She reached her home some time after noon. First thing she did, was get out of her clothes and take a dip in the river. She sighed with relief as she lowered herself into the clear and cold waters, shuddering both from the cold but also with relief. To think this river, many kilometers downstream, later became all murky and home to all sorts of monsters. But no matter, she was home now, and she was safe.
She laid in the waters for perhaps 10 minutes, scrubbing herself properly, and even dipped her head beneath the surface, washing her hair. Then she got up, the water dripping from her nude form, and stood by her cottage wall in the bright sunlight, sun-drying. There were no one else living here anyways, so drying in the nude was something she had gotten accustomed to over the past 7 years. Occasionally she would wring her hair and turn around, to speed up the drying process.
Some half-hour later when she felt proper dry, she headed inside and got into a fresh set of clothes. Her shorts and simple top would do just fine. Then, she laid down in her hammock, snacking on some of the dried fruit she had brought with her for the excursion. The safety and comfort of her home could no longer be overstated, not now when she had experienced how harsh and dangerous reality was outside of her sanctuary. Naturally, she assumed not everywhere was like that, seeing humans and other humanoid races had made villages, cities and entire nations, but her reality was that she was surrounded by a very dangerous forest.
If she ever wanted to leave, which she did eventually, she would have to master the forest in one way or another. But right now, she was simply too weak. She had come too close to death for her liking, and that she didn't like one bit.
She bit into a piece of dried apple slice, chewing while in deep thought. If she could make a spell to increase her mana permanently, she could probably do the same for her other stats as well. But, it had taken her seven years to get above 3000 mana. Sure, she was in no rush, but there had to be a better way to increase all her stats at once. She took another bite of her apple slice, trying to think of ways to make her stronger. She recalled manga from her past life, where the protagonist had a skill which let them absorb the powers of the monsters they killed. Could work.
She gathered her mana around her on the hammock, using her unique skilled "Magic Creation", and then envisioning the effect she wanted from her spell. She wanted an aura spell where, for a set amount of time, she would steal some of the stats from creatures she killed. She felt the rush of her magic fade, and a new spell added to her spellbook.
"Absorption Aura", cost 5000 mana to cast, and for 10 minutes the caster will absorb 10% of the stats from any creature killed while under this effect.
It was a very strong spell, to say the least. But she didn't even have 5000 mana yet. If she worked on increasing her mana every day, she could reach 5000 mana in a bit over a year. But even then, if she spent 5000 mana on this aura, how would she then kill any creatures if she was out of mana? These were all things she had to consider, but she had over a year to figure out a good tactic, so she felt confident she would figure something out.
That said, 5000 mana, that was more than even the summoned heroes would be able to amass, meaning she'd probably be the only person in history capable of such a spell. So, now that she had a new goal in mind, it was time to grind! Well, grind and grind. Life settled back into the comfortable lull she had maintained for the past seven year. She woke up, had fruits for breakfast, worked out in the vegetable fields, had fish stew for lunch, bathed and washed her clothes, sun-dried, then spent the afternoon and evening relaxing or maintaining her equipment. The one big difference was that now she had 2000 kilos of Titan-Boa meat in her sub-space inventory. It seems the passage of time does not affect her inventory, so the snake meat in there is perfectly fresh and preserved. So, she started frying it for dinner, and it was actually rather tasty. A bit stringy, with an off mushy aftertaste, but more than edible. Since she had only been eating fruits, berries, veggies and fish for years, the addition of meat was more than welcome even if it was a bit iffy.
And like that, the seasons came and went. One and a half year flew by in no time at all, and Lyra was now 26 year old, though her body had not changed at all since her rebirth here 9 years ago. She passed 5000 mana a few weeks ago, and now her stats looked like this:
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Name: Lyra Lunarsong
HP: 500/500 MP: 5060/5060
Level: 10 (23,000/67,000)
Race: High Elf
Age: 26
Stamina: 50
Strength: 3
Agility: 5
Spirit: 5
Intellect: 33
Job: Mage (Apprentice and Novice level spells costs 50% less mana to cast.)
Skill: Magic Creation (SSS) (The User may create spells with their own unique effects, the manacost is proportionate to the effect of the spell)
Available attribute points to spend: 0
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She had also figured out a means to use her new "Absorption Aura", which was by the invention of a new spell called "Mana Gem" which let her create a consumable item for storing mana. The mana gem can store up to 3000 mana and costs 100 mana to create. So past few days, she had been creating a handful of mana-gems and filling them up with 3000 mana each. So right now, she had 5000 mana on hand, but also four mana-gems containing 12,000 mana total.
There was one final thing she had realized she needed for her plans, and that was a monster-lure. Thankfully, that was also something she could simply create with her unique skill. For 1000 mana, she could conjure a totem that would aggro all nearby monsters in a 1 kilometer area for thirty minutes.
So, after over a year, she finally felt ready to put her plan into action.