Stepping off the perfect lawns of the academy and into the Training Forest was like walking through a portal. The air, no longer tame and smelling of cut grass, turned wild and bit back with the scent of damp earth. Good. I preferred the forest's honesty over the academy's polite rejection.
After walking for what felt like an hour, the sound of running water led me to a small clearing with a low, rocky overhang. It wasn't a luxury suite, but it had water, cover from the wind, and most importantly, privacy from the prying looks of other students. Home sweet home.
As I dropped my bags, my hands—this new body's soft, unworked hands—felt totally useless. Then, a memory surfaced, not from Einz Velden's sad history, but from my own. I'd joined a camping club once, a calculated move to impress my 5th girlfriend. The relationship was a predictable write-off, but the skills I picked up were the one investment in the relationship that had actually paid off. The irony was so thick I could taste it.
My brain, armed with that forgotten knowledge, immediately started running diagnostics. Priorities: Shelter, fire, food. In that order. I dropped my bags under the stone overhang, which would serve as the back wall of my new home. The first task was to build a raised bed. Sleeping on the cold, damp ground was a rookie mistake that led to sickness, and I had no intention of letting a common cold derail my plans.
The rest of the day was a brutal education for my new body, which apparently had the muscle tone of a wet noodle. My mind knew exactly what to do—find sturdy, straight branches for a frame, lash them together with flexible vines, then weave a platform of smaller, springy boughs. My body, however, treated every suggestion as a personal insult. Bending over made my back scream. Hauling a moderately thick branch felt like trying to wrestle an anaconda. My hands, which had probably never seen a callus in their life, were scraped and raw within the first hour.
"Pathetic," I muttered, leaning against a tree to catch my breath, sweat stinging my eyes. The original Einz Velden was a masterpiece of inefficiency. All the resources spent on this body for such a pitiful physical output.
Still, I kept working. I found a fallen log and, with a great deal of grunting and cursing, managed to roll it into place as the front support for my bed frame. I gathered branches, snapping them over my knee until my thigh was bruised. Slowly, painstakingly, a crude but functional structure began to take shape.
As I wove the last of the springy pine boughs into the platform, I paused. I was filthy, my borrowed uniform was probably ruined, and every muscle I owned was staging a mutiny. But looking at the simple, raised platform, a strange feeling flickered in my chest. It wasn't pride, not exactly. It was a quiet, solid satisfaction. This was real. Unlike the fake smiles and hollow compliments of my past life, this was a tangible result of honest effort. The feeling was so foreign it was almost uncomfortable.
By late afternoon, I was a sweaty, aching mess. But in front of me stood something that vaguely resembled a shelter. A lopsided lean-to now rested against the rock face, its frame woven with leaves and bark for insulation. It was ugly as hell, a haphazard thing of sticks and hope, but it was a foothold. A base of operations.
My stomach grumbled, a blunt reminder that a shelter was a good start, but pointless if I starved in it. I needed food. And with the sun getting lower, I needed firewood, and lots of it. I wandered a short distance from my new shack, scanning the forest floor for firewood and anything that didn't look poisonous.
That's when I heard it. Not a twig snapping or an animal call, but a dignified little "eep!"
It was followed by the frantic rustle of expensive fabric snagging on thorns. I moved toward the sound, curious. Looking through some big, leafy plants, I saw a ridiculous sight.
She was hopelessly tangled in a thorny bush, looking for all the world like a frilly, pastel-blue mushroom. On closer inspection, it was a petite, red-haired girl in a first-year's uniform, her skirt hitched up at an awkward angle as she tried to free her sleeve. From the panicked look on her face and the way she kept glancing around, it was obvious she was completely and utterly lost. Her genius solution, apparently, had been to try and take a "shortcut" straight through the angriest-looking bush in the forest. She wasn't in any real danger. She was just an idiot.
I ducked back behind the leaves, my brain instantly shifting gears. The exhaustion, the aching muscles, the need for food and firewood—all of it vanished, replaced by the cold, thrilling hum of a researcher who'd just stumbled upon the perfect test subject.
This wasn't a girl. This was my first experiment.
The system was infuriatingly vague, a single line about 'genuine affection' with no instruction manual. What worked? A dramatic rescue? Calculated charm? Simple kindness? I had theories, but no data.
This lost, helpless first-year was the data. A perfect, isolated variable to test my hypotheses on.
What formed in my mind wasn't, "I need to help her immediately."
It was, "Time to run some tests."