1.28 YOU get a notification, and YOU get a notification…

[The Survival Period has now closed, all Safe Zones are hereby negated. Please head towards the beacons for System-designated equipment. Good luck, players.]

Rocky looked up as a timer, appearing seemingly out of thin air, began to tick down.

[5:00:00 Until Safe Zone Dissolution]

[4:59:59]

[4:59:58]

He turned over to get a better look at Alina and Amber, strategizing about their next move. Not like he had a lot of other things to do. Harold was out, helping to fell trees with his green, crystal hammer that was now an axe. It was a shiny, alluring view, to see trees felled by the sharpened edge of superior material.

Oh, that’s right! They were using wood now to construct their camp, much to Rocky’s anger and disappointment. How was it his fault that trees were so stupid that they couldn’t even hide themselves underground? ‘It’s NOT my fault, that’s why.’

Nevertheless, his three golems were doing most of the cutting, moving, and actual building. According to Harold, while the System didn’t build things for players, it did provide blueprints. Because the moment Harold had started working, he could see the outline of the walls Rocky wanted built.

This left Rocky with nothing better to do than to examine his gains, in the aftermath of the Goblin Chieftan’s death.

[System Error Note: Please refer yourself to your Support Sprite for reconfiguration at your earliest convenience]

[Congratulations, Level Up! Level 19 Count of Cold Iron]

…

[Congratulations, Level Up! Level 22 Count of Cold Iron]

[Skill Learned: Eat - Grants the ability to ‘eat’ items into a storage for later use]

[LEVEL 20 POTENTIAL UNLOCKED]

[Calculating...]

[Calculating...]

[Calculating...]

[Domain of the Earthen Monarch, No Bloodline Detected]

#####

[Rock Hard]

Age: ???

Race: Rock

Class: [Count of Cold Iron, Level 22]

Constitution: Rock

Skills: [Stone Manipulation], [Summon Stone], [Steel Aura], [Language Interpretation], [Words of Power], [Claim Area], [Eat]

Domain of the Earthen Monarch [Domain Development: 0.0%]

Achievements: [First Light] [Arachnae Slayer] [Town Founder]

Titles: [Progenitor] [Monarch’s Bane]

#####

‘Eating? Why would I ever need to do that?’ Ah well, he would figure that out later. There were probably more interesting things to do around the camp.

For now, his golems had completed their work on the wooden wall meant to surround the camp, and were now beginning to work on the palisades that would help repel a charge.

Rocky fought the urge to wander off. The woods seemed particularly interesting, especially now that he knew that he could find cool things in it. Like more rocks. Town building, it turned out, was a lot slower than he had hoped, and much more boring than Alina had led him to believe. Edging closer to said sprite and Amber, he tried to listen in on their conversation.

“So you can’t explain any of this mess?” Amber stood, hands on her hips. ‘Uh oh, I know that look.’ Rocky shifted nervously. That was the look of anger before she launched into a lecture.

Alina also seemed to understand the tirade that was about to hit her, and quickly launched into her own explanation. “I can tell you what I know!” Her voice quieted, almost nervously. “Buuuut I’m meant to support people after the Tutorial, not during it, so I don’t know everything about what’s going on.”

“Fine.” Amber sighed, and Rocky breathed his own sigh of relief. “So break it down, why are there different phases to the Tutorial?”

The Sprite shook her head. “All I know is that the survival period is meant to weed out the people who wouldn’t be able to survive in the System. The phases are just meant to test and teach different things… I think.”

“You think? Fine. So I guess we lucked out with getting our weapons from underground, and that most other people can’t access things like this.” She lifted her staff up and down.

Suddenly, she whirled around, and poked Rocky with the butt of her staff. “And you, Rocky, are supposed to be the lookout, right?”

“Yup! I’m looking… in the, uh, outward direction. Yup! That’s me.” Nope nope nope, he was not getting verbally smacked again. Rocky forced his senses to ignore the conversation behind him, taking multiple steps towards the gate of their little encampment.

[4:26:00]

#####

[4:00:00]

Robb stared as the timer ticked its way down towards its inevitable resolution. The beacons were a self fulfilling prophecy, he decided. He made his way past a felled pine, one which had once stood a hundred feet. Which meant, of course, that its diameter was untraversable without some difficulty on his part.

The dissolution of the safe zone was undoubtedly overlooked by a lot of the desperate humans in the Tutorial. Not him, though. Grunting, he grabbed hold of one of the myriad offshoot branches, trying his best to make it over the large trunk.

‘The monsters will probably swarm us as soon as the timer runs out.’ Robb himself had been attracting quite a few unwelcome stares during his relatively short jaunt through the forest. And that was by himself.

“Ow!” His arm clipped against one of the branches. Robb thought back to the large camp he had left behind to begin this expedition. He shuddered, they probably would’ve been overwhelmed by the half dozen Screamers that were swarming them had he not intervened.

‘Even then, I don’t know why they decided to run.’ He would certainly have been dead if they had just rushed him. Not that he was complaining.

Vaulting over the top of the felled tree, he landed with a light thud on the other side, taking a moment to center himself before resuming his walk. The forest itself seemed to emanate some sort of… bloodlust that he hadn’t felt since his early years with his father. It wasn’t a welcome feeling.

Robb kicked a pinecone, ‘It’s been like this since the countdown started.’ He could come up with a few theories as to why, though it could honestly have been for any number of reasons.

He crossed the line he and Donny had drawn on their second day here. The area had a notable lack of wildlife, the rabbit warrens and squirrels that had once decorated the area were few and far between now, likely hunted to nigh extinction in this area of the safe zone. The smart ones had probably left by now.

Their original camp came into view. Within it, he could see the thirty or so inhabitants packing up what food and supplies they had, no doubt planning to begin the trek to one of the several beams of blue light that could be easily observed, even from their position below the considerable foliage of the pines.

Taking a look around, Robb saw that his prior fears had been well founded, for squalor and a general lack of food and hygiene seemed to have taken over the camp. The nearby slow-moving river had thankfully not dried up. Nor, he noted, did it seem to be contaminated beyond use.

He nodded approvingly. ‘At least they wised up before it was too late.’ They had probably forbidden the bathing and washing in the river that caused the initial devastation to begin with.

The stink arising from the camp, however, seemed to indicate a lack of latrines. Robb wrinkled his nose. Though at this point, he probably wasn’t the picture of hygiene either. Donny spotted him first, jogging to him with a halfway decent grin.

“Hey Robb, welcome back!” He gestured back towards the camp. “We’re packing up the camp right now. Planning to head to one of the beacons to get some supplies.” He snapped his fingers. “Ah! How’d your scouting go? Find a way out?”

Robb froze for a second. ‘Damn! Forgot that was my excuse to leave in the first place.’ He gave his impression of a disappointed smile. “I didn’t find a way out-”

Donny held up his hand. “Hold on, I just realized it’s best for you to tell the entire camp at once.” He cupped his hands over his mouth, “HEY GUYS, ROBB’S BACK!” He waved a couple of the closer individuals to them.

A couple minutes later, the camp had congregated near the two men, their eyes alight with expectation and hope. Robb shook his head at them, doing his best to look remorseful.

“I couldn’t find anything. It seems like this pine forest just extends in every direction for miles.” He pointed a thumb at the direction where he had ventured out. “At least, one or two days of travel out that way won’t get you out of here.”

Of course, this was the outcome he had assumed ever since seeing those notifications at the start of this whole mess. But these were office workers, likely lacking the, ah, cultural enlightenment that LitRPGs represented.

Moe stepped out in front of the crowd. He emitted the same odor as the rest of the camp, though something was still off putting about him, even in this diminished state. No longer were his clothes unwrinkled and his smile inscrutable, but his brown eyes, flecked with red, still seemed to bore a hole through Robb’s head.

At his side stood Jess. The government official turned novice… survivalist? Anyway, she appeared by his side almost immediately. ‘Interesting.’ When he spoke, she seemed to cling onto every word.

The beautiful man made a show of welcoming Robb back. “You’re just in time! We’re just packing up to make the trip to the nearest beacon.” His perfect features molded themselves into a sheepish smile. “As you can see, we’ve more or less exhausted the resources here.”

Turning back to the camp, Moe looked back at Robb. “You coming?”

Robb felt the inexplicable urge to punch him in his perfect teeth.

[3:12:25]

#####

He could almost taste the blood in the air. He yearned for it. To see the scarlet liquid fount from any source was… tantalizing (red). Such was life.

After all, even in the singular process of bloodletting, there was so much nuance, (red) so many interesting details in which a being could immerse themselves evermore in revelry.

He licked his lips with an elongated tongue. He was a mutation. Unwelcome even in the ranks of the beasts above.

The black was limited. It came from the skittering queens in the below grounds. Yet it was so utterly, utterly fascinating.

Perhaps that was the reason for its rarity. For the black did not flow as the other colors and flavours flowed. It splattered, painting itself against any nearby surface. Simply impossible to retrieve in large quantities.

So scarcely harvested was the black that he almost expected its holders to conserve their lives, to sell themselves as dearly as they could for the cold, unfeeling terrain they fought for.

Of course, they never did.

In the night time, when the moon shone brightly over the hallowed woods, he would fly out, in search of sustenance in the woods, ever full of beautiful life.

The above grounds were a beautiful thing, much greater in scope and variety. Here, the countless colors warred with one another for… whatever it was that these fools fought for.

Every variety of blood was to be found here. Green, red, blue, purple. It was beautiful. He had arrived now, catching sight of a dead green, still bleeding out on the ground.

He was but a humble bat, seeking sustenance in the blood-rich above ground wars, but he still got his own notifications. A normal thing, even for him, if a bit rare.

[The beacons have arrived. Travel to the light to find your prey]

Such were the thoughts and feelings of a being, shaped by the System that had configured its very existence to evoke as much terror and pain as possible. Such was life here, and such was the nature of all such monsters.

The bat landed to drink the green that founted forth. A rumbling laugh sounded from behind him. The little monster, panicked, tried to take flight.

The big green had caught sight of him, and the bat could feel cold, deadly hands reach around his wings.

With a motion, his wings snapped off. Dead in but a two second exchange. Such was the nature of the Tutorial.

[1:25:00]