I

Before marching over to the town to destroy the aliens, Eva made her way into the village for some food and rest. The inside of the village had been devastated by the attack. Many of the shelters had been destroyed, and the stench of blood and ash lingered in the air. She walked to the central fire pit where she’d eaten food before only to find it abandoned—the fire tenders having gone to mourn. Most of the meat was petrified to the point of ash, but there were a few pieces that had been far enough away from the fire to turn into jerky. She ate her fill and retired to one of the shelters.

Eva found it hard to sleep. A nervous energy flowed through her, punctuated by flashes of the dead that had been massacred. She was saddened by the villagers who perished, but also felt a small amount of guilt for what she’d done. Her enemies had earned their deaths for what they’d done to her friend, so why did she feel guilty at all? She shook her head and tried to fall asleep despite the distractions. Two hours of rolling on the hard ground without any results, she got up. Tired or not, she was going to finish the fight. Action was the only way she’d settle her heart and finish her revenge.

She walked past the mourners on her way to the ruined fort. As she approached, it was easy to make out; the fires she’d lit still burned, casting long, flickering shadows across the clearing and into the woods beyond. Eva followed the trail that had been beaten into the ground from the marching warriors to the landwalker town.

II

Around the town were brightly burning pyres with landwalkers dancing around. There was a hint of somberness in their celebration of the dead. Eva smiled. They were bunched up and near already-burning fires. A few Fireballs✦ wouldn’t be noticed. With the mana she had, she could do 16 full strength Fireballs✦, or 32 half strength. Knowing how easily her enemies had died only a few hours before, she decided that more distributed pain was better than fewer certain deaths.

Then she considered how to cause the most havoc and destruction. The walls of the town were made from earth, primarily. The buildings inside, by contrast, were built from wood. It was the perfect opportunity to wipe them from existence. Eva grinned and chuckled. The gates were wood and not defended with much of the town outside.

She Snuck▲ towards the gate. There were two guards that she quickly dispatched. They made noise, but with the festivities ongoing, they were ignored. She ignited her sword and burned her way through the gate like she had at the fort.

The inside of the town was quiet, with only the occasional landwalker moving about. Eva Snuck▲ through the streets to scout out the town. Every so often, she had to kill a landwalker that discovered her sneaking about. She knew that these kills would eventually alert what guards there were to her presence, so she would have to do whatever she was going to do quickly and escape.

Near the center of the town she found what she was looking for: a warehouse. It was the largest building she’d seen so far, and it was near or touching several other buildings that would definitely go up in flames if no one was able to put out the flames. She lit several Fireballs✦ and threw them towards the warehouse and nearby buildings, figuring that the more chaos there was, the better. Though the explosions drew a handful of landwalkers, she took care of most of them with a Fireball✦ each. She left as soon as she confirmed the fires had caught.

Eva calmly made her way back to the gate, casually launching a Fireball✦ towards a building or an opportune landwalker every so often as she went. She didn’t care if they saw her now, the damage was already done, and she knew she could escape their clutches easily enough now that she was a tier higher than the landwalkers she was fighting. She had trouble fighting up a tier, but fighting down a tier was closer to taking out the trash than anything else.

A scant few minutes later, she was waltzing out the burning gate. The landwalkers were still dancing or whatever it was they actually did when someone died. Regardless of how silly it looked, all it really meant was that they were still distracted. Eva meant to change that. She still had enough mana for around 25 Fireballs✦.

Quickly and efficiently, she lit and lobbed the Fireballs into disparate groups of landwalkers. Due to the fires burning already, the extra fire wasn’t immediately recognized as being hostile in nature. As a result, the first ten or so of the Fireballs✦ hit home with devastating consequences. The fifteen after were very much hit and miss, with a third being avoided by her intended targets.

Some of the landwalkers had the initial instinct to run towards her, but instead they were overtaken by their comrades running towards the town and safety. She laughed when the first escaping landwalkers reached the mostly burnt gate. The inside of the town was becoming an inferno, with much of the center ablaze and the outer areas filling with smoke.

Eva walked towards the congregating landwalkers while tossing a Fireball✦ every half minute or so as her mana regenerated enough to power the skill. With how bunched they were, it was like shooting fish in a barrel while using a musket—certainly effective even if the rate of Fireball✦ left much to be desired.

The scared and confused aliens pushed their way through the gate into a larger group of landwalkers that were trying to push their way out to escape the flames. The result of this was to simply bunch them up even more. Now, when Eva tossed a Fireball✦ their way, the explosion was enough to kill one or two more than just the Fireball✦ itself.

Soon, she was closing in on the backs of the crush of landwalkers. She Infused★ her sword with fire and Charged★ into the nearest alien. She got three experience notifications from landwalkers that had died somewhere inside the crush from the extra force she’d applied. She got another from liberating the head of the one she’d pushed. Piercing✦ into the crowd a handful of times netted a few more. It also got her a long-overdue notification.

Choose a Journeyman rank upgrade for Pierce✦

Change “Swords” to “Pointed Weapons”

Bypass 0.5% more armor

Increase damage by 1%

Reduce mana consumption by 1%

Eva went with the extra damage, barely giving time to read everything.

Journeyman Pierce★ Lv 1

Pierce with a sword ignoring 21% of armor

Damage armor by 5.5% per strike

Increase damage by 1%

Costs 5 Mana to activate

As soon as the system message was gone, she went back to killing. There had only been a few seconds where she hadn’t been ruthless in her extermination of the invaders. That was a few seconds too long.

Eva fired another Fireball✦ into the crowd with her shield arm and continued to hack and slash her way into the crush. With only ten minutes of effort, she was able to lessen the weight on her side enough that that crowd of landwalkers started moving rather than squeezing. It was time to leave. With a final Fireball at the feet of the fleeing landwalkers, she ran back to the village.

She was feeling a lot better now that she’d done some real damage to them without costing human lives in the process. Ever so often as she ran, she’d get another experience notification. Most of them had modifiers making the actual experience gained miniscule. Others were the full value for what she was used to getting when she killed something directly herself. All in all, the experience was pretty terrible. Her being tier 3 made all the tier 2 kills worth half the value and that was true of all the landwalkers she killed. The experience was good enough for another two stats with a handful left over towards the next stat point.

III

When Eva returned to the village, the pyres had burned to coals and the villagers had returned to their shelters for what remained of the night. She waved to the guards on her way inside the wall. Though many of the shelters had been destroyed, she had an easy time finding an unoccupied one to spend the night in.

She lay down and reflected on the craziness of the past few days. She’d accomplished a lot. She tiered up, took care of the fort, and scattered the landwalkers such that they were unlikely to be a threat again; and yet, she felt the weight of Hideki’s death as well as the villagers who died in the fighting against the landwalkers. She hoped what she’d done would be enough to do right by humanity.

Images of the day’s fighting echoed in her mind. They were haunting but at the same time they sated her lust for vengeance. Again Eva resolved to put one foot in front of the other and get stronger so that no one would pick a fight with her again.

She had the quest from the system to control six dungeons, already a third done. When she awoke, she would see if there was anyone in the village who would have any leads on where the next dungeon would be. If there was no one, she would have to pick a direction to walk in and hope that she ran into something helpful along the way. It wouldn’t be a great plan, but it was better than no plan. Eva’s thoughts echoed in her mind as sleep finally took her. She would never end up in a situation like that again.

IV

When she opened her eyes, it was approaching noon. For needing less sleep compared to usual, staying up for as long as she had with as much action as she’d enjoyed, she really needed to sleep in. Like all the days of the Tutorial that far, the sky was clear with no hints of weather incoming. She could hear the chirping of birds and the buzzing of insects as they made their way about their business. She rolled to her stomach and stood up. She walked with purpose, and a refreshed mind, towards the central fire pit for food.

“Good morning,” she said to one of the cooks, who nodded in return.

Eva grabbed a chunk of roasted meat and sat down. There were a mix of people sitting and chatting while they ate. She recognized a couple of them as councilors, but the rest were people she hadn’t yet met. They were dressed in leather armor that looked worse for wear for the most part, with the occasional pristine piece—no doubt enhanced with self repair. She sat near a couple that had bows and looked more like hunters or trackers than the typical fighters she was used to dealing with when the monster waves came.

“Morning,” she said to them.

“Hey,” one of them—the woman—replied while the other nodded, his mouth full.

“Any news of other towns or villages of people besides ours?”

“None that we’ve met before,” the man answered. “But we saw tracks to the north that looked human-made. I’m not sure if they’re all that recent, but that’s your best bet.”

“Thanks,” she said. She was glad that they’d given the information without asking her motives. She’d rather not spill the beans on the quest she had if she didn’t need to.

Eva asked several others while she ate her meal, but only the hunters had been of any help. She decided she’d check in with Lex, if he survived, and see if he had any ideas. He seemed to be well connected, afterall.

In the daylight, she could really see the devastation wrought to the village. She could also see many of the people busying themselves with repairing the hole in the wall and the towers that had been brought down. Several others were clearing the destroyed shelters and associated firepits. The upside of all the death was the increase in the space everyone left could enjoy within the walls.

The market was set up near the gate as usual, though with fewer stalls than in the past. There were few customers with most of the villagers busy with their work. Near the front, Eva was glad to find Lex’s stall. He had his usual potions and a few other assorted items on display.

“Morning, Lex,” she said when she stopped in front of it.

“Oh, hey Eva,” he answered, looking up from what he was doing.

“Glad you made it through yesterday.”

“You too.”

“I did what I could. Say, do you know of any other towns or villages?”

“No clue. You might want to ask the hunters. They’d know the lay of the land better than anyone else.”

“I tried that. All they told me was ‘north’. Not really easy to work with. I hope I’ll stumble into them.”

“What’s the rush?” Lex asked.

“Got a quest from the system about the dungeons, so I’m going to see if I can complete it before the Tutorial ends in around three weeks. Hopefully it’s not too bad.”

“Oh? That’s interesting! I did hear something about someone causing a kerfuffle at the dungeon a couple days ago, that was you?”

“Yup. It’s technically my dungeon now, but I didn’t put any restrictions on it. It’s as if I don’t own it but I still do according to the system, you know?”

“Mhm. So is there anything I can do for you?”

“Well, I could always use more mana and stamina potions for what I plan on doing. I don’t have much in the way of shards left, so give me what you can for what I’ve got left.”

Eva dumped her remaining basic shards onto the stall’s counter. There were around twenty of them.

“Hmm,” he thought after counting. “I can give you three mana and three stamina for what you brought, will that work for you? They’re the better variety.

She agreed and placed the potions into her backpack. She waved goodbye to Lex and walked through the gate.