Silence. A scuttling of mice, slithering of snakes, or the chirping of birds were not sounds that permeated the air so deep into this forest. Even the gustful breeze refused to seep in so deeply, the leaves barely even rustling.

The primary sound that could be heated was the mechanical movement of muscles, the rhythmic, heavy breathing of an animal recently having partook in extraneous exercise.

In fact, although there was one such creature emanating the sounds, there was one more, sounding a little different.

This one's breathing was measured, and clipped, trying to be as quiet as possible. It’s movements were minimal and made with such grace and care that nary a sound was made.

The beast moved about a little, almost like it was circling the burrow. It walked a few metres, stopped, looked around, and then carried on walking. From the way it lifted its snout into the air, the woman hiding in the bushes got the sense it was checking for scent more than sight alone.

When the boar was out of sight, a mound occluding it from the woman, she crept closer to the hill. It was a steady incline, taking up a large space but not being particularly tall. She’d be able to climb it with ease, without the use of her hands, and could keep herself crouched down low in order to make herself harder to see.

As she climbed to the apex of the hill, the trees still towering above her with the thick trunks and impossibly high canopies, she saw the boar, completely unaware of her, continuing with its patrolling.

She first followed it with her gaze and then began trying to get closer to it little by little. She made her way down the hill from the top, then circled around to keep in line with the boar, and then descended a little.

However, one time she got closer, her foot slipped a little, and a substantial chunk of earth tumbled down the hill, colliding with the ground with a hard thud and suddenly alerting the boar to her presence.

With minimal hesitation, the woman dashed forwards, stone spear in hand, and forcefully thrust towards the boar.

Alas, her physicality failed her. Her short arms made the attack fall short, just as the boar backed away from the obviously sharp tip flying through the air towards it.

Ideally, the woman would be able to throw the spear as a javelin but seeing how this was her only one currently, she was obviously reluctant to do so.

Quickly, she scrambled down the hill, scraping her legs and butt against the coarse dirt as she partially fell.

She didn’t care; her focus was on bigger things currently.

As she planted her feet on the level earth, the beast took this as its moment to charge. It had backed up a few metres, ample running space, and the woman knew from personal experience that those metres meant nothing.

As soon as she sensed the boar's intentions, she quickly scrambled out of the way, partially jumping and sliding along the slope of the hill as the boar came rocketing towards her.

As it missed, she thrust out with her spear once again, stabbing it in the body but failing to deal a fatal strike.

The boar pulled back, its razor-sharp tusks a clean, pearly white unlike the dirty, muddy, matted fur that covered the rest of its body.

This performance repeated itself a few times. The boar's body was built for massive, powerful bursts of energy. It’s tusks were forward-facing, extremely long, and it lacked adequate articulation in its neck. A powerful charge was an incredibly dangerous weapon in its hands but it lacked the ability to do anything else.

The woman danced around the creature with graceful movements, dodging out of the way with ample time and then stepping in for another attack. She took advantage of the spear's reach to the maximum in keeping distance from the boar.

With each attack, every time the stone tip sunk into the boars hide, it elicited a sharp squeal of pain and then an angered, annoyed huff. A few times, the boar shifted its huge body weight, its muscles rippling under the skin, in an attempt to either dislodge or break the spear stuck in its body.

The woman, however, always managed to withdraw her weapon quickly, her slim arms and small body hiding the hidden strength within her.

And then, with one final, last attack, the spear sunk into the eye socket, the body of the beast collapsing to the ground, dead.

She wiped the sweat off her brow as she examined the bloodied spearhead. It was of a different shape than it was to begin with, with chips taken off, but it was still usable.

Good. This is good. I can use this. Killing takes more time than the knife but it’s much safer; I only got grazed once and even that was only 20 points of health this time.

Satisfied, the woman knelt down and rested her hand on the still-warm head of the boar.

She gave her thanks to the boar, for an exhilarating fight, for helping to test her weapon, but, primarily, for the sustenance it would provide her in the form of food.

She tried to do this after every kill she made; it helped to keep her conscience clean by making clear the reasons why she was taking life. It was simply the food chain; she killed to eat—any other reason was auxiliary to that.

Hunting could be fun, sure, but she didn’t want that to become her prime motivator; she’d end up killing more than necessary and disrespecting the creatures that she killed by not even eating them afterwards.

Gratitude delivered, she stood back up, lodged her spear back into the boar flesh deeply, and began to drag the huge carcass back towards her burrow—back towards where she left her materials for more spears.

This was tough. Her body felt alight with energy from the adrenaline, and she barely noticed the weight of the boar behind her. But after even a few minutes of all this pulling, her arms were beginning to ache, beginning to shout at her to take a rest, and even her back began to creak from pain. She ended up taking periodic rests as she caught her breath, not that her arms relaxed much.

Eventually, however, she had dragged the boar back within the vicinity of her current camp. Exhausted, she dropped it unceremoniously.

I raised my power but I barely felt any different! Do the-Do the stats not actually alter the physical body? Are they just numerical abstractions?

She was panting like a dog and began making her way towards the stream, to where she can find refreshing water to clear her of thirst.

Maybe it’s just something else? Fuck; there’s still so much that I don’t know yet.

She took large mouthfuls of water, gulping it down like a dog in a desert.

Now, however, it was time to get to something she had been putting off; where to spend her skill point.

Her last fight made one thing quite evident; when it was one-on-one, her weapons combined with her ease of healing meant they posed very little threat to her at all.

And then, a revelation hit her:

Why am I limiting myself to just a select few skills? I found [Leech] through wanting a skill that could [Heal] me; could I do the same for other skills?

To test it out, she thought, in as clear and explicit language as she could, a skill that could start a fire.

And the fire skill tree popped up in front of her.

Okay. This begs some experimentation; does it find skills or skill trees?

Browsing through the list of every life skill she could purchase, she looked to find what should be the most unique and specific skill.

I want a skill that lets me [Reanimate] a dead animal.

The life skill tree popped up once again, confirming that this search functionality worked based on skills.

Thus began a long time of feeling out this system, seeing what strange skills there were.

She began with the broken ones; a way to level up faster? Nothing. Immortality? Nothing. Clairvoyance? Nothing. She had expected as such but there was no harm in checking.

Next was the more basic skills but all focused around a game plan in mind. Naturally, the best way to hunt something would be to be unseen and to attack from a distance silently—this was why bows dominated for so much of human history.

She was already part of the way there; [Leech] was a long-ranged attack that was both silent and deadly. Therefore, she decided to focus on maximising the power of [Leech].

There were two ways of doing this, she believed; increasing the strength of [Leech] and increasing the number of times she could use [Leech].

Her exploration into increasing the strength of [Leech] only yielded the meta magic skills that she was already aware of, so nothing new there.

Increasing the number of times she could use [Leech] also didn’t reveal anything new, the phrase 'a skill that increases my essence regeneration' having been used. Either, there weren’t that many skills available to her to accomplish her goals or she wasn’t wording her inquiries quite right.

Either way, in her eyes, that left basically two options: the ability to make [Leech] 20% stronger or to regenerate 20% more essence per day.

Fuck. The indecision is killing me. I’ll just level up and get both of them. There.

With her plan in mind, she headed back towards her burrow.

She had found this place initially by following some boar tracks, and so it was a little out of the way from the stream. That meant it took some time to walk to and from, but with the nice serenity of the forest accompanying her, the journey never felt like a chore to her.

But the time it took certainly mattered. The burrow was her current home, where she had set camp. She had her materials there, as well as her weapons, so she had naturally let her guard down.

The repercussions of doing so made themselves evident as she felt two massive, piercing prongs dig themselves deep into her back. Immediately, she felt her legs give out from under her as her body weight was lifted into the air. Her hand involuntarily released the knife that it was always holding, spasms of pain travelling through her.

Her eyes blurred with tears, obfuscating the two pristine chunks of ivory penetrating through her body.

She didn’t even need to see her health to know it was rapidly plummeting.

Her heart beating like a piston, she gave no thought as she quickly purchased [Maximise Mastery].

Thankful for the many practise sessions she had gotten in, her mind unfurled like a boxed up, complex contraption, establishing a connection with the creature impaling her almost instantly. As soon as she felt the mental click, it was like her mind reverberated, a flood of energy seeping into her. She forced through much more energy than she was used to, widening the tunnel between as [Maximise Mastery] enhanced the skill as natural as it was to use it in the first place.

Strength was immediately restored to her limbs as she kept the skill active.

With all the strength she could muster, with a loose grip on the ground and practically blind from tears, she grasped both hands around one tusk, long enough to give her plenty of space to grip, and began to twist and ease her body forwards.

She slammed her mouth shut as a strong scream of pain tried to escape her mouth, unable to even keep her eyes open as all the muscles in her body tensed.

With a disgustingly slick sound, she managed to extract herself from one tusk, causing the other to dig even further into her side with her twisting. She couldn’t do anything about it but hope [Leech] was keeping her healthy.

However, with one tusk already out, and the boar apparently not able to exert enough strength or will to try to pierce her again, or even carry her somewhere, she painfully managed to slide the other tusk out of her, collapsing to the ground in a half-mangled mess.

It was then that the connection disappeared, her essence running dry. No more healing from now on.

Desperately, she clawed forwards on the ground, feeling a single tusk just graze her thigh as the boar punched its head towards the ground.

Desperation clutched at her as her fingers dug into the dirt, crawling forwards with the vestiges of strength left in her body.

As her hand closed around the handle to the dagger and she twisted around, a fierce scream erupted from her mouth.

The boar had struck the ground once more except, this time, one tusk had stabbed straight into her thigh, the other missing her other leg by an inch.

With all the strength she could muster, she gripped for the short fur of the boar and then stabbed into the head.

Her attack was pathetically weak but she stabbed again as the beast tried to push forwards, trying to dig the tusk even further into her flesh.

She stabbed and stabbed wildly, the knife never sinking more than two inches into the flesh and never with a consistent target.

But then, with one final thrust of the knife, it plunged into the soft, gooey body of the eyeball, sinking to the hilt as blood began to pour out and the body collapsed onto her, ripping the tusk out and crushing the bones in both her legs.

With the last remnants of consciousness left, she reached out towards the closest plant, and prayed to whatever deity had placed her in this situation to give her some essence to [Heal] herself.

The final thing she felt before darkness took over was one last, deep, mental click.