Chương 14: Interlude: Michael

Michael walked with quiet confidence, the soft glow of Leadership smoothing over the strain in his party's steps. A trait he was endlessly grateful for. Simple in description, absurd in practice: it accelerated recovery of HP, MP, and Stamina to the point that his group could return to full strength in under an hour. It was the reason his team had pushed so far ahead of the other Tutorial parties. Well… all except the one guy who won the cosmic lottery, became a True Dragon, and essentially speedran the food chain.

Hard to compete with that. Footsteps approached from behind. Michael didn't need to look to know who it was, but he turned anyway. Liam. Leadership was only half the equation. The other half was Liam's trait: Threat Appraisal. Simple name. Extraordinary effect. If Liam could see something—even just the direction of something—it would tell him the approximate danger level. Monsters, terrain, locations, choices, pathways… anything visible counted.

Stronger dangers even came with visual distortions only he could perceive. When he'd looked at the True Dragon guy, Liam said he didn't see a person at all— —he saw a burning crater. It was, Michael could admit, far more impactful than his own trait. And if Liam was approaching, that meant he'd seen something. Sure enough, the young man stopped beside him.

"To the right," he said quietly, "there's a spike. Higher danger than the rest of the forest. Could be a stronger monster… could be a dungeon." Michael nodded, signaling the group to stop. He turned, straightening slightly as Leadership lent weight to his voice.

"Listen up. Liam's located a danger zone to our right. Could be trouble, could be opportunity. We vote." He raised his hand.

"Hands up if we stay on the safe path." A small scattering of hands rose.

"Hands up if we go check it out." A far larger forest of hands shot upward. Michael nodded once—firm, confident.

"It's decided, then. We're going." He faced the treeline to the right. And led them forward. It took only five minutes to reach the source of the danger—a strange dirt hill rising from the otherwise flat, mossy forest floor. Michael's heartbeat quickened. If that isn't a dungeon, then nothing in this world qualifies. Circling around the mound confirmed it: one side held a yawning, arched hole, its inky darkness stubbornly refusing to reflect sunlight. A classic RPG dungeon entrance. Michael wasn't surprised.

He glanced at Liam, who nodded once. If Liam thinks we can handle it, we probably can, Michael reasoned. He turned to the party, raising his voice with the steady confidence Leadership lent him.

"Prepare for combat. We're going in." The group shifted—some adjusting armor, others tightening grips on staves or drawing blades they hadn't already drawn. Energy rippled through them, an alert, focused tension. Seeing them ready, Michael stepped toward the entrance. But before he could get within ten feet, the void inside the hill flashed white, blinding all of them. He staggered, blinking away the afterimages. It took several seconds before shapes returned.

And when they did— There was a girl standing only a few feet away. Small. Pale. Beautiful. Staring at them with a faintly puzzled expression. And then—in less than a heartbeat—that expression vanished, replaced by a gentle smile and an unreadable stillness, as if her emotions had been quietly folded away and filed elsewhere. The shift was so abrupt it took Michael a moment to understand that something was wrong. Her hair was impossibly long—pure white, shimmering like silk dipped in moonlight.

Tiny flecks of starlight pulsed through it, constellations glinting and fading in a slow cosmic rhythm. Foxkin, clearly. But not any Foxkin he had seen up until this point. Her ears and tail carried the same celestial shimmer, as though the night sky itself had wrapped around her. In her right hand, she held a massive sheathed blade—taller than she was—its surface resembling condensed auroras frozen into the shape of a weapon.

Her face was perfectly proportioned, almost unnaturally so, like a doll sculpted to embody beauty and then quietly given breath. But none of that compared to her eyes. Black wasn't the word. Her eyes consumed the light around them—voids where pupils and irises should be. Perfect circles of darkness among the white of her sclera, deep, cold, and impossibly still. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. Then she spoke, voice soft and polite.

"Oh… how unexpected. Hello." A choked wheeze came from behind him. Michael whipped around just in time to see Liam collapse, his face white as ash. The Foxkin tilted her head, smile unchanged.

"Is he… quite alright?" Michael's throat tightened. Every instinct screamed at him not to draw her attention— —but lying to a creature like this felt suicidal. He didn't need Liam's Threat Appraisal to know exactly how precarious this moment was. Not when a simple Inspect laid everything bare: ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Astral Duelist [Uncommon] (Level 10 | Tier 1) Race: Starborne Foxkin ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ His trait pulsed—steady, guiding—pushing him forward, urging him to act like a leader.

Maybe Leadership isn't as simple as I thought, he realized. Michael stepped forward.

"He has a trait that lets him see the relative danger of anything he looks at," Michael said evenly—far more evenly than he actually felt. The girl nodded, the motion delicate, almost thoughtful. She seemed convinced by the honesty—or at least not offended by it. Both outcomes felt like victories.

"I see… it is somewhat surprising that anyone kept pace." she murmured. There was no pride in the statement, no challenge. Just quiet observation. Somehow, that made it worse. Michael's trait nudged him again—subtle, insistent. He swallowed.

"I also have a trait. Leadership. It allows my party to recover resources much faster than normal. Combined with our Dexterity investment, we… move quickly." Her expression didn't change at all, but one ear gave the faintest curious flick. A tiny detail—one he would have missed if he weren't currently operating at full survival instinct.

"An unusual thing to reveal so openly, wouldn't you agree?" she asked softly. Nothing in her tone was threatening. But the question felt like someone had gently placed a hand on the table between them… palm down… directly over a detonator. Leadership pushed again—firmer this time.

"I want to trade information," Michael said, choosing each word with surgical precision.

"We're planning to raid the dungeon behind you. And I assume you're alone?" He gestured lightly to his party—nonthreatening, controlled.

"We have information on the racial skills and stat distributions of Humans, Elves, Wolfkin, Catkin, and a Chimera. As well as the starting skills of all four base classes." Her ears tilted forward. Interest. Not malice. Not amusement. Just… interest. Michael let himself breathe—carefully. Confidence flickered to life in his chest. He might survive this conversation after all. He didn't wait for her agreement—waiting felt like tempting fate—so he moved immediately into explaining everything his party knew.

Behind him, the group stood utterly silent. Good. Very good. They understood the situation. Or… maybe they didn't. Maybe he was overreacting. But when faced with someone this powerful, this unnatural, and this unreadable—well, better safe than sorry. The explanation took several careful minutes. Throughout all of it, the girl simply listened, her posture relaxed, her expression soft… yet impossible to interpret. Not hostile. Not friendly. Just… observing. And that was somehow worse.

Her gentle smile didn't move an inch the entire time. Not in approval. Not in boredom. Not in concern. Just there. Michael finished speaking with a quiet exhale, feeling sweat prick the back of his neck despite how calm he tried to look. This was the moment of truth. The girl nodded thoughtfully, like someone checking off items on a private list. Then she began to speak.

"The dungeon is an abandoned subterranean factory… presently overrun with moles." Relief hit Michael so sharply he nearly stumbled. She was answering. Conversing. Not disintegrating them for bothering her. He forced every shred of attention he had onto her words. Missing a single detail now would be unacceptable—and possibly fatal. He listened. Carefully. Respectfully. Still very aware that overreacting might make him look foolish… … but underreacting might make him look dead.

Her explanation was fast, concise, and absurdly well-organized. Monster names and behaviors. Possible skills and variations. A rough map of the layout. Encounter timings. It was so thorough that Michael briefly felt as though she was trying to sell him the dungeon. Then she moved on to the runes. The mysterious runes carved into the machines, how they worked, what they did, how they interacted. She described them so cleanly and confidently you'd think she invented the things.

By the end of it, Michael felt genuinely confident his group could clear the dungeon. They had strong frontline fighters, high Dexterity runners, and several party members with sharp Perception. With this kind of intel? It would be easy. He nodded, taking a moment to absorb everything before speaking.

"Thank you. Truly. This will help a lot." She nodded back, then tapped her chin lightly. Cute, Michael thought before he could stop himself.

"I appear to have obtained considerably more information than you," she said, "so I shall extend a small courtesy." She extended her small hand. Starlight flared from her palm. Michael tensed immediately, bracing for an attack— But instead, the light bent. It twisted, convulsed, condensed—shaping itself into something solid and familiar. A sword. A longsword made of the same shimmering material as the one in her hand. No—not just similar. An almost exact replica of his starting blade.

Which meant her weapon wasn't a boss drop. She made it. The blade finished forming, gleaming softly as she approached him. She grasped it by the edge and held it out.

"Here." It wasn't a question. It wasn't even an offer. It was an instruction. Leadership pulsed in Michael's chest—stronger than ever—driving home a very clear realization: Her pride is the one thing you never step on. He accepted the blade immediately, bowing his head slightly. She nodded, satisfied.

"If that concludes matters, I will take my leave." Before he could respond, she simply—vanished. No transition. No flash. No visible skill activation. Just gone, as if someone had deleted her from the scene. For a moment, Michael wondered if he had imagined the entire encounter. But then he looked down. A blade of starlight rested in his right hand. Proof that the foxgirl had been real. And that she had been very, very generous… in her own deeply alarming way. I guess I really did overreact, Michael thought drily.

He forced himself to inspect the sword before he forgot—partly for documentation, partly to prove to himself that it actually existed. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [Starlight Blade (Rare)] A starmetal longsword forged by the User Lyn. Designed for exceptional sharpness and durability. Naturally resistant to astral energy. No additional effects. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Michael let out a small, exhausted sigh.

The very first Rare item anyone in their party had ever seen— And it was casually handcrafted in under five seconds by a girl who looked like she should be attending a high school, not breaking the difficulty curve over her knee. The power gap was… absurd. Utterly, comically absurd. But now came the part Michael had been dreading since the moment Liam hit the ground. He needed to quantify the situation. He turned to the still-trembling Liam, whose knuckles were white and whose breathing remained uneven.

"Was she as bad as the True Dragon?" Michael asked quietly. Liam shook his head. Violently. Far too violently for comfort. So—not as strong—"No," Liam rasped.

"She's worse." Michael froze. Liam swallowed, arms wrapping around himself as if trying to physically contain the trembling.

"So much worse." Michael's expression hardened.

"What did you see, Liam?" The young man slowly lifted his gaze.

"The sky fell." Michael didn't speak. Liam continued, his voice thin and hollow:"It wasn't our sky. It was… something above it. Higher. Further. A layer over everything." He shuddered.

"I watched it warp. Crack. Split open, like glass breaking under too much pressure." His breath hitched.

"Light poured through the fractures. Lines. Shards. Pieces drifting apart, like the whole thing had been holding on for too long." His fingers dug into his sleeves.

"And beyond the cracks—things I couldn't understand. Shapes. Motion. Blinding flashes. Like looking at a storm through a shattered window, only the storm wasn't in our world at all." He finally looked Michael dead in the eye.

"It wasn't the end of the world," he whispered.

"It was something above the world… breaking." Michael felt his stomach drop. The entire group went still. Why wouldn't they? Every one of them had read the Tutorial's rules. Difficulty scales based on the highest point total present. And if something of her caliber was included in their Tutorial… Michael swallowed hard, the weight of realization sinking into his bones. He broke the silence first, voice low and defeated, barely more than a breath.

"…Fuck."