The Long Way Down

Silstimore — a northern stretch of the continent where vast forests unfurled without end. Small villages, minor nations, and all manner of races made their homes there, but none of that meant a thing to the woman currently clinging to a cliff face.

"Ugh… p-please, easy… Don't you dare crumble on me, okay? Okay??"

A woman was making her way down the sheer rock, fingers and toes finding purchase on the bare stone. Anyone could imagine how raw and painful it was to climb naked, bare hands and bare feet scraping against rock — and that was without having to experience it firsthand.

To make matters worse, her aggressively large chest kept brushing and dragging against the wall, adding a whole new layer of misery. Still, the only way to put solid ground under her feet was to get down this cliff.

She carefully shifted her left foot onto a jutting spur of rock below.

Crack-rattle!

The stone sheared away. Her balance collapsed in an instant; the hand braced against the wall slipped, and she only barely managed to hang on.

"Hahh… hah… Almost died just now. For real."

The one small mercy was that she wasn't doing any of this with a pistol still clenched in her hand.

The points that had first appeared on the status window had been 300P. The gun cost 180P and a single magazine 45P — 225P spent in total, leaving 75P. Among the available purchases was a tactical pistol holster strap, a thigh-mounted rig that would let her stow the weapon. Perfect for her current situation. At 40P, that would have left her with 35P, but—

Killing that giant cockroach had bumped her total to 55P — enough to buy one more magazine. After that, she was left with 10P.

And so she had become a naked ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠woman climbing down a cliff with nothing but a pistol strap around her thigh.

"Argh, come on…! And why is this hair so damn long?"

The wind kept whipping her hair across her face, blocking her vision or stuffing strands into her mouth. Was this the kind of daily misery every woman just lived with?

Arms and legs trembling, she pushed through it — and at last she was nearly at the bottom.

"Last bit… hah… hwaah… I thought I was going to shake myself to death."

The moment her feet touched solid earth, the tension flooded out of her locked muscles and she dropped straight onto the ground. Unfamiliar weeds tickled her bare skin, but she was in no state to care — and, surprisingly, it almost felt good.

She steadied her shaking body and racing thoughts and forced herself to think again.

Where was this place? Why had she ended up like this? What was that status window that sold her a gun? The unknowns piled up endlessly, but reality demanded action over contemplation. Her throat was dry from the stress, and more urgently, she was completely naked — she needed something, anything, to cover herself. And this was a forest. There was no telling what kind of beast might come charging out, so she couldn't afford to let her guard down.

Sitting still won't give me any answers. Might as well move — at least try to find some water.

She got up and started walking. Clothes were the immediate priority. No grown adult should be wandering around stark naked — least of all in a body like this. Fortunately the area was thick with trees and greenery; she could at least cobble together some emergency coverage for the essentials.

Twenty minutes later.

"Argh… just… stay tied, damn it!! You're just grass! Uuugh! There — is that it?"

She had tried weaving broad-leafed plants into something resembling underwear to cover her chest and groin, but it proved far harder than expected. The stems refused to hold like string, constantly coming undone, and shaping the whole thing was a nightmare. Still, after a brutal struggle, she managed to wrap leaves around her chest and cinch something around her waist that vaguely resembled a miniskirt. Of course it wasn't actual underwear, so the breeze slipping freely between her thighs felt deeply, unnervingly strange.

At any rate, the most critical problem was roughly solved. Next came drinking water. A person could scrape by without food for a while, but without water, three days was all it took to become a mummy.

In her previous life she had been an ordinary otaku college student in her twenties — not some special forces veteran, not some survivalist freak who kept wilderness lore rattling around in her head. She had no professional method for finding water.

The best she could come up with was painfully vague: riverbanks tend to be breezy and cool, so if she just followed the wind, maybe something would turn up.

For reasons she couldn't explain, the sensation of wind against her skin was remarkably sharp. Back in the cave she had assumed the darkness had simply heightened her sense of touch by cutting off her vision — but even out here in the forest, her senses felt unnervingly acute.

Fine sounds carried clearly. Scents registered with startling precision. Her eyesight stretched far enough that she half-wondered if someone had bolted a telescope onto her face — a night-and-day improvement over the glasses-dependent vision of her past life.

She set off following the wind. Birdsong drifted by now and then, grass rustled in the breeze, and her own light footsteps padded along. Thankfully, no tigers or boars came bursting out of the undergrowth.

How long had she been walking? Without a watch, her sense of time was useless. It felt like she had been at it for ages, and also like not even ten minutes had passed. Her mouth grew drier. She wasn't about to drop dead on the spot, but her tongue was starting to stick to the roof of her mouth.

"I'm not going to die of dehydration, am I…? Haaah…"

Reincarnating into another world only to die of thirst felt like a particularly cruel joke. Still, the only thing she could do was keep putting one foot in front of the other. And then—

Rustle…

"…?"

She stopped. Something had just brushed through the grass. Not the wind. Something definite had disturbed the undergrowth and stepped on the ground. In her old body she never would have noticed — but with senses this sharp, she caught it clearly.

Rustle.

Rustle…

Behind her.

Roughly twenty meters back, inside the grass.

An… animal? Please let it be a rabbit or something.

She stared hard, but nothing emerged. Up in the trees, deep in the grass, beside the rocks — nothing visible. She started to turn forward again when—

Rustle.

This time from the right. A chill ran down her spine. Something was definitely there. Person, animal, monster — something was out there. She drew the pistol from the holster on her thigh.

Her heart began hammering for no good reason.

"…If you're going to come out, just come out already."

Of course nothing answered. She immediately regretted it — all she had done was announce her position. In response, the grass shook harder. Faster. Her pulse climbed until the thudding of her own heart drowned out the forest wind. And then, in that instant—

Whoosh!!!

She snapped the gun up on pure reflex. But what came bursting out was—

"What the… it's a squirrel."

A completely ordinary squirrel. Not oversized like that giant cockroach, no razor teeth, no horns — just a regular squirrel. It stared at her for about ten ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠seconds, then bolted back into the woods.

"Scared me for nothing."

She stood still for a moment, shaking off the cold sweat and reclaiming a scrap of calm. Then she looked in the direction the squirrel had fled. All her eyes found was more forest.

Shhhhhh…

A faint sound began to reach her. With the harsh rustle of grass and the pounding of her heart settling down, her ears finally picked up something subtle underneath.

"Water…? Is that running water?"

A little color returned to her face.

"Found it!"

She broke into a run toward the sound. Her improved hearing clearly wasn't her imagination. After a short sprint the noise grew louder, and then the trees parted to reveal a small stream. Sunlight glittered across the current; now and then tiny fish leapt above the surface.

There was no reason to hesitate. She dashed to the bank, dropped to her knees, and scooped water up in her hands. Cold bloomed across her palms and set her fingers tingling.

"Is this… safe to drink? No idea… but it's better than dying of thirst…"

She hesitated for a beat. As a modern person she knew rivers were full of bacteria and microbes — but this was no time to be picky. She had no way to boil anything, and her throat felt ready to crack. So she drank.

"Whatever."

Gulp.

Gulp.

Gulp.

"Khh… I'm alive…"

It was the kind of cold that reminded her of coming home on a sweltering summer day, sweat pouring off her, showering, and cracking open a cold soda — a coolness that seemed to fill every corner of her body.

She drank for a long while, then washed her face, and only then did her mind fully come back online.

"But… who is this elf…?"

At last she noticed the face reflected in the water. Long, lustrous silver hair that shone in the sunlight. Golden eyes. Ears that stretched long and pointed to either side.

"I wasn't even human? No wonder… something felt off. That hyper-sensitive perception — it was because of this, wasn't it?"

She idly pinched the tip of one pointed ear, and the reality of it settled in even deeper.

Soft. Springy. And somehow… weirdly tingly…

"Ugh… this feels so strange…"

The novelty didn't last. Now that her body had water, it started demanding food — her stomach let out a loud, theatrical growl. Fortunately a few fish were darting around in the stream. The problem was how to catch them.

She couldn't afford to waste bullets when she didn't even have the points for a spare magazine, and hitting a fish with a pistol was dubious at best. In the end, she would have to do it by hand.

"Might as well try…"

.

.

.

.

"Aaaargh!!!!! Just get caught already!!!"

Trying to grab quick little fish while bouncing around with a massive chest attached was absurdly difficult. She had never even caught a fish barehanded before, and doing it in an unfamiliar body made success all but impossible. Frustration with the uncatchable fish mounted until she finally drew the pistol.

"I was going easy on you, you little—!!"

She ended up firing five shots. Ten rounds left. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠The silver lining: one fish got lucky — or unlucky — and floated limply to the surface.

"Acting all cocky…"

Just like when she had killed the cockroach, the status window appeared and her points went up. 25P — still not enough to buy anything in the shop.

"A little more and I could probably afford another magazine…"

Five shots for 15P. In theory, the remaining ten rounds could bag two more fish for 30P and get her a fresh magazine — but she decided to put that aside for now. Filling the hole in her stomach came first.

She turned back, fished the catch out of the water, and stepped onto the bank, already fretting over how to eat it. Even she drew the line at tearing into a raw fish.

And so began the labor of making fire — a labor whose full difficulty she had not yet begun to grasp.