“These fucking deer are gonna be the end of me.” Kaltyr facepalmed for the tenth time. “Deer! Deer! I can’t believe I’m going to die to deer!”

A few minutes had passed since Kaltyr was stabbed by the buck’s antlers and she climbed a third branch higher up the tree, unwilling to stay within their range of stabbing for any longer.

“If these bastards are at all intelligent, they’ll know that I can’t stay up here forever.” Kaltyr surveyed the area around the tree, regretting killing the first deer. “And this tree is too far from the rest. I can’t just enter Stealth Mode and navigate my way through the canopy until I’m far enough away to escape.”

The girl placed her face into her hands and released a long sigh.

“Even if I stealth and drop from the tree, they’ll hear my fall. If there were only one or two I’d be able to avoid them long enough to disappear from their senses entirely, but there are SEVEN of them! Even if they all just ran around blindly they’d still hit me before I could leave the clearing.”

A hard frown formed on Kaltyr’s face as she lowered her hands and glared at the seven “herbivores” circling her tree like sharks.

“I’ll have to fight my way through.”

Her resolve hardened, Kaltyr positioned herself so that her back leaned against the tree’s trunk and her legs dangled on either side of the branch she sat upon. Then, she turned to the one hope she knew she had available to her.

Name: Kaltyr (Kal-tier)

Life Level: 1

Available Stat Points: 5 [Open List to View]

Effects: [Peckish] [Open List to View]

???

Title: [None] [Open List to View]

Class: [None] [Open List to View]

Skills [Open List to View]

First, I’ll check my skills.

-General Skills-

-Class Specific Skills-

???

Magic Sense Lvl: 3

Small Projectile Throwing Arts Lvl: 4

Fishing Lvl: 3

Body Mana Reinforcement

Lvl: 0

Item Mana Infusion Lvl: 0

Small Blade Arts Lvl: 3

Stealth Lvl: 5

Stealth Strike Lvl: 4

Hmmm… They seem impressive enough to me, but I don’t think knowing any of these can help me in this situation. I guess I was hoping that something would just spontaneously appear in my time of need…

Kaltyr had trouble coming to terms with the fact that nothing in her Skills List was of use to her at the moment, but there was nothing she could do about it. With an annoyed grunt, she opened the last List with the possibility of containing the answer to her problem.

Available Stat Points: 5

External Mana Manipulation: 0

Internal Mana Manipulation: 0

Immediately, Kaltyr was taken aback.

“What?”

Bewilderment took over as the girl struggled to comprehend the lines of text that appeared in her vision. Questions swam about within her skull and collided with each other in flashy explosions, leaving a mess of scrambled words and letters until Kaltyr regained control of herself enough to pick up her thoughts.

“WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BASIC SIX?!”

Kaltyr’s angered shout startled the deer below.

“There should be stats like ‘Intelligence’, ‘Strength’, ‘Wisdom’, ‘Dexterity’, ‘Stamina’, and ‘Agility’. Or ‘Endurance’, ‘Charisma’, and ‘Luck’! Those kinds of stats! What’s going on?!”

The lass took out The System Wishes You Good Fucking Luck and furiously flipped through the four pages of starter info until she came across the single passage she remembered related to her current woes.

No way… “There are only two stats, so I think you can figure out how those work”. REALLY?! I hadn’t yet remembered the video game RPG stuff when I first read it so I forgot that this was a thing!

Kaltyr furiously dropped the guidebook onto her lap, panicked as she thought it might fall off the tree, stuffed the book into her pocket, then used a hand to massage her face. After a solid minute of rapid debates against herself, she calmed down.

Ah, whatever. There being only two stats—albeit it ones I’m unfamiliar with—might make things simpler…

She pulled up the screen once more.

Wait…this IS simpler!

With an excited chuckle, the girl began contemplating.

Both stats literally have “mana manipulation” in the name, meaning that this world’s power/magic/leveling system pretty much completely revolves around the conscious manipulation of mana rather than just pressing skill or spell names on a screen! Whatever “screens” are…

Kaltyr dove deep into her memories, recalling all that she could of the video games with similarities to her predicament.

It was almost always the case in games that “mages”, also known as “wizards” and other types of “magic users”, used mana to cast spells, while the classes that didn’t depend on mana just had strong bodies… But, how did the classes like “warriors” become so physically strong? The kind of fantasy shit they could achieve was clearly just that—fantasy. Yet, now I’m actually in a fantasy, so I have to put real consideration into this speculation.

She remembered the name of one of the first skills she obtained that she just ignored for being useless in her situation a few minutes before.

Body Mana Reinforcement. Is that how the “warriors” of this world work?

Beads of sweat began to form on Kaltyr’s forehead as her back began to itch.

The skill that gave me the impression that I’d seriously injure myself the first time I used it???

The girl raised her hand to shoulder-level, looking at it, recalling the moment when she almost threw the rock at the starry-eyed beast while her arm was empowered with mana. At that moment, an incredible sense of danger pervaded her senses and the feeling that something catastrophic would occur stopped her from finishing that swing.

I assumed that using the Body Mana Reinforcement skill would hurt me because it was level 0, but…how and why would I increase its level if using it is bad for me? There’s gotta be something else going on.

Thinking back to the moment she first reinforced her arm, something struck her as odd.

But, apparently, I had no problem activating the skill. Mana flowed into my arm, stayed there, and I got the notification for learning it, yet when I tried to swing my arm, I thought it’d hurt…

Another pause transpired as Kaltyr watched the deer below her, noting the flow of mana within each of the creatures.

Why, except for the buck who stabbed me, is their mana inside their brains and their auras disappeared? Just earlier their entire bodies were full of it, and they …

It was as though Kaltyr’s mind was a house and an idea was at her front door, knocking. The idea rapped its knuckles against the door, impatiently waiting for her to open it. Kaltyr wanted to let the idea in, but she was stuck on the second floor, solely capable of looking at the idea through the window. When she tried to find her way downstairs, she was met with a labyrinth of rooms and corridors and was forced to go back to her window, unable to open the front door…

Until the buck that scratched her leg finally stopped pacing around the tree and lied down, pulling its mana back into its brain, causing its aura to disappear. It even joined a few of its kin in absorbing magical essence.

It was then that a shower of lightning struck, shaking the heavens and rending the earth with its mighty roar and destroying Kaltyr’s house, leaving the idea free to step into the rubble, dig out Kaltyr, and tell her about what it discovered.

Ah…so that’s how it is.

The eleventh facepalm struck harder than all before it.

I wrongly assumed that beasts followed different rules than I! Just like me, beasts absorb magical energy, refine it into mana, store it in their brains, and move it through their meridians! I just thought, because I only saw that beasts were always full of mana, that they worked differently.

For the test to prove her hypothesis, Kaltyr threw her concerns to the sideline and closed her eyes. Her mind’s eye opened wide as she saw the infinitely complex layout of magical channels interlacing through every fiber of her being, then focused on her soul. Like always—except for when she entered Stealth Mode—it burned brightly and beautifully. With a tug of her will, Kaltyr caused the mana that she’d let stagnate within her soul flow free, rapidly shooting through every meridian within her and filling every part of her body with raw power.

Kaltyr opened her eyes to find that her actions had alarmed the beasts below, causing them to shoot to their feet and watch her warily.

They know what I did. They know I reinforced my body with mana. They can feel…my aura.

With a dastardly grin, Kaltyr laughed maniacally into the sky, sending her voice to every edge of the forest—again, startling the deer.

So, this ENTIRE time, the beasts around me have been utilizing the Body Mana Reinforcement skill while I was too stupid to figure out that it was only safe to use when applied to the entire body. It seems that the sense of danger from my first night came from how if only my arm was strengthened I would’ve torn some non-reinforced muscles in my shoulder, or something.

The girl maintained her wicked grin as she stood from her previous resting spot and scanned the various branches above her. When she decided on one, Kaltyr wasted no time and jumped, latching onto it with both hands.

Ouch, forgot about the antler stab…but wooooow, this is soooo much easier.

Although her arms still quickly began to ache from the physical exertion, Kaltyr found herself able to perform several chin-ups before she was forced to drop back down to rest on the third-lowest branch.

Then, this discovery also explains my encounter with the gray cat. It hid behind a tree and used the Stealth skill, but because I wasn’t looking for a change like its mana signature and aura slowly fading, I missed it.

Kaltyr released her body reinforcement, allowing her mana to return to her soul.

What? I have, like, 80% mana left. Where’d the other 20% go? I only used the skill for a few seconds!

The girl began to worry if the Body Mana Reinforcement skill really drained her mana so much, but then came to her senses when she recalled her Life Level.

Oh, yeah. Leveling up increased my mana pool, didn’t it? It’s good to know that fighting while reinforced will last at least a few minutes…

Kaltyr returned her attention to the stat screen.

Which brings me back to my speculations. The Body Mana Reinforcement skill is probably an example of “Internal Mana Manipulation”, right? Since it’s performed by manipulating my mana internally…thus, adding the stat points to it will make my body reinforcement stronger. Which means that “External Mana Manipulation” involves stuff like throwing fireballs, right?

An excited energy built up in Kaltyr’s chest as she pictured herself strolling around in a beautiful prairie on a sunny day when, all of a sudden, she unleashed the mighty power stored within, sending a torrent of devastatingly powerful fireballs into the sky and cladding herself in lightning, uprooting the earth, vaporizing distance mountains, destroying everything in sight…

“But I don’t know any spells! Nor how to learn any!”

Exasperated with how The System forced her to learn everything on her own, Kaltyr whined. She had figured out how to do tons of stuff by herself, including becoming “invisible”, but it was through observing what other creatures did! The beasts she was attacked by and killed were better teachers to her than The damned System was!

“Like, seriously?! Will I have to wait until a beast casts a spell on me?! Or am I supposed to just—” Kaltyr raised an arm and extended it in front of her, palm facing forward. “—randomly throw mana out through my meridians until something happens?!”

With a flick of her will, the girl sent a sliver of her mana out of her soul, through her arm, into her hand, and out of her body into the air—a tiny spark of blue light shot forward before disappearing with a twinkle after traveling a single meter.

You have obtained the spell skill: Crude Mana Bolt