The Tale of Hero Alice’s Social Death

Chapter 4: Gathering, Tattered Forest Friends Association

After Alice returned to the preserved part of the forest, she spent almost no effort to capture several rabbits. However, it wasn't as if her physique had leveled up after undergoing the panties baptism just now. In reality, after separating from her underwear, Alice's physique was no different than before.

Instead, what happened was that Purification Blade's blinding light had literally blinded the rabbits lingering around the preserved forest's edge. And once these rabbits began running around in a panic, several of them crashed headfirst into trees and fainted. Hence, it became a lot easier for Alice to capture these rabbits, and she managed to gather enough rations for the next few days in no time.

Moreover, Alice no longer had any trouble looking for kindling to start fires with. After Purification Blade had destroyed a large part of the forest, Alice now had access to what was essentially a lifetime's supply of wood chips.

As a side note, now that Alice had used her panties to vaporize the forest, she only had her dress to cover up her lower half. Moreover, as one of the wolves had damaged her dress just now, the fabric covered hardly anything. Taking into account that Purification Blade's effects might draw other people to this place, Alice decided to skin two rabbits and use their pelts to make herself a simple pair of underwear.

Unfortunately, while her makeshift underwear indeed had the function of one, appearance-wise, it was nothing but a piece of rag. Hence, her ability did not recognize it as an Artifact. The system didn't even recognize it as a pair of underwear. Instead, it was labeled as a "Crudely Processed Pelt" and rated as "Garbage." It also only provided an effect of "Constitution +1." Alice suffered a severe mental blow from this outcome. After all, she had initially been delighted with her handicraft.

Items of the same category seem to provide similar effects.

Alice had gradually noticed a pattern for weapon abilities. Almost all of the tree branches she picked up provided a boost to Speed, whereas stones provided a boost to Strength, and fur provided a boost to Constitution. If she picked up items of a similar type to use as a weapon, she would be granted similar effects.

Going by this pattern, then possibly all of the panties that entered her right hand would turn into Artifacts. Although this sounded incredibly strange, she now had a trump card she could rely on at the very least. The only problem was that Alice currently did not have a second pair of panties to verify this theory. After all, the system refused to recognize her handcrafted panties as actual panties.

More importantly, do the people of this world even wear panties?

This was another thing Alice was worried about. According to the descriptions she often saw in transmigration novels, the civilizations found in alien worlds filled with magic typically resemble medieval Europe. And while novels generally described these worlds to be beautiful, it was a fact that the Middle Ages was a sloppy part of Europe's history. Many of the hygiene practices the people of this era adopted would be seen as questionable at best in the eyes of modern people.

If this world truly was stuck in the Middle Ages, panties might not exist in this world. In that case, Alice would have to go the extra mile and invent panties herself.

When Alice thought about how she had potentially transformed the only pair of panties in this world into light, she couldn't help but find her previous actions a little extravagant.

While holding such worries and anxiety in her mind, Alice lived at the edge of the preserved forest for the next several days. Because everything Alice had on her body had been exchanged with her current attire when she transmigrated, she didn't have any methods to kill time. She couldn't play the single-player games on her phone. The only thing she could do was pick up rubbish in the forest every day, a.k.a. picking up all sorts of Garbage-quality "weapons."

Surprisingly, Alice's actions weren't completely futile as she had picked up a few items that were not "Garbage."

Of these non-Garbage weapons, one of them was a "Milu Rabbit With Some Mana," a brethren of the fox-tailed rabbits that Alice had been eating for the past several days. After knocking this thing unconscious, Alice could wield it and use it as a weapon. The rabbit had a "Not Bad" quality, and its effects were "Strength +2, Speed +2." It was significantly better than an ordinary stone. Hence, Alice was now raising a Milu Rabbit. She had tied the rabbit to a tree with a vine, and she would knock it unconscious and use it as a weapon whenever she went out hunting.

After repeatedly being knocked unconscious for the past few days, the Milu Rabbit, unfortunately, did not improve its resistance to blunt force trauma. Instead, all the karate chops to the head had seemingly knocked a few screws loose from its head. Now, whenever the rabbit saw Alice approaching, it would tacitly ram its head into a tree and faint, saving Alice the effort to knock it unconscious.

Apart from the Milu Rabbit, Alice had also picked up strange items such as "Sparse Iron Ore That was Brought to the Ground by an Earthquake," "Poplar Branch Bathed in Holy Light," and "Baptized Sedimentary Rock." All of these items had the "Not Bad" quality. As for higher quality weapons, Alice had yet to encounter any thus far. Although Alice had found many identical copies of these items, she still chose to keep all of the "Not Bad" items in her temporary campsite as a collection because of her gamer mindset.

Meanwhile, collecting these strange items became one of the few pleasures Alice had now.

Fortunately, Alice's patience wasn't meaningless. On a certain day, after Alice returned from picking up trash in the forest, she found a person standing in the small campsite she had settled in for the past few days. Her heart jumped when she realized this fact, and her frustration of not seeing humans for half a month vanished instantly. She subconsciously wanted to call out to the party, but she seemingly remembered something and quickly shut her mouth. Then, she hurriedly hid behind a large tree, poked her head out, and quietly observed the figure standing in her campsite.

The other party was relatively short, and they seemed to be roughly the same height as Alice. They had long, silvery-white hair, so Alice guessed that the other party was a girl. However, because the other party had covered her body with a big cloak, Alice couldn't say for sure whether she really was female. The other party also wore a mini wizard's hat on her head, which probably meant she was a magician.

Because Alice had previously gained 5,000 points of Mana from the Soft White Underwear, it was safe to say that magic existed in this world. Hence, it wasn't strange for a magician to appear. However, what worried Alice now was whether the other party was friend or foe.

Although Alice had yearned for human contact when there were no other humans around before, she still couldn't help but be worried now that she had seen another person. Looking at the wizard's hat, Alice became even more confident that this world's civilization should have a setting similar to medieval Europe. The fact that magic existed also proved that this world contained supernatural abilities. So, it definitely wouldn't be strange for this world's inhabitants to operate based on the law of the jungle.

What if the other party wasn't a good person? Now that she no longer had any panties to make use of, how should she fight with the other party?

While Alice was pondering how she should initiate contact with the other party, the suspected female suddenly executed a new action. After looking around at the somewhat crude campsite, she reached into a cloak and pulled out a...mobile phone? Alice guessed that it was probably a phone. To be precise, it was a glass plate with a very smooth surface.

Afterward, under Alice's stunned gaze, the other party held up the suspected mobile phone, swiped a finger across it a few times, and seemingly started taking pictures of Alice's campsite. Flashes of light had even appeared from the glass plate, and Alice could vaguely hear the sound of a camera shutter.

...Isn't this the Middle Ages? Why is it a little different from what I imagined?

------

Other novels I translate on Hosted Novel:After Being Bent By Reader (ABBR)(GL)Reincarnation of the Strongest Sword God (Side Stories)Miss Cousin is Always Busy (MCAB)(Yuri, Quick Transmigration)