Couldn't My Reincarnation have been more Cliche!

Chapter 5 (I'd hate to kill you, I'd hate to die) Part One

After doing a quick check on the state of my body, I found that I was mostly fine besides some bruises. The ant, on the other hand, didn't get so lucky. It had missed the water entirely, instead hitting a bunch of sharp rocks nearby.

The once intimidating creature now lay in a heap of mangled limbs and greenish-yellow blood. I let out a sigh of relief, realizing that for once I had actually gotten lucky when a system notification filled my vision.

{Primary Mission "Survive" completed- - - - calculating reward

{100 gp has been deposited successfully!}

{Primary Mission "Survive" has been reissued}

{Primary Mission "Survive" has been updated with a failure condition. Reward set to new difficulty (~100GP)}}

I lay on the cold wet ground of the cave, looking up at the ceiling that must have been ten or so meters above me. I let out a large sigh. My tattered dress was soaking wet; the only light on my face was from some strange glowing strands of moss in the ceiling

Despite all this, I couldn't suppress the smile on my face. I had done it. I had bested this damn world, just this once. So what if I just happened to fall off a cliff and land in the right place? Yeah, I'd chalk it up to luck rather than skill, but it was my actions that brought about the result, and frankly, I'm scraping the barrel for stuff like this, so just let me have it, okay?

Gazing at the glowing messages slowly starting to fade in front of me. My eyes felt a little wet, I honestly couldn't tell if it was from the water, fear, relief, or happiness. Heh, Maybe it was some combination of them all. I was shivering now, letting out a sneeze. The thought entered my mind that my body wasn't suited for this kind of life.

Up until now, everything had been out of my control. Things had been happening so fast, I hadn't had enough time to take everything in. Well, even if I did have enough when I first got here. I don't think things had fully set in yet. I mean, I had just been thrown out of a weird goddess's domain, I can't say after that I was really ready to go over everything about this new life I had been given, much less so my new body. Noticing that I had been referring to this body, and its circumstances as mine, for a while now, I couldn't help but think that I seemed to be getting adjusted. However, I wasn't sure if that's something I should be happy about or not.

Though it was hard to accept, I was a woman now, I was objectively speaking another person, and if I escaped from here I might really have to face that fact, I wasn't me, there'd be people "I" had never met saying they knew me, family that wasn't mine asking "what happened you've changed", I guess my love life will be a bit barren, eheh, unless this world is more tolerant than it's ominous architecture would suggest.

Still I couldn't stop my smile from getting a bit larger on my face. Really now, I shouldn't be thinking about stupid stuff like this. I'm still just lying here shivering on the ground, but well, hey, having a good spirit is all I could do at the moment. Little familiar thoughts like these are all I really had to somehow cope with this world. and yeah I'd like to think I was doing pretty well at keeping my head above water, but somehow this cave where the only thing I had to do was survive was comforting when compared with what comes next.

With that in mind, I guess it'd be best to take a better look at myself. Maybe I had been consciously trying to avoid it, but since the time in the mirror I hadn't even taken note of what I looked like, holding up my hands in front of my face. What met me was not the sturdy, if a bit soft, hands I had always known, but instead a pair of frail, ragged hands, covered with a variety of small nicks and gashes, dripping wet, and a depressing skinniness. Despite all this though it wasn't all bad, I honestly did think that with more care the body had a lot of potential to be pretty.