Did Alice have any money? It was a question that struck straight to the soul.
Standing on a tree branch thirty meters in the air, she turned the pockets of her unrecognizable dress completely inside out. Aside from two mint leaves she used as chewing gum and a single coin worn smooth and shiny, she had absolutely nothing.
"I'm broke."
The young girl let out a helpless sigh. She tossed the coin high into the air and caught it with pinpoint precision as it fell.
The island she currently occupied held immeasurable biological value. Catching a single prehistoric insect and bringing it to the outside world would cause biologists to brawl in the streets. Smuggling out a dinosaur egg would fetch an astronomical price.
But there was a glaring problem. This godforsaken place had zero signs of civilization. There wasn't even a scrap yard around to fence these priceless local specialties.
Her System was incredibly stubborn as well. It completely refused physical collateral. The interface only recognized circulating currency or high-purity precious metals.
Because of this, her asset balance remained a massive, depressing zero.
Poverty restricted her imagination. Worse, it restricted her combat power.
Her current inventory was pitifully barren. She had a complete [Megumi Kato] template drawn from her starter pack. She also had a recently acquired [Mikoto Misaka (Fragment)], which was utterly useless except as eye candy.
"Why couldn't I wash up on Treasure Island or somewhere from Pirates of the Caribbean? I would even take a cursed island full of danger if it meant ancient gold coins were lying around."
She looked down at her destitute self, lacking even a pair of shoes. Then she thought about the dazzling, god-tier character cards sitting in the System Shop with their astronomical price tags. She curled her lips in sheer disappointment.
She prepared to put her coin away and debate her lunch options. It was either bitter wild berries or risking her life to steal bird eggs. Suddenly, the corner of her eye caught something highly unusual.
"Wait, what is that?"
The girl narrowed her eyes, peering through the overlapping gaps in the canopy. Her gaze focused on the far end of the azure horizon.
A tiny black dot was rapidly expanding. A low, rumbling drone accompanied its approach.
Alice had lived on this island for a month, making the sound both alien and profoundly familiar. It was alien because this place was entirely dominated by the roars of beasts and the cries of birds. It was familiar because it was the pinnacle of modern industrial civilization.
It was the roar of a turbofan engine.
She rubbed her eyes fiercely. She even dug her fingernails into her thigh to ensure this wasn't a hunger-induced hallucination.
It wasn't a seagull. It definitely wasn't one of those four-winged prehistoric freak birds. It was a plane. A modern jet airliner.
She finally made out the streamlined metal fuselage, the silver-white paint job, and the massive engines slung under the wings. A rush of hot blood shot straight to Alice's head. She was so thrilled she nearly leaped right off her branch.
That was the symbol of civilization. That was her raft out of this green hell.
"Hey! Over here! Look down here!"
Logic dictated that a plane cruising thousands of meters in the air couldn't possibly hear her shouts. But she couldn't stop herself from waving her arms frantically and screaming with every ounce of strength she had.
For the past month, she had worked like a tireless ant on the most exposed crescent beach. She used dead branches, white seashells, and dark kelp to arrange three massive SOS signals. She even weighed them down with heavy rocks to prevent the ocean winds from blowing them away.
She painstakingly maintained them every single day after the high tide receded.
It was getting closer and closer. But the plane's altitude looked completely wrong.
It was flying dangerously low, and it seemed to be steadily descending. Its colossal shadow swept across the ocean surface. The roar of its engines vibrated so violently that the leaves trembled around her.
Alice truly believed hope was finally within her grasp. Then, a blinding flash of light suddenly erupted across the cloudless horizon.
In the next instant, it looked as if an invisible, gargantuan hand violently swatted the massive airliner.
The thunderous explosion echoed for miles, making Alice's eardrums throb with pain. Thick black smoke instantly spewed from the plane's left engine, followed by a violent shower of sparks.
The smoothly soaring iron bird instantly lost its balance. It tumbled and spun wildly through the air like a dragonfly with a snapped wing.
The sickening rotation carried a desperate, tearing centrifugal force. Alice could easily picture the literal hell unfolding inside the cabin.
The sudden disaster shocked the young girl, leaving her entire body running cold. Her bright blue eyes reflected the plummeting wreckage.
The aircraft's structural integrity simply could not withstand such violent tumbling and extreme G-forces. Accompanied by the ear-piercing screech of twisting metal, the fuselage snapped cleanly in half mid-air.
The nose and the front half of the cabin hurtled forward on pure momentum. It shrieked through the sky just a few hundred meters above Alice's head, dragging a mournful howl of wind in its wake. It plunged headfirst into a mist-shrouded valley deep within the heart of the island.