The dungeon was not that far from the cabin, less than a mile. He stared at the structure before him then shook his head. “Seriously? They call this a dungeon? It looks like a dilapidated shopping mall.”

The message screen popped up again and he could not help but laugh when his suspicion was confirmed. “Forgotten mall, huh?”

Scott followed the prompts that the screen sent out. First, he checked the immediate surroundings from the outside. This shopping mall had few exterior windows, so stealth surveillance was not an issue. When he did come to a window he was cautioned to move carefully.

He peeked through the window briefly, saw nothing, and then crawled past it to avoid being seen if he had missed anything. There was little of interest outside of the mall at first, but he did find one thing that unsettled him. It was a corpse!

“What the hell?” Scott inspected the dead body and saw multiple claw and bite marks. It was like a thousand tiny animals had worked it over. It was badly decayed. He could not tell if it was a woman or a man. He could not even tell if it had been human!

He nearly left the corpse where it was, but he remembered something from before. “Identify.”

The corpse became illuminated in red light for a moment. Several smaller points of light appeared in different locations on the body. Scott held his nose closed and leaned down to check them out. He found eighteen copper coins, a small dagger, a pistol, and a piece of paper.

He held the pistol up and stared at it. Since the memory upload he had known that this world had guns. However, he also knew that they were rarely used by anyone outside of city patrols and professional militias. They were considered weapons with little use outside of hunting weak monsters or fighting low-level bandits.

“Eight shots left, a thirty-eight caliber pistol. Hmm, only an attack power of one hundred forty? Even a rock was attack power one.” The idea that a thirty-eight caliber pistols only produced a little over one hundred forty times the power of a simple rock was not an easy one to accept.

He considered the weapon for a moment then placed it into his inventory. It could break with a few more uses and he had little ammunition. It would need to be used sparingly for emergencies. The knowledge that he had acquired told him that a weapon with an attack rating of 140 would be suitable for use till around level forty or so. Properly equipped weapons usually needed to be in a range of 3-4 attack points per level to remain useful.

The sheet of paper turned out to be the words for a basic torchlight spell. Scott followed the instructions and held up his hand, palm up. “Gather here, spirits of the sun. Dance above my hand. Bring light to the darkness.”

Nothing happened, not that he had expected that it would. It would be too simple to be able to cast a spell solely because he knew the words.

The message screen had other ideas, however. He read the information that it provided then he smirked. “Now that’s convenient.”

Since he had chosen to take the dungeon exploration option he would be granted this spell for free. Normally, he would need a real spell-book, actual training, or something similar to use a spell. He gained the torchlight creation spell immediately afterward.

“Oh, so that’s what I did wrong.” Now that he knew the spell, he knew how it operated. It could not be used in broad daylight. He would have to use it in a darker area. It was still too easy, but it was a game world so who was he to judge?

Scott walked away from the disgusting corpse then remembered to check his knew knife. The blade proved to have an attack power of twenty-seven, and a durability of eighteen. He kept it out despite having no dedicated knowledge of using a knife. It was still stronger than his natural unarmed combat skill. That skill relied on raw strength as the base, so even with his ten percent bonus he only had an attack power of eleven.

He quickly slid into the dungeon entrance and looked around. There were no immediate threats, but it was darker inside. He tried his light spell again. This time, the spell activated and took twenty points of his mana with it. He had no other use for it right now, but the sheer amount of mana that it took was a cause for concern. The spell lasted only ten minutes per use, after all. Even if he rested, that would give him one hour of exploration time at most.

The sphere of light that he created drifted upward and hovered several feet above his head. The shadows fled wherever the man walked. The ancient shopping mall was not a particularly large structure. He found no monsters, and it seemed like there was nothing left to scavenge.

After a half hour of wandering, a new message screen popped up. It congratulated him on successfully navigating the entire dungeon. He gained twenty EXP, and an additional point of faith. Why he gained faith from wandering in a shopping mall was anyone’s guess. Still, it was not bad. He’d gained two new weapons, a little money, and light spell from the corpse outside. The inside was empty, but the trip was not a total bust. The weapons were only a rusty knife and a battered baseball bat. Neither seemed to be worth much, but they were loot.

He left the Forgotten Mall and went back to the cabin. He ate dinner and rested for a few minutes to completely recharge his mana. Normally that would take much longer, but the nature of the cabin and the tutorial sped the process up greatly.

“Lessee, I could go learn about survival skills. There is also the magic tutorial, the pet tutorial, mapping skills, and capturing monsters.”

Scott considered the choices then chose to learn survival skills first. If he was going to be living in this game world soon, he would need to be able to survive.

The arrow led to a small clearing. Message screens began to pop up. They instructed him on the basics of starting a fire, first aid for minor injuries, foraging for edible plants and insects, and simple weapons or armor maintenance. He also learned how to fish, set traps for small game, and cook. There were many minor things that were also mentioned such as purifying water, and blazing a trail. When he was done he was granted the skills: survival lore, first aid, cooking, fishing, trapping, and camping.

“Man that was a lot of stuff to learn.” Now that he had the skills, though, he remembered everything that he had been taught. That was weird but useful.

The mapping tutorial was fairly straight-forward. He acquired a mapping skill that automatically generated a map for him to call up. Whenever he entered a new area, the map would automatically fill-in as he wandered around.

The magic tutorial was interesting, but very short. He followed the arrow to the proper location and read a book on magic. Rather, he started to read the book and it dissolved into a stream of light that pierced his body then automatically uploaded the necessary basic skills. He now had a mana manipulation skill to work with, and understood the basics of magical energy usage.

Roughly two hours had passed and he had nearly finished the available tutorials. The only ones left were pets and monster capturing. He chose the pet tutorial.

The pet tutorial arrow led him to yet another clearing. However, in this one there sat three pedestals. Each pedestal had a book sitting upon it. He read each book when instructed, and learned how to tame, train, and increase the level of pets.

A new message popped up asking if he would like to summon a pet from the monster world. Scott shrugged. The information seemed a little odd to him regarding pets, especially the part about intimacy levels. Still, he could use a little furry mascot. “Yes.”

The arrow popped up and led him to a small altar nearby. “I have to place an item on the altar that is of the family of monster that I wish to summon?”

He did not really have anything from a monster except for that piece of dragon-turtle shell. Uncertain if it would work, Scott placed the shell onto the altar. A new message popped up. He read it aloud. “This item will require four levels of experience to be expended in order to summon a pet.”

“What? Are you serious? These things are only supposed to require a small amount of experience!” The information he had learned, claimed that the power level of a summoned pet would be based on the amount of experience required. Most required one hundred experience points or less, but four levels worth of experience, was many times that amount for him at present. Four levels… what kind of monster would this thing summon?

“Yes, go ahead.” They were only levels after all. He could gain them back. He might not have a chance to get a strong pet again for a while.

He could feel the strength rapidly drain from his body. His attributes dropped by four points each. He felt weaker, less substantial. It would have been hard for him to describe it beyond that. At least he was still at a low-level. The cost was not that high.

When the experience drain stopped, the scale began to glow. Soft, whimsical music began to play in the background. It shifted then transformed into a small spherical crystal with a strange runic design floating in the center.

Scott reached out and took the little marble. “What’s this?”

He used his identification skill and discovered that it was a monster capture sphere that was designed specifically for dragon type monsters. “Wait, it’s empty? I just used up four levels for an empty ball!”

He was all set to start a tirade about the idiocy of such a system but a new message screen popped up. After reading through it he understood what had happened.

Scott raised the sphere then nodded. “I guess I know what my beginning class will be, then.”

The spheres could only be activated by monster trainers. They were people who specialized in capturing and training pet class monsters. He would have preferred a more direct combat oriented class, but it was not like this one would prevent him from developing those skills. If anything, bonding with monsters would increase his stats.

“You know, it’s kind of weird, though. It was like this tutorial was set up to herd me toward this class. Ah well, I’m getting paid to be here and it’s fun anyway.”

Scott went back to the cabin and chose to take the monster capturing course. After following the arrow to an open field outside the forested area he was greeted to the site of a large number of dragon-turtles. A new message screen popped up. “I see. If I defeat enough monsters of a similar race a boss monster might appear. It might not always happen in the actual world, but here it will work without fail.”

He stopped talking to himself for a moment then felt mildly embarrassed. Speaking his thoughts aloud was a nervous habit. Scott had spent a lot of his time alone in one way or another. During his tenure in the army he was stuck on staff duty frequently. He’d often be the only one awake since the lieutenant and the other soldier on duty would often find a way to take a nap. Honestly, even when other people were around he had felt alone most of his life.

Talking to himself was a way to vent his frustrations and work out ideas. Some people had thought he was not quite right in the head, but he liked to hear his thoughts spoken aloud.

The world was too real, though. He did not mind hunting or fishing for food, but killing random wild animals for fun and profit disturbed him. Scott knew on an intellectual level that he would have to get over that sentiment. This was only a game right?

Dragon-turtles were slow monsters. They did not seem very aggressive either. This was good for Scott since he was unarmed and wore no armor. He did not want to risk damaging the few weapons that he had acquired since they were all fairly close to breaking.

He heard a hiss to his left. Scott turned quickly and saw a dragon-turtle that had somehow snuck up on him. He needed to pay attention.

The turtle monster lunged at him, but it was even slower than the one he had fought before. He missed his first opportunity to flip it onto its back, but the next time it attacked he succeeded in knocking it down. These turtles were not very strong opponents at this point.

Scott picked up the handful of coins that it dropped and stuck them into his inventory. There was no piece of shell to retrieve this time.

Slowly, he moved beyond his indecisive and passive nature and began to lure turtles toward him one or two at a time. His timing was not perfect. Sometimes a lunging monster would manage to tag him on the shoulder, or they would only jump a short distance and lash out with their tails. Scott learned to move out of the way during short jumping attack sequences. The tails hurt quite a bit despite their small size. It was like being whipped with a leather belt.

Several hours passed and he gained two levels in the process. After a rest period he went back to work. He lost track of the number of dragon-turtles he had defeated, but it didn’t matter. He would only be able to force a boss monster to spawn if he killed enough of them.

He still did not know how that worked. Where did they spawn from? Were they created from thin air? He knew they respawned after being defeated, but the mechanics of it escaped him.

Scott defeated one more turtle then started to collect his loot. A bright light suddenly erupted a few feet from his location then coalesced into a surprisingly human form.

He stared openly at the new arrival. She was stunning! She had glossy red hair, bright green eyes, and a body that could not have been the product of nature. Scott could not believe what he saw. No woman could look that perfectly fit and yet have curves like that!

She looked at him then smirked. “Seriously? You’re the idiot who’s got these little guys in a snit?”

“They’re in a snit?”

“Well, yeah. You keep killing them and forcing them to respawn! How would you like it if they went to a human area and killed your people willy-nilly?”

Scott felt sick to his stomach. He knew it was a game, but this was ridiculous. How could he allow himself to act like that!