In the name of efficiency, I made very little progress in my leveling up in the next three months.

  I made a lot of progress on my situation, and I'm sure that it will start paying dividends later.

  For starter, I move out of my cave, as fancy as it was, the snake just under me made me a bit uneasy at night, and walking to the stream each day was becoming a chore. I built myself a treehouse in one of the not apple tree, I learned that the bark of that specie of tree is also poisonous, and while I'm resistant enough to not be impacted, the bugs that keep coming in my bed are not.

  That side progress increased my Crafting to level 2 and gave me Construction at level 1, the effect of the Skills are really impressive, for my shovel I just shaped vaguely the wood in a shovel like form, but after getting the skill I was able to craft myself hammer and axe with stone head like a pro. I thought a lot about where the System get his knowledge ? Toriel wasn't able to answer me, but for me there are two options, either the System is kinda omniscient and can just give people knowledge about anything, which I doubt seeing how many troubles he got when I first got there, or it learns back from people, someone somewhere made a basic stone axe, so now everyone that get the same Skill know how to do it. That would mean there is a top limit for skills, it can't teach you something nobody figure out, and maybe that's why it's there ? To make people invent new things and techniques to create a bigger database ?

  Musing about the raison d'être of the system is fun and all, but I won't find answers while stuck in the woods if everyone in the vast civilization didn't, and since Toriel is made to teach me everything someone growing up should know about the system, which by itself almost prove that the system learn from peoples, and he doesn't know, I guess that still a mystery for the wider world.

  Maybe I will find a library or a school when I finally find a city.

  On other news, I made a lot of progress on soul magic, more like accidentally that I would like, but still. I was trying to increase the duration I'm able to be out of my body, make a spell to protect it or something, but my life and death magic didn't do it. So I reread my trait, and I have technically soul mana affinity, which gave me basic life and death magic. So I tried to mix the two magic together to try to reproduce the effect of my ability , and it didn't work.

  Like it did something, but not what I was trying to do, I lost basic death and basic life magic, and instead got basic soul magic*, with which I can do all I could with either of the two before, so not a lot, but my soul magic can't protect my soul from erosion, or maybe it can, but not for long enough for me to notice. To make it better, I have three options : increase my Magicus, increase my Skill level, or wait until level 10 and take Soul mage. Soul mage is a nice potential future option, I was a bit scared that it would give me similar abilities as Soul warrior and that it wouldn't work together, but apparently abilities can fuse like traits, making them more powerful or versatile, and with two class similar it would probably happen a lot. We talked about class a lot, as I decided to wait until level 10 to face the bear, and I would have the option to choose a new one at that point.

  To come back to basic soul magic, I managed to do a nice thing, I call it a spell even if Toriel insist that if it was, it would have been recognized by the System. I think the System is being snobbing and won't give me the spell interface, since I'm not a mage.

  I call my Spell 'eye of the soul', and it allows me to look at my soul with my soul, it's a bit trippy, and I feel like it has a lot of future potential, but it allows me to see the system around my Soul. Like, literally the magic or something of the System is like a web around my soul and does things, changing it and pushing it in direction when I use my abilities or interact with my Interface. And by looking a lot and thinking a lot, I'm pretty patient like that, and meditation is kinda fun, even if my first try was interrupted by the system telling me that I got the meditation skill. I was angry for like 5 seconds before I realize that the skill increase my magic point regeneration when I meditate, which allow me to get a bit more perception, which allow me to look at my soul better, however it works ?

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I managed to comprehend how some of the system stuffs works, I can't touch it directly or anything, but I found what I believe is the exp stuff, so now I'm able to monitor how far from the next level I am, and how much my actions are rewarded.

  So I know I'm halfway to level 7, which is not very fast, but I also found some very interesting things that should allow me to rush trough levels.

  The system seems to take all your actions and all the consequences of those into account, probably because it's connected to all living, or unliving things. I will come back to undead things later, it's worrying. The more philosophical distance between your cause and the consequence, the way less the system attribute it to you, but I can gain exp if by my actions things dies, or get healed, even if I'm not the one doing it directly.

  For example, my bear trap didn't work, I mean, maybe if the bear was drunk at night it may have missed my trap, but it didn't happen, so I left the experiment and went to do more productive things, but like a week later, I got this notification :

  You have assisted in the killing of young deer, some exp has been awarded

  It took me a while to figure out that while chased by a fox, a baby deer fell into my hole, and the fox managed to drain it while it was stuck. With a bit of testing I realize that it could be a way to fast progression, if I burn down the valley, I should get some exp from anything that die, I won't do that, for obvious reasons, but traps and the like is a way to get passive exp, and I guess maybe kings and the like get exp from their army fighting ? That have some scary implication but whatever.

  And I thought I found a new error in the system, but I got no notification, so I must be missing something, I'm getting exp from all the bug that die climbing the tree to get into my treehouse, I'm not doing anything to get them to do that, but I'm still responsible apparently … That's like nothing, but I won't say no to free stuff.

  The second way to gain fast exp I found was abusing my soul projection, I can use my abilities while in soul form, and that include soul attack, the creatures in the valley aren't able to see souls, so I can get very close to them and blast them for a few minutes. Not very effective, as I'm not doing enough damage to kill a bigger beast, and the system seems to be fixing people soul, faster the higher level you are. But it's a no risk, fast way to gain a little.

  The third way include healing, the easy way is to catch something, hurt it a lot, and then heal it, again and again, to get some exp. I found out that I gain more exp the more the wound is important, and with my soul magic I can't fix a lot. So trying that on animals is not only distasteful, but also not very effective. The effective way is to hurt myself, as unending soul can fix any kind of wound and is not dependent on my Magicus or Skill level. And as Toriel put it, 'it can also help increase your pain resistance skill, very smart !', but yeah, not a big fan of self harming, I'm no longer a teen.

  I finally made a big progress last week, and a lot of my current exp come from it, I'm able to control my body while I'm soul projecting. It's not part of the ability, but I can manage it with soul magic, it's apparently necromancy and I shouldn't tell everyone I can do it, it's pretty taboo.

  So my current method of cheesing the System is to get out of my body, and manipulate my body to stab herself with a pointy stick. I think a therapist would have a lot to say about that, but it's working, no body no pains, but a lot of gains ! Well, not a lot, without my soul my body don't have magic point regeneration, or unending soul and does not fix itself, the realization came with a lot of pains. But I can manage to be just enough outside to not feel anything and be totally disconnected, but not enough for my body to not be recognized as it, and I can let it fix itself, I got a few skills levels from that technique and Toriel think I will gain some interesting class options from that.

  But a few hours each day give me as much exp as killing a lvl 6 something, so that's a win in my book. Must do it away from my home, because that's a lot of blood and I don't want to stink up the place.