the events of the night before had pushed all thoughts of the system out of my mind. I looked around to see if I could find the source of the voice, but all I saw was a bright white square of light floating in the middle of the darkness. I read the words on the square, which I assumed was the screen I had heard so much about, and they repeated word for word what the voice had said. I was a bit nervous about having to start on this journey on my own. true my family was never of much help, but at least in town I could bribe someone into helping me. the old people at the academy were always eager to have someone truly interested in what they had to say. They were out of reach now. There was no going back. To be honest, my life there would have been over regardless. I doubted the monster my "family" had sold me to would let me spend time reading. It was always going to come down to one of us dying. I could not feel even a bit of regret even if I tried, not that I was trying.

The voice drew me away from my thoughts as it said: Now that the system has been implemented you will be able to access this screen even when awake. Let's proceed with the tutorial. The voice explained what a character screen was, what the different tabs were for, and how to move back and forth between them. We focused on three tabs. The character sheet tab, the notices tab, and the skills tab. First, we went to the notices tab:

You have attuned yourself to the energies of life.

Congratulations You have learned the skill of healing. Title early adopter grants you 10 levels to the magic skill healing.

Congratulations! You have learned the skill of forage. Your title "survivor" grants you 10 levels in the skill forage. Forage reaches lv 10. 10% increase to the yield of the items you forage per level

Congratulations you have learned the skill to identify.Your title "survivor" grants you 10 levels in the skill indentify. Identify is now level lv10. you can indentify items that match your level of the skill

Congratulations, you have learned the skill tracking. Your title " survivor grants you 10 levels in the skill tracking. Tracking is now level 10. the levels in this skill help you follow older tracks. this skills extendens the age of the tracks you can follow by 2 hours per level. at level 1 you can follow 1 hours old tracks.

congratulations you have learned the skill stealth. learning how to be invisible helped you stay out of the way of adults who wanted to see you dead for existing. Your title survivor grants you 10 levels in the skill stealth. you are 5% harder to detect per level.

You have learned the combat skill of archery. Your title: "child soldier" grants you 10 levels in the skill archery. archery reaches lv 10. +2% accuracy per level

You have learned the combat skill of small blades your title child soldier grants you 10 levels in the combat skill small blades. Your skill small blades reach lv 10. +1 % chance of a critical strike per level

Congratulations, you have unlocked the title child soldier: the title child soldier grants you 10 levels in any combat skills you trained before having access to the system.

Congratulations, you have been granted the title: of beloved of the system. unlike most around you, you have been granted the ability to sense and harness the subtle energies that make everything. Some call this magic.

The system loves you, but you love it right back, You have earned the title of early adopter. because you started attuning to the subtle energies and practicing magic from the cradle you are granted the title early adopter. The title early adopter grants you 10 levels in any magical skill you practiced before having access to the system.

Congratulations you have been granted the title survivor. The gods help those who help themselves. The title survivor grants you 10 levels in any survival skills you trained before having access to the system.

You have killed a brute, lv 30. You receive 5000 points of experience. for killing a monster 30 levels above your own your experience received is increased by 100%.

congratulations! you have reached lv 10. plus 2 attribute points per level.

you also gain 2 general skills, combat skills, and magic skills points per level gained.

congratulations, you can now choose a class. classes available:

Healer

archer

Rogue

would you like to choose a class? The voice instructed me on how to turn down a prompt and advised me to return to it later. I did as the voice advised, but I had no intention of returning to any of those classes later.

You have killed a being by removing the essence of life from them. ! you have

learned the magic skill decay. Decay lv1. you can syphon the very life out of any living organism. you can channel this energy into yourself or others.

Before I had had a chance to absorb all the information there we moved to the next tab: character screen: In the center of the screen was a picture of a dirty, skinny child. I suppose that was me. The child was wearing a top that was too big for her. I shrugged my shoulders, might not look good but it works, probably doesn't smell good either. I have bigger things to worry about now.

It went over attributes:

strength: affects the weight of the things you can, and the power or force you can apply to movements objects, etc.

Constitution: affects your health and stamina pool as well as their regeneration.

dexterity: affects how quickly you can move as well as the precision with which you move.

intelligence affects your mana pool as well as your mana regeneration.

Wisdom affects your ability to apply the things you learn, as well as use the things you already know, and observation of the world around you to build your extrapolate and form new patterns from old ones.

charisma affects how other people perceive you as well as your ability to convey your thoughts and ideas to others.

base starting attributes:

Strength: 10

Constitution:10

dexterity: 10

charisma: 6

wisdom: 14

intelligence: 10

You have 20 attribute points to distribute.

Next, I saw three bars underneath the attributes. One bar was red and it read health, 500/500. beneath it, I saw an arrow that let me know there was something there to expand. I expanded it and read health regeneration: 1 health point per minute. The next two bars followed the same principle, yellow for stamina, which let me know how much physical energy I had to do things such as running, swimming, and climbing. The stamina bar read 30/30, and also had a stamina regen bar. The stamina regrn rate was 1 point per minute. The next one was blue. That bar was for mana. It read 1000/1000. The regen rate was 5 points per minute. The voice explained that as I increased my attributes the regen rates for said attribute would increase as well. I could not help but notice that the mana was my biggest energy pool, and yet I was doing so little with it!

The last tab was the skills tab which had a section for basic skills and advanced skills the basic skills section of the skills tab was expanded. After a quick look, I saw things like breathing lv5. The voice advised me to shrink it for now. It told me though that it was possible to evolve these basic skills into something better and not dismiss them. voice pointed out that under basic skills there was something that looked like an arrow, and that I could click on this to shrink that area. After looking at the skills there I decided to shrink it. Next are advanced skills. The voice then explained how I could and should minimize the screen unless I was in a safe area. The screen and messages can interfere with you being aware of the environment and being unaware of the environment can get you killed the voice said with no inflection. When you minimize the screen all announcements and the voice-over feature are paused until you expand the screen again. Try it now.

I tried willing the screen to minimize, and it disappeared then willed it to expand again and it did. Very good. This concludes the tutorial. You can disable the voice-over option. Would you like to disable the voice-over option? I selected no.

Just as I thought, even though I did not have access to the system before my birthday, I still accumulated experience during that time. prob less than I would now, but something is something. My effort was worth it. I would start with a stable foundation. What I didn't get in luck, I got in common sense. I would take common sense over luck any day.

I had no one to answer to, and no chores to do, and the feeling of freedom filled me with happiness. True I had no one to rely on but had I ever had anyone to rely on before? not really. At least now I had no one making demands on time. Talking about time, it was time to improve! The old man who gave me training in exchange for healing had his archery at lv 20! even as old as he was an incredible hunter. I was probably going to depend on my bow a lot to keep myself fed. I needed to raise that to at least lv 20 as soon as possible. I was also going to hold off on assigning my bonus point attributes, all my attributes except charisma were at the basic level, which should carry me through for a bit. My charisma was low, however, if you are unlikeable in the forest, but there is no one around to notice, are you even unlikeable at all? I laughed at my joke and lowered my bag with a rope, and then followed after. time to kill two birds with a stone... or arrow? I needed some breakfast and It was that glorious time to grind some skills.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Now, while my skill with the bow was pretty decent, I could not forget that my bow was sized for..well me. I was of average size for a girl child, which meant... I was small. So I needed to choose the right prey. it would be insane to go after a deer or anything of even remotely that size with my child-sized bow.

The first two animals I saw, a rabbit and a turkey, took off before I could get anywhere near them. I figured I was making too much noise. I spent the next several hours moving as slowly as I could, paying careful attention to where I put my feet, to make sure I didn't trip or break any sticks. after several hours I was rewarded. I saw what could be nothing more than a newborn deer drinking from a rivulet while its mother chomped on the grass nearby. it was bigger than a rabbit, but still small enough that I could take it with my bow. It was awfully cute, but I was hungry. I aimed at the fawn's neck, pulled my arrow back, and let it fly. My aim flew true and impaled the fawn through the neck. The mother deer reared back and sniffed at its calf. when her attempts to wake it up were unsuccessful, the deer wandered off.

I came out of hiding and tied a rope to the small deer's front legs and dragged it back to a place I had chosen to make my camp in. it was a very small shallow cave. just big enough to keep a small fire and lay out my sleeping roll. I had lived on my own before in my small hut, but I was always on alert because, at any possible moment, someone from the big house could come demanding that I do this or that. Here in the wild in the middle of dangerous land, I felt more at peace and safe than I ever had before.

While it was great that I had gotten the deer and all, I was sure that when I checked my notices the system would not be congratulation me about my new levels. I needed to kill things that could hurt me, not baby deer. After I went back to camp butchered and seasoned the meat I set it to smoke over a green wood fire. I thought about my choices and concluded that I needed to get deeper into the forest and find the actual monsters. I decided to leave camp around mid-day and move towards the wilder parts of the forest in search of more dangerous foes. After about 2 hours of carefully making my way into the forest, I started to notice something that made me smile. I saw what looked like spider silk that reached from tree to tree. Spiders in the forest did not tend to get too, because well, it would be difficult to move massive bodies among all that vegetation. They would be bigger than house spiders sure, but probably just the right size for me to grind on.

As I continued to crawl closer I saw my first customer, and as old man Ghrelin used to say: You have to take care of your customers. I knocked the arrow and held it in place with the first two fingers and the thumb of my right hand. I raised the bow to shoulder height, pulled the string and arrow back to my ear, and released the arrow as I breathed out. Good hit. Got the spider through the head. Hopefully, there was a nest nearby.

While most spiders live alone, some do form colonies. I was hoping I was dealing with that type. I was in luck, I advanced a bit further and saw three spiders moving together. They were quite a distance away, so maybe I could take out all three before they reached me? Only one way to find out. I took aim, focused, and released the first arrow. without hesitation or stopping to see the arrow hit my first target I knocked another arrow and aimed for the other one and released. As I was getting ready to knock my third arrow I felt something heavy fall on me.

I screamed in fear, it was another spider. It fell on me instantly biting my shoulder, I screamed again. I could see my health bar drop by 50 points, and now it was green instead of red. It felt like my body was burning all over. I let go of my bow, reached for my dagger, and stabbed at it as fast I could. 2, 3, 4 I kept screaming while stabbing. My health kept dropping by a few points every couple of seconds. I quickly cast heal on myself. which raised my life bar by 200 points, but it was still green and kept dropping by 5 points every second. After another healing, and about 10 minutes, my life bar stopped dropping and it was no longer green. I looked all around me including up this time and sat with my back against a tree taking big deep breaths. After a few minutes of resting, I decided that I needed to regroup. That had been too close. I made my way back to camp as the afternoon sun was sinking on the horizon. I decided to look at my progress.

You have killed a fawn! You gain 10 experience

You have killed 4 forest spider soldiers you gain 400 experience!

I quickly finished reading all the notifications on the screen, very glad the system was smart enough to summarize the new information instead of drowning me in lines and lines of notice.

I switched from my notices page to my character sheet with a thought. I was lv 10. It read that I had 400/3000 points to get to level 11. I would need to kill about 30 forest spiders for each lv I wanted to gain. That did not sound like fun.

While I wanted to kill lots of monsters and level up as fast as possible I wanted to do it in the least amount of time possible. What was the best way to do that? I neither had a powerful weapon, nor the skills to make one...yet. What could I do with the skills and tools I had available to me now? After thinking about it for a while I narrowed it down to two possibilities. One, I could hunt for the big game, potentially using stealth to sneak up on powerful monsters, and then use my decay on them. Or two I could just shoot many arrows at large groups of smaller monsters as fast as possible to kill as many of them as possible. That just did not sound efficient. If only I could shoot more than one arrow at once. Was there a way I could do that? I could only imagine that being possible with magic. Was there a way I could do it with magic? Maybe if I had a magic skill that could duplicate arrows as I shot them? If magic could restore limbs, create storms and even call beings from other places, surely it could duplicate an arrow right?

I had learned a new skill by using one I already knew and guiding it with my intent to get magic to do what I wanted. What if I tried shooting multiple arrows at once and focusing my intent on developing a skill that duplicated my arrows? I got to work right away. To help me visualize it I took two arrows and knocked them at once. I pulled back on my bow and kept thinking in my head, One shot, many arrows, and let go. I did this over and over all day long. Sometimes the arrows would travel a couple of feet and fall, other times I would release them awkwardly and they would knock against each other and drop to the ground. I kept my mind focused, imagining what it would feel like, to have an arrow in my hand, knocking it, pulling back, infusing my magic through my hand and into the arrow, and seeing it with as much detail as possible split into two when the arrow shot from the bow.

Several days passed. I only took breaks to sleep and to forage and hunt for food. I knew it was possible because I had done it before, I just had to persist! After several days of intense concentration and determination, I felt something shift, and then as I let go each arrow multiplied into two!!! I jumped up and down and screamed for joy. True the arrows did not travel very far, but I want the point, that I could improve with practice if I wanted. I excitedly pulled up my notices screen and read the notices:

Congratulations you have created the skill Surging arrow. Surging arrow lv 1. arrows shot while activating this skill will multiply and produce one additional arrow per level. Each arrow deals the same amount of damage as the original arrow.

Congratulation you have learned the skill focus. Focus lv 1. Whenever you actively use focus while performing another skill you add a + 1% chance of success per level on the skill.

Congratulations you have learned the ability skill artist. Skill artist lv 1. You have unknowingly stumbled onto one of the basic principles of magic. All magic comes from the same source. Water takes the shape of a vessel.

I had spent several days trying this on a whim, just following a gut feeling, and I was very well rewarded for it. I made a mental note to pay attention to such feelings and thoughts in the future. It looked like that was the way to make the greatest breakthroughs. Alright, I had developed a way to kill many monsters, but the skill would not be as efficient if the monsters were scattered about. I needed a way to group monsters. In my vision, I would find a way to group monsters, and then use my exploding arrow skill--once it was a higher level of course--devastate them with my arrows.

I sat down to the meal I had prepared. I had made a roasted rabbit stuffed with mint and thyme. To round out the meal I wrapped a couple of mountain potatoes in bamboo leaves and then cooked them slowly under the coals. The wonderful smell of the thyme brought a memory to mind. Thyme was used by people to keep away pests and bugs. If there were herbs that could keep away pests, were there also herbs that could attract them?

After I finished my meal I decided to use the rest of the afternoon to forage in the forest. I activated the skills forage, and identify while focusing on finding herbs that would attract monsters. I walked deeper and deeper into the forest while looking at every herb, grass, flower, and bush I came across. The hours slid by and blended into each other. Suddenly I felt a shift inside me. I stopped and pulled my notices tab:

Congratulations, you have learned the skill find. Find lv1. When you activate this skill while focusing on looking for something, the skill will guide you to what you are looking for. As you increase the level of the skill finding what you are looking for will get easier. The rarer the item or substance, the harder it is to find. I smiled happily and activated the skill. I looked around the forest waiting for the skill to guide me, and I felt pulled in a certain direction. I looked at my mana pull and saw it drop by a few points. I wondered if the mana draws intensified with the rarity of the item.

The terrain started to slope upwards and I found myself walking up a hill. I came to a stop. In front of me stood a short bushy plant. It smelled strongly musky to me, I could see places where it had been nibbled. As I bent to examine the bush my eyes made contact with slitted pupils underneath the shrub. I made to get up and run, but the creature lunged at me with its mouth opened wide. All I saw next were fangs.