Chương 30: The End of the Tutorial

When I open my eyes, the sun has crested the horizon, and I need to make a decision. I have enough time to go through my MP again, probably increasing my spellcraft again and possibly increasing my firebolt level. Or I have time to further destroy the target we took from that pawn shop the other day and potentially increase my bow skill, and maybe even go so far as to increase my Rapid Fire ability. I don't have time to do both, though.

It turns out that Ashley and Gigi weren't sparring; they were shooting at the target. We have seventy arrows left. I've pretty much laid claim to thirty of them, with the two girls each getting twenty. I fire faster than they do, though only slightly faster than Gigi now, as she has my old bow. But I'm spending less time to aim, kind of relying on my hand eye coordination to the do the aiming for me. Ashley is still taking the time to actually aim.

As I walk up, I see that Gigi is doing the same thing to Ashley that I used to do to her; instead of trying to get her own grouping, she's shooting her arrows right next to wherever Ashley's shots land. I smile at them as I get close, taking my bow and drawing an arrow.

"Mind if I join you?" I ask them.

"We were just talking about what we want to be," Ashley says as she looses an arrow. It lands in the red ring, which is pretty good. I take aim six inches to the left and land dead center of the whole target, right in the inner yellow ring. Gigi lands her arrow almost perfectly between mine and Ashley's.

"Do we know what the options are?" I ask.

"No idea," Gigi says.

"But I'm guessing elves will be an option. Elves are always an option."

"I don't want to be an elf," Ashley says.

"But I don't want to be a dwarf, either. I don't want a beard." I try to imagine what Ashley would look like with a beard. She has a somewhat prevalent chin and gorgeous cheekbones. While definitely feminine looking, I can see what she'd look like with a beard, and it wouldn't be bad. She'd still be attractive.

"How about an orc?" I ask.

"If we're going with Tolkien, they're always an option."

"I could handle being green," Gigi says.

"But I don't want to be all slobbery and ugly."

"Yeah. I don't want to be short," I say, dismissing gnomes and halflings without having to bring up dungeons and dragons.

"But I definitely don't want to be human," Ashley says. She shoots again.

"Though to be honest, I feel more like a demigod at this point." I pull out five arrows and use Rapid Fire. The arrows are a blur, my hands are a blur, and suddenly there are five arrows in the center ring of the target. Thankfully, none of them seem to have hit one another.

"Case and point," Gigi says, putting an arrow inside the little ring grouping that I just made.

"I could go half elf," I say.

"That's always the way to play a human without playing a human. We could also end up as something else, something we're not even thinking of."

"Yeah, but where's the fun in that?" Ashley says.

"All I know is, I don't want to be human anymore."

"If we are, I don't want to be called Gigi anymore."

"Oh, yeah, we haven't even talked about that! I was going to start going by Ash or something like that, but I don't want to still be called Ashley. I mean, it's such a generic name, and so out of place in quasi-medieval. I don't want to be Ashley." We collect the arrows, and I do another Rapid Shot while I consider the point that the two of them are talking about. I don't much mind my name. Caleb Strong sounds like a character name more than a person name anyway. Might as well keep it.

It's been my name for my whole life. I'm used to it. But I'd be okay with picking a new name for myself. Or maybe a nickname? Yeah, I could see that. But I want to earn one of those. I don't want someone to just give me one, and I definitely don't want to give one to myself. Still, this is the time to give it to myself. If we're going into a new world, if we're going to be new people, we can get new names, new nicknames, new titles. Whatever we want. We can be whoever we want to.

We're free of our old world, and it makes sense to pick a new name. But again, I like my name. I'm down with keeping it. I don't need a new one. Maybe I'll pick up new ones as time goes by. New titles, new nicknames, whatever. But I'll still be Caleb. Or I could go by Kay. Kay Strong has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

I keep shooting while thinking about names, wondering if the others are going to keep their own names, wondering if Vinny will pick a name more appropriate for a great wizard, wondering if I want to try to change my own name. What name would I pick for myself? Would Caleb become my dead name? Would I still want to go by my last name? Do I want to reduce myself to a single letter the same way that El has? Will she change her name?

I don't really pay much attention to what I'm doing, just shooting at the target, retrieving my arrows, and shooting again. At first, I think I'm just going to keep doing this until the tutorial ends, until the timer reaches zero. My bow skill goes up to twenty, even twenty one. But eventually, I realize that the girls have stopped talking to one another and have stopped shooting. The world is getting heavier, the air thicker, and I look at the corner of my vision to see what the clock says. 00: 04: 59.

Five minutes left. I gather up my arrows, my tools, and a good number of furs.

"This is it," I say, looking at the others. We've all kind of gathered together, awkwardly waiting to see what's going on. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. I turn towards Gigi.

"Did you come up with a new name?" I ask her. She frowns.

"No," she says.

"As weird as it is, I like it. I might change what the Gs stand for, but you can still call me Gigi."

"Call me Ash," Ashley says. She's standing with her mace in one hand and her shield in the other. There's a second mace at her side. Am I the only one who doesn't have a backup melee weapon? I mean, even Vinny has his dagger.

"Vincent," Vinny says.

"I think I want to go by Vincent." The time ticks down. For some reason, we're all facing the cherry on the spoon, waiting. I wonder if we're going to wake up dead again, or if we're about to enter a new world at a much higher level than we would have if we'd found the park the first time around. Once again, I get the urge to leave the park, to let the tutorial reset again, to see if I can manage to get to a higher level by myself. Passing urge; my legs don't even twitch.

I don't even glance at the edge of the sculpture garden. Maybe we're in the wrong park, but I don't think so. As the time counts down, I think we're in the right place. I feel the flow of mana, and as I try to trace it backwards, it all seems to be coming from the cherry. Everything seems to be coming from the cherry. No wonder we're all staring at it. One minute left. What if the tutorial ends with a battle? What if the cherry becomes some kind of monster we have to defeat to get to the new world?

That would definitely be one way to end things. I nock an arrow in my bow just in case, and I make sure that Shell is up to its full 563 points of strength. But when the time runs out, no monster appears. The cherry dissolves into bright light, and there's a pause. Then a voice from all around.

"Tutorial god not found," the voice says.

"Tutorial end speech not given." There's a long pause.

"Tutorial god has been slain. Judgment shifted to automatic. Tutorial ends." We all look at one another. God has been slain? So it's like Nietzsche said. God is dead. But I didn't get the impression that it meant the one and only god. It felt like it meant the god of the tutorial level. Like there was supposed to be something watching over us, giving us instruction, something like that. Which fits with what I've been thinking. Strange that the god is dead. Did we kill it?

Or if not us five specifically, what about the other people who went through the tutorial? Maybe there was a boss at the end of the tutorial level, and they killed it? That would explain why it wasn't there for us. But it doesn't explain why it wasn't there for us the first time. It doesn't explain why there was never anyone providing tutoring during the tutorial.

"Who slew a god?" El asks.

"Wasn't me, Vincent says.

"I've never even met a god." The light shining from the cherry continues to shine. Slowly, it seems to be settling into a portal of some sort. I suppose that makes sense. The spoon makes a little bridge, and I think the statue is called Spoonbridge and Cherry. So we can walk across the spoon and make it to our new world.

"What if we don't end up together?" Gigi asks.

"Then it's been fun," Ash says, giving and honest smile.

"And an honor to fight by your sides."

"It's a big world, presumably," I say.

"But we'll find each other again." Then I walk out onto the bridge. For a second, there's a flickering of images, as if there are other people on the bridge. They look familiar, but they don't last long enough for me to get more than a general idea of their shapes. But one was taller than me, one was broader than me, and several were shorter. I also have the impression that some of them were a different color skin than me. Not to say that they were black or white, but I swear at least one of them was green.

I take another step across the spoon, and a light passes over me. I feel a tickle in my mind. Then notifications start up. Classes qualified for: 16. Bonus ability/spell points awarded: 4. Talents acquired: 3. Bonus levels awarded: 2. Enemies slain: 659. Bonus skill increase: 20%. Level achieved: 24. Bonus talent: 1. Racial choice error. Bloodline bonus: 1. A shiver runs through me, and I check my character sheet. All of my skills are higher.

Some of them by only one point, but those that were at least at ten are better by two or more points. Also, I'm level 24 and have sixteen stat points to distribute. I decide to put six into agility, four into vigor, and six into awareness. As for the four points bonus to my abilities and spells, I decide to put one into Shell, making it as strong as my natural hit points, which are now 864. Then I put two points into Sniper Shot, reducing its cooldown to 45 seconds and increasing the damage to 350%.

The last point I decide to put into Camouflage, allowing me to move 60% of my base speed without breaking it. Then I have another talent to choose, along with a bloodline to choose. I guess I will be half something after all. I wonder if everyone is going to have the same results. Is everyone going to get the same bloodline choice? The same number of talents? I think I ended up the highest level.

But does that mean I get the most choices, or does it mean that I get the fewest, since there's less of a gap for me to fill? Better to focus on my own sheet than to worry about other people's. I still don't even know if we're going to end up in the same place. Maybe the bloodline point will determine where we spawn. Then I have to hope that I choose the same as the others do, or at least the same as one other does. I don't know what the odds of that are. I guess it depends on what the bloodline choices are.

Before I can see them, though, I need to choose a new talent. I consider the toughness one. I really do. While Shell does effectively double my hit points, so does the toughness talent. And that would mean that Shell would double its efficiency too. I'd have effectively more than three thousand hit points. With my high defense, that will make me really, really hard to kill. But the other talents are so much more robust. They allow for so many other options than just combat.

And I'm not looking to just fight all the time. I'll fight when I need to, but I'd rather be someone who explores. What exploration talents are there? There's a talent called omniglot, which allows the reading and speaking of all languages. Apparently polyglot doesn't extend to reading. I wish I'd seen this one earlier. Wait, no; it's got polyglot as a prerequisite. Okay, I don't feel like I wasted my other talent. But I'm not sure I'll need this one. I could go with regeneration.

But again, it doesn't seem that necessary. Or rather, I'm not sure I'd want it for hit points. I don't lose them often enough to need them back, and I assume that when I do need regeneration, it won't be fast enough to matter. An additional hit point per second isn't going to help if I'm taking enough damage for it to matter. But I could use regeneration of my MP or of my stamina. Regenerating stamina would mean that I could effectively fight forever, without getting exhausted.

It would also mean that I could use my combat abilities more freely, something that is appealing. Regenerating MP would mean more spells, which would probably help with the Spellsword route if I decide to go that way. I think the stamina is the way to go. I think I want to regenerate that. Even at a rate of only 1 per second, that'll be pretty fast and will let me keep using my abilities. It's enough for me to keep using Rapid Shot or Bleeding Strike as soon as they comes off cooldown forever. Okay.

Let's go with regeneration of stamina.