“What?” Dante spluttered, choking on air. “PTSD? I don’t have a mental disorder.”

He expected to see a teasing grin on Laurelai’s face, but the pitying look in her eyes made his heart sink. Was she being serious? How could he possibly have PTSD after his first battle? A fight that he won. If he was so fragile, then how was he possibly supposed to excel in this new world?

“Relax, Dante,” Laurelai whispered, landing on top of his head. “You haven’t developed anything yet, so just calm down for now. It takes a long time for any disorder to become chronic, but almost all trauma cases don’t become anything worse. You may experience some intense symptoms for a little while, so don’t think you’re insane if you get a flashback or have nightmares.”

How could he possibly relax? He might develop a debilitating mental illness, but it’s alright because he also might not. Besides, how was anyone supposed to get enough rest when they were forced to sleep on a floor of solid rock, and that wasn’t even mentioning that he had to try and fall asleep while knowing that he might not wake up fast enough for the next ritual.

“I’m fine, thank you. My reactions are quite normal under the circumstances. In fact, I don’t think there is a single well-adjusted and sane human being that would be completely calm under my circumstances.”

Laurelai looked at him with concern. “Almost everyone develops some issues after the tutorial. It’s a hard and traumatic time for everyone, but that’s the point. The system wants you to grow your body and mind, becoming a better version of yourself at every turn. A person who can stand tall and live the life they want to live without fear of consequences.”

“In fact, the system designs these things with multiple purposes in mind. First of all, it’s a test to prove that you’re as talented as it deems you to be. Secondly, it’s a method of teaching designed to push you to your limits. Not only does it show you that almost anything is possible with the help of the system, but it also teaches you that hard work is always paid off. As for the last… Well, you’re feeling its effects right now.”

“But why do that to a person’s mind?” Dante said, trying to change the subject with a comment that even he thought didn’t make sense. He was fine. The constant training every day combined with an almost non-existent sleep regiment explained everything he was feeling. “Why not just feed someone energy until they turn into a god? That would be way more efficient than going through all this trouble.”

Laurelai sighed wistfully, almost like she was dreaming. “What good is eternity if you only have the strength of a god? As much as it hurts to hear, you’re still a child in both body and mind. Hell, even the oldest people on your planet are still children in the grand scheme of things. Some of my race’s ancestors are so old that we don’t even bother to record their exact age anymore. A year is nothing to someone who can meditate for a millennia without eating or taking a single break.”

Dante raised a hand to his mouth as he gasped. “But that’s impossible. How could someone even live that long?”

He couldn’t even imagine meditating for more than an hour, let alone a thousand years. That amount of time wasn’t conceivable. The very idea of doing nothing but think for ten times longer than a human’s life span was so farfetched that he couldn’t even begin to imagine what it was like. Even now that he started trying to form a basic levitation technique, he still spent less than a few minutes meditating before taking a break.

A thousand years… Unfathomable.

“Everything is possible in the grand multiverse, Dante,” Laurelai muttered as she yawned. She even used his hair as a blanket. “The lower races like us take sixteen years to reach maturity, but some high-tier races can take up to a century or more. A hundred years to stop being a child. Can you even imagine that?”

“Now, off to bed. You only have four days left until your tutorial quest ends, and we need all the time in the world with your abysmal talent.”

Dante walked over to the angled crystal he usually slept under and laid down, but he couldn’t close his eyes no matter what. Although he didn’t believe that he was developing a chronic mental illness, that didn’t mean he couldn’t in the future. He wanted to push himself to his limits and become strong, whatever that looked like, but he also knew that his journey wouldn’t be without struggle.

According to Laurelai, there was going to be an apocalypse after he left the tutorial, and it wouldn’t pass by unnoticed like a tsunami in a foreign country. Earth and its people were going to be tested by the system, and that meant social and societal upheaval. War, looting, and massive infrastructure losses were apparently just the start, leading to the inevitable question of what he was capable of.

There might be no food, forcing him to steal from others to survive. But could he take food away from a family, dooming children so that he could save himself? Could he, in good conscience, take food from a breastfeeding mother, knowing that she would have to watch her baby starve to death as her milk dried up?

And that was just the beginning.

Murder was inevitable, according to Laurelai. He would have to kill other people, and that wasn’t taking into account that he wanted to become as strong as possible. His very survival would make killing others inevitable. If he didn’t want to steal food from families or kill others for their resources, allowing him to avoid murdering others, that didn’t mean everyone would follow his example.

People would come to kill him just for the sin of being well fed.

And that made him wonder if he could really do it. To end another man’s life for his own benefit was a sickening thought, and even if he could murder someone, what would the cost be? Would he have a mental breakdown? Or would he become a cold, unfeeling psychopath?

He honestly didn’t know which one terrified him more. To lose control of himself, or to lose his sense of identity. What kind of monster would he become in the-.

Dante was pulled out of his trance by a little smack on his head from Laurelai, making him realise that he was being a tad ridiculous. He wouldn’t have to confront these ‘what ifs’ for a long time. Hell, at his current rate of progress, he might not even make it out of the cavern in seven days.

Closing his eyes, Dante eventually drifted off to sleep.

***

As the days wore on, Dante entered an endless cycle of training. He would stabilise his mind while the hawks were going about their ritual, then spend the rest of the day working on his control. Although his progress on the levitation technique was minimal, making his hours of work every day feel wasted, his soul force was becoming easier and easier to control as he continued to drink the slime potion.

He wondered if his talent would increase the more stable his soul force became, but Laurelai threw a bucket of cold water on his dreams.

“You’ve been stabilising your mental energy for three hours every day, right? Well, there you have it. Stable energy usually means easier control. Better to ride a calm dragon than an angry snake, or so they say.”

His training was slow and uneventful, but the threat of a gruesome death hanging over his head kept Dante focused. His only consolation was that the actual training lasted for a few minutes at a time before he needed to take a break, which was more or less spent on him relaxing while he chatted with Laurelai about the system and what would happen to him next.

As it turned out, she had no idea. Well, she did know what was going to happen, but the immense variation of system protocols made it almost impossible to predict accurately. All she knew was that there would be a tutorial, then humanity would be released into a world that was redesigned by the system.

Of course, that was if the people of earth passed the tutorial successfully. It also didn’t help that the criteria for passing changed with every world. So overall, humanity would get sent into a tutorial before getting released back onto a post-apocalyptic Earth.

But none of that mattered now.

He needed to spend his time now on mastering the levitation technique. Not only was it a difficult skill to learn, but it was also something taught to those a rank above him, more so due to the high energy cost than the difficulty.

On the last day before his escape quest ended, Dante managed to shroud his legs and half his torso with soul force. He was well on his way to covering his chest as well, which was an impressive feat for someone with his level of experience, but one thing was painfully clear.

He wouldn’t make it in time.

It was a shroud of colourful mist rather than a solid film, barely held in place by his willpower. He could feel the strain pushing against his mind now, almost like there was a physical weight resting on his brain. He was nearing his limit, and he could feel it as clearly as he could feel the pain in his stomach from not eating for a week.

If he had a full stomach and a good night’s sleep, he might just be able to form the technique. But now…

Dante attempted to complete the technique in one final push. He pressed down on the loose cloud of soul force meandering around him, forcing it to solidify as it began to cover his upper body. From his nipples to his collar bones, the energy began to cover his upper body. All he needed to do now was cover his arms and head, and he would have successfully formed a basic and unrefined version of the famous levitation skill.

There was a thrill of anticipation in his heart as everything progressed steadily, his upper arms and neck getting covered in a cloud of rainbow energy. But then everything began to go wrong. He didn’t spread the soul force around his neck correctly, causing him to strangle himself. The air in his lungs fled as he began to choke, forcing him to push the energy back down to his collar bones.

Like an avalanche in fresh snow, the cloud of energy around his chest became too dense, and his focus was gathered on other places. The barrier holding everything together was pierced from the inside like an overfilled kiddie pool, and Dante was thrown back as all of the soul force on his chest was released, launching him into a purple crystal.

“Are you okay?” Laurelai shouted, buzzing around his head. “That was a nasty one. But on the bright side, you almost had it!”

Dante groaned as he lay on the ground, a million aches and pains blossoming all over his body. “Thank you for your faith in me. At least one of us is hopeful.”

“No, really. You did an awesome job! If we had another week or two, you would have definitely been offered the skill by the system. Remember, talent is just a number or a label. There have been many powerful Lords and Ladies that were labelled as trash, only to appear endless years later with immense power!”

Dante smiled, more so for the fact that she was encouraging him than the words she spoke. It had been an uphill battle for the first three days, but after a particularly bad mistake that almost broke his foot, Laurelai figured out that he responded better to encouragement than abuse.

Which seemed self-explanatory to him, but what could he do.

“I just don’t have the time. I could have done it if I had more time or talent, but that’s just an excuse. Almost everyone could do it if under those circumstances.”

“Don’t be so negative! This is a test, something that’s been designed and engineered. You’re not stuck in some Yawning Abyss that no one has ever come out of after entering. There’s always a few different solutions to a puzzle.”

As Dante lay on the ground, his eyes closed and his head throbbing, something Laurelai said resonated with him. The tutorial was a test, a puzzle created by the system. But was it hand made for him, or did this specific place just happen to be a good challenge for people with his abilities and talent?

If it was the latter, that meant more than one solution existed. Maybe someone with potent enough blood essence could leap up to the tunnel in the wall, while someone with a lot of astral energy could fashion stairs out of the stone so that they could casually walk up to the tunnel.

And that made him think. He didn’t have to learn the levitation technique well enough to gain a certain degree of mastery over it, the skill automatically getting recognised by the system. He just needed to use his energy to lift himself to the tunnel in the cavern wall. There were a lot of different requirements for the levitation technique to ensure that it could be sustained for long periods and even remain stable after getting attacked or disrupted, but he didn’t need it to be that perfect. At least not good enough to match official standards.

“Laurelai, I think I have an idea.”