"What are you doing here?" the confused troll inquires without expressing anger in his speech.
"I don't know, it's just that you turned around and left, and I thought I had to follow you." What the girl did as if she were an uncrowned dog, the troll then seizes the opportunity.
"So what if my friend?" The troll's question doesn't surprise the girl who instinctively reacts by nodding, the troll looks happy and serves a large bowl of soup with plenty of meat to the girl who is very grateful, but almost finished eating she thinks a bit and asks kind of dumb.
"If you don't kill animals where did the meat come from?" the troll laughs a little and responds cheerfully with a mouthful of soup. "It's from the bad boys who like to hurt our animal friends" She's not sure she understood.
"I'm going to sleep, thank you" the troll also tired says something unintelligible, Alice sleeps in fear, but she guesses that is easy to notice that troll has stopped snoring as that is to notice he is snoring.
The sun shines on the horizon and the girl wakes up plenty of energy, she walks a little more as if she doesn't want anything, and approaches the troll amicably.
"Do you have any interest in these things that are lying around?" no response, she continues "Can I get it for me?"
He nods with his head and a noise with his mouth without blinking, for him they are useless trinkets, but for her they can yield some value in the village that she thought she would never see again, at least not so soon, she takes a full backpack of items of common items, and happily goodbye to the troll, the troll reminds her not to harm the animals, now they are all friends and she agrees.
Arriving at the village, she sees 6 mercenaries at the entrance waiting for her, she realizes that their clothes are similar to the one she had incapacitated yesterday, she doesn't hesitate, they don't look better than the last one she took down, she remembers her training from when shhe lived in the magic pocket of Merlyn, her creator.
Of all the advice and struggles she had with the few living things there, and none were remotely humanoid, the broom, the feather, the hammer and the knife taught her to live the day to day, and the spider, the snake, the horse and fox surviving in everyday life, raised by them since she was a little one.
One day she opened the forbidden door tired of waiting for her "grandfather" and when she saw they had all become common animals and objects, she had no choice but to leave in search for him.
Along the way she found that magic almost disappeared on the world, the wonderful stories her tutors told her as she grew up lacked a lot of important information, she was often shocked and took a while to believe what she found.
The magic now boils down to a few pockets and magical objects, almost all the magic was lost because of the excess of wizards and witches, especially Merlyn who wanted to cure the barrenness of his specie and committed many atrocities in their search.
Such quest that took him to very powerful and dark magic, he wanted ordinary witches and humans to have children so with more people being able to use magic, people would be happier, he wanted to transform the era of peace into the era of happiness and in the end he only brought the era of chaos.
The story that most horrified Alice, and anyone else who has ever heard it. It was when Merlyn killed Mallory, the closest to becoming a saint ever, to steal her soul and body to absorb the "pieces" of the warriors who tried to kill him, the story of when he created the first synthetic life, but without spirit.
So when he achieved his goal he looked around, and he saw that the world had turned into a horrible place, in large part because of him.
Repentant Merlyn saved the creature he created in an unknown location and went on to fight the demons he had freed, sending them back to where they should never have left, and those that were not banned, they were reduced to deadly beasts and those beasts that continue to plague this world until today.
Humanoids have been defending themselves well with the advancement of science and technology, the smoking machines that started to appear for the most varied purposes have helped a lot in this, but they are still difficult to be produced, there is still a lot of fear that these things won't will be enough.
It seems that the more you kill the beasts and ferals, more powerful they get. And the curse that Merlyn sacrificed herself to seal the passage that brings the demons to this world seems to weaken each year.
Merlyn however, still had hope that her "daughter" could finish his job and left several hidden messages for her, which she has been collecting along this journey.
She touches her coin embedded in her chest beneath her clothes, which is a relic of the legendary heroine of almost forgotten eons.
The heroine who once saved the world and would come back to save it once more, this coin is engraved with this heroine's name, the name she uses for herself, as she has never received one, the most nurturing name for those who go through difficulties, and that few dare to give to their children, Alice.
Parents don't want the world to have too many expectations on them, it's a burden for anyone who has that name, this name carries even greater weight to women, Alice is regarded as the most perfect women, an ideal that is unattainable today, and this is why Alice only reveals her name when asked.
Alice takes her hand off the coin and her right foot off the head of the last of those brutes who haven't been able to bring her out of her reverie as she struggled (you mean: slaughtered).
None of them are in a condition to get up and if they were, surely they would pretend not to be, she doesn't forgive this time, and collects some more valuable belongings from her aggressors, this money will be very necessary for her go on her journey.
The last message said that would be more difficult to get the rest of the messages from now on, she feels a little anxious, but as it is always a superficial feeling, she has already noticed for some time that she doesn't seem to feel anything intensely, and ironically this is precisely why she doesn't worry too much about it.
She fulfills herself by buying everything she needed this time, the merchants find that girl a little weird, who despite looking strong has a very feminine body, with so many brute stuff to sell.
But paying customers are always right in this realm, Alice even thinks about buying an animal to mount, but she knows it would be too risky to leave it behind to explore an underground dungeon.
And it's exactly in such a place that she should find her next message, most messages so far have only taught her fragments of Merlyn's stories or the people who tried to stand up to him, she already started to learn a little bit about magic, but with such scarcity of magic in nature, she could not make any practical use of this knowledge.
Alice researched what she could about her next destination, there is almost no information available, the last message she found was the only place that said the approximate location, it must be somewhere close to where the troll lives, one of the signs for this would be as animals and beasts become strangely peaceful on their entrance, Alice shakes her head suddenly letting her hood fall back at the thought of how stupid she was, she should have asked the troll.