Chương 4

I was today years old when I found out that hyenas make a very weird sound. Also, I found out why spears were the main thing you found in ancient times. One last discovery: Tina was a bad motherfucker. I don't know why, but I had already pictured the first confrontation with monsters as something that would be absolutely ruinous. This group was ill-prepared for whatever the Tutorial was about to throw at us.

I had the best equipment, the Armor of Raziel, the best Skill, the Sphere of Intuition, and I felt like I had no idea what I was doing. [Wild Hyena - Lv. 3] [Wild Hyena - Lv. 3] Tina, when a large hyena, a German-shepherd-sized monster appeared between me and her and Hailey, just shot the thing through its fucking head. Before the monster could finish its weird cry and attack her, she had her staff a foot from its head, and fired a Mana Bolt right through it.

"Fuck you!" She shouted. I saw that with my Sphere of Intuition while the second hyena, the one in front of us, I speared through the neck. It thrashed and I had to grab onto the damn weapon as hard as I could, but it didn't take longer than ten seconds—which is an eternity when you've never killed anything—and it was gone. Loot Wild Hyena? I checked mentally and a small inventory appeared. It had a hyena's pelt, a hyena's tooth, and a hyena's anal gland in it.

I mentally extracted them and brought them to my inventory.

"Please tell me you're not keeping that," Hailey said.

"It's loot."

"It's a gland." I kept it. All these mental movements came naturally to me—probably some more AI fuckery. I turned to Tina, who seemed to squint at something, probably looting her kill as well.

"That was stone cold," I commented, looking at Tina right in the eyes. We were all looking at her, quite surprised.

"I go to the gun range very often," she said almost sheepishly.

"I really like guns." I wanted to point out that the staff in her hand wasn't a gun, but Lucas said, "there are two more that are running at us." I turned and saw that, indeed, there were two more Wild Hyena, still Level 3, running at us. Tina aimed her staff at the Wild Hyena but her Mana Bolt missed this time. That's when Lucas drew his bow and shot a much larger version of the Mana Bolt at one of the two Hyenas. The monster's head exploded on impact, leaving only one left.

Marcus walked forward and slammed his shield into the Hyena. I hesitated for a moment, but then I managed to put my spear through its chest. Tina finished this one as well.

"Good one, Marcus," I told our project manager.

"It's the Skill I got from my Skill Scroll. It's called Shield Bash."

"Makes sense," I said. Then, I heard something in my head. Congratulations! You have reached Level 2! Reach the nearest Haven to distribute your Status Points.

"Have you guys leveled up as well?" I asked, confused.

"Yeah," Lucas sighed.

"It does behave like a videogame. We level up and we can apparently distribute stats as well."

"I also leveled up!" Hailey said, and we all turned.

"You did?" I asked.

"Yeah, Level 2!" Hailey grinned.

"That's pretty cool."

"It is. It probably counts us as a group. That's good. It will make it easier to level or all of us." I looked toward the horizon. The sun was still on its way up, a couple hours before noon. I could spot some more Wild Hyenas in the distance. But they appeared far enough that we didn't have to deal with them immediately. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. I hadn't had time to work out how Fire Mastery worked.

The Armor of Raziel had brought it to Level 15, and at Level 15 I expected to be throwing fireballs at something. I had waited because I had no idea how to start. Now we had a moment. Everybody was still catching their breath. I tried. I focused on the concept of fire, whatever that meant. Nothing happened. I tried again. A fireball. A flame. A single blade of grass burning under my boot. Nothing. Whatever Fire Mastery did, it would have to wait.

I focused on Judgment of Raziel instead, to see whether that gave me anything back. Nothing there either. That's going to have to wait until the Haven, I thought, and sighed. We had to make our way to this goddamn Haven. Then, I saw something appear at the top left corner of my view. I focused on it and a minimap superimposed with the prairie. Congratulations, Divers! You have completed your first monster engagement! You have unlocked Minimap! A blue arrow will always point toward the closest Haven in the Tutorial!

We don't want you guys getting lost, you know? It's not great for entertainment. I exclaimed, "Okay, this is going to be very useful. We can just go and see what this Haven is." Lucas nodded.

"Yeah. Let's go. We can kill some more of these hyenas on the way. I bet that we'll need a lot of levels to survive this." Tina too seemed enthusiastic about this. I saw a part of her that didn't really come out when she was just an HR lady. Marcus managed to clasp the shield to his back. It was way too heavy to bring it normally to the Haven.

"Why don't you put it in the inventory?" I asked.

"I don't know. It says that I can't take anything out of the inventory during a fight."

"Oh," I frowned.

"That's good to know." We were about to depart when, while still keeping my Sphere of Intuition up to get accustomed to the feeling, something started tugging at my mind. I looked at Lucas and Tina. There was something about them that felt slightly fuzzy. I focused my mind and I noticed that their faces looked different in my Sphere of Intuition sight from what they actually looked in real life. I started focusing on them and they were almost blurred.

"Guys, wait a second. I finally realized something. You two have just used an unknown amount of Mana," I said.

"Do you know how many bolts you can still use?" Both Tina and Lucas looked at me with a confused expression. Lucas frowned and brought a hand to his head.

"I don't know, dude. I don't wanna do math right now. Let's just go." That's when I noticed once again that something was off with them. Lucas was usually a very rational person. He could be at times unpleasant, but he wasn't going to put himself or others at risk just because.

"Okay, I'm calling an executive meeting right now," I said.

"What?" Tina too brought a hand to her head.

"What are we talking about?"

"Can you see how much mana you have, yes or no? Like, as of right now, do you have any indication of how much mana you have?"

"No," Tina said, rubbing her head.

"Okay. I think that mana usage and mana drain, I suppose, partially scrambles your head. The reason why you're probably feeling a small headache and you can't think clearly now is that you just used quite a few Mana Bolts. And if we go right now, we're going to have a problem because we don't know how many Bolts you still have in reserve, and I am the only one with a weapon. Marcus has a shield, but I don't think he can kill with it yet, and Hailey is a healer.

So we have to wait a second and see if your guys' mana regenerates normally. If that's not going to happen, then we're looking at a way bigger problem than I thought." That explanation finally seemed to get through them, and I was glad to see that they both sat down. We hid partially in a patch of tall grass and waited. I kept an eye on them, and it seemed like the blurriness on their faces started subsiding in about thirty minutes. I still had my watch on my wrist, and I was glad for it.

"I bet you two feel better now," I told them, letting out a small grin.

"Yeah," Lucas frowned.

"You— How did you know we were out of mana? I— Dude, it felt like my head was scrambled, and I just shot a couple of Bolts."

"Yeah, I think that your Mana Bolts are actually more expensive than hers," I said, pointing at Tina, "because of the bow. But the most important thing right now is apparently mana exhaustion is going to mess with your head. You're going to become less responsive. So I just wanna say this for the sake of readiness, I suppose.

When we get to the Haven and you guys unlock your stats, please let's wait a moment and think and ask and see if there's any guide whatsoever to see how we can distribute these stat points because I suspect that both Lucas and Tina will need a fuck ton of whatever gives you more mana."

"Yeah, I agree," Lucas said.

"When we get there, please, everybody, just wait. We need to share information. We need to cooperate. This…" Lucas trailed off.

"This is creepy," Tina admitted.

"I didn't even notice that I was thinking slower."

"Yeah, I believe that there are going to be more tricks than we expect with the whole thing. The monsters were not particularly strong, and I'm sure that we can definitely take two or maybe even three or four. But there's definitely going to be things that the AI didn't explain that it expects us to figure out on our own. And that means we have to be very careful because if we're not, if we slip, we're dead." So we started making our way through this wild landscape.

This yellow prairie, like a savannah, was infested with groups of two hyenas. They all seemed to go in pairs. Thankfully, through our combination of roles, we slowly made our way toward where the blue arrow was pointing. It wasn't impossible, but we all reported several wounds fighting the monsters. A hyena bit Marcus on the leg, and Hailey was on him before he finished falling. Without her, he might have bled out. That made me think that without a healer, it would have been a big problem.

All the groups that didn't have a healer most definitely suffered some level of mayhem. With Hailey, every single wound was easy to account for. We could take it and heal it. We didn't have to be as conservative while fighting. We even fought two groups together, four hyenas total. Lucas and Tina had to sit after every other engagement and rest for about half an hour. I monitored their mana as well. I didn't let on all the details of this new skill of mine. And it allowed me to know when they were at full tank.

I saw a wooden palisade in the distance.

"Fuck, that's the Haven. Finally," I said, wiping some sweat from my forehead. We must have been hunting for more than three hours. I checked my wristwatch. Yeah, about three hours. The group was exhausted even though we all reached Level 3. But we weren't fighters. We were office workers. Three hours of unbroken continuous work was essentially unheard of in our midst. Everybody would have had at least two coffee breaks in between. And honestly, when I wasn't trying to be a hero with my time, I was the same.

"Guys." I pointed at the palisade.

"Let's go. Let's just get there. We need rest."

"Yeah," Marcus said, breathing heavily. He was the one who had suffered the most. Carrying the heavy shield had been torture for him. However, I felt he had gotten stronger. A little. He had definitely gotten slightly more muscular, which in a time frame such as ours was unheard of. We made our way to the palisade, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

We kept looking around, and we bolted at the last hundred feet, literally breaking into a sprint toward the place in fear that some more hyenas would jump out of nowhere. Once we crossed what looked like an unmanned entrance, we got a notification.