Chương 2: Chapter 1: Welcome to the Tutorial

James Roller was working on what should have been a paid holiday, and he was already pissed about it before reality decided to become considerably more complicated. The summer heat wave had pushed temperatures across the northeastern United States into the nineties, and the unfinished high school auditorium had no working air-conditioning. By early afternoon, James's shirt was soaked through the back, sawdust covered his jeans, and every piece of plywood he touched felt warm from sitting inside the building.

He was cutting another sheet of plywood for a set of auditorium steps when the table saw suddenly stopped. The blade slowed beneath the wood, the motor died, and the familiar noise of construction equipment disappeared from the room.

"Frank, can you check the breaker?" James shouted toward the adjoining hallway, where his partner had been installing a replacement window. No answer came, so James waited several seconds before raising his voice.

"Frank? Wake the hell up." The building remained strangely quiet after he finished speaking.

"These kids with their fucking headphones," James muttered as he stepped away from the saw. Frank was twenty-three and seemed physically incapable of performing any task without something playing through the wireless earbuds permanently attached to his head. James brushed sawdust from his shirt, dropped the plywood flat so nobody would trip over it, and started toward the electrical room to check the breaker himself. He made it six steps before a trumpet sounded from everywhere at once.

The noise did not come through the auditorium speakers, nor did it seem to originate outside the building, because James could feel the note inside his chest as clearly as he heard it.

"What the fuck?" he asked as he stopped in the middle of the unfinished auditorium. A golden translucent window appeared directly in front of him before he could decide whether he should run. Intricate sigils moved around the edges of the golden screen. James had never seen the symbols before, but he somehow understood the words forming between them. The message carried a weight that made the building, the heat, and even the missing electrical power feel unimportant. [Congratulations!] [This Realm has passed the acceptance threshold and is now part of the wider multiverse.] [The 54th Realm is now being integrated.] [Designation: 10442-Realm-54] [Habitable worlds within the Realm: 12, 560, 450, 192.] [Planet Earth is being terraformed.] [Caution is advised.] [The Tutorial sequence will begin immediately.] [Welcome to your new future.] James read the announcement twice, and instead of fear, the first thing he felt was excitement.

He had spent thirty-two years reading fantasy novels, playing RPGs, arguing over character builds, and imagining what he would do if magic suddenly became real.

"Please let this shit actually be real," he said as he stared at the golden window. His common sense immediately reminded him that the message included the words terraformed and caution is advised, but common sense was currently losing badly to the part of him that had wanted something impossible to happen since childhood. The golden screen disappeared, and light spread across his body before he could call for Frank again. James had enough time to look down at his glowing hands before the auditorium vanished.

His vision turned white, then black, then white again as his stomach twisted hard enough to make him think he was falling even though he could no longer feel the ground beneath his boots. When his vision cleared, James stood beneath an open sky surrounded by enormous trees. Nearly a thousand people occupied the wide clearing in front of him, dressed in everything from construction clothing and police uniforms to office suits, hospital scrubs, gym clothes, and summer dresses.

Some were already shouting, while others stood completely still and tried to understand how they had gone from normal lives to a forest in the space of a few seconds. Group survival tutorial, James thought as he took a step backward to get a better look at everyone. His boot found empty air. James had appeared at the extreme edge of the transportation zone, and the System apparently cared only that he technically arrived inside the designated area.

A cliff dropped more than a hundred feet directly behind him, serving as a natural wall between the clearing and the forest below. James knew none of that when his weight shifted backward and the ground disappeared beneath his heel.

"Oh, FUCK!" James shouted as both arms shot forward for something that was no longer within reach. He dropped past the edge, struck the cliff once with his shoulder, and fell through a layer of branches growing from trees below. One heavy branch caught him across the ribs and slowed him before breaking, while several smaller branches tore his shirt and opened cuts along his arms and face. He finally struck the forest floor hard enough to knock every bit of air from his lungs.

James remained motionless for several minutes. Consciousness returned slowly, followed by enough pain to convince him that waking up had been a questionable decision. He moved his fingers first, then his toes, and carefully tested his legs before attempting anything more ambitious.

"Come on, you bastards. Move," he said while forcing one knee to bend. When both legs responded properly, the fear that had been building in his chest eased enough for him to breathe.

"Oh, thank fucking God," James said as he allowed his head to fall back against the leaves. His ribs hurt badly, one shoulder felt damaged, and several cuts were bleeding, but his spine appeared intact. He tried sitting up and immediately abandoned the attempt when pain tore through his left side.

"Fine. A few more minutes on the ground won't kill me," he said while breathing carefully. He looked toward the trees around him after the words left his mouth.

"Probably shouldn't fucking say things like that anymore." The thought had barely settled when a blue System screen opened over his face. [Welcome to the Tutorial!] [Tutorial Number: #782-F.] [Main Objective: Survive 30 days.] [Secondary Objective: Defeat the Tutorial Boss.] [Warning! The world has been terraformed. Nothing is as it used to be.] [Change is inevitable. Adapt or die.] [Status screens are now available to all sapient species.] More than a hundred feet above him, the remaining 999 participants received the same blue notification. Confusion turned into open panic almost immediately as people demanded answers nobody possessed. Several survivors tried their phones, only to discover there was no signal, while others shouted names into the crowd in hopes that friends or relatives had been transported into the same tutorial. Two police officers were among the first people to force themselves into action.

Daniel Warsky was middle-aged, broad through the shoulders, and still dressed in the patrol uniform he had been wearing before Integration. Timothy White wore another police uniform several dozen feet away and had already begun moving people back from the dangerous edge of the cliff.

"Everyone get away from the drop and give each other some fucking room," Timothy ordered as he pointed several frightened survivors toward the center of the clearing. His tone was controlled rather than friendly, but enough people recognized the uniform and followed the command to prevent another accidental fall. Daniel moved through another section of the crowd and tried to stop several people from shouting over one another.

"Nobody here knows what happened yet, so screaming the same question twenty times isn't helping," he told them while checking the surrounding forest. The crowd did not become calm, but the presence of two officers gave frightened people something familiar to focus on. Small groups began forming around Daniel, Timothy, and anyone else who sounded confident enough to provide direction. Timothy was among the first survivors to test the System's final instruction.

"Status," he said while keeping one hand near the equipment belt that had transported with him. A blue screen opened immediately. [Status] [Name: Timothy White.] [Species: Human.] [Tier: Unawakened.] [Level: 0.] [Class: Unavailable.] [Skills: Language Comprehension, Basic Punch.] If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. [Titles: Newly Integrated.] Timothy read the information without sharing much of his reaction.

Others quickly copied him, and blue screens appeared throughout the clearing as hundreds of survivors discovered nearly identical information. Daniel opened his own status a moment later, while Timothy began asking several people whether anyone possessed unusual skills, titles, or anything else that could immediately help protect the group. Near the tree line, Elizabeth Johnson discovered that her own screen was not identical.

She stood apart from the largest clusters and kept her expression carefully neutral while reading information nobody else seemed to possess. The people near her were too busy discussing their own screens to notice the additional entries. [Status] [Name: Elizabeth Johnson.] [Species: Human.] [Tier: Unawakened.] [Level: 0.] [Class: Unavailable.] [Skills: Language Comprehension, Basic Punch.] [Titles: Newly Integrated, Bloodline Matriarch.] [Bloodline: Echoing Sound.] [Description: Allows Elizabeth to use sound as a weapon without consuming mana.] Elizabeth dismissed the screen without saying anything. Being useful could make someone valuable, but being obviously different in a frightened crowd could also make her a target for every desperate person who believed they deserved access to whatever she possessed. She watched Timothy and Daniel organizing people near the center and decided she would reveal the bloodline only when doing so benefited her.

At the bottom of the cliff, James finally managed to stand. His legs shook, and his ribs objected every time he inhaled too deeply, but his tool belt had somehow remained fastened around his waist during the fall.

"Small fucking blessings," he said while checking the pouches. His framing hammer, utility knife, measuring tape, pencils, screwdriver, pliers, chalk line, half-used roll of electrical tape, and several loose nails were still present. The equipment was not impressive compared with the swords and magical weapons James had imagined receiving if the world ever turned into an RPG, but complaining would not make a sword appear. He removed the electrical tape and wrapped the worst cuts as tightly as he could manage.

"First five minutes of the apocalypse, and I'm already doing construction-site medicine," James said through clenched teeth as the adhesive pulled against his skin. The treatment was crude, but slowing the bleeding mattered more than comfort. James looked toward the cliff while pressing one hand against his ribs. Voices from above reached him occasionally, but the distance and heavy vegetation made individual words difficult to understand.

Calling for help was possible, yet he had no idea whether anyone above possessed rope long enough to reach him or whether climbing back up with injured ribs was even realistic. He considered shouting anyway before another thought stopped him. The tutorial objective was not to remain together; it was to survive thirty days and defeat something the System had specifically called a boss.

If monsters existed, standing beneath a cliff yelling until his throat hurt might advertise his location to more than the humans above. James decided information came first.

"Status," he said quietly while pulling his hammer free. A blue window opened in front of him, and his initial amusement disappeared when he reached the final entry. [Status] [Name: James Roller.] [Species: Human.] [Tier: Unawakened.] [Level: 0.] [Class: Unavailable.] [Skills: Language Comprehension, Basic Punch.] [Titles: Newly Integrated.] [REDACTED] James stared at the last line.

He tried focusing on it, mentally selecting it, and even touching the screen with one finger, but the blue window offered nothing more.

"Redacted by who?" he asked while narrowing his eyes at the sealed entry. No explanation appeared, and after another failed attempt to open it, James looked back at the rest of his very unimpressive status.

"No bloodline, no magic, no hidden sword skill, and apparently I've got classified paperwork attached to my own ass," James said as he dismissed the window. The situation was disappointing, but he had survived the fall, and survival gave him time to figure the rest out. A repeated clicking noise deeper in the forest reminded him that time might already be limited. James stopped moving and listened. The sound came again, closer this time, and the regular pattern made it clear that something living was producing it.

He pulled the utility knife with his left hand while keeping the framing hammer in his right.

"All right, whatever you are, I'm having a really strange fucking day," he said as he shifted his weight away from the injured leg. He watched the bushes until a small gray creature burst through them. The monster was approximately the size of a large rabbit, but that was where anything familiar ended. Seven eyes were scattered across its face, three pairs of thin arms extended from its body, and every hand ended in narrow claws long enough to open James from wrist to elbow.

Its mouth split vertically when it clicked again.

"What the hell are you supposed to be?" James asked as the creature lowered its body. He recognized the movement as preparation to jump and decided he had no interest in waiting for the monster to make the first move. James stepped forward and swung the hammer directly into its side. The impact sent the creature tumbling into a root, but it recovered almost immediately. It launched itself at James with a high-pitched screech and cut four burning lines across his forearm before he managed to knock it aside.

"Son of a bitch!" James shouted as blood ran toward his wrist. He drove the utility knife into one of its eyes when it attacked again, and black fluid sprayed across his fingers. The fight became ugly at close range. James had no training beyond ordinary roughhousing and years of handling heavy tools, while the creature possessed six clawed arms and no hesitation about using any of them.

James absorbed several shallow cuts before catching it beneath one boot, and once the monster was pinned against the ground, he brought the hammer down repeatedly until its limbs finally stopped moving. James remained bent over for several breaths before straightening.

"Fuck you too," he told the corpse while wiping black fluid from his knife against the grass. A blue notification appeared over the body. [You have slain a Battleground Feral lvl. 1.] [Experience awarded.] James read the name and looked down at the mangled creature.

"Battleground Feral sounds dramatic for an angry seven-eyed rabbit," he said as he crouched beside it. The monster had nearly carved his arm open anyway, so he decided insulting its name after death was probably enough. Years of games had taught James one useful habit that apparently translated surprisingly well into reality: never leave useful materials behind. He cut several intact claws from the Feral and discovered that each was approximately six inches long and considerably harder than an ordinary animal claw.

When he stored the fifth usable piece in his tool pouch, another blue message appeared. [Action recorded.] [Class seed is forming.] James became still.

"My actions affect my class," he said as he looked at the claws, his hammer, and the corpse in front of him. The System did not confirm his interpretation, but the wording seemed straightforward enough. That realization changed how James considered every decision. If fighting, crafting, building, healing, or exploring could influence his eventual class, then blindly copying whatever worked in a video game might produce a result he did not actually want.

"This isn't a fucking game," he reminded himself as he examined his damaged arms. Death had already come close enough to make that distinction very clear. The first fight had also demonstrated another problem: his weapons forced him too close to anything he wanted to kill. James removed the chalk line from his tool belt, found a straight branch roughly five feet long, and used his utility knife to clean the smaller growth from it.

He seated one Feral claw against the end, wrapped the chalk line tightly around both pieces, and reinforced the connection with electrical tape. Ten minutes later, James held an ugly but functional spear. He tested it with several careful thrusts and adjusted the binding until the claw remained mostly stable.

"It looks like shit, but it gives me five feet between my face and those claws," he said while checking the tip. That made it the best weapon he currently owned. James glanced toward the cliff one more time before heading deeper into the forest. Nobody had called his name from above, which meant either nobody had noticed his fall or the chaos had prevented them from doing anything about it.

"Large groups are always a pain in the ass," he said as he began walking parallel to the cliff. He had spent enough years on construction sites to know that putting hundreds of frightened people together did not automatically make them organized. Twenty minutes later, another Battleground Feral crossed his path. This time James kept the spear between them, stabbed the creature when it lunged, and used the hammer only after it managed to push inside his reach.

The fight lasted less than half as long as the first and ended without adding any new wounds to his collection. [You have slain a Battleground Feral lvl. 1.] [Experience awarded.]"That's better," James said while recovering the spear. He harvested several more claws, inspected the bindings, and continued moving rather than waiting for another monster to find him. The next Feral took longer to locate, but the fight itself confirmed that his first improvement had not been luck.

[You have slain a Battleground Feral lvl. 1.] [Experience awarded.] James's confidence increased, though he made an effort not to become careless. Three kills did not make him an expert, and the forest was large enough to contain things far worse than the creatures he had already encountered.

"One more," he said while checking the position of the sun through the canopy. He wanted to know what leveling actually did before he started worrying about food and shelter. Almost two hours after his first fight, the fourth Feral attempted to ambush him from behind a fallen tree. James caught one of its seven eyes watching him through the branches, shifted his grip without giving away that he had noticed it, and drove the spear forward the instant the creature jumped.

The claw point punched through its chest and pinned it to the dirt. The Feral thrashed hard enough to nearly tear the spear from his hands. James planted one boot against its body, pulled the weapon free, and finished the fight with two heavy hammer strikes.

"Not so clever when I can see you coming, are you?" he asked while stepping away from the corpse. Blue light immediately gathered around him. [You have slain a Battleground Feral lvl. 1.] [Experience awarded.] [You have leveled up!] [You are now Level 1.] [3 Attribute Points are available.] Warmth moved through James from his chest into his arms and legs.

The effect did not erase his wounds, but his breathing became easier, some of the exhaustion receded, and the muscles supporting his damaged ribs stopped complaining quite as loudly. James stood straighter and looked at his blood-covered hammer with a slow grin.

"Well, shit," he said as another blue screen opened at his request. The first day of the tutorial had barely begun, and James had already fallen off a cliff, killed four monsters, built his first weapon, and discovered something hidden inside his own status. Whatever happened next, he finally possessed a direction.