After making preparations.
At night, Tsukasa planned to leave the village.
No matter what, she could not agree to her parents in this life selling her freedom to a noble. One had to realize this was a world with magic; becoming a slave meant being forced to wear a magic collar, and her life would be over then. Although, those noble lords might not necessarily be willing to waste money on a magic collar for her.
However, she was very confident in her looks.
She had gained a high appearance score in her previous transmigration.
In her second transmigration.
Her beauty had increased even further.
Being sold to a noble was definitely not a good thing.
If she were ugly, it might be one thing.
But since she was beautiful, her chastity would certainly be at risk. Therefore, she had to find a way to save herself, and the only option before her was to run away.
Fortunately, she hadn't shown any extraordinary traits as a child, and ordinary people in this world seemed unable to master the
So, in the eyes of her parents.
She was still just a naive little brat.
They never imagined she would run away.
"As expected, the lower your birth, the more you must know how to hide your brilliance."
With extreme caution, she left the room and walked out of the house without waking her parents or younger brother.
Tsukasa took one last look at that dilapidated house.
She could imagine that after her escape, the noble lord in the city might vent his anger by punishing them.
At this point, she didn't want to make any excuses.
She had abandoned them for her own sake.
Tsukasa dashed out of the village without looking back.
She didn't bring any luggage.
She wasn't confident she could prepare such things without alerting others. Her family even slept in the same bed; in such circumstances, trying to pack a bag for a long journey was simply unrealistic. Doing so would surely lead to discovery, and then she wouldn't even be able to run.
She ran into the dangerous mountain range behind the village.
It was said that there were monsters inside.
The entrance to the "Elroe Labyrinth," the eternal protagonist of adventure stories, was located within this mountain range. Cities generally stayed far away from this area; only some impoverished villages would be built near such dangerous zones because they had no other choice.
The reason Tsukasa risked running in there was also because she had no other choice. There were only a few paths, and if she didn't enter the mountains and instead ran toward the main road, the risk of being caught and brought back was far too high.
She didn't doubt for a second that the noble would send people to search for her. She was quite confident in her appearance; if not for the stimulation of two transmigrations, and if she were still a man, she felt that given the chance, he wouldn't easily let her go either.
Furthermore, she felt that this group of nobles, whose cultural level was lower than Earth's, certainly wouldn't have higher moral standards than her former self.
Tsukasa would never harbor any wishful thinking.
So, she chose this path with a slim chance of survival.
After all, in her heart.
A crisis of chastity was more important than her life!
Al-
-though both were important.
But she had already died twice.
So her mindset had changed somewhat.
A person's life is only valuable because of pride and conviction. If it were a dark life, she would rather die now, so she chose to drive herself onto a dead-end path!
A ten-year-old human girl with no combat power and no weapons running into a mountain range where magical beasts lived? No matter how you looked at it, it was a death wish, yet she did it without hesitation.
Of course, she wasn't completely unprepared.
Because she still had skill points.
skill points were exactly what the name implied, just like in a game. However, skill acquisition in this world didn't necessarily require skill points; for instance, she had been beaten once by her father for not working efficiently and subsequently learned the skill
The mountains were very cold at night.
It was somewhat uncomfortable for Tsukasa, who was only wearing a thin cloth garment, so she used skill points to learn the skill
<# Human Race # lv1 # Name: Tsukasa #>
<# Status Values:
HP: 20/20
MP: 20/20
SP: 20/20 (20/20)
Average Attack Ability: 5
Average Defense Ability: 10
Average Magic Ability: 5
Average Resistance Ability: 10
Average Speed Ability: 5 >
<# Skills:
... >
<# skill points: 4850 >
<# Title: None >
She appraised her own attributes.
Tsukasa's only evaluation of herself was that she was "Scum with a combat power of five."
She might even be worse than "Scum with a combat power of five"... No, let's remove the "might."
Let's be honest.
She really didn't even have the combat power of "Scum with a combat power of five."
Running recklessly into the mountains like this was no different from seeking death, right? She knew that, of course, but life is just full of such frustrations. If she were really a character in a novel, even as the protagonist, it would definitely be a tragedy-focused one!
"Even though I have skill points, I'm still scared after all; I have no information about monsters at all..." Having lost track of where she had walked, Tsukasa's mood was inevitably somewhat uneasy.
Because she knew nothing about this world.
There was no helping it.
That village was poor to begin with.
And her family was one of the poorer ones in the village.
Getting an education was impossible.
Nor did she have any opportunity to learn about the world outside the village.
Moreover, her parents seemed to think she didn't need to know anything as long as she learned how to do chores; they didn't treat her as a human being at all. This situation became even more severe after her younger brother was born, which was why she didn't feel a shred of guilt about betraying that family—she had never considered it a home.
Looking at the poorly lit surroundings, Tsukasa silently clicked on her skill points to open the skill learning menu. This was something that could only be done by possessing the
She didn't know if others could do such a thing.
But she felt that most people couldn't.
Because very few residents of this world seemed able to master the
She often used
Although using the skill would cause the target discomfort.
But those villagers didn't know the truth.
Coupled with the fact that the skill's impact on the target wasn't severe, she had unscrupulously used this skill to observe all the villagers.
This was her only source of information.
"Hmm... I'd better learn a few skills before moving on. Magic-type skills are relatively cheap... That being said, I don't really have any other choice besides choosing magic skills right now, because I can't possibly engage in close-quarters combat with my current physical fitness."
Although Tsukasa felt in her heart that this world's magic was unreliable—because she didn't believe for a second that this System was harmless—her previous life's novels had given her plenty of inspiration. More than once, she had speculated whether this System was the handiwork of some great god, and this world was likely just a ranch raised by that god.
Out of this "conspiracy theory" mindset.
She always felt that strengthening the physical body was the right path!
But alas... conditions didn't allow for it.
She didn't know how the System judged it, but learning a type of magic only cost her 200 skill points. Furthermore, magic in this world was learned directly by attribute; the skill displays were things like
Normally, shouldn't magic types be more expensive?
Why was it the other way around for her!