Chương 4: Tutorial store

Alex was bleeding from more places than he wanted to count, but none of that compared to the strange, hollow feeling where his mana used to be. He'd never felt anything like it before. Exhaustion wasn't new to him, hours of cardio as a 300-pound man had taught him every flavor of tired there was, but mana exhaustion sat differently in his body entirely.

His head rang, low and constant, like standing too close to a struck bell, and there was a strange lag between deciding to move and his body actually responding, like the signal had to travel further than it used to before it found anywhere left to land. He flexed his fingers experimentally and watched the motion arrive a half-second slower than it should have, which was somehow more unsettling than the bleeding. Alex smiled anyway. He'd won.

He was fairly sure that if anyone else in the family had taken that python on, even three of them together, the outcome would have gone very differently. His size and strength carried weight most people simply didn't have access to, and for once that felt like more than just something his mom worried about. Pulling up his notifications, Alex let himself feel proud for a second. [You have killed Python - Level 2. Essence absorbed. x5] [You have assisted in the kill of Python - Level 2. x2] [You have killed Python - Level 5.] [47 TP earned.] [Level up. Level 4.] A surge of strength rolled through him, settling into every limb at once. He felt stronger, faster, more something he didn't have a word for yet, just generally more capable of existing in his own skin. The python's body kept twitching even though Alex knew it was already dead, nerve signals with nowhere left to go. Groans rose up around the field as the last of the smaller snakes met their end, one by one.

Thankfully none of them had carried venom, or the body count today would have looked a lot worse. Before Alex could even think about moving, Ace was already closing the distance toward him, eyes locked on the blood soaking through his chest and leg.

"You reckless idiot, why would you take that thing on alone?" He could hear the real fear underneath the anger in her voice.

"Don't worry about me, I'll be fine," Alex said, flashing her a grin meant to smooth things over. It didn't work. It never really did, not with her.

"You are not fine. You're bleeding." A soft green light bloomed from her palm.

"Heal."

"Oh, that's the skill you picked for being a healer?" Alex watched, genuinely amazed. Actual magic, and it was the thing keeping him from bleeding out on the grass.

"We didn't get much time to go over the details, but yes. It mends simple injuries. Doesn't touch broken bones yet, so do not get yourself a broken bone."

"Wouldn't dream of it." Alex knew it was a lie the second it left his mouth, and judging by the look Ace gave him, so did she. She'd known him his whole life. Older than him by a solid margin, she'd still always treated him like something worth fussing over, which meant a lecture was probably coming regardless of what he promised. It took her a few minutes to close every wound.

By the time she finished, more of the wounded had drifted toward them, drawn by the green glow, and the rest of the healers spread out to do the same work across the field. None of the injuries looked life-threatening on their own, just a lot of blood for the size of the cuts, but the sheer number of people needing attention ran several of the healers dry on mana more than once before the last wound finally closed.

Alex sat back and replayed the fight in his head, and the more he turned it over, the more he understood that today had only been the opening act. If ten of those level 5 pythons had come through that portal instead of one, most of the camp wouldn't have made it. He'd spent nearly everything he had taking down just one, and he already knew his stats were near the top of what anyone here was working with.

Beside him, recovering from a graze a python had managed to land after slipping past the melee line, sat Liam, Uncle Bartholomew's youngest, seventeen years old and freshly graduated from high school. He'd picked Mage, which made sense given how much of his life had been spent buried in games and theory crafting rather than actual physical activity, his build never really suited for anything that asked his body to do the heavy lifting.

"You doing okay?" Alex asked, a real edge of concern in his voice. He wasn't entirely sure how his own head was handling everything that had just happened, let alone how a kid barely out of high school was supposed to process it. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"I'm fine, doesn't even hurt that much." The lie was obvious, and Alex had spent the last twenty minutes listening to the same kind of half-convincing nonsense from half the camp.

"Sure it doesn't." After a beat of comfortable silence, curiosity won out over tact.

"What's it actually like? The magic, I mean. I saw you throw out a bolt of blue light earlier." Whatever weight had been sitting on Liam's face vanished instantly, replaced by the unmistakable look of someone who'd just been asked about his favorite thing in the world.

"It's so cool. I don't really know how to explain it, but it's like I'm pulling something out of myself and shaping it. Mana, I guess, but it doesn't feel like anything I expected. Like some part of my body just unlocked a setting that was always there. It's exhausting too, though, kind of like a muscle, my brain feels wrung out after, but it's still so cool." Liam kept talking for the better part of half an hour, and Alex let him.

What stuck with him most was the rundown of Liam's two skills, Mana Bolt and Mana Shield. The shield only worked on himself for now, and from what Liam admitted, it wasn't especially strong yet either, though he hadn't actually tested its limits since he'd spent the whole fight flinging Mana Bolt until his reserves ran completely dry.

He talked about the diminishing returns too, how the more mana he poured into a single bolt, the less efficient the spell became, though he suspected that was more his own lack of control than a property of the spell itself. Alex felt a small flicker of envy listening to him. Flinging actual spells across a battlefield sounded like exactly the kind of thing eight-year-old Alex would have lost his mind over. Powerlifting hadn't exactly come with that option.

Maybe the system shop would have something he could pick up later tonight, though he already knew better than to go charging in there without talking to the rest of the family first. Showing up and spending everything on himself while everyone else figured out food and shelter felt like exactly the wrong way to start this.

Ace and the other healers probably hadn't earned any points at all today, given that healing didn't seem to come with a kill attached to it, and they'd still need access to whatever the shop had to offer. Looking down at the number sitting on his status screen, Alex allowed himself a small smile. Maybe there'd be something decent to eat tonight. He glanced over at the pile of dead pythons nearby.

They'd probably taste fine too, in a pinch, though the idea of eating snake with absolutely no seasoning available made his stomach turn a little. An unseasoned meal wasn't really a meal at all, as far as Alex was concerned. He was nearly done getting patched up, the last pass handled by Katelin, the fifteen-year-old cousin who'd picked Healer with more conviction than experience.

"You need to be more careful, Alex. You could have died out there." He and Katelin had never been particularly close, cousins by extension more than by choice, but apparently a near-death experience made for decent bonding material.

"You're not the first person to tell me that today." Katelin, like everyone else who'd said it, looked genuinely worried underneath the lecture, though she kept her gaze fixed on him with the specific disappointment only a younger relative could manage. Kids really were getting bolder these days, scolding a grown man twice their size without blinking. Alex just let her finish the last of the healing in silence, since arguing clearly wasn't going to win him anything.

"You're done. You're good to go. Uncle Chris wants to talk to you, something about points and what everyone should buy." Walking across the field gave Alex his first real chance to take the place in. It was wide, green, easily the size of a few football fields stitched together, with short grass underfoot that felt almost groomed despite clearly being untouched by anyone's hands. The air smelled faintly of cut grass and copper, the python blood already starting to dry dark against the green.

Trees ringed the open ground on every side, dense enough that he couldn't see more than a few rows deep into any of them, and also areas with little to no trees at the side of the forest areas which was a bit off. He found himself wondering how far the nearest outpost actually was, and how dangerous those treelines might turn out to be once someone worked up the nerve to explore them.

Off to one side, the dungeon entrance still sat open, a perfect circle of pitch black that the pythons had come pouring out of less than an hour ago, swallowing light at its edges like it was actively pulling it in. A door like that probably led somewhere worth exploring eventually, somewhere that might explain why fifty snakes had decided this particular patch of grass was worth defending. Just not today.

He found his dad standing in a loose circle of about ten people, deep in conversation, and slipped in beside them, trading quick nods and tired smiles with family members along the way. Up close, his dad looked older than he had this morning, the kind of tired that came from holding a room together rather than from any actual physical exertion.

"Knowing what we know now," Chris was saying, "the first thing we need is at least a hundred points pooled together for some kind of wall before the next wave hits. I'm proposing fifty percent of everyone's earnings go toward shelter and survival gear for this first wave. We can adjust that number down once we've got a better read on what's coming."

The conversation rolled on for a few more minutes, but it settled where Alex figured it would: food and shelter would come out of a shared pool, since neither cost much compared to anything actually magical. After handing over half of his own total to his dad, twenty-three or twenty-four points depending on how the rounding shook out, Alex watched as people started returning from somewhere with tents and bedding already in hand, the basics apparently cheap enough to grab without much debate.

With the immediate necessities sorted, Alex figured it was finally his turn to see what the shop actually had to offer. He found Bartholomew nearby and asked how the whole process actually worked. His uncle just shrugged and told him to pull up his status. Alex did, and sure enough, a new tab sat there waiting beside his stats and skills, one that definitely hadn't been there before the wave. Tutorial Store: Unlocked.

He focused on it, and the panel unfolded in front of him, rows of items and descriptions hanging in the air like a menu at a restaurant that had clearly never served humans before. Whatever he bought, Bartholomew told him, would just show up in his hands or at his feet, no trip required. Apparently the system was at least considerate enough not to make everyone walk somewhere else to spend their points.