Chương 5

Congratulations. You have made it to your first Haven. Go to your guide in order to receive the proper information on how Havens work in the Tutorial Dungeon. I got the same notification that I guessed everybody else had just gotten. But before even looking for this guide, I looked around. This Haven looked like something out of a medieval bum town village. There were many huts, a few of which had tables with some tools in front of them, but most were empty. I counted about two dozen.

We stood there waiting for this guide to show up. We imagined that if it was as zealous as the AI, it would be quite talkative. We were all still clutching our weapons, scanning the surroundings. Yet nothing happened. It didn't seem like this guide was here.

"How does, how does this work?" Hailey asked me.

"I have no idea," I replied.

"There was supposed to be a guide here. Where is the guy?"

"Hello?" I said, raising my voice.

"Hello? Is anyone—Is anybody here?" I heard the sound of glass crashing and cursing.

"God damn it. What is it now?" We looked at each other and I took a few steps forward, bearing my very simple spear in the direction of the hut. That's when a gruff-looking middle-aged man came out of the hut, shielding his eyes from the high sun with a bottle of dark liquor in his right hand and asked, "Who the fuck are you?"

"Are you the guide?" I asked, frowning.

"Yeah." Then the man rubbed his face and looked around.

"Huh," he said.

"It appears that a new dungeon started. Huh, I wasn't notified. Uh, or maybe I was." Then he looked at us and made quite a disgusted face.

"So you guys are divers?" He asked.

"Yeah, we're divers. So are you the guide? Aren't you supposed to explain things to us?" Tina asked.

"You talk a lot. God," the man replied.

"Excuse me?" Tina said, putting one hand on her hip.

"Ugh, whatever," the man replied.

"So let's see." He started rubbing his forehead.

"Uh, I guess that you guys are being… ugh, whatever. Why am I asking you anyways? Let me check." He looked in front of himself, probably checking some screen. That's when I got a glimpse of a bothered face.

"Huh, the Sorvos Empire is trying to take over another planet." He looked at us and said, "Your planet wasn't integrated, and you're originally a mana-less species."

"What do you mean a mana-less species?" Lucas asked.

"I can cast Mana Bolt and so can Tina."

"Yeah, but could you do that before the integration?" the man asked. Lucas didn't reply.

"Thought so." The drunk man nodded to himself.

"You guys are fucked." I felt my stomach plunge when I heard that. This guy didn't look like a very serious person, but from the way he spoke and his facial expressions, I would have guessed that he knew the Sorvos Empire we would eventually fight. And more importantly, he seemed to know that something was off.

"What do you mean we're fucked?" Lucas asked angrily.

"The Sorvos Empire is a war machine that has existed since the dawn of time. They were taking a little break last I checked because of some internal strife. But whatever was going on, it appears they have resolved it, so now you guys are probably…"

"Probably what?" I asked.

"Isn't the tutorial meant for us to get stronger? And about that, like, can you explain what the hell is happening? This thing looks like one of our video games. We just, I don't know. This thing just killed like ninety percent of our population at the entrance test. And now I, we, we don't know what to do." Hearing the confusion and uncertainty in my voice, he sighed and gestured for us.

"Come inside the hut. Uh, I wanna sit. I'm not gonna have this conversation while standing in the sun."

"Are we gonna fit there?" Hailey asked, looking at the hut.

"Eh, it has a space spell, whatever. Just, just come, please." We followed the guy and entered what looked like a dilapidated hut. But on the inside, it was gigantic. It was probably bigger than our office floor, and it had a tavern with a guy, a barman or an innkeeper, just polishing some mugs and waving at us. It looked like we had just been teleported to some sort of medieval fair.

"What the hell?" I muttered.

"Yeah, you're gonna say that a lot," our guide replied.

"By the way," he said, standing at the head of a table, "my name is Bluemont."

"Bluemont?" I asked.

"Like, as in blue the color?"

"Yeah. I guess that's how it translates in your language. You are speaking common, by the way, but whatever. Uh, we have more important things to go over, so please, all of you, sit." We all sat around the table, and Bluemont kept rubbing his face and yawning. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"You're probably wishing you had another guide," he said, looking at Tina and Hailey, who had been whispering to each other.

"And you're probably right. It would have been better if you had gotten literally anyone else but me. There are vampires in this fucking joint who could have been your guide, and I don't know, guided you to suck blood or something."

"There are vampires?" Hailey asked with a weird tone.

"Yeah, and other stuff," Bluemont said.

"But that's not important now, so I'll go over everything. I have to give you the explanation first, or you won't be able to access your status page. So welcome to the Tutorial Dungeon, and—" He stopped and then took out a piece of paper. It was all crumpled. He unfurled it and started reading from it.

"So yeah, welcome to the Tutorial Dungeon?" He said it like a question.

"We are happy to provide you the opportunity," he was spelling each syllable separately, "of becoming stronger when you are entangled in this interplanetary war?" The last two words came out smoother.

"Yeah, I guess. So that's the official script from the Tutorial Dungeon," he said, and put the piece of paper away.

"Now, you need to unlock the status here. Open your chests if you got any, which I really doubt. And what else?" He started tapping on his head with a finger.

"Uh, I guess I'll give you a rundown of, uh, whatever the multiverse is. So there is an Interuniverse Federation that governs the multiverse. There are many planets and many universes connected by this giant AI. The AI is meant to regulate any kind of conflict and to avoid, you know, people getting fucked over, in theory." Our population just got almost entirely killed because of the AI.

"What is the AI even regulating?" I asked.

"This is absurd."

"Yeah, it is absurd, all right," Bluemont replied.

"The AI doesn't really care how many people die exactly. There's a lot of unfairness going on in this world, and the AI is sort of giving everybody a chance to save their asses if they're capable enough. If you survive the tutorial, again, not likely, but if you do, the AI will offer you to get a job with the Federation or with the AI itself instead of going to war. It's going to be a whole thing, and an entire population of survivors will have to decide, and anyway, yeah, so that's that."

"Is that what you are?" I asked, getting a tingle in my head.

"Are you, like, a survivor of the dungeon?"

"Good guess." The guy shrugged.

"When the AI regulated the war between my planet and, well, the Sorvos Empire, once again, it offered those without any power or levels to enter the tutorial. I did, and a bunch of other people did, and they all pretty much died."

"Uh, I'm sorry," Marcus interjected.

"I, I'm very sorry for your loss, sir, but are you saying we don't stand a chance? Our people have fought many wars before."

"Yeah, that helps sometimes," Bluemont acknowledged.

"But the Sorvos Empire is made of some of the most talented warriors in the universe. If it chose your planet, it's probably because it has resources they want. This war is a farce. Even if you guys engaged on fair terms after the tutorial, the chances of you surviving are pitiful."

"Okay." I stopped him.

"Let's then focus on surviving the tutorial. So is the tutorial a training ground for wars that anybody in the universe can access?"

"Something like that," Bluemont replied.

"The tutorial is open to those who can grow stronger. In your case, it probably had an entrance test because you had a lot of people not qualified for war and perhaps too many people, enough to warrant a strict entrance test." It looked like Bluemont was looking at some screens in front of him.

"I see that indeed a lot of your people have died. There were a lot of you, so the AI is probably trying to speed things along."

"I think I need a beer," Marcus said, gathering approval glances from everybody. Bluemont raised his hand and waved at the innkeeper.

"That guy is Mateus. You will see him in every single Inn like this. Do not attack Mateus. He will kill you. And most importantly, do not attack anybody in this Haven. If you attack somebody while in a Haven, you will be marked and hunted down by other divers. You sort of start a quest that has anybody who kills you gather incredible rewards. So yeah, don't do that." He tipped the bottle over the table. Nothing came out of it. He set it down anyway.

"As far as chests, go into your own hut and open them privately. It's good etiquette not to show others what you get when you open a chest. But if you're in a group, you can discuss strategies after opening the chests by yourself. It's a sign of great, great loyalty and trust to open a chest in front of somebody else. I would recommend, even if you guys were family, that you don't do that. As you go on with the tutorial, you will start understanding why." Honestly, I thought, I already understood why.

After seeing how the others had initially reacted to my chest and to my items, it only made sense. I remember my father once telling me not to tell people how much money you made, especially if you made a lot of money. Some people liked flaunting it around. But envy, even among the rich, was a nasty, nasty thing. He told me to always mention lower figures than the ones I really earned, to always downplay my achievements, and to only stand out when I really needed to. I'd never understood what he meant until today.

I'd thought them silly at the time. I'd thought that my friends would want the best for me. And to be fair, the people here weren't really my friends. They were colleagues, which was very different. Speaking of other people, I immediately looked toward the door of the inn and asked, "Wait, are there other people out there? In the huts, I mean?"

"It will probably take longer for the others to come here," Bluemont replied to me.

"It takes anywhere from two to eight hours, depending where the dungeon dropped you."

"Okay, but what do we have to do now?" Hailey asked. Bluemont took a swig of his dark liquor and waited for Mateus to put the glasses of beer on the table.

"This first round is on me, but the next ones you'll have to pay. Anyway, to answer your question, sweetheart, you're here to kill things and to reach the next floor. To clear the floor, you have to kill three alphas and one boss. And before you ask, alphas are, uh, stronger versions of mobs like the one you just saw. It's like a hyena but bigger and stronger, and they usually do something nasty. So that's that." He stopped, took a pull from the bottle, and lost his thread for a second.

"…Where was I. Right.

"A boss is a completely different creature that's surrounded by its own mobs, and I would recommend you don't worry about that until the clock runs out. Usually, you want to face the boss about an hour before everything ends."

"Wait, what?" I asked.

"What do you mean an hour before everything ends?"

"Oh, right. There's a clock to this floor. You have four days to go through everything. So I suggest you guys go open the chests, rest a moment, and get out. You have alphas to hunt. The schedule I recommend is hunt one alpha a day for the first three, kill the boss on the fourth, and get out before the clock does anything interesting."

"Damn," Lucas said.

"We'll have to work overnight for this. How strong are these alphas even?"

"Yeah, before I answer that, don't go out at night. At night, the monsters transform. You don't wanna see what they turn into. So always be in the range of a close Haven before it gets dark and get to it. The moment everything goes dark here, shit changes."

"So the tutorial doesn't want us to go out at night?" I asked.

"Listen, kid, I'm not in the business of interpreting whatever the fuck the AI wants you to do. I'm just telling you, you go out at night, you're dead."

"Got it. Got it," I replied.

"So what about the statuses? Those are important, right?"

"Yeah, about that," Bluemont said and waved his hand with some sparks coming off it.

"Status unlock."