The water was cold! Spluttering as her head peaked out of it, James tried to force her limbs to keep moving against the water’s movement. The current was strong, and pre-System James would have been swept away with it despite the years of swimming lessons her parents had insisted she get. Now, though, with a whopping strength stat of 10, especially impressive when compared with her initial 3, she hardly struggled to tread water. The initial shock had been surprising, despite expecting it, but her body soon got used to it.

Scrubbing herself with her nails to get as much of the surface gunk off as possible, James succeeded in getting most of the grime off of herself. Her clothes were a bit harder to clean, but a lot was removable though the stains remained. The higher stats undoubtedly helped her in that endeavor too.

Next, she swam a bit upriver and away from all the blood and dirt she had washed off and forced herself to drink the water. It felt weird and gross, almost like drinking bath water, but she knew she needed to drink.

It probably would have felt better if she drank the water while being outside of it, but she couldn’t force herself to do that. She knew the second she stepped out into the fresh morning air the small bit of temperature equilibrium she had managed to achieve would end and she’d be freezing. And drinking before washing her hands was more of a health hazard than she’d like to admit. She’d probably do it later. When she could ignore everything her hands had touched.

Lazily hanging around in the water, she saw some fish swimming past her and to the area she had cleaned off at. The fish were fat, with a lazy appearance. They had large, defined yellow scales and large gills. None of them seemed to particularly mind her, though none got too close. Using Identify on one of them, it came up as Sharped Carp. While they didn’t appear to be an entirely new species to Earth like the goblins, the fish’s name indicated that they were evolved. All the same she did have to admit that she knew next to nothing about fish and wouldn’t have been able to spot the difference without Identify.

Of course, that was when James got the brilliant idea to go fishing. Well, magical fishing. After all, she liked sushi, and the fish were certainly fresh and appeared healthy. Having solved her cooking problem by deciding not to cook anything at all, James patted herself on the back.

If she experimented with her Mana Blast now, she could gain a better understanding of it as well as get a solid meal. James checked her mana reservoir: a massive 575. Taking a deep breath, she touched that area of her mind that seemed to house the Skill. Feeling the knowledge fill her, she triggered it, feeling as her mana seemed to gush out in a big wave. Her sphere seemed to fill with an explosion of white that seemed to be gone in an eyeblink. Her blue dot started to blink as the colors of the mana around her began to fade.

You have killed Sharped Carp level 1! Experience is granted.

You have killed Sharped Carp level 2! Experience is granted.

You have killed Diving Heron level 4! Experience is granted.

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…

You have killed Heavy Carp level 1! Experience is granted.

She felt her throat fill with vomit which she forcefully tried to ignore and push down. This Skill felt like a sledgehammer. It didn’t discriminate and just killed and killed and killed. On the other hand, she knew she would have to keep using it. It had saved her a day ago. And would save her hunger now.

But there was nothing sporting about it. Those animals were dead because they were around her when she decided she wanted to experiment. And, logically, she knew it was the correct decision. And that when she needed food, she would do it again if she had no other option. But she wouldn’t let herself forget this feeling. She didn’t even get a level from all the hassle of using her Skill, signifying how this wasn’t even worth all that much experience because of how low leveled her “opponents” were.

Checking her mana, because otherwise half the reason she released the Mana blast was voided and she would need to repeat it, she saw that it cost her 240 points. She’d need to see how it would compare to the next time she used it. For all she knew it depended on how many beings were in range at the time.

Going with that amount for calculation purposes, she could currently only release two Mana Blasts before she had to resort to other methods. And in spite of all her misgivings about the Skill, she wasn’t sure what else she could do if she were attacked. For all her training with Jean Paul and Louis, two weeks’ worth of it wasn’t enough to make her any good. According to Jean Paul she hadn’t graduated to throwing punches status. She supposed that her practice level with her Skill was even lower, but she was too reluctant to consider how she could practice it outside of fishing.

Slowly fish started to bob up to the surface, and James felt dirtier than ever. Hurriedly getting to the other bank of the river, she tried to grab a Sharped Carp that was close by but hissed in pain when it cut her. Despite being a low level, it had managed to draw blood without even being alive.

Holding her hand to reduce blood flow, she dripped water all around her as she trudged her way out of the river and grabbed a few leaves. Shivering with every small gust of wind, she set the leaves up on the ground and held them down with some rocks. Then, she grabbed a few more leaves to help her hold onto the fish. This time she didn’t get cut, and she placed it on the makeshift plate she had set up with the leaves.

Next up was the question of how to cut the Sharped Carp. The fish themselves were sharp, but in a paper-cut kind of way: she couldn’t use one to butcher the rest. Sashimi sounded great, but it was a long way off from the fish she was currently looking at.

Wrinkling her nose, she figured the first step to dealing with the fish would be to gut it. Prying its underside open with her leaf-covered hands and hearing a sickening crunch, she turned it on its side outside of her leaf plate to let most of the contents out. Sticking her hand in, she almost gagged from the sliminess of it, and took out the rest of the organs as well as the spine, or at least as much of it as she could grab. This was much worse than playing with clay.

At least the inside of the fish didn’t have the same type of sharp quality like the rest of it, and she didn’t get any additional injuries. Washing it off in the clear stream water once she was done, she stared at the Sharped Carp in her hands. It wasn’t going to get any better.

With tentative fingers, she ripped off a piece of white flesh and smelled it. Slightly fishy, but not enough to convince her to wait for other options, she put it in her mouth and hoped it wasn’t too bad. She needn’t have worried. She was too hungry to really taste anything objectively. The second it was in, more pieces followed. Magical fishing was a success.