I

Eva awoke to Sadiya shaking her shoulder. She yawned and rubbed the fog from her eyes. The rest she had gotten was not nearly enough for her to feel alert, but she was awake enough to be aware of where she was: the Tutorial. Her heart leapt. Was there an attack?

“Anything happen?” she asked the woman, brushing the leaves from her body and grabbing her gear.

Sadiya shook her head. Eva breathed a sigh of relief.

“Ok. Get some rest.”

Eva sat next to the fire while waiting for the man to get up. The smell of woodsmoke dominated her senses. There was a sizable pile of dry wood near the fire, but not so close that it would catch fire if left unattended. There would be no need for her to go looking for wood in the dark, so she could focus on watching their surroundings.

Eventually, the man stumbled into the light of the fire and sat down. He yawned loudly.

“Hey,” she called to him quietly after they’d been sitting in silence for some time.

The man looked over at her with a dull expression.

“What’s your name?”

“Hideki,” he answered.

“I’m Eva.”

He nodded.

She knew that seeing someone die right in front of him would be a difficult subject to talk about, but getting him to open up was the path towards healing that he would need. Eva felt awful about the situation; and at the same time, she felt an intense need to comfort him because he reminded her of a teddy bear. He was—on the surface at least—everything her ex was not, and she was even more interested in him for it.

“So what happened to you before the Tutorial came?”

Hideki took a long time before he spoke.

“I was walking home with some friends after karaoke when I appeared here. I tried to save her, I really did.”

He began to cry. Eva slid next to the man and wrapped an arm around him. She considered her next words carefully before deciding that the truth would be better than the lies she’d told the other two. It could just have been that he was pouring his emotions out, but there was something about Hideki that was magnetic.

“I knew the Tutorial was coming a couple minutes before it happened. I had something like a dream where I had to fight monsters or die trying for weeks, but that ended only a handful of minutes before the Tutorial started. The gear I’ve been wearing came from that dream world. I know it sounds crazy—and it is crazy—but there’s no other way I can explain it without sounding even crazier.”

They sat in silence for a while.

“So the stuff you’re wearing is—is real?”

She nodded.

“Did you learn anything in the dream world that would be useful?”

“Not much. I spent the majority of the time trying—and failing—not to die.”

A shiver ran up her spine just remembering the previous month.

“The main thing was that I should be on the lookout for dungeons, that they would be important. The only other thing—besides learning how to fight monsters—was that there would be invaders that are trying to take over Earth in the Tutorial as well. I picked up a few Skills along the way, and gained some Stats, too, but those are more practical things.”

“I see. Could you tell me some more about the Skills and the Stats? I remember reading stories that follow a similar pattern to what we’re going through. Knowing more might give me some ideas that could help us survive. Plus, I really enjoy figuring out these kinds of things”

He laughed quietly.

They discussed the System over the next couple of hours. Eva learned that Hideki heard her speaking Japanese, which he found strange. They eventually came to the conclusion that Human Language✹ was doing the translation for them into their native tongue so smoothly that she hadn’t even paused to consider that the people she’d run into had been from different parts of the world.

After they finished talking, he borrowed her sword to fashion a sharp tip onto an extra pole that had been gathered for building the shelters. He hardened the tip of the green wood in the fire and handed back her sword.

II

Not long before dawn, Eva turned her head and focused. Moments later, she heard the sound again. It was far away, but it was getting closer each time she heard it until she could hear it continuously.

“I hear someone screaming and running this way,” she told Hideki.

She stood up and drew her shortsword while listening for the approaching people. Hideki grabbed his spear and joined her. She shifted back slightly to protect the two sleeping nearby.

As the screams got closer, she could eventually make out several shadowy figures. Two of them looked vaguely human while the rest were bestial. The forms were drawing closer to the fire, and they would soon be in the flickering light.

Eva took the chance to use Observe▲ on the two human shadows in the lead.

???, Human Lv 0

???, Human Lv 1

A look at the shadows behind them exposed the situation.

Shadow Wolf Lv 4

Young Shadow Wolf Lv 2

Basic Observe▲ now level 3

The two humans—a man and a woman around her age—dashed into the light of the fire. A quick glance at them revealed that both were rather underdressed for the environment. The guy wore a t-shirt and boxers, while the woman just had a knee length pajama dress. Their clothing was ripped and blood dripped from the deep scratches below. Eva guessed the injuries were from the environment rather than the wolves. The shadow wolves darted into the firelight moments later. Hideki ran to guard the scared couple while she engaged the monsters.

Eva sprang into action, Charging✦ the wolves. Going with the idea that using the opposite element would inflict the most damage, she Infused★ her blade with light and swung at the first wolf in her range. The shining sword cut through the wolf like it was paper. The next cut killed another wolf. Then another. And another. There were nearly ten wolves that had been chasing the two. Most were the normal shadow wolf, with a few young shadow wolves tagging along. There was no 'alpha shadow wolf' like she half expected to see.

The fight drained most of her mana and left her seeing afterimages of her sword. When she could see clearly enough to move without tripping over everything, she walked over to check on the newcomers.

“Are you ok?” Hideki asked them.

“We are now,” the man replied.

“Thank you,” the woman said to Eva upon seeing her arrive.

Eva nodded her head at the thanks.

“So what happened?” Hideki wondered.

“You mean besides waking up in the middle of nowhere with a box telling me to survive?” the man asked. “Well, after that rude awakening, we tried searching for others and for food.”

The two glanced at each other before he continued.

“Finding no food, we then looked for water, but ran into some assholes that made a pass at my wife. We left quickly, but it got dark. There were wolves howling in the darkness, so we ran away from them. But they came after us. We're so glad to have found your camp. Thank you!”

By this point, Rob was awake enough to join the group. Sadiya was still in dreamland.

“I'm Hideki. This is Rob, and Eva. The one sleeping over there is Sadiya. Welcome to our camp.”

“I'm Boris and my wife here is Irina.”

“Russian?” Eva asked.

“Yeah. You sound Russian too.”

“I’m American and Hideki is Japanese. I think it's something to do with that Human Language✹ Skill we all got. You sound like you're from California to me.”

Neither Boris nor Irina said anything more. They both looked like they were processing what had happened with the wolves coupled with the fact that they were in a fairly random group from all over the world. Boris sat down by the fire and Irina joined him.

“We don't have any food,” Hideki said, “but we have water from the nearby stream.”

The two greedily drank from the metal water bottle after he offered it. Sadiya was stirring when the sun cracked the horizon. Eva felt both hunger and thirst grip her after the long night. Her attention turned to the wolf corpses. Maybe their meat was delicious? She trotted over to that part of the camp.

There were wolf parts strewn all over. She'd done quite a lot of damage to them in short order—that much was obvious in the early morning light. The wolves were completely black-furred wolf-like creatures with sharp teeth and long claws. The smell of their still dripping blood was unavoidable. Under the fur there was flesh. Eva used her sword to hack off the skin of a section of one of the wolves and dragged it over to the fire. With Rob's help—and a few disgusted glances from Sadiya—she managed to spear a few strips of the meat with sharpened sticks and hang them over the coals.

When the outside was crisp—and the inside cooked—she took a kebab for herself and passed others around. Even Sadiya reluctantly ate some. The taste was passable, but hunger made it seem like the greatest thing in the world. It was better than she thought it would be, but it was tough and gamey nonetheless. With food in her belly, Eva set about carving more strips of meat from the wolves. She did her best to skin the monsters, but was pretty terrible at it. An exasperated Rob took over the butchering duties soon after.

She spoke with the others about what should be done before lunch. Irina volunteered to cook and dry the meat with Boris. Rob and Sadiya went to gather potentially edible herbs, wood for the fire, and building materials for more lean-tos. Eva and Hideki decided to go scouting after making enough wooden spears for the others.

III

“Eva,” Hideki began once they were out of earshot of the rest of the camp. “I saw your sword shining earlier, was that a Skill?”

She nodded.

“Is it something you could teach me?”

“No. It’s some kind of magic Skill. I really have no idea how magic works, only that I can use the Skill. When I learned it, the way to do it was shoved in my head, so it’s not something I would be able to explain.”

“Oh,” he said, looking down.

They walked in silence for several minutes before Hideki spoke again.

“Are there any Skills you could teach?”

“Maybe? I mean, there are plenty of ones that you could go for that aren’t too difficult. With the spear you have, you could get Polearms and Pierce. Polearms boosts any weapon of that category, while Pierce helps with getting through armor. They’re pretty self-explanatory, I think.”

“I see. Any others?”

“There are resistance Skills and armor Skills that wouldn’t be too difficult to obtain if it weren’t for the fact that you’d need to get injured as part of the process. As best as I can tell, anything you think might be a Skill probably is, like Meditation, for example.

“Hopefully that’s helpful,” Eva shrugged. “Maybe you can figure out more of what’s going on and enlighten me. It’s all too much for me to work on while trying to survive.”

“Ok,” Hideki nodded. “That sounds like fun, honestly.”

He had a few more pointed questions to ask as they walked. Everything from how strong the Stats made her to wondering why her level was only showing as 1 rather than much higher. His Stats were enough to put him at level 1 instead of level 0, but she had nearly three times as many!

Some quick tests proved that the numbers really did tell the story. His 12 Strength couldn’t match her 29 Strength. When he tried pushing her, she found it effortlessly easy to push back with just one arm against his best efforts.

Throughout the morning, they wandered down the stream in search of food that wasn't lupine and anything else they could find along the way. Twenty minutes of walking later, they found a camp. There were three bodies ripped apart by monsters. It looked like they'd tried to light a fire in a pit but had failed. The inhabitants didn't have much on them, clothing included.

Eva and Hideki came across a couple of smaller camps as they searched. Some of those camps were abandoned, while others contained dead bodies from people who didn't survive the night. They were able to pick up some useful items that the dead no longer needed, like a knife and some undamaged clothing, but their expedition wasn’t very fruitful overall.

Just before turning back for the camp, they were ambushed. Hideki was surprised, but Eva could sense them ahead of time thanks to her higher Perception. Out from behind trees came a group of five men. They were younger, and they all had weapons of some kind. Four had knives, while the leader had a handgun. Observe▲ put their levels at 1 or 2. They had either fought monsters for the experience, or they’d killed people. Her money was on the latter, which made her angry.

“Drop your weapons and clothes on the ground,” the leader ordered, pointing his gun their way.

Hideki moved to undress, but Eva stopped him. People were dying from monsters and this was how these assholes were going about life in the apocalypse? She was not having any of this.

“How about 'no',” she retorted.

The leader started to pull the trigger when she Charged✦. She wasn't quick enough to prevent the shot from going off, but her Charge✦ frightened the man enough upset his aim. Eva's sword left its scabbard and tore the man in two—she'd Infused★ it with air for extra lethality. She whipped around on the others, with her blade pointed at them. The shortsword had faint blue currents passing over it just above the surface.

“Drop your weapons or die where you stand,” she ordered.

Two of them men complied, but the other two thought they'd be able to kill her; they were wrong. The two that still lived ran back into the forest. She wasn’t going to chase people who had given up like that. Maybe they’d learn from the experience not to be bandits. Eva got Hideki to take the knives from the ground.

Hideki threw up when he glanced at one of the dead bodies. While killing another human didn't sit right with her either, she was fairly numb to violence already. That they had been scum made it easier, but it still made her angry that there was nothing else she could have done differently.

With the loot from the bandits—which included some more clothes—and the loot they’d already found along the way, they walked slowly on the way back to the camp. They took frequent breaks so she could talk to Hideki and make sure he was ok.