Chapter 3: Chapter 3

The morning was cold and miserable, as Alice realized how little warmth the open ground of the forest floor provided. She looked at the remains of her attempts at lighting a fire, as well as the fish that had now been laying in the dirt for several hours, and sighed. Today, she needed to do better. She hadn’t eaten in two or three days at this point, and she was starving.

If she didn’t find something to eat today, she was going to start becoming thinner and weaker, and it would be even harder to recover. Assuming the System didn’t somehow make her stats ‘work’ even without the calories to power her body, but she wasn’t going to bet on that when her stomach was clearly telling her something needed to happen soon. Fish and fire were a bust for now, so at this moment it was looking like she needed to find some random plants or something and then engage in desperation roulette. If she could even find some wild vegetables or berries, which, thus far, she hadn’t.

She began travelling up the river again, continuing her search for civilization while keeping an eye out for anything useful.

A few hours into her journey, she finally found something that might serve as food. A few berry bushes spread out from the river, with dull blue-green berries about half the diameter of her pinky finger ringing the branches.

Since she didn’t recognize the berries at all, she looked closely at and around the bush, trying to spot anything that might indicate whether or not the berries were edible. After a few minutes, she realized that the branches around her ankles were curiously devoid of berries. Maybe some small animal had been eating from this bush and had stripped the lower branches bare, but couldn’t reach the higher branches?

If the rabbits were eating the berries, it couldn’t be too bad even if it was a little poisonous, right?

Or maybe the lower branches just didn’t support berries.

Still, she had to take a risk somewhere if she wanted to avoid starving to death - Alice craved safety and security, but if she refused to take any risks she would just have to wait for starvation to kill her. Gritting her teeth, she grabbed one of the berries from a bush that reached about the height of her waist and then bit into it.

The flavor was somewhat odd – it tasted somewhere between a mixture of an apple and a blueberry, but it was much more tart than she was used to. She couldn’t tell if that was just the flavor of the berries, or if they were unripe, or what. Regardless, she had eaten one now. If this is poison, hopefully it’s a survivable amount, she thought, trying to clamp down the hunger pangs in her stomach as she sat down and waited. If a while passed and she didn’t feel any ill effects, she would consider the berries safe and eat more of them. One berry hopefully wouldn’t kill her even if they were toxic.

After a solid ten minutes passed, two notifications suddenly sprang into the air in front of her.

Through Training, you have increased an attribute!

Willpower +1

You have leveled up!

Survivor: 6

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