Clear blue skies, a warm breeze ruffling through the leaves of trees overhead, all signs of a wonderful day. There is, of course, one issue.

Why in the fuck am I outside?

Lilly laid in the grass, staring at the treetops above her as she thought about what exactly is going on. The last thing she could remember was falling asleep in her illustrious bed that she painstakingly saved up for and splurged on the past weekend. Her wonderful, fluffy queen-sized bed that would ensure that sleeping in every day would be immensely more difficult to resist, but worth every second of lost daylight hours.

Did I get kidnapped? But who would even bother bringing me all the way out to a forest in the middle of nowhere and how did I not wake up? She thought as she sat up and took a survey of her surroundings. It seemed that she was in the middle of a somewhat dense forest. Thankfully, she had been on a patch of soft comfortable grass, since everywhere else looked like it would've given her back pains for days. A mountain range loomed in the far distance, though her eyes could be deceiving her since it almost looked like there were enormous flying beasts circling several of the peaks.

Even more peculiar was the blue bar at the top left of her vision, which followed the motion of her head and indicated 100/100.

"Okay, I have to have gone crazy. Come on, Lilly, snap back to reality, time to get out of this crazy dream. You have an excruciatingly frustrating part-time job to get back to." She did everything from pinching herself and smacking her face a few times, but nothing woke her up. Lilly started to realize that it was either an extremely realistic dream, an unrealistically crystal clear hallucination, or she really was in a new world with possibly dragons flying in the far distance.

Seeing as Lilly wasn't normally one to panic or stay in denial for long, she squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and started to evaluate her situation properly.

Only to have a rather obnoxiously large lizard, the size of a car, walk in front of her.

[Adult Drake - ??]

Oh fuck. First I get stuck in the middle of who the fuck knows where, and now this reptile shows up to eat me. What's next, kind farmers with cannibalistic tendencies?

As she stared at the drake, momentarily stunned, it noticed her and started growling in her direction. Upon seeing the clear aggression in its eyes, Lilly had to decide quickly what to do about this untimely intrusion.

She took a stance, calmed her nerves, and ran away as fast as she could. Lilly was almost 99% percent sure that the lizard, drake rather, could bite off half her body in one go and still not be satisfied. She ran through bushes and weaved through trees, trying not to trip over any rocks and roots, ever so thankful that whoever, or whatever brought her here didn't take her clothes and put on her sneakers. Turning back for just a moment, she could see the drake mowing down trees in its path of destruction as it rushed to snack on her bones.

Is this how I die? To some overgrown lizard who ate one too many insects before finding me?

Pushing the thought down and the urge to scream various profanities that would make nuns cry, she started to look for a way out of this shitty situation as she ran for her life. She was starting to run out of breath and had scratches all over her arms and legs from running through the shrubbery, when she could see a clearing up ahead and realized she was running up to the foot of a mountain. Without knowing what else to do, she kept going, exited the forest, and took a second to take into account her surroundings. Up ahead, she saw a rather narrow cave and booked for it, still hearing the drake coming from behind, praying that the entrance was small enough that she could escape the stupid lizard.

This better work or I'm actually fucked. She thought before she ran up to the cave opening and crouched through, barely making it inside before hearing the drake ram itself into the entrance. She fell onto her ass and crawled away, staring at the opening as the drake struggled to fit, but couldn't quite make it through. She sat there and stared at it for a moment, stunned, and slowly started to laugh.

"HA! Fuck you, you stupid overgrown lizard!" She yelled out in triumph, panting heavily and reveling in her shallow but delicious victory. It was short-lived, however, as while she was looking at the drake, it opened up its maw and the inside of its mouth started to glow red. Her eyes widened and she quickly scrambled back, just barely getting out of range of the drake's deadly breath of fire. Waves of heat washed over her as she looked in horror at how close she had gotten to becoming a freshly grilled Lilly.

Maybe I shouldn't sit so close to those menacing jaws of death. Good thing my amazing reflexes and wit pull through every time. The drake kept snapping and pushing against the entrance of the cave, breathing fire from time to time. After a few stressful, uncomfortably hot minutes, the drake seemingly lost interest and left. She let go of the breath she didn't realize she had been holding, resting against the cool wall of the cave, slowly catching her breath as she looked around. She had found herself in a dimly lit tunnel that led deeper into the mountain. There were stalactites hanging from the ceiling and various patches of glowing blue grass which were the sole sources of light besides the entrance. After calming down, a ding! sounded off in her head as a message appeared in her line of vision.

Achievement!: Outerworlder - Within minutes of finding yourself in a new world, you've already encountered and narrowly escaped a deadly opponent! Either you're extremely skilled, or extremely lucky, but hey, you made it!

Tutorial Completed! Level Up!

What is with this snarky message? She thought as she looked bewildered at the floating letters. She then felt a slightly warm glow as the scratches on her body healed, leaving no sign of the damage she sustained from running through the woods aside from the blood on her limbs. I guess leveling up heals me; that's handy.

"Also, new world? Well, I guess that explains a lot, fucking not. What do you mean, a new world? What transcendent bastard decided to pull me out of bed only to throw me into a forest in the middle of nowhere? You couldn't have the decency to give me a pep talk in an endless white space like any other isekai anime out there, or even put me in town where I wouldn't have a chance of dying to some random beast meandering through the woods? This is bona fide bullshit." Lilly ranted as she thought of all the things she would do once she got her hands on whoever brought her here.

After she calmed down a little, she realized that there was a second message indicating a level up, so she used her outstanding deduction skills to realize that there is probably a status screen of some kind. Just as the thought came to her, the screen popped up blocking her vision.

Name: Lilly Nightingale - Level 1

Race: Human

Mana: 100/100

Class: None

Active Skills:

Identify (Common) - 1

Inventory (Special, 0/100) - 1

Passive Skills: None

Stats (5 points remaining):

Vitality - 14(+)

Strength - 12(+)

Intellect - 11(+)

Wisdom - 10(+)

Dexterity - 15(+)

Perception - 9(+)

After letting out a startled and slightly embarrassing yelp, she looked through her status screen, taking in her stats and skills. Why are some stats higher and lower than others? Is it because I spent too much time at the gym and somewhat ruined my eyes through my indulgences of the internet? Well, I'm sorry that Disney Plus came out right after I moved out, there was no one to stop me from lazing in bed and marathoning my way through all the classics. She huffed to herself as she considered what to do with her floating points that she had presumably gotten from leveling up.

"Well seeing as there are classes and skills, I guess this is going to be like one of those RPG type things where I can be a paladin in glistening golden armor with holy skills? Hell fucking yeah, except there is no way I'm going the shining knight route, if there's anything that I'm going to be, it'll be something stealthy and inconspicuous." And not so cringe-worthy. With that in mind, she put two points into Perception and Dexterity each, and one into Strength. Satisfied with her ingenuity, she tried to use her inventory skill, but could only feel the vague presence of empty space that she could pull and store her items, if only she had any items to her name. Finally, she tried her identify skill, walking up to the grass she spotted earlier. After focusing on the grass, a pop-up came into her view.

[Blue Grass - Common]

"Oh, that's neat." and didn't help at all. She thought. After a moment, she grabbed some and thought of her inventory again. It seemed to take around ten seconds or so to store the blue grass, which is fair, otherwise it would simply be too easy to abuse such a skill. The grass took up one of her hundred inventory spaces. She decided that she would do some testing in the near future to better understand the limits of her skill. Lilly poked around her status screen to see if there was anything else to find, closed it out with a thought, and started her leisurely stroll down the tunnel, humming quietly.

Twenty minutes of walking down the damp tunnel, with only the sounds of water dripping from the ceiling to accompany her, a new message showed up at the top and center of her view.

[Cave of Trials]

Well, that's simply ominous. Why not, Cave of Horrors, or Long Tunnel of Boredom?

Up ahead, she spotted a lone bat, only this one was the size of her head and looked much fatter compared to Earth bats. Well if there's anything I could possibly kill around here, it HAS to be that, right?

The bat spotted her and started flapping towards Lilly, quite a bit faster than she thought a bat had any right to be moving.

[Cave Bat - 5]

With little to no combat experience, she was going to have to learn on the fly how to fight monsters, and eventually, humans. She swung at the bat with her left fist, missing completely as the bat dodged back and bit down on her forearm, blood spraying out of her arm. She screamed out in pain and swung her arm with the bat still attached against the ground, slamming the bat and dislodging the monster from her arm. She followed up with a kick, sending the disoriented bat into the far wall, earning a loud squeak!. The blood dripping from her arm almost made her pass out, but she stayed standing, albeit unsteadily, and faced down the bat that was once again flying towards her.

[Unarmed Combat (Passive) - Skill Unlocked!]

You've exchanged fists with a bat and almost failed miserably. Next time, you won't fail as much.

Slightly alarmed by the message, but not quite caught off guard, Lilly thought away the notification and narrowly dodged the incoming bat, grabbed the wings of the bat as it flew by, and swung it back into the ground again, causing the bat to scream out in anguish. She could feel the improvement in her fighting already, not quite enough to make it an easy fight but enough that she wasn't caught out too badly. Holding onto the struggling bat, she started to repeatedly punch the bat over and over, blood flying onto her clothes as the bat squealed and struggled furiously in its attempt to escape her hold on its wing. After a few minutes of this abuse, the bat’s body went limp in her blood-soaked hands.

[Cave Bat - Defeated!]

Level Up!

[Unarmed Combat - Level Up!]

[Dodging (Passive) - Skill Unlocked!]

You managed to dodge a flying bat, not really that impressive but for you, it was enough. With this skill, you'll be more adept at dodging bats and maybe other monsters too.

Reading the message briefly, she noticed the dissolving bat before promptly passing out.

Name: Lilly Nightingale - Level 2

Race: Human

Mana: 100/100

Class: None

Active Skills:

Identify (Common) - 1

Inventory (Special, 1/100) - 1

Passive Skills:

Unarmed Combat (Common) - 2

Dodging (Common) - 1

Stats (5 points remaining):

Vitality - 14(+)

Strength - 13(+)

Intellect - 11(+)

Wisdom - 10(+)

Dexterity - 17(+)

Perception - 11(+)

After waking up, Lilly extracted herself from her own crusty pool of blood and looked over to where the bat had been. On the ground where it dissolved, laid a white ornate dagger and some copper coins. Walking over, she identified the dagger after storing the coins in her inventory.

[Fang of the Bat - Common]

A dagger crafted from the fang of a Cave Bat. Not the best weapon, but suits your purposes perfectly fine.

She smiled widely, proud of her first loot so far in this deadly world. Finally, I can stop punching things to death. I'm pretty sure a stealthy girl needs her stealthy dagger. Satisfied with herself, she started to venture further into the Cave of Trials with her new weapon.

"Wait, didn't I level up?"

Lilly stopped to check her status screen to see that she reached level 2, as well as gained new passive skills and five floating stat points. After her last encounter, she was feeling a little too vulnerable. If that fight had lasted much longer, she might have passed out from blood loss. Not to mention, it was a terrible idea to have fallen asleep right in the middle of a dungeon. Pouring four of her points into her Vitality stat to hopefully beef up her defenses, she rounded it out by putting the last point into Strength.

"How come all these skill descriptions sound more like vague flavor text than anything, and why the fuck does it always sound like I'm being insulted?"

On that note, Lilly proceeded to explore more of the cave.