Novice Reincarnator

“This is the last chance I will give you. If you don’t want to suddenly disappear one day, then pack up your bags and return to the lower worlds where you belong.”

Aurelius Snowlight’s cold warning echoed in the depths of my mind. I had chosen to ignore his warning and take the intermediate explorer exam.

[Instinct] screamed at me and I shot to my feet. My heart hammered in my chest as I desperately looked left and right. I was standing in the middle of a forest with my back to a burnt tree. In front of me was a small clearing with a burnt patch in the center.

The ears on top of my head twitched as I desperately sought to listen for danger. It was so quiet that it was eerie. A faint scent of blood and burnt flesh lingered in the air. My tail swished in uneasiness.

I felt incredibly weak and I couldn’t sense any life around me. W-What had happened?

“Detailed Status.”

Name: Fang

Gender: Female

Race: 1 Tailed Fox Beastman

Class: Adept

Level: 1/20

Personal Skills (2/5): [Ash Demon Princess], [Fox Fire I],

Racial Skills: [Instinct II], [Agility I]

Class Skills: [Adept], [Growth II]

It all came back to me the moment I laid eyes on my status. I turned as white as a sheet. My hands frantically patted everywhere on my body to make sure I was in one piece. My legs were still attached to my body.

My hasty exploration was cut short by the addition of strange, furry appendages on my head and rear. My eyes returned to my status. I read it out loud in wonder.

“1 Tailed Fox Beastman?”

Before I even realized it, I had brought my tail to my front. Moving it was like second nature to me. My hands reached out to touch the strange, furry addition and I immediately fell in love. It was a warm bundle of fluff. I wasted no time in hugging my cozy, black tail to my chest.

[Instinct] growled at me and I came to my senses. I was so absorbed in my new tail that I had forgotten my situation. This time, not even my fluffy tail could distract me from my growing panic. Abruptly, I realized.

“...I died.”

The proof of that was etched into my body. My eyes fell onto my torso where four, wide strips of white skin stood out in stark contrast to the dark tanned skin of the rest of my body. The lowest scar was across my hips while the highest was just under my breasts.

Each of the four scars wrapped all the way around my body. The giant fox’s claws had cut cleanly through me. The beautiful blue flames from its ki devoured me. I would have been dead for good if I did not have the option to reincarnate.

I had lost my [Ki Sense] skill when I reincarnated, but I didn’t need it to know that there were absolutely no monsters around me. The Six-tailed Red Fox evidently wasn’t around either or else I would have died the moment I reincarnated.

It was temporarily safe. The key word here being temporarily. Although bleeding out and being set on fire with only my upper body was about as bad as it got, being level 1 in an unknown dungeon was only slightly better.

If the strength of the Six-tailed Red Fox was any indication, then I was in way over my head. With any luck, the monster that killed me was something of the boss of the dungeon. The fact other monster’s avoided its territory gave credibility to this theory.

A faint breeze swept through the forest and I couldn’t help but shiver. The moment my mind calmed down enough to think about miscellaneous things, I came to an abrupt realization.

I was naked.

I didn’t do anything girly like scream and alert the Six-tailed Red Fox of my survival. Instead, I blushed furiously and crouched into a ball. My tail instantly tucked underneath my legs and covered up all of my private parts. It was a very normal reaction. Not girly at all.

In hindsight, my current state was an obvious outcome. Even if it was enchanted, there was no way my school uniform would have survived the Six-tailed Red Fox’s [Fox Fire]. That meant I was stuck outside in a forest without any clothes. My eyes fell on the vines and branches surrounding me.

With my Adept class, it should be possible for me to quickly pick up a skill related to crafting clothes, but I didn’t think I could afford using up one of my precious skill slots on something that wouldn’t help me survive this dungeon at all.

I took a deep breath to calm down and focus. The explorer’s handbook, as well as the lectures I attended at Saint Mikhael Explorer Academy, spoke of what to do when an explorer found herself in a weakened state in the middle of a dungeon.

I needed to conceal my presence, find a shelter, and wait for rescue. Everything would be okay as long as I waited. The instructor in charge of following me would know that I never made it to the third layer of Beast Den. A search team would be dispatched once word got out that I was missing.

Three candidate skills came to mind that could help me hide until a rescue team could reach me.

As the name suggested, [Presence Concealment] would help me hide from the senses of others. It passively helped me erase traces of my presence in an area. When used in an active manner, it could reduce my presence to nearly zero.

[Stealth] was an incredibly powerful skill that turned the user invisible and erased their scent. It was the best hiding skill to approach your target unnoticed, but it took a lot of energy to maintain it. Moving in [Stealth] was an incredibly risky thing as the skill did nothing to muffle the sounds of the user’s movements.

Lastly, there was [Disguise]. This skill helped the user disguise their presence so that they appeared as something else. It did nothing to make me harder to spot, but the Six-Tailed Red Fox wouldn’t bother to investigate my presence if I looked like a tree to its senses.

I ruled [Stealth] out almost immediately. As the Six-Tailed Red Fox showed, the monsters in this dungeon had much stronger detection abilities than I did. I couldn’t maintain [Stealth] permanently and it would be hopeless for me to try to activate it after I had already been noticed.

That left both [Presence Concealment] and [Disguise]. I would inevitably leave traces behind if I stayed in one place for a long time. If a monster laid eyes on me, it wouldn’t matter what my presence was disguised as. They would instantly know that I was a weak foxgirl.

Even if I tried to conceal my presence with [Presence Concealment], I would not be able to entirely erase it. Monsters with keen detection abilities would be able to sense my presence even with my skill up. My chances of being detected shot way up the moment a monster wandered around close to my shelter.

There was no miracle skill that instantly solved my problems, but I did have three free skill slots. Taking both [Presence Concealment] and [Disguise] would help me hide. As for my last open skill slot, [Ki] was the only option.

Not only was it a versatile skill that did a bit of everything, it was also the only skill that would give me the possibility to punch above my weight class. Should the worst happen and a rescue team fails to materialize, then I would need a skill to to fight my way out of this dungeon.

As the explorer’s handbook liked to say, hope for the best and plan for the worst.

I desperately wanted to take [Ki Sense] as one of my skills, but the sad reality was that the monsters in this dungeon would detect me long before [Ki Sense] picked them up. My first “death” in this dungeon was all the proof I needed to pick a stealth skill over a detection skill.

I closed my eyes and focused on making my presence as small and invisible as possible. It wasn’t a hard thought to conjure. The fact that I was naked made my wish to disappear a thousand times stronger than usual.

Every living being had a presence. I had to take my own presence and somehow conceal it so that others would have trouble finding it. Thankfully, I was familiar with sensing the presence of others. That didn’t exactly help in figuring out how to conceal my presence, but it gave me a solid starting point.

This was where my Adept class shined. A swordsman suddenly thrown into the wilderness might not even be able to gain a [Presence Concealment] skill even if he spent months. It only took me an hour for my presence to grow incredibly faint to my senses.

The faint burnt smell on my body disappeared and my breathing grew incredibly quiet. I opened my eyes and moved around the forest. Even to my incredible ears, my footsteps produced next to no sound.

I walked up to one of the trees and placed my hand on its rough bark. Now that I had gained the [Presence Concealment] skill, it wasn’t too hard to learn [Disguise] as both skills were focused on manipulating my presence. It only took me 10 minutes to gain the [Disguise] skill.

[Ki] was even faster, taking only a few breaths of time. I activated both of my concealment skills and sat down against a tree trunk.

“Status.”

Name: Fang

Class: Adept

Level: 1/20

Personal Skills (5/5): [Ash Demon Princess], [Fox Fire I], [Presence Concealment I], [Disguise I], [Ki I]

Racial Skills: [Instinct II], [Agility I]

Class Skills: [Adept], [Growth II]

The weight on my shoulders eased the moment my status was filled with useful skills. Now that my skill slots were full, there wouldn’t be any strange skills added to my status like [Weak Bladder].

Another breeze swept across my bare skin and I shivered. I hugged my fluffy tail to my chest and got about working on raising the proficiency of my skills.