The nose had crashed deep into the valley, which was perpetually shrouded in mist and from which terrifying roars that even a Tyrannosaurus Rex would fear often echoed; she had once seen a giant Quetzalcoatlus with a wingspan of over fifteen meters take flight from there.
Going there would be no different from seeking death.
However, the half of the fuselage that had crashed by the sea was different.
That area was a shallow beach with relatively open terrain and fewer Beasts.
"The plane broke, but there wasn't a massive fuel explosion. There might be survivors in that half of the fuselage."
Alice gripped the scarf in her hand.
To go, or not to go?
Reason told her that on this cruel island, meddling often meant death.
She was already struggling to survive; taking on injured baggage would be suicidal.
But they were her own kind.
It had been a whole month, and she hadn't heard a human word or seen a human face.
That bone-deep loneliness was more maddening than hunger.
Even if it wasn't to save anyone, scavenging for modern supplies—antibiotics, knives, lighters, or even just a bag of salt—would be a huge help to her survival.
Having made up her mind, Alice briskly tied the sky-blue scarf around her left wrist, securing it with a double knot to serve as a wristband.
Then, like a nimble ape, she slid down the thick vines hanging from the large tree, descending from the thirty-meter-high canopy.
Having survived in this jungle for so long, although she hadn't developed muscles like Schwarzenegger, her proficiency in tree climbing and vine sliding had been forced to the max.
The moment her feet touched the ground, Alice didn't hesitate and silently recited the incantation in her mind.
"System, activate Character Card—Kato Megumi, apply!"
[Ding! Character Card Kato Megumi (Saekano) has been activated. Remaining duration: 3 hours 45 minutes.]
As the system notification finished, a strange sensation enveloped Alice's entire body.
She felt herself becoming lighter.
This lightness was on the level of presence.
It was as if her entire being was fading from this vividly colored jungle painting, turning into an inconspicuous background element, a stone by the road, a weed that no one noticed.
If this were an RPG, a golden Kato Megumi buff would have appeared under her character status bar at this moment.
Effect description: [Presence -99%, Aggro lock immunity, Passive stealth check critical success].
Alice took a deep breath and, barefoot, stepped onto the thick layer of fallen leaves, heading toward the beach.
The path through the jungle was difficult, filled with tangled roots and thorny bushes.
"Crackle, crackle..."
After only a few steps, a tooth-grinding chewing sound and the crisp snap of breaking branches came from ahead.
Alice instinctively stopped, pressing her body against the trunk of an ancient tree that would take three people to encircle, and peeked out.
In a clearing twenty meters ahead, a creature of terrifying proportions was feeding.
It was a wild boar.
But it certainly wasn't the two or three-hundred-pound wild boar of the modern World.
This monster was at least four meters long and over two meters high at the shoulder, looking like a heavy tank covered in black hair.
Its needle-like black hair was matted with dried mud and the flesh of unknown creatures, and its massive snout was rooting for plant tubers underground.
Every time it raised its head to root, large patches of soil were turned over as if by a heavy plow, forming ridge after ridge, even snapping tree roots as thick as a wrist.
This was a prehistoric Beast, a Daeodon, or perhaps a variant of Entelodont.
Alice didn't know its scientific name, but she had nicknamed it "The Bulldozer."
Despite having the Kato Megumi card active, the physiological fear in the face of such a heavyweight monster still made her calves tremble slightly.
She stood still for about three minutes, only daring to move after confirming the wild boar was fully focused on a massive tuber and hadn't noticed any movement from her direction.
On tiptoe, she carefully skirted past, less than ten meters away from the wild boar.
AI Model: gemini-3.1-flash-lite
The wild boar was eating with gusto, making satisfied snorting sounds, its thin little tail wagging back and forth behind its rump, shooing away a few horseflies buzzing around its tail.
At first glance, apart from its massive size, this wild boar actually had a sort of clumsy, adorable charm.
But Alice would never be deceived by its appearance.
One dusk half a month ago, she had witnessed the brutality of this Beast with her own eyes.
At that time, a Sabretooth, known as the king of the jungle, attempted to hunt the wild boar's cubs.
The result was that the adult wild boar went berserk.
The crazed wild boar was like a runaway train, snapping a tree that took one person to wrap their arms around in half.
Its thick fur couldn't even be pierced by the Sabretooth's sharp claws, but its pair of meter-long, scimitar-like tusks became deadly weapons.
The unlucky Sabretooth was chased until it was terrified, finally being caught in a dead-end valley.
With a single charge, the wild boar's tusks pierced straight through the tiger's soft abdomen, and then it shook its head wildly, tossing the several-hundred-pound tiger away like a ragdoll, leaving its entrails scattered all over the ground.
Since then, Alice had listed this wild boar in the top three of her 'absolutely do not provoke' list.
One step, two steps, three steps...
Alice held her breath and focused; every step she took required her to test the ground with her toes first to avoid snapping dead branches and making noise.
At the closest point, she could even smell the strong, musky odor and the scent of earth on the wild boar, and could hear its heavy breathing, which sounded like a bellows.
Finally, she managed to bypass this living tank.
Not until she looked back and could no longer see the massive dark shadow did she dare to let out a long sigh of relief, realizing that her clothes on her back were already soaked with cold sweat.
"This is the sorrow of the weak."
Alice shook her head with a bitter smile and continued forward.
The jungle became increasingly dense, filled everywhere with towering trees dozens of meters high; there was no such thing as a path.
She could only trudge through the gaps between the plants like a bug.
Beneath her feet was a thick layer of humus; every step was soft and squishy, occasionally oozing black, foul-smelling water.
Mosquitoes buzzed incessantly, circling her ears. If it weren't for Kato Megumi's buff causing these insects to ignore her existence as well, she would probably be covered in welts by now.
"Rustle, rustle..."
A slight disturbance suddenly came from the bushes ahead.
Alice's nerves instantly tightened, and just as she was preparing to dodge behind a moss-covered tree, a small head with white spots poked out.
It was a sika deer.
It wasn't large, about the same size as a modern deer, sporting a pair of uneven, branch-like antlers.
It had a pair of large, watery eyes with an innocent and naive look, bleating a few times like an old sheep before lowering its head to graze on tender shrub leaves.
The young girl's originally tight heart relaxed a little, and clutching her chest, she muttered to herself, "You scared me; I thought it was a Velociraptor."
In this jungle filled with slaughter, seeing such a herbivore always brought a rare sense of healing.
Alice even felt a slight impulse to go up and pet it.
After all, petting cats and dogs is human nature, and petting a prehistoric sika deer seemed pretty nice too.