Wilona rubbed her eyes. She expected to have some kind of sleep problem last night, but apparently, putting charges into her stats made her feel drowsy. Actually, no—it skipped past drowsiness and just put her unconscious.

  She got up and forced her protesting body to accept the fact that she had fallen asleep in the dirt. One hand reached out for her unkempt hair, and she decided then that her living situation needed to be improved if she was going to continue living around here. She checked her system and confirmed that, yep, she had an extra thing below her Survivalist profession.

  Charges:

  Soul [2]

  Mind [1]

  Instinct [2]

  Professions:

  Survivalist [Novice]

  *Primitive Crafting

  *Exploring

  Warlockdom [Novice]

  *Orb of Light

  The word "crafting" only really had one meaning in her eyes, and that was to make something using materials. The "primitive" behind this one implied that she could only use materials found in the wild, but you know what? Wilona thought that was fine—she didn’t mind.

  The other thing was Warlockdom? What did that mean? She wasn’t familiar with any magic mumbo jumbo, so the meaning behind the damn thing was completely lost to her. But hey, it was magic, so who was she to complain? "Orb of Light" made sense to her, too—she had used it last night, even.

  "Eh," Wilona shrugged and closed her system. Magic wasn’t all that complicated now that she had used it. It required more imagination than she expected, but that wasn’t an issue—she’d always been quite creative. She even drew occasionally.

  Alright, where was she?—Making improvements to her home, right. There wasn’t much she could realistically do at the moment, but she could try to figure something out. A bed would be a good start, and maybe some doors? A place to take a shower and take care of her hair? A comb? Yeah, a comb sounded nice.

  Two new quests greeted her when she stepped out of her humble home.

  [New Quest! - A Good Home!]

  [Quest Type: Encouragement]

  [Rewards: Wilderness Survival Kit]

  ["It is now your second day, and it seems like you have found yourself a place to stay in! How about you make it more comfortable for yourself? It looks like it has the potential to be a good house if you just treat it well; make a bed, cover the entrance, and dig a fire pit!"]

  [New Quest! - Magic is Quite Versatile!]

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  [Quest Type: Ingredient]

  [Rewards: Magical Seeds]

  ["So you’re finally digging into the more esoteric aspects of the world you have found yourself in? Do you find it fascinating? It is quite interesting. Discover more aspects of it and cast a new spell!"]

  The two quests gave pretty good rewards in Wilona's opinion. The first one gave her a wilderness survival kit, and the other gave her magical seeds. Both rewards didn’t really explain what they were just from their names alone, but they were also self-explanatory.

  A survival kit and a bunch of seeds that had magic. And in exchange for them, she needed to cast another spell and make some improvements to her house.

  The second one was hard but doable. Making a bed was easy enough—she had spare clothes she could probably fill with leaves, and that would be the end of it. Covering the entrance of the tree stump, too—that was just piling a bunch of leaves on top of some branches. And the fire pit? Well, she had already dug a grave last night, so how hard could a fire pit really be?

  First things first, though—she wanted to use another spell and see what these "magic seeds" were. Wilona was also just generally curious about what she could do with magic now that she was capable of it. And even though she was very excited for all the possibilities magic could bring, the one thing she ended up doing was testing if she could clean the waters of the swamp.

  Why? Because she didn’t want to use some stupid survival method—that the Cub Scouts' guidebook undoubtedly had—to manually clean the water when she could just do it using magic. Hell, maybe she could even light her campfire with some fireball spell or something? That’d be cool.

  For now, Wilona went ahead with her first plan and got close to the deeper parts of the swamp. She bent down once she could reach the surface and dipped her hands in it. She tried to repeat what had happened last night and imagined the water becoming clean. Something tingled in her hand, it went out her palms, and it warmed the water around her skin.

  A bit of clarity came and cleared the murk. Everything underneath all the debris became visible, and Wilona saw grass, rocks, and a pair of eyes.

  She jumped back and started crawling—"You again!" Wilona screamed at the alligator gar as it flopped its way across the wetland. She kicked its head but stopped when the fish made attempts at trying to bite it. "Why do you keep chasing me?!"

  Wilona pushed herself off the ground and used her newfound stability to walk away from the damn thing! Stupid fish—she was sure it was the same one that had attacked her the first time. "I’m not gonna drag you back into the water, you know?!"

  The fish stopped flopping and let out a... sigh? Before turning around and, with its best attempt at slithering like a snake, headed back for the water. It disappeared from Wilona's view moments later.

  Wilona couldn’t help but blink in the aftermath. She wasn’t going insane, was she? Did the fish understand what she was saying just now?

  She put the strange encounter at the back of her mind and headed out. So what if the fish could understand languages? That wasn’t the strangest thing she’d seen after coming here. She could do magic now too, so a talking fish was kind of part of the norm now?..

  Convincing herself that it was normal to see a (potentially) talking fish existing aside, Wilona wanted to see what the magical seeds were now that she had finished her quest. When she went back to her tree trunk, she completed the quest and looked at the tiny pouch that fell from above. It was full of tiny little crystals in the shape of an oval.

  Wilona had no idea what any of them were.

  She closed the pouch and placed it next to her bag. She clapped her hands. "Well then! A bed!"

  Made of leaves. It wasn’t the most comfortable thing Wilona had ever slept in, but it was good enough for her. She also had to use an extra shirt just to make it, but eh, it was a pretty good investment. Oh, and she discovered that her new spell, "Purify," could actually work on things that weren’t water. A pile of leaves could be cleaned by the spell just as easily as a murky swamp lake.

  For covering the entrance, Wilona settled on destroying a pair of pants. They did the job pretty well, oddly enough, and she also got to confirm that ripping them wasn’t a waste because she completed her quest after digging the fire pit.

  The survival kit that the quest rewarded her wasn’t modernized like she had thought it would be. Instead, it was some kind of bag full of jars, a book about herbs, another knife, a canteen of water, and a bit of jerky. The jerky was dry and unappetizing. She didn’t like it.

  The survival kit was left next to her satchel—it wasn’t as useful as Wilona had thought it would be. But... the jars could be used, definitely.

  "Now what do I do next?" Wilona asked herself, waiting for a quest to pop up. The one that appeared was pretty shocking. It definitely beat the time she sat next to a skeleton, that’s for damn sure.

  [New Quest! - Shrine of Rebirth]

  [Quest Type: Prophetic]

  [Rewards: Lesser Emissary of the Goddess of Fertility and Rebirth]

  ["A Goddess has taken notice of you after you buried the corpse of the person you found! Now she wishes to aid you in your journey. If you accept her book, make a shrine around your home. A dirt mound surrounded by rocks should be fine—just plant one of the magical seeds given to you, and she will do the rest!"]