They were still a minute or two away from the forward barracks, as Ada had apparently drawn the direwolves pretty far away from it. Karolina felt herself falling behind the group as she checked her status. She wanted to assign her free points right away in case they ran into more monsters.

Status:

Name: Karolina Grant

Level: 15

Race: [Human (F)]

Class: [Monk]

Health: 390/390

Stamina: 380/380

Mana: 390/390

Stats:

Str: 53

End: 38

Dex: 55

Con: 39

Int: 40

Wis: 39

Free Points: 3

Putting her free points into wisdom had certainly paid off for her in her last fight. She had enough mana to cast Mana Armor twice and still briefly use Combat Perception. She decided to continue investing in her mana, so she put her points into wisdom again.

That done, she inspected the rest of her team. She wanted to see how much they had all leveled up from the fight. Ada had only leveled up once, to level thirteen; it seemed that being in a support class was starting to inhibit her leveling when she spent most of her time fighting.

Thomas, on the other hand, had leveled up three times, same as she had. He and Ada were finally at the same level, which would hopefully make him happy.

Selena hadn’t leveled up at all, which didn’t really surprise Karolina. Selena hadn’t participated in the fight, so she wouldn’t have gotten the large amount of experience for defeating the high level enemies. She was still only level nine, one level away from getting her first new skill.

She liked watching her allies get stronger. In addition to how it benefited her, seeing people she cared about embrace their potential just made her happy. And she did care about Selena; it was hard not to like the bubbly girl.

It only took another minute after she finished inspecting everyone before they were in sight of the clearing with the forward barracks in it.

The building itself didn’t look like much. As Ada had said, it was a large wooden building that was about the same size as the lodge. It was in good shape at least, much better than most of the buildings in camp had been originally.

Karolina slowly opened the door, trying to make sure that there were no more monsters left in the building. As far as she knew, they had killed all of the monsters guarding the building, but being cautious couldn’t hurt. She gave the building a quick sweep, and after she was sure that there were no remaining monsters inside she let the rest of the group in.

The barracks had three rooms. The first was a small entry room, with a table and two chairs but not much else of interest. The second was a long room filled with beds that had a partially filled bookshelf and a rack of glass bottles filled with strange liquids along one wall. The third room was in the back, and had only a desk and a locked chest.

Thomas quickly made a beeline for the bookshelf, looking through the titles before picking one up and flipping through it. Ada seemed content to poke around at the glass bottles. Seeing that the main room was covered, Karolina headed for the side room with the chest, Selena following after her.

Upon entering the room, Karolina headed straight for the chest. It seemed the most likely thing in the room to contain valuables. She tried to just rip the lock off of the chest, but that didn’t work even when she tried using Strong Blow to strengthen her muscles. She tried punching the side of the chest to get in that way, but all that got her was a sore hand. The chest seemed unharmed even when she hit it as hard as she could.

Apparently, getting in through force wasn’t going to work. She stood up, hoping that the key for the chest was somewhere else in the building. Just as she was about to start searching, Selena held out a key to her. Apparently she had found it in the desk. Karolina gave her a grateful smile, then unlocked the chest expectantly.

There wasn’t much inside of it: a pair of identical fist-sized blue crystals, a sword that seemed to be made of solid gold, and a clear crystal. Karolina started inspecting the items, curious what they all were.

The first item she looked at was one of the blue crystals.

Paired Communication Crystal (F): A crystal that is magically paired with another. When injected with mana, sound is transmitted from the crystal to its pair.

Those two blue crystals seemed to be a limited version of a magic cellphone. That sounded very useful. If nothing else, it would hopefully ensure that if Ada went off on her own again they would be able to keep in contact. Another way it could be useful was keeping in contact with camp when they went on expeditions like this one. There were lots of possibilities. Having any form of long-distance communication would be a godsend.

She inspected the golden sword next, idly wondering why anyone would make a sword out of gold. It seemed like a unique combination of expensive and useless.

Gilded Sword (F): An ornate sword fit for a king. When held, increases the effectiveness of leadership skills.

This was less useful, at least for her and her friends. As far as she knew, none of them actually had any leadership skills, whatever that meant exactly, and none of them were able to use a sword anyway.

Maybe someone back in camp would find it useful? It seemed tailor-made for someone like Buckley, but it was doubtful that he would actually use it, so she wasn’t sure if she wanted to give it to him.

She inspected the clear crystal next.

Leadership Skill Crystal (F): A single-use crystal that activates leadership potential. When used, ensures that at least one of the skill options for the user’s next skill selection is an appropriate F-rank leadership skill.

This was everything that she had been looking for! She was going to be a leader, and this crystal would help make that a reality. She wasn’t sure what exactly a leadership skill was, but she was pretty sure that it would help her achieve her goal somehow.

Thus far she hadn’t really been making much progress towards becoming leader of the camp. She had been pushing herself to level up and get stronger, and strength did seem necessary in this new world, but she hadn't yet started trying to displace Buckley. Hopefully using this crystal would be the first step.

Now all that they needed to do was to bring all the items back to the main room. She was sure that she could convince everyone that she should get the crystal. Before she could say anything to Selena, however—

"I'll be taking this, thank you very much," Selena said as she reached in and took the skill crystal. She smiled innocently at Karolina as she tucked the crystal into her pocket.

Karolina was speechless. She didn't know what she could even say to that. "What… you can't… no," was all she managed to get out.

"You owe me," Selena said. "I came along on this trip to keep you all safe, and you owe me for that. This is my price."

"No," Karolina said, her voice becoming firmer as she continued. "I do appreciate you coming along, but that doesn't mean we'll just give you whatever you want. You can't just decide to take the crystal, no matter what you feel we owe you. Look, we’ll gather up everything and then decide what everyone should get together, okay?"

Selena fell silent, obviously considering something. Karolina checked out her soul, and almost gasped; it was practically volcanic. This was the angriest she had seen anyone since she had gotten this ability.

After a few seconds, Selena walked towards the open door and closed it with a click. She turned around to face Karolina with a cold expression.

"No. That’s unacceptable. I’m taking the crystal, and you won’t like the consequences if you try to stop me,” Selena said. Her tone was cold and angry; Karolina hadn’t thought that the woman could sound like that.

Karolina let out a deep breath. Who did Selena think she was, saying that Karolina ‘won’t like the consequences’. Who talked like that? She opened her mouth to argue with Selena, but the healer held up her finger before she could say anything.

“Maybe you’re not understanding me. You rely on me for healing, so you rely on me to keep you alive. If you don’t allow me to keep the crystal, I will never heal you or your team again. Do you understand me?" she asked.

Karolina stared at her in shock. The Selena that she knew would never threaten to let her and her friends die. That meant that she must have been pretending to be someone else in every interaction they had ever had. Why? What could she possibly hope to gain?

More important than her disbelief was how she was going to react to Selena’s threat. Looking at Selena’s face and soul made it clear to her that she was willing to follow through on it.

Without regular healing, if she and the rest of her team continued going out into the forest, they would continue to accumulate injuries and probably die. The System did grant some level of regeneration, but it wasn’t anywhere close to being effective enough to completely rely on. If she hadn’t had Selena’s help after the kobold hit her earlier, she didn’t know if she would have healed on her own. And not going out into the forest, hiding away in camp, wasn’t an option.

Was getting the leadership skill crystal, taking her first step towards getting rid of Buckley, really worth all of that? She had to admit that it wasn’t. It definitely wasn’t worth risking their lives over, especially not when she had been having doubts about her goals recently anyway.

“Yes, I understand you,” she said. Hopefully her voice didn’t sound as bitter as she felt. Even though she didn’t really have another choice, capitulating like this still left a bad taste in her mouth.

"Great," Selena smiled. She seemed to already be in a better mood. "Of course, there's no need to mention to anyone the existence of this crystal or anything about me. Right?"

"Right," Karolina agreed sourly.

Selena turned briskly and headed for the door, her business apparently finished. She couldn’t let her leave like this. Selena, her friend, had apparently been lying about who she was since the first time they had met. Why? Why would she do this? She needed to understand.

“Why do you need the crystal so much?" she asked before Selena could get to the door.

Selena paused, and then turned back to face her. She looked surprised at the question. She stood completely still, a neutral smile on her face, even though Karolina could see through her soul that she was furiously considering something. After another few seconds, it seemed that she had made a decision.

“You know, I haven’t actually had a real conversation with anyone since the start of all of this, so I’ll answer your question. I’m going to rule the world one day, or at least a large part of it. That’s not a hope, or a silly dream, but a fact. Having a leadership skill, and eventually some kind of leadership class, is vital to that. So, when I saw the chance to ensure that I got one, I had to take it,” she said.

Her first thought was that Selena was a lunatic, but looking at the confidence on her face gave her pause. In this new world, all the rules seem to have changed, so who's to say what Selena could or couldn’t accomplish.

Karolina was also using the System to push herself to achieve goals that she had thought were out of her reach, but there was one crucial difference between them. She would never hurt people she cared about just to accomplish her goals.

Maybe she was just being naive in hoping that Selena cared about her, but she didn’t think she was. Getting the crystal, and by extension accomplishing her goals, was just more important to the woman than Karolina was.

Selena still didn’t really make sense to her. She needed to understand why the woman would do this, why she had pretended to be someone else during her entire time in the tutorial.

“Well, if we’re having a ‘real conversation’, then I have another question. Why have you been pretending to be someone you’re not?” Karolina said. She tried to hide the growing anger in her voice, and was mostly successful.

“Let me give you some advice. It's always better to be who others want you to be. That's how you get ahead, not by being yourself or whatever. Buckley wanted someone who would listen to everything he said and wasn't too bright, so that's who I became. I would have been running the camp within another week if it weren't for you.”

Karolina couldn't help but think that that was a very sad way of looking at the world. Selena might be right that there were advantages to pretending to be someone that you weren't, but she couldn't imagine living her life as someone else.

Selena looked down again, and started talking again. She seemed to be half-talking to herself. “You know, thinking back on it, choosing that persona might have been a miscalculation. I picked the best option to manipulate Buckley, but I didn’t expect anyone to really challenge his leadership. That was a naive assumption in hindsight. And by the time you appeared and started gaining allies, it was far too late to change it,” Selena said.

This was the second time today that people had seen her as a leader, someone who was important. Her friends had looked to her for direction when they were deciding how to deal with the monsters, and now Selena was acting as if manipulating her was as important as manipulating Buckley.

That was definitely something that she had to think about, but now wasn't the time for it. Karolina still had a million questions, but she felt that her main ones were answered. She needed time to think, to process the revelation of who Selena really was.

She opened her mouth to thank Selena for answering her questions, but something else slipped out instead. “I thought that we were friends,” she said, almost too quietly to be heard.

Selena considered her for a moment. "We can still be friends, as long as we're the kind of friends where you do what I need you to do. Honestly, this conversation has been really freeing. Being able to just be myself for a few minutes has been nice. We should do this again sometime," she smiled.

Karolina didn’t respond, using all of her focus to avoid glaring at Selena. She hadn't had much respect for the original Selena, but she had liked her. Now, it seemed the opposite was true. She didn't like her anymore, but she would admit that she was scared of what the healer could do, or rather stop doing.

“Also, don’t worry about the whole healing thing for now," Selena said, as if reading her mind. "I would have carried out my threat without a moment’s hesitation, but I’m glad I didn’t have to. I’ll still heal you and your friends whenever you need me to—free experience, am I right?" she laughed. She seemed unphased when Karolina’s irritated expression didn’t change.

Selena walked out the door back into the main room of the barracks without another word. Karolina grabbed the communication crystals and gilded sword and then followed, still angry.

Thomas and Ada were still in the main room, occupied with their respective items. Karolina put the items down on a bed, then clapped her hands together to draw their attention, forcing a smile on her face.

“Selena and I found a pair of communication crystals, basically magic cellphones, and a sword that increases the effectiveness of certain skills,” Karolina said as she gestured at the items on the bed.

“Yeah, to get these we had to open a locked chest and everything! It was really cool,” Selena interjected with a smile. Karolina forced herself to ignore the irritating woman, who was already back in her fake persona.

“So, what has everyone else found?” Karolina asked.

“Oh, I found these incredibly interesting books. One of them, the Beginner’s Guide to Mana, covered in five pages more than I’ve been able to figure out during my entire time here! Imagine everything that I could learn,” Thomas said. He looked incredibly excited at his find.

“That does sound very useful, Thomas. What other books did you find?" she asked.

In response, Thomas started grabbing books off of the bookshelf and talking through them one by one. She tried to give him her full attention, but she couldn’t really focus on the books he was explaining with Selena’s betrayal still on her mind.

After he was done, Karolina looked to Ada. While Thomas had been looking through the bookshelf, she had been looking through the rack of glass bottles that contained different colored liquids.

“Ada? What are those? Are they worth taking?" she asked.

“Yeah, I’d definitely say they’re worth taking. These are different potions, which provide magical effects to the drinker. I’ve got a few healing potions, mana and stamina recovery potions, and two potions that temporarily increase stats. I call dibs on at least one healing potion, by the way,” Ada said.

“Great. Those do sound very useful,” she said to Ada. Her simple words hid the hope that she started to feel at the mention of healing potions.

Would the potions be a way to end their reliance on Selena? She let herself entertain the thought for a few seconds, then let it drift away. It definitely wouldn’t work, as the potions were an incredibly limited resource. She did need to find some way to get healed without Selena, however, as otherwise the healer could force her to do almost anything.

“Ok, let’s grab as many books and potions as we can, then head back to camp. We’ll store them all in the lodge. Tomorrow we can come back and grab the rest,” Karolina said.

As they started to pick and choose what to bring, Karolina tried to remind herself that this had been a very successful day. She had leveled up three times, found some incredibly useful items and potions, and gotten some books that should hopefully help them understand this new world.

She shouldn’t let the fact that Selena was a lying liar who stole the most valuable item they found ruin the rest of what they’d accomplished. She needed to focus on the positive.

After they had gathered up everything they could, they started heading back to the camp. The two hour walk there was long and boring, but one interesting thing did happen.

“Hey, everyone, check the tutorial status. I think we made it change!” Thomas exclaimed.

Karolina opened the tutorial status, wondering what he was talking about.

Tutorial Status:

Aspirants Remaining: 1749/2000

Time Remaining: 92 Days | 19 Hours | 17 Minutes

Percentage Conquered: 11%

The first part of the screen that caught her attention was how many people were left. A full eighth of the people who had entered the tutorial were dead. She had hoped that the number of people dying would decrease, but if anything it was increasing. She wanted to do something to change that, to keep more people alive, but what could she do?

The second part of the screen that she noticed was the percentage conquered. It had ticked up one percent. That was the first time that the percentage had increased, and they were the ones who made it happen. It felt too early to celebrate, especially as they had only accomplished one percent of the task, but they were on the right track.

“It seems that we did. Great job everyone! Out of 2,000 people, we were the first ones to get this far,” Karolina said. Everyone’s moods, even Selena’s, seemed brightened by that.

Besides that discovery, the walk back to camp was uneventful. Just as they were finally getting close to camp, Selena stopped them for a moment and handed Karolina a letter. As they kept walking, Selena started to explain herself.

“Hey, so sorry that I forgot to give this to you earlier. I was just so distracted by the cool stuff you found in the chest, you know? Anyway, I found this letter in the desk. I think it might point to the next location that we need to head to?” Selena said.

Karolina quickly scanned the letter; Selena was accurately describing what it said. It had directions to a supply depot from the forward barracks, which she could only assume was the next location that they needed to take back from the monsters.

She wondered if Selena was telling the truth about forgetting to tell her, or if she was only telling her now for some other reason. Second-guessing Selena’s every action was going to drive her mad. She wished she could share her concerns with Ada and Thomas, but she couldn’t risk telling them.

Honestly, sometimes it seemed like she wasn’t telling them a lot; she still hadn’t told them about her soulsight, either. Maybe she should talk to them about it. It would be silly to trust them with her life but not with that secret, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it right now. Especially not with Selena within earshot.

After another few minutes, they finally arrived back at camp. Karolina immediately headed to the tailor’s house. Luckily he was there, and was able to fix her practically ruined clothes within half an hour.

After that, she and the rest of her team met up with Buckley and Aaron. Buckley seemed pleased that they were all still alive, although he also seemed like he had mostly been worried about Selena.

Karolina did mention the treasures they had found, and Buckley seemed interested, but he didn’t argue too much when she said that she wanted to keep most of them in the lodge. He did ask that they use what they found to help keep the camp safe, which was easy enough to agree to.

She also gave the gilded sword to Buckley. It was practically designed for someone like him, and hopefully it would stop him from standing in her way so often. It didn’t seem like he was actually going to use it, but she might be wrong.

As she went to bed that night, she found herself struggling with whether or not she should tell Ada and Thomas about her soulsight and Selena’s true nature. She knew she should, but she was worried about how they would react to her ability. Plus, she didn’t want to risk angering Selena without having access to an alternate source of healing.

She went to sleep stressed and uncertain for the first time since she had arrived in the tutorial.