Eloise started her day like every other day—that was yesterday—in this brand new world, snuggled in a vortex of blankets, reading books about magic things.

She remembered yesterday’s events and shuddered in the warmth the blankets provided. The forests were too dangerous. Eloise went out to pick up a simple unassuming branch, and that act alone almost cost Eloise her life. At the very least the experience provided her with a new spell. Who knows just how many monsters are in that forest. What if I met two instead of a single one? Or a whole pack? Going out to explore without a plan won’t work.

Discounting the tower, in the nearby vicinity, Eloise found no signs of any civilization. No paths, no roads, all the monsters.

Eloise took a sip from a cup, then picked a book to read - “Three Simple Steps To Win Every Fight”. She took it from a bookshelf to learn more about the combat in this world, what to expect from it, from enemies, from skills, how to best use skills to get an advantage or win.

Eloise flipped through the pages of the author’s introduction, then all the special thanks, and finally a fifth of the book in, she found the explanation for the first “simple step”. The book went on and on for a multitude of pages before boiling the whole point down to “be more powerful than your enemy!”

Just in case the other points explained things more clearly Eloise flipped to them. The book explained the second point in the same fashion - “Can’t be more powerful than your enemy? Be more resourceful instead!” And the last point - “Can’t do that either? Make the combat go exactly as you want, that way the enemy will have no choice but to fall in front of you!”

Almost knocking down the cup, Eloise threw the book across the library. When the book landed with a nice flop onto the ground, Eloise picked up another book she had placed on the table.

This other book taught about skills, that it was a necessity to level them up no matter if you were a combat expert or an apprentice at a bakery.

The higher level the skill was, the more one could break out of its initial mold. A spell didn’t count as a proper spell before it had level twenty or thirty, after that level spells could be manipulated by increasing or decreasing their power, shape, area of effect to both strengthen the spell and conserve the Mana as needed.

And if someone hit above level fifty in a skill, they could be called an expert. That person could manipulate the spell from its very roots, change fundamentally how the spell worked, creating new static skills out of it.

As for spells higher leveled than that the book started rambling about how mysterious and awesome they’d be without clearly stating how or why. All Eloise knew from it that above level hundred is known spell mastery.

And yet, the very first steps to be taken will have to be the low levels, and even that will provide a challenge.

Eloise took a trip downstairs to refill her drink after she finished reading the general book about skills, and scanned through the bookshelves to find something about spells, Fire spells.

Cup in one hand, “Compendium of Low-Level Elemental Spells” in another, as the sun warmed up the library, Eloise decided to leave her pile of blankets for the next morning and picked a spot in the shade next to the window at a different table.

The book went into the meat of things straight away, even if it only contained the basic elements, the book listed dozens of beginner spells for each of the elements, and all the ways the author knew and even confirmed to learn them. The author also noted how difficult each spell was, and whether it was worth learning them.

Eloise spent a good while flipping through the spells reading the whys and hows. The author of the book preferred simple direct spells, that could be leveled up and becoming more versatile then.

Other spells were of dubious use. [Fire Shield] might sound good and fun on paper, but casting it in combat to defend against an opponent and realizing that fire was, in fact, not invisible limited its use, and limited it by a lot. Who wanted to be blind every time they had to defend themselves? And the shield needed to be hit to level up, too.

Eloise flipped through non-fire element pages in case the book had some simple yet powerful spell to learn. And she found one, a simple yet neat spell, but after an hour of pointing the wand outside at the ground, following the instructions in the book, imagining the spell, and trying to cast it, nothing happened to a point where Eloise fired a [Fire Shot] just to check whether the magic still existed and worked.

Eloise huffed and found the beginner book classes this time, which recommended given an option to specialize into an element, to not. Unless Eloise wanted to spend weeks, if not longer to learn a simple Earth spell, Eloise now was locked in into Fire spells only.

On the other hand. Fire spell galore.

Eloise, in the compendium, focused on fire spells. After flipping through them all, she found something. A [Fire Trap]. Set it up on any surface, charge it with Mana and watch the target step on it, and go flying. Slightly flying.

Simple, versatile, useful, exploitable spell.

Since it would have been a bad idea to do so inside, Eloise stepped outside out of the tower to practice the spell. A few meters away from the tower should be good enough.

Eloise tested it earlier today, but the magic fire did not spread. The immediate appearance of the spell does the fiery effect and damage, but after magic runs out in the spell, so does the fire, unless the spell’s static effect was to do just that - spread, multiply, destroy.

Eloise picked up her wand and pointed it to the ground a few more meters away from her, trying to imagine Mana condensing on the grass blade below into a sphere that would explode as needed.

She felt something leave her body, and Eloise felt less. That something—Mana—raced through her wand and flew onto the targeted blade of grass, settling and nesting onto itself like a ball of wool before unraveling itself, first one thread, then another thread quicker and the rest of them at the same time, creating an explosion.

The smoke lingered for a few seconds around the charred blades of grass. If the trap exploded without anyone triggering it, it’s not a trap. And the system thought so as well, as Eloise gained no new skills.

She checked her status interface.

[Mana: 14/16]

Plenty of Mana of waste. Eloise pointed the wand at a different blade of grass, imagining an oval capsule one, but instead of medicine she thought of it holding concentrated Mana, and the container for it would be a capsule that would dissolve as soon as it touched anything that moved.

The Mana left Eloise and she fell less of a whole again. It moved and condensed as Eloise imagined. The medicine-less explosive Mana capsule sat on the blade of grass for a long six seconds before one side of it cracked and all the Mana it had exploded through that side. Not expecting the power capsule held, Eloise flinched.

[Mana: 10/16]

This test cost more Mana, and it took forever to regenerate. From yesterday’s encounter’s experience, it would take a lot of active rest to regain the lost Mana, and the drink won’t help either.

For the third time, Eloise waved and pointed her wand at a blade of grass and the Mana flew out from her body. It settled on the blade of grass, condensing, making itself tighter, smaller, more powerful. Then Eloise sent even more Mana outside. This Mana wrapped around the condensed Mana and settled in the form of a capsule. The condensed mana expanded to touch upon the capsule’s walls and settled there, unmoving.

Eloise switched the weight from one leg to another, wiping away the sweat that formed on her forehead. According to the Status barely two points of Mana were left.

The spot which she trapped, Eloise could feel it. Not with any senses she had before, but more of a sixth sense, she knew that something was in the exact spot she set the trap, but when Eloise tried looking at it all she saw were the wind moving the blades of grass there, no physical presence of the trap.

Eloise waited. A second. Two. Five. Then a minute more, and the trap still held fine. To gain the skill into her Status one more thing had to be done.

She dug around the ground using her wand, looking for pebbles. Once Eloise had found one, she retreated behind the opened tower’s door, hid most of her body behind it, and threw the pebble in the general direction of the trap. And missed. The last part might have been Mana intensive, but it wasn’t dangerous. Now though, Eloise needed to trigger the trap, and doing such without a cover or trying to touch the trap herself would result in at least a loss of a limb, or if in a lucky case - instant death.

Eloise dug a bunch more pebbles and started repeating the same action. Hide, throw, wait. After more than a dozen tries a window finally appeared in front of her.

[Skill obtained: Throwing Lv. 1]

Eloise stomped on the stony entrance of the tower. “That’s not what I wanted!” She slapped the window away.

It might be a problem in the early levels of the trap spell, the area where it triggered was way too small. Might not be as bad with a bunch of traps, but when Eloise needed to trigger one, the small size didn’t help.

For now, Eloise was stuck in a loop of throwing pebbles at an invisible to a naked eye object. After a few more minutes of trying, Eloise heard an explosion, and the pebble she just threw slammed into the door behind her. Cover helped.

[Skill Obtained: Fire Trap Lv. 1]

Now that was an explosion. Eloise peeked out of the door. The explosion charred the immediate area around it black, looking closer the grass around the charred area got covered in earth and dust.

In any case, success.

After downing one cup of the drink in celebration, Eloise rested until she regained all of her Mana back. Outside the moon threatened to show up as the sun slowly dyed the color of everything into a deep orange.

Eloise went around the clearing looking for a nice spot. As she walked around Eloise saw no monsters and went a little deeper into the forest. Deep enough to not be next to the barrier but not deep enough to not make it back to the boundary.

Eventually, Eloise picked a spot that had no bunched up trees with those treacherous roots that would try and trip her up every time.

[Fire Trap] [Fire Trap]

After setting just two traps Eloise felt drained already, her mind cloudy. She opened her Status and checked her Mana banks to find she had a whole zero of it.

Eloise wobbled back into a bed on the third floor and fell asleep for the night.

She continued her exciting life of setting up traps, reading, resting, and doing nothing. After a couple of days, the location she picked was littered with [Fire Traps]. The spell stayed at level one, too.

Then, on the morning of the day after, Eloise went to the trapped location waiting for monsters to show up. She listened to the wind rustling the leaves and branches for ten minutes, before deciding to go deeper into the forest.

After thirty minutes of wandering deeper into the forest and back to the spot, deeper into the forest and back again, Eloise encountered a Twotail. It gnawed upon a tree and growled looking up, but the tree was empty from any monsters or birds.

Eloise pointed her wand, a branch wrapped up in rags soaked in her own blood, at the monster and [Fire Shot] at it.

The moment [Fire Shot] landed on the half-furred monster’s side, it roared, snapping its head in Eloise’s direction. Then, the creature seeing its new prey chased Eloise. She sprinted back as fast as she could to the trapped location and through it, dodging all the traps she set up. Eloise hoped the Twotail couldn’t sense the traps.

Eloise’s worries disappeared as the monster jumped onto a trap, detonating it, and gracefully shot a couple of meters into the air before falling onto yet another trap and shooting back up into the air. The monster ended its gymnastic performance with a bad fall into hard earth where its bones crunched and broke that even Eloise heard.

Eloise stopped running and turned around. The beast struggled to stand up, not yet dead. She fired off a couple more [Fire Shots] both for mercy and for experience points.

[Twotail defeated. Extra experience gained for defeating a being above your level.]

Oh, forgot to even check what level it was. She [Analyzed] the corpse, but it gave no useful information - [Corpse of Twotail].

In the post-ambush quietness, Eloise felt the Mana thrumming in the area. Maybe I overdid it a little? No, never enough traps.

Eloise left the Twotail’s corpse alone and went looking for more experience points, that is monsters. She hadn’t waited for long and another Twotail showed up.

[Twotail - Lv. 2]

And died in a similar spectacle as the previous one.

[Twotail defeated. Extra experience gained for defeating a being above your level.]

Before Eloise went to look for another monster, it appeared already and went for a bite of its friend’s corpse. Maybe they weren’t friends then. Just as the monster was about to take a bite, it turned its head left and right, sniffing at the air. Then its head snapped where Eloise stood. The Twotail immediately charged at her, its muscles rippling with power.

[Twotail- Lv. ?]

And yet, all that power was useless against traps it couldn’t sense or see. The monster triggered a trap with all his weight and power before the explosion forced the monster to fly into a tree. The poor tree even shed a couple of its leaves from the Twotail slamming into it.

Eloise finished off the beast with [Fire Shots].

[Twotail defeated. Extra experience gained for defeating a being above your level.]

[Fire Trap leveled up to Fire Trap Lv. 2]

Then a pack of Twotail strolled into the area, likely with the intention to feast on the fallen monster corpses.

[Twotail - Lv. 2]

[Twotail - Lv. 2]

[Twotail - Lv. ?]

Were there no level one Twotails? The lowest level Twotail Eloise saw so far was level two, and all others had their level obscured.

There weren’t as many traps left, enough for one or two Twotails lured separately, not enough for a whole pack. And if they missed the trap Eloise’s dead. Even if one of the monsters triggered a trap, but other pack members didn’t, she’d still die.

Eloise fired a couple of [Fire Shots] with the dwindling remains of her Mana, and without waiting to see how will the situation pan out she dashed with all the power her legs could muster through the traps, through the bushes, through the boundary, into her lone tower in the clearing, now her new home.

Eloise was about to sit on a chair in one of the guest rooms on the first floor when a window popped up.

[Twotail defeated. Extra experience gained for defeating a being above your level.]

[Fire Trap leveled up to Fire Trap Lv. 3]

She chased the windows away with a smile. Finally, something I can exploit.