I

The next morning came quickly… too quickly. Eva felt the sting of the light on her eyes and struggled to get up. Hideki was already long gone. The Russian couple were as lively as ever, and Sadiya seemed to be enjoying herself while cooking breakfast.

“'Morning,” she said. “Where'd Hideki run off to this early?”

“Early?” Sadiya said. “Dawn was three hours ago!”

“I'm here,” Hideki said as he walked over from behind a shelter.

“Want to do the Novice✦ version of the dungeon this afternoon?”

“Sure. After the monster wave.”

“Monster wave?”

“When the monsters come. It’s what the System calls it, anyway.”

“Oh. Sure. That's the best way to get experience, it seems.”

“You're telling me!”

“Oh, how's Light coming along?”

“It was up to 4 last night. I've been tinkering with it this morning. According to the description, it deals light damage when it hits something, so I’ve been practicing my aim as my mana allows. It's up to 6 already. When you told me that Skills get new modifiers at each tier, I wanted to see that for myself.”

“Well, I hope you can soon. Maybe the Novice✦ dungeon can drop more things like that?”

“Hmm.”

“Before it gets too late, we should really go tell the council about the dungeon we found.”

Hideki followed Eva on the way to the center of the camp. Now that it was daytime, the bustle of people made it fairly difficult to get to the center. There were many councilors sitting around the fire that she didn’t recognize. As they arrived, a couple of the councilors took notice of the two.

“Good morning,” Eva said in her best customer service voice.

One of the councilors came over to her. He was dressed in a dirty white button down shirt with black slacks and a black belt. Shiney shoes completed his look.

“Good morning,” the man said back. “Who are you?”

“I am Eva, the one who brought the landwalker corpse yesterday.”

“Thank you for that. The discussions were a lot of fun. I'm Adam, by the way.”

“Good to meet you Adam. Hideki and I were talking to some other survivors, and they found something that would be helpful for the village before they joined. There's a dungeon full of monsters to fight a few miles from here. I went to scout it with Hideki yesterday, and their information was accurate.

“I was hopeful that it wasn’t a one time thing, and it turns out that it isn’t. I don’t know how often it refreshes, but there are multiple difficulties to choose from. We’re going there again this afternoon. You should send teams to train by fighting the monsters there. That way we have defenders who know what they're doing and can stop landwalkers from trampling us if there are a lot of them out there.”

“I think that's a good idea. I'll talk with the others and see who I can send with you as an experiment. It’ll take a couple of hours, so why don't you meet by the front gate at, let's say, 26:00:45? That'll be enough time to get yourselves and a couple of others packed and ready to go.”

“Thanks, Adam,” Eva said. “I would recommend a team of four or five to go with us. We’ll get them started, and they can pass on what they learn to other groups.”

“I’ll see what I can do now that the walls are complete and most of the housing has been built.” Adam agreed.

II

Hideki left to go train more while Eva wanted to trade. She had some of the shards from the expedition into the dungeon. Those had to be worth something, right? There was a fairly obvious section of the village near the entrance that had turned into the de facto marketplace. She decided to peruse the offerings.

Most of the things for trade were monster hides or scavenged metal goods. There was the occasional tool that had been with someone when the Tutorial started. What she was after was something a bit less common. It had been difficult to navigate the dungeon by scratching the ground, so she was hoping to find a notebook and a pen to make creating a map easier. Even if the items were expensive in terms of shards, she’d be able to complete the dungeon faster if she had a map. That was especially true if it turned out that the layouts changed between tiers and every time she entered.

Scouring the marketplace for nearly an hour, she finally stumbled on what she had been looking for. The person looking to trade didn't have that many items on him, and it looked like he was just setting up after someone else had finished trading for the day.

He was a man about her height with tanned skin and dark wavy hair. He wore a ratty pair of jeans and a t-shirt with a band’s logo emblazoned on it.

“Excuse me,” she said.

“How can I help you?”

“I'm interested in the notebook there. Do you have a pen to go with it?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want for it?” she asked.

“What are you willing to trade?”

“Well, I got a couple of interesting items I came across.”

Eva pulled out two Basic Augmentation Shards▲ and showed the man.

“What are those?”

“You can give items effects, like added agility. These will turn a Basic▲ item into a Novice✦ one with one effect.”

“Not bad. Do you know how to use them?”

“Of course. If you accept these, I'll explain how to do it.”

“Hmm. Do you have anything else?”

“I've got one Novice✦ version. Does the same thing, I think.”

“You think?”

“My Observe▲ is too low, so I can't say for sure, but it's got the same name, just Novice✦ rather than Basic▲.”

“Ok. I'll take one Basic▲ and the Novice✦ for the notebook and pen, ok?”

“That's fine by me,” Eva accepted.

She took back the other Basic▲ shard and explained to the man how to use them to upgrade equipment. Afterwards, they stashed the newly acquired notebook and pen into her backpack.

It had been most of what she’d found, but it wasn’t like she had much else to trade—the weapons and armor went to the guards and defenders. The shards were powerful, but they were also an unknown item. It was probably a bad deal for her, but getting the notebook and pen would give her more flexibility for the dungeon and it was worthwhile now. It’s not like people were going to be making more notebooks and pens during the Tutorial! Plus, Eva knew where she could get more shards if she wanted to use them for herself.

Not being able to see anything better than basic information—and being unable to see information on anything too many levels above her own—really put an emphasis on raising Observe▲ to novice sooner rather than later. As there were around three hours before the daily fight, she decided to spend that time Observing▲ everything. There was a minimal mana cost to doing that, but the mana mostly refilled in that time. If she happened to be short before the fight, she could always Meditate▲.

III

Choose a Novice rank upgrade for Observe▲

Hide level from beings of the same rank or lower

Show weaknesses of being of a lower tier

Show quality of items

Reduce mana consumption by 1%

Eva chose the quality option. Hiding her level was pointless at this stage, and there was nothing of a lower tier than she was since her species had changed rather than her being of a higher tier than others.

Novice Observe✦ Lv 1

Costs 1 mana to use

Show level of beings up to your level plus 11

Reveal all items of Novice tier or below and any directly related items of a higher tier of something already known

Reveal special items with two or fewer effects

Show quality of items

Eva still had an hour to spare before the monsters came. Basic▲ Skills really were just that easy to progress! Since most people were aware that there would be a fight every day in the early afternoon, there had been a lot more preparation done to prepare defenses for future attacks.

The guards had begun to dig a ditch several feet away from the wall. It was slow going but faster than one would expect in a survival situation like they were in. The ditch covered around a quarter of the wall, and was dug primarily in the areas where there were few guards in the hopes that it would funnel the monsters to where they could be more easily slaughtered. Near the entrance of the town, there were short segments of spiked logs to slow and direct enemies while still being within reach of the defenders spears and projectiles.

There were more defenders that day than before. The call had gone out for everyone that was not occupied by cooking or crafting to defend the village. Not everyone obeyed the order—many were still in shock from the suddenness and brutality of the Tutorial. Others were focused on producing equipment for the new fighters. The conscripted defenders were poorly armed. Most had spears but some had slings instead. Several of the guards had freshly made bows. They weren't of terribly good quality, and the arrows were without tips or fletching, but they would work well enough as long as the enemy was close and numerous.

Eva spent the last of her time preparing and securing the shield to her arm as best she could before Meditating▲. When there were five minutes left, she got up and joined the front of the formation. There was no way she was going to pass up experience and free equipment!

IV

There are 26 days remaining

7749/10000 are still alive

New Quest: Defeat a monster wave. 0/1628 killed

Less had died in the previous day than in prior days, thankfully. It looked like humanity was beginning to establish itself. If she were a betting woman, Eva would have said that there were three or four more villages like the one she was defending out there somewhere doing much of what they had been. Contacting them and diplomacy were things for the council to deal with. She detested dealing with politics.

It took time for the first monsters to appear. When they did, it was clear why. The enemies that day were slimes. They were slow and poorly organized—so poorly that they actually hindered themselves in their slow rush towards the humans. As the slimes approached, the archers and slingers took pot shots at them. The slingers did little damage, but each hit by an archer did significant damage. Slimes were weak to being pierced, after all, and the arrows really drove that point home.

With no projectiles of her own, Eva was stuck waiting for the slimes to arrive since she did not want to get hit by an errant arrow. Ever so slowly, the still living slimes kept coming. When they arrived, she knew it would be an endless wave of them. At least, that's how it would feel. Observe✦ told her these slimes were in the 4-5 range for levels. Killing a couple of hundred of them would let her level up. Probably.

Finally—when the slimes were within range—Eva stepped out and began her assault. Due to the difference in stats—coupled with the levels she had in Swords★—her normal attacks did plenty of damage to kill in one hit. Slimes—for all their potential—were really stupid creatures. They had only a couple modes of attack—drowning or bashing. Neither were particularly effective as long as the one fighting them didn't tire too much to dodge.

She slashed and stabbed her way into the slime army. Once in a while, she would catch a glimpse of a beefier opponent among them. These were the giant slimes—giant being relative, of course. They went down in only a couple of slashes, netting her around five times as much experience as the smaller ones. The only issue is that there weren't all that many of them.

The other defenders had an easier time than they'd had against the goblins. Many sallied out like Eva had, so there was a lot less of a chance she might get overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the slimes. Gradually, though, the effort of fighting drained her stamina, and she was forced to Meditate▲ for a few minutes before rejoining the slaughter.

Although the slaughter was very one-sided, there were a few deaths on the side of the defenders. Those that died did so because they got tired and made a mistake or they pushed too far forward and got surrounded. Even then, that number was fairly small.

When Eva rejoined the fight, the slimes began to pull back. From the edge of the clearing came a much larger slime. This one towered above the rest. A slime king complete with a crown on its head. She was unable to see its level, making it at least level 14. That was the opponent she was looking for. Even though it was the 'boss' of the wave, it wouldn't be a hard fight for her. Based on Skills and Stats, she could probably take on monsters around twenty levels above her and kill them with only minor injuries. The Training she'd been through was no joke.

Eva cut her way towards the slime king. When she was close enough, she Charged✦. There were slimes between her and the king, but they fell swiftly. Soon, there was a small opening surrounding the two combatants. Eva smiled. She didn't fully enjoy fighting or pain or any of that, but she did like the feeling of accomplishment from killing monsters like heroes did in video games.

An air Infused★ Pierce✦ cut deeply into the slime, causing a gush of transparent, blue fluid from the wound. Eva jumped back and Dodged✦ the slamming attack the king did. As simple as the basic slimes were, the king showed some intelligence even if calling it 'intelligence' was mildly insulting to intelligent life everywhere. She ignored a notification she got after Dodging✦ and slashed into the king slime again. This time, however, the slime caught fire. Even though she had Infused★ air into her shortsword, the slime was burning!

Eva hastily made her escape from the burning monster. The flamethrower effect on each of the wounds was spectacularly scary. The blaze quickly spread to the other slimes. As each subsequent slime caught fire, a raging inferno formed. The burning slimes would eventually pop like miniature napalm bombs with their insides sticking to—and torching—everything around them.

The defenders followed Eva's lead and hid behind the gate for safety. Thankfully for the humans, the fire spread almost too quickly. It hit most of the slimes and left a field of burning wreckage that did not quite reach the front lines. The already dead slimes didn't catch fire for whatever reason, but their bodies did char from the intense heat. Within ten minutes, the fires had burned out, and the remaining slimes were hunted down.

Congratulations on completing the quest!

Top contributors:

Eva Greene

Mo Fan

Pradip D'Aramitz

Li Po

Wu Guanyu

Crescens Kalniņš

Karolina Hummel

Alexei Michailovich

Sumit Nandi

Nikita Crnčević

Bryan Pierce

Cillín Tarpinian

Fang Min

Swapnil Anker

Sabah Mac Duibhshíthe

Ela Seppänen

Zoran Losnedahl

Reward: Double experience to the top contributors, 163 experience to all others. First place receives a Belt★. Second place receives a Spear★.

Eva spent the large influx of experience to raise all of her Stats and then reviewed her stats. Once she'd gathered all of her gear together, she would go with Hideki to the dungeon to try the higher difficulty versions. Of course, she needed to choose what to do with Dodge✦. In the end, that decision was rather easy. Having the Stats stick around for a bit after avoiding an attack would give her an edge in more difficult fights. Getting that now would give it time to grow as she leveled the Skill.

Journeyman Dodge★ Lv 1

Increase Agility by 21% when avoiding attacks

Increase Dexterity by 11% when avoiding attacks

Boosted Stats remain for 0.1 seconds after dodging successfully

Name: Eva Greene

Species: Human I (Modified)

Class: None

Level: 5

Experience: 8

Health: 437

Regen: 4.6/min

Stamina: 437

Regen: 46/min

Mana: 552

Regen: 46/min

Strength: 52.5

Cost: 48 Exp

Dexterity: 46.5

Cost: 47 Exp

Agility: 50.6

Cost: 47 Exp

Endurance: 46

Cost: 47 Exp

Wisdom: 48

Cost: 47 Exp

Acuity: 46

Cost: 47 Exp

Intelligence: 47

Cost: 47 Exp

Willpower: 46

Cost: 47 Exp

Vitality: 46

Cost: 47 Exp

Perception: 46

Cost: 47 Exp

Skills/Spells: Throwing▲: 3, Polearms▲: 6, Unarmed▲: 4, Swords★: 4, Shields★: 2, Charge✦: 7, Infuse Weapon★: 3, Medium Armor✦: 1, Pierce✦: 4, Air Resistance★: 3, Fire Resistance★: 2, Earth Resistance★: 2, Water Resistance★: 3, Dodge★: 1, Poison Resistance★: 4, Meditation▲: 3, Observe✦: 1, Human Language✹, First Aid▲: 1

Titles:

Equipment: Chain Hauberk▲ (Medium Armor), Steel Helmet▲, Shortsword★, Shield▲, Magister's Emerald Ring✹, Boots of the Traveler✦, Belt★