Does Alice have any money?
This was a question that struck right at the soul.
Standing on a tree branch thirty meters high, she turned the pockets of her dress—which had long since lost its original appearance—completely inside out.
Aside from two mint leaves she used as chewing gum and a coin polished bright from constant rubbing, she had nothing.
"No money."
The young girl sighed helplessly, tossing the coin high into the air and catching it precisely as it fell.
Although the island she was currently on possessed immeasurable biological value.
Any prehistoric insect she caught and brought out could make biologists fight to the death over it, and any dinosaur egg she found could be sold for an astronomical price.
But the problem was that in this godforsaken place with no signs of civilization—not even a scrap yard—these priceless specialties couldn't be turned into cash.
The system was also stubborn; it didn't support physical collateral and only recognized circulating currency or high-purity precious metals.
So, until now, her assets column still displayed a big "0".
Poverty limited her imagination and her combat power.
Her current assets were pitifully meager: a [Kato Megumi (Full Version)] card drawn from the Newbie Gift Pack, and a recently acquired [Misaka Mikoto (Fragment)] card that was useless for anything other than looking at.
"Why didn't I end up on an island like those in 'Treasure Island' or 'Pirates of the Caribbean' where gold and treasure are everywhere? Even a dangerous cursed island littered with ancient gold coins would be better than this."
Looking at herself now—possessing nothing, not even a pair of shoes—and then thinking of the dazzling array of god-tier Character Cards in the system mall marked with astronomical prices, the girl curled her lip in regret.
Just as she was about to put away the coin and continue pondering whether today's lunch would be sour wild fruit or the risk of stealing bird eggs, a flicker of something unusual caught the corner of her eye.
"Eh, what's that?"
The sighing girl narrowed her eyes, her gaze piercing through the layers of the tree canopy to focus on the end of the azure sky.
There, a black dot was rapidly enlarging.
Accompanying the approaching black dot was a low, rumbling sound.
To Alice, who had lived on this island for a month, this sound was both strange and familiar.
Strange because there were only animal roars and bird cries here; familiar because it was a product of modern industrial civilization.
The roar of a turbofan engine.
She rubbed her eyes hard, even going so far as to pinch her thigh with her nails to make sure this wasn't a hallucination caused by hunger.
It wasn't a seagull, much less one of those prehistoric monsters with four wings. It was—
An airplane!
A modern jet airliner!
Seeing the streamlined metal fuselage, the silver-white paint, and the engines mounted under the wings, Alice felt a rush of blood to her head, so excited she almost lunged right off the tree branch.
It was a symbol of civilization.
It was a vessel to leave this hell.
"Hey—over here! Look over here!!"
Although logic told her that a plane ten thousand meters up couldn't possibly hear her shouts, she couldn't help but wave her arms and scream with all her might.
Over the past month, like an industrious ant, she had already laid out three massive SOS distress signals using dead branches, white shells, and dark seaweed on the crescent-shaped beach with the clearest view.
To prevent them from being scattered by the sea breeze, she had weighted them down with heavy stones and maintained them every day after high tide.
It was closer, even closer.
However, the plane's altitude didn't look normal; it was flying very low and seemed to be continuously descending. Its massive shadow swept across the sea, and the roar of the engines made the leaves tremble.
Just when Alice thought hope was within reach.
A flash of light suddenly erupted in the previously clear, cloudless sky.
Immediately after, the massive airliner looked as if it had been slapped hard by an invisible giant hand.
"Boom—"
The sound of the explosion, even from several kilometers away, made Alice's eardrums ache.
The plane's left engine instantly spewed a thick plume of black smoke, followed by a shower of sparks.
The once-steady steel bird instantly lost its balance, tumbling and spinning violently in the air like a dragonfly with a broken wing.
The spinning motion was filled with desperate centrifugal force; Alice could only imagine what kind of living hell it was inside the cabin right now.
The girl was chilled to the bone by this sudden turn of events, her azure pupils reflecting the falling wreckage.
The plane's structural integrity simply couldn't withstand such violent tumbling and g-forces.
Amidst the ear-piercing sound of twisting metal, the fuselage snapped in two in mid-air.
The nose and front cabin, propelled by inertia, whistled past a few hundred meters above Alice's head and, with a shrill wind, plunged into the mist-shrouded valley deep within the island.
The remaining middle and rear sections of the fuselage, along with the right wing, tumbled and burned like a piece of discarded scrap metal, finally crashing violently onto the edge of the island.
Right toward the beach in Alice's direction.
"Bang!"
A massive column of water shot into the sky, followed by the dull thud of a heavy object hitting the sand.
From the plane's appearance bringing hope, to the attack and crash, to the final impact, the entire process took only a few short seconds.
These few seconds felt as long as a century to Alice.
Her heart felt like it had been on a roller coaster without a seatbelt, thrown high into the clouds and then slammed hard into the abyss.
What was that light?
A natural phenomenon?
Or some kind of weapon attack?
She stared blankly at the sky; the smoke was dissipating, but some light objects were blowing toward her.
They were debris thrown from the ruptured cabin when the plane disintegrated at high altitude.
Paper, clothes, fragments—like a desolate rain.
Something drifted before her eyes, and she instinctively reached out to catch it.
It felt silky and soft, carrying the scent of Chanel No. 5.
It was a sky-blue lace scarf.
Looking at this scarf, which might have been tied around an elegant lady's neck just minutes ago, Alice's heart, numbed by shock, finally resumed its beat.
"There's still a chance."
She took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down.
The plane had crashed in two parts.