The first week was a nightmare of blistered feet and stomach cramps. Shino quickly realized that reading about survival in a cozy armchair was vastly different from practicing it in a forest where the squirrels were the size of terriers and the shadows seemed to growl.
"Okay," she whispered, huddling under a massive fern as a bioluminescent rain began to fall. "Logic first. Priority one: Water. Priority two: Shelter. Priority three: Don't get eaten by something with more teeth than me."
The Librarian’s Lens
She focused her gaze on a cluster of bright blue mushrooms growing at the base of a glowing oak.
[Analytical Eye Activated]
Item: Azure Cap
Category: Fungi (Magical)
Properties: Highly Hallucinogenic. Causes 'Confusion' status for 4 hours.
Librarian’s Note: Would make a great bookmark, but a terrible snack.
"Great," Shino muttered, her stomach giving a traitorous growl. "No mushrooms for dinner."
She spent the next few months living like a literal stray. Her Cait Sith instincts were her saving grace—her ears would twitch toward the snapping of a twig long before her human mind processed the danger. She learned to climb, her sharp claws digging into the cork-like bark of the massive trees. She spent her nights high in the canopy, tied to branches with vines, watching the forest floor crawl with predators she wasn't ready to face.
The First Level
Her first "kill" wasn't a dragon or a goblin. It was a Horned Rabbit—a creature that looked remarkably like the ones from the starter zones in her favorite light novels.
It had lunged at her while she was gathering berries. Shino didn't have a sword, but she had a heavy, jagged rock and four years of pent-up "Truck-kun" resentment.
Thwack.
[Level Up!]
Shino Kurugawa: Level 1 -> Level 2
Strength +1, Agility +3
New Skill Acquired: [Stealth - Rank F]
"One Horned Rabbit down," she panted, looking at her shaking, clawed hands. "Only... ten thousand more to go until I'm Kirito."
The Great Library of One
By the end of her first year, Shino had transformed. The soft, library-bound girl was gone. In her place was a lean, sun-darkened Cait Sith wearing a tunic made of cured rabbit furs and woven vine-fiber.
She had found a small, dry cave tucked behind a waterfall. It wasn't just a home; it was her project. Using a sharp flint stone, she began to scratch "books" into the stone walls. She wrote down everything [Analytical Eye] told her about the plants, the weather patterns, and the monsters she observed from the trees.
She was "cataloging" the world.
Status Window:
Level: 7
Skills: [Analytical Eye - Rank D], [Stealth - Rank D], [Dagger Proficiency - Rank F] (Self-Taught with a bone knife), [Cooking - Rank E].
"Level 7 in a year," she sighed, leaning back against her stone 'bookshelf.' "At this rate, I'll be a master of the forest by the time I'm twenty. Or at least, I'll have the best-documented cave in history."
She looked at her tail, which flicked with a newfound confidence. She missed the scent of real paper, but the forest was becoming a story she knew how to read. She just didn't know that the "Protagonist" of her story was about to arrive in three years.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVijx73DtfM
and then Add to home screen.