Alice leaned against the wall next to the hole. She was exhausted. Physically, she was completely fine, having barely even moved for the entire time. However, it was still immensely stressful.

The act of killing by itself was already something Alice doubted she would ever get used to. And in some way, doing so with a gun from behind a wall took all personal involvement out of it. One might assume that it makes the whole thing easier, but on the contrary, it made Alice feel like a cog in a machine. A cog in a murder machine. It made the whole act seem unimportant. It might be stupid or hypocritical, but she didn't like it.

The fight had been a lot shorter than Alice expected. It probably did not even take ten minutes. But then again, she realized, there was only so much time one could spend shooting at living beings and expect more of them to run at you.

For the first time, Alice checked the messages she got.

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

Level Up!

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Level Up!

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A total of two levels. It had definitely slowed down. However, who knew how what was actually being calculated. The amount of experience, and in turn levels, she got might be related to nothing but the number of killed creatures. But it could also be related to her enemy's strength or the risk involved. And for all she knew, there could be some kind of elaborate meditation exercise that could give them just as many levels.

On the other hand, the assumption that experience and levels were gained through some kind of action might also be completely wrong. It could just as well be that the levels reflected personal growth. In short, Alice didn’t know.

"Are you okay?" Ava asked from next to her. She managed to mask it very well, but Alice could tell from her soul that she was just as stressed and exhausted as herself. Alice wasn't quite sure why exactly, but she could read Ava's emotions a lot better than those of others.

Maybe it was because she knew the girl a lot better and was getting familiar with her soul, or if it had to do with her outburst back at the high school.

"I'm fine, don't worry. Right, now that I think about it, I never asked you what you did with your second level up. We dealt with the same kind and number of monsters, so you should have gotten to level two back then as well, right?"

And if she didn’t, that would already be proof that the system is more complex then assumed in how it gives out levels.

"Oh, right! I took the random secondary Stat. And it's even marked as trainable."

"Trainable?"

"Yes, I can increase the Stat as long as I try hard enough, basically. The Stat is for my hearing, though, so it's nothing too exciting. Also, it has a max limit."

"No, no, no. Isn't this pretty big? That basically means you can train to get stronger without having to increase your level. Also, aren't stats more or less your basic abilities while Skills serve as multipliers? With the right combination, it should be extremely powerful," Alice argued.

"I guess, but it still means that I get almost nothing from it until the Stat has sufficiently increased. So it's only something for the long-term."

"Let's level up then? Or have you already?"

"Yeah, I took Stats."

"Okay, give me a moment."

Alice thought about what she wanted. Stats and Skill points were the safe choices. They would increase her base capabilities and make specific Skills stronger. On the other hand, Class affinity was something that could apparently be earned in other ways, as proven by her increase in Necromancer affinity.

Then there were the secondary Stats. After hearing what they did, Alice thought that they had a lot of potential and definitely wanted to take one of them. However, Ava was right. They were a long-term project, and she currently had not a single Skill directly applicable to combat.

Good thing then that she had earned two levels. For her first level-up, she chose a random Skill.

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Reward: Skill

Soul absorption Lv 1

1 Soul energy

Regenerate 1 Stamina, or Regenerate 1 Mana, or Regenerate some health.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

The process of activating Skills had been extremely easy until that point, like an extra limb she has always had and used, but forgotten about for a few minutes before rediscovering it. And so was it this time too. At one moment, she had one Soul energy and thirteen Mana, the next, it turned into zero Soul energy and fourteen Mana. She immediately grabbed another soul from behind the wall and repeated the process.

Of course, nothing changed. Aside from using up the soul, it was a plus-minus zero deal. However, not only could she regenerate Mana with the Skill, she could even regenerate Stamina and, if she understood correctly, consume Soul energy to heal herself. It stood to question how effective that would be, but that was something she would have to test.

However, more than anything, the Skill had massive potential. And thus, she decided that the long-term could wait a little longer.

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Reward: Skill point

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Soul absorption Lv 2

1 Soul energy

Regenerate 2 Stamina, or Regenerate 2 Mana, or Regenerate some health.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

A manic grin spread over her face.

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

Name: Alice Liddell

Level: 4

Class-primary: Necromancer 71,4%%

Class-secondary: Warrior 78,2%

Resources:

Stamina: 15/15

Mana: 14/15

Soul energy: 0/10

Primary Stats:

Muscle-density: 15

Stamina: 15

Mana: 15

Magic power: 15

Secondary Stats:

Soul energy: 10

Skills:

Soul collection Lv 1

Soul sense Lv 1

Undead constitution Lv 1

Flesh grafting Lv 1

Soul absorption Lv 2

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Immediately, Alice collected every single soul in her reach, bringing her Soul energy up to five and her Mana down to nine. Then, she proceeded to absorb three of the souls, leaving her at two Soul energy but maxing out her Mana at fifteen again.

"What did you get?" Ava was clearly curious about the way she was acting.

"I have infinite Mana!" Alice declared as pompously dramatical as she could.

"What?! What kind of bullshit Skill did you get this time?"

"Well, it's not really infinite," Alice conceded sheepishly before explaining the Skill, or rather the Skill combination, to her friend.

"Give me your arm," Ava finally said when Alice finished her explanation.

Not suspecting anything, Alice extends her arm, quickly pulling it back when her best friend took out one of her knives and gave her a shallow cut.

"Ouch! What was that for?"

"A cut like that should heal in three to seven days. Roughly. Now try healing yourself."

Alice had already done so before Ava told her. In mere moments, the pain completely disappeared. Rubbing off the small amount of blood that got left behind, her arm showed no signs that anything had happened to her.

"Well, that was quick. We will have to see how effective it is for bigger injuries, but it's definitely good that you have it. Also, now that I think about it, we need to test how many Skills can be used at the same time. If you can use that Skill at any and all times, you can use your Soul energy to completely substitute your Mana and Stamina Stats! That Skill is totally ridiculous!"

"You don't need to tell me that. But you shouldn't forget where the Soul energy comes from. I have to kill something for every single point of Soul energy, and I can only kill so many things."

"But natural Mana regeneration is super inefficient as well. Even with a larger mana pool, you can only get one Mana per hour without meditation," Ava complained.

"I know. That's why I'm going for a hybrid. In my opinion, we should always forgo greater power in favor of greater safety. I think we should always assume that any enemy is going to know and target our biggest weak points."

"And how would you target the weak point of needing souls to regenerate Mana?" Ava asked her, her voice clearly telling that she didn't think there was something like that.

But Alice had already an answer, "Just keep me away from any place where something recently died? And if that doesn’t work, then guerilla tactics. Constantly harass me and force me to use up my Soul energy while making hunting for more too dangerous."

"Okay, right. But at least make sure that you don't waste this veritable feast right on our doorstep."

"Don't worry. I wasn't planning to," Alice told her friend.

She walked along the inner side of the wall, collecting and absorbing as many souls as she could. However, in most areas aside from her and Ava's, the Raptors had died quite some distance away from the wall, making her unable to reach their souls. She would have to invest a point or two into her Soul collection Skill in the future. If she had to collect and use souls in the middle of combat, more reach would be important.

She turned to Michael when she couldn't reach any more souls, "Can we go out by now?"

"Is it urgent? I would prefer it if we waited a few minutes longer," his answer came immediately.

"Kinda. I need to collect their souls, and I don't know how long those stay in place after death."

"Okay, that sounds just a tad sketchy. What the hell do you need souls for?"

"Right, you don't know yet," Alice told him roughly what she could do.

Michael thought for a moment and finally answered, "Fine. How does it look outside?" he shouted the last sentence towards the roof.

"Looks fine enough. There are still some between the trees, but they don't look like they are going to come out if we don't provoke them," the same old woman as from before the fight answered.

"Someone needs to go outside the wall for a moment. Cover her please!"

"Sure, boy!" was the answer that came back down.

"They will give you sniper cover, but be fast and run back the moment you hear them shooting. Also, you are going to have to use the ladder to get over the wall. Opening and closing the wall costs too much Mana to do so all the time," he explained.

"Sure. Thanks."

It was a bit of a risk to go out there right now, but she was going to have sniper support, something she never expected to ever even think about besides in some game, maybe. Then again, said sniper support was very likely to have presbyopia, so she wasn't too sure how she felt about that. Then AGAIN, they probably had some kind of Skill or Stat counteracting that.

She highly doubted that they would be given such weapons otherwise. Or Alice hoped that, at the very least.

"The ladder is over there," Michael pointed to the right side next to the entrance.

"Don't think I'm gonna need it," Alice declined him and took a running start at the wall.

At one of the high schools she had been at, the P.E. teacher had thankfully opted out from teaching them the same four sports every single year that were also taught at every single other high school. Instead, he chose to teach breakdancing, which she luckily only had to join the last two lessons of. But after that, he taught free running, something she had actually enjoyed doing. And what she had learned back then hadn't yet left her.

She jumped up, placed one foot into a shooting port, and vertically jumped up the wall where she grabbed the edge and hoisted herself up and over. The wall was a bit over three meters high, but if you knew how and had some practice in it, it was surprisingly easy to get up even much higher walls. Not to mention that the shooting ports were basically perfect footholds.

It wasn't quite as fluid as she would have liked, and university life hadn't exactly been good for her fitness, but that had more or less been offset by her increased Muscle-density.

Her landing on the other side wasn't as elegant as she would have liked, but she ignored Ava's comments and her slightly painful ankle and went to work. She didn't have to walk far until she practically stood in a sea of souls. As quickly as she could, she collected them, then absorbed them to top off her Mana. In the end, she was missing only one point of Mana, which she had needed to top off her Soul energy. She also used several souls to heal herself.

For one, because of her ankle. But also to test how well her healing worked on sore muscles, the reminders of the previous day. In the process, she noticed one more thing. It surprisingly relieved her of her slight coffee addiction. If she didn't get her coffee in the morning, she would act grumpy for the rest of the day, or that was what Ava told her.

But this felt almost even better than a morning coffee. It was, of course, not just a little questionable considering the origin of this new coffee substitute, but so were most of her Skills and probably all of those she would get in the future as well. It was a fate she had chosen herself.

When she was finally done, she took another running start and clambered once again over the wall, this time choosing to go down the other side slowly instead of jumping it.

"You know, most people here are veteran soldiers," Alice stated.

"Yes?" Ava answered her with uncertainty in her voice, confused at that comment that had come out of nowhere.

"I just thought that it might be a good idea to ask one of them to train us."

"That's... Actually, a good idea. But doesn't military training take quite a long time?"

"Sure, but we don't need to be perfect at everything. We won't be using guns a lot in the future, and physical training can be substituted by increasing our Stats. In the first place, trying to quickly build up muscles under these circumstances would be a waste of resources. Standard military tactics, hand-to-hand combat, survival skills, and movement techniques will probably also be invalidated by one Skill or another. And sooner rather than later, actually."

"Ehm... Then why are you saying we should ask them for training if it's going to be useless in the end?" Ava asked confusedly.

"I'm just saying that we won't need full training. We only need to learn the basics, so we have a foundation to build on."

"Okay, good point. But you know, you are adapting to this shit pretty insanely quickly. Just yesterday, you said I should call the shots since I'm, and I quote you: 'a professional'. I think the only thing I contributed since then was finding these armors. You make me feel a little useless, you know."

"First of all, you saved my life."

"Only after I let you almost die," Ava interrupted.

"And secondly, adapting is my secret superpower."

"It's no secret anymore if you tell me," Ava answered wryly.

"Why do I need to continue hiding my superpower if everyone now has superpowers?"

"You didn't deny that I was useless, by the way," Ava stated.

"If you feel indebted, you can just pay me back by helping me find my brother," Alice assured her friend, whose presence was the only reason she could act this tough.

"I was planning to do that either way."

"See? Even if you were useless, which you weren't, considering I would have had to sneak past a goddamn dragon without you, you have no plans on staying that way. So there is absolutely no problem."

"Oh, right. There was that," the redhead cheered up again.

It was at that moment that the captain came up to them and asked Alice a question, "Considering you are the one who is most likely to know, what do you think about naturally occurring undead? We haven't thought about that possibility until now, but I could most definitely do without these little shits coming back for round two."

Alice didn't need to think about that for long. Considering her Class and Skills, she had a good guess as to how undead came to be and what could be done to prevent them, despite never having seen them.

"I can't know for sure, but if I had to hazard a guess, then an undead should be a soul possessing a dead body in some kind of way. So taking the body away should already be enough to prevent them since the soul will stay in the same place where the being died. If you want to make extra sure, you can probably burn the bodies, or I can go around and collect all of the souls," Alice finished, only to add something a moment later, "I'm only talking about zombies, though. I don't have any idea about ghosts and stuff like that."

"Okay, that has to be enough for now. We don't have the resources to burn the corpses, so could you please collect the souls? There is no need to take risks when we have you already."

"Sure. I can do that," Alice answered, secretly happy that she wouldn't have to help collect the bodies while she did so. Then, she got another idea, "But can I leave three or four of them behind to watch them? I want to see how long they stay behind and stuff like that. I think it's going to be quite useful in the future."

"You sound like you have an idea already?"

"Sure have. I can more or less tell how intelligent someone is from their soul. In other words, I can tell if a soul belongs to a human or a monster. Now, if it turns out that souls always stay behind for roughly the same amount of time..."

"Supernatural crime-scene analysis. I see. Good thinking, do that after you have collected the souls. But you should still feel ashamed of leaving all the hard work to a bunch of grandmas and grandpas," Michael said with humor in his voice.

That last comment actually did make her feel ashamed, but learning more about souls was actually pretty important, and she was the only person who could do so. At least as far as she knew. And she really could do without having to ferry around corpses.