Wave 1 complete.

5 enemies killed

Rewards: 250xp 5x goblins, New Spell: ‘Fireball’, New Spell: ‘Flamethrower’, New Ability: ‘Mana Manipulation’, 5,000 System Points.

Would You like to proceed to the next wave?

5:00 Remaining

Yes/No

He walked over to his gear, sat down and grabbed a can of food and bottled water. After finishing both he felt within his soul once again.

He wanted to check if he could somehow sense how much mana he had left to see if he should use the maximum free time he was allotted.

Imagining the ball in his chest and focused on its weight he doubled the amount of mana flowing to his right arm and felt a minor drop of about 5% of the orb’s weight leave as he channeled the mana out of his soul. Satisfied he was near full capacity he checked his weapons were ready and selected ‘Yes’.

Immediately he could hear the screeches of the little green men behind him about 200 feet away sprinting at him in the same fashion as the last five, like brainless animals with only thoughts of food on its mind.

He lifted his arm and fired off a weaker orange fireball to see if it would reach. At about 40 feet out it reached its limit and exploded marking the ground with black streaks.

Disappointed that it wasn’t outranging conventional firearms he wanted to see what his most powerful fireball could do at range. The goblins had closed the distance to 130 feet unphased by the previous display of magic and he took aim for the center of the pack and fired off a blue fireball.

Once again it zipped to its target and exploded. Waiting until the smoke cleared before moving forward to check the damage a horrid smell hit his nose in no time. Smelling of something between burned garbage and burnt rotting animal he threw up a little and covered his nose.

He turned to see that the smoke had cleared and that the goblins were just burnt husks and not one second later did he get a similar message as the first time.

Wave 2 complete.

10 enemies killed

Rewards: 500xp 10x goblins, 4,000 System Points.

Would You like to proceed to the next wave?

6:00 Remaining

Yes/No

Relieved that the smell of the burnt goblins and his puke had been magicly swept away Leo checked the amount of mana in his soul so that he could better gauge what fireball’s usage was. He repeated what he had done to check earlier and was surprised that his orb only felt 30% lighter.

‘Sheesh I can only fire off about 3 of the blue ones. That’s a bit disappointing but I guess I’ll use my other weapons after draining my mana pool.’

This time he waited the full amount of free time and let the wave come naturally. This time a new monster arrived in the form of a trio of dark grey wolves whose shoulders sat a head higher than the goblins.

They sniffed around at first before they caught the scent of Leo and started to spread out trying to surround him.

‘Oh no you don’t’ he thought before he sprinted towards the one on his right charging with his right arm out preparing to fire off his spell. The ball of heat fired out and landed 5 feet from the wolf burning its side and knocking it off its feet.

Taking stock of the other two wolves he saw that they were now on a full on rush at him no longer bothering with stalking him. He pulled out his rifle and took a knee bringing up the weapon’s sights.

He targeted the one closest to him and started firing off bursts of 3 to 5 shots wanting to conserve ammunition.

It took two reloads to pump the wolf full of enough bullets before it went down. It was more the difficulty of hitting the agile thing than the damage of the bullets.

As he was turning to retrain his sights on the last wolf something with the force of a train rammed into his body knocking him to the ground. He threw up the body of his rifle to stop the wolf’s jaws from clamping down on his neck but its 3 inch claws were doing serious damage to his body.

He let the wolf’s body get closer to him so that he’d have more leverage to kick it off of him. When he could feel the near steaming breath of the creature on his face he primed his legs for a kick and launched the creature off of him. As soon as he could he sat up and started spraying bullets into the downed beast.

He dropped the gun to the ground and caught his breath, wincing in pain, as the usual notification confirmed his safety for at least the next 6 minutes. He got up, careful not to tear any of the gashes in his chest and started towards his gear.

When he arrived he knelt down and started going through one of the bags he had stored medical supplies in and pulled out bandages, cleaning alcohol and some painkillers. Biting on some cloth he proceeded to pour the alcohol over his wounds bringing tears to his eyes and screams that almost made the goblins’ screech seem tame.

Leo took a few breaths after he cleaned the wounds he thought hard about how his fight went down.

‘I can’t believe my greediness almost got me killed. I guess I just have to blow through all the ammo I have and be more alert.’

Only two minutes remained before the next wave by the time he had fully bandaged himself and taken some food and water. He collected himself and prepared the .50 cal machine gun for the next round. Weapon prepped and ready Leo wanted to test something with his mana.

When he was pinned by the wolf he was lucky that his legs had had enough room to kick the wolf off of him but he wanted to be prepared for a situation where he didn’t have such a privilege. He channeled his mana into both of his palms and pushed it out into the world imagining an invisible force flying out of his hands.

As soon as the mana left his body he could hear and feel the displacement of the air as his spell flew through the air.

Satisfied that the cast worked he checked how much mana he used and found only 10% of his mana gone. Now he only had to test its damage on a live target and he hoped it could do enough damage to replace his more expensive fireballs.

Before the timer ticked to zero he finally brought up the notification from the previous wave.

Wave 3 complete.

3 enemies killed

Rewards: 1800xp 3x dire wolves, 3,600 System Points.

Would You like to proceed to the next wave?

0:13 Remaining

Yes/No

He selected ‘Yes’ not wanting to waste the adrenaline that had started to pump through his veins once again. His body stayed tense as he started scanning the horizon in a full circle.

Completing the full scan he had spotted no monsters and wondered if there was a bug in the Tutorial. He was only a third of the way through a second scan before he heard screeches from above and when he looked up he saw 5 dinosaur looking bird creatures making a dive bomb for him.

He waited until the birds were half a second away from him before he dodge rolled to the side. Turning to his previous spot he saw that the birds hadn’t been able to stop in time before they crashed into the ground and each other.

While they were still flopping about grounded he lifted both of his hands and dumped half his mana into a blue flamethrower that lasted a quick 3 seconds.

A ding sounded out as his mouth started to water at what smelled like an almost chicken barbeque.

Wave 4 complete.

5 enemies killed

Rewards: 4000xp 5x terror birds, 5000 System Points.

Would You like to proceed to the next wave?

8:00 Remaining

Yes/No

He pressed ‘No’ and proceeded to wait and rebandage his wounds as they had started bleeding again after his roll. After sitting down to rest he started to wonder if he could somehow use his xp or check if xp was doing anything.

He came to the conclusion that there were only a few ways he could find the answer to his questions. So he called out “Status” and was met with a screen he had not seen before.

Status screen disabled during Tutorial. Please wait until you

Are returned to your new world to access your Status.

“Damn.” he shouted depressed because he really wanted to see how this game System worked.

“Hello? Assistant! Are you there? What do I do with this xp that I’m earning?” he shouted to nothing in particular hoping the helper wasn’t disabled while he was fighting the waves.

“Error. Helper access disabled during waves.”

Sighing he let his shoulders drop in sadness before deciding he wouldn’t waste any second he had and went about discovering more about his mana.

Closing his eyes he started to take deep breaths and clear his mind. Focusing on the gateway to his soul and how the mana was first flowing from its edge to an outer layer where it was in constant motion almost like the molten core of a planet or sun.

He noticed that from this layer mana was almost overflowing back into his soul but it flowed freely and automatically throughout his body. Wanting to see if his mana veins extended to capillaries he guided mana to his forearm and pushed it to leave his body and when it left his body it turned into a sort of mist.

He still felt a connection to it and started to move it around his arm. As he was moving the mana around he tried to sense if he felt it physically but he couldn’t feel any movement on the hairs of his arm. For his next experiment he wanted to see if he could bring that mana back into his body.

Guiding the mana to coalesce on his skin he started to pull a small amount of and when the first droplets entered his body his body took over the rest of the work cycling it back into his soul. He finished returning the rest of the mana to his body before he got up to prepare for the next wave.

Laying down at the trigger end of his machine gun he listened for the direction his enemies were coming from.

After half a minute it was not sound that alerted him to the direction of his enemies but the shaking of the ground. Turning around he saw a squad of 7 tall fat gray humanoids.

‘Now we’re talking. Finally getting into the real fantasy creatures now. I wonder if they’re ogres or orcs or something similar, let’s go with ogres. They definitely fit the part from the games I’ve played.’ he thought to himself in glee as a smile found its way to his face as he stared down his sights and held down the trigger.

Much to his surprise the bullets from the .50 cal absolutely tore through the flesh of the ogres like they were paper.

‘Eh makes sense they’re only flesh and probably not that high a level.’

Thirty rounds later the ding sounded out and he checked the notification to see if his guess was on point.

Wave 5 complete.

7 enemies killed

Rewards: 7000xp 7x ogres, 8400 System Points.

Would You like to proceed to the next wave?

10:00 Remaining

Yes/No

Sitting in place after selecting ‘No’ he once again fell into a meditative state to study his mana further. The last time he had been guiding his mana around his arm he saw something weird in the way that it moved.

Whenever it made a turn around his arm and he lost some control the mana he lost control of went flying off but when he tried to regain control of it was like trying to pull a car by pulling a chain attached to it.

So this time when he let go of the mana he focused hard on how the free flowing mana acted as it left his control. And at about an inch from the surface of his skin the mana seemed to shrivel up and now looked like a dead fish floating through the water losing its shining radiance it had when in his control. And now that he had brought his attention to it he could see mana like that greyish dullness floating all around him.

Whenever it bumped into the barrier it bounced off and continued in another direction almost as if the barrier blocked the mana from touching his skin.

After returning his mana to his body he returned his focus to the ambient mana around him. And his conjecture was correct about the barrier. As he waved his arms around the air he could see the air pushing the mana out of the way like it was snow or sand.

He was about to continue to his next test when an ear shattering roar made him jump. Looking up he saw what could only be a 20 foot cyclops running at him with a 10 foot club in his hand.

Manning the machine gun he started firing and the cyclops only took a few bullets to its chest, casually shrugged them off, then placed his club in front of the rain of fire. Leo tried shooting where the club was not but only ever got a clean line of sight for a split second before he was aiming at a club.

Deciding it wasn’t worth it to play this dance he stopped firing and took out two of his incendiary devices and checked that they were good to go. Then he took off in a sprint towards the monstrosity. As he neared the cyclops it slowed its run and swung for him. He dodged outwards towards the arm with the club and as the cyclops was finishing his follow through Leo ran up and threw one of his grenades at the creature's face.

The grenade flew true and exploded into an inferno of napalm that covered the whole right side of its face. It dropped its club as it brought both hands to its face screaming and clawing trying to snuff out the flames that were quickly consuming its flesh. Leo then launched his second grenade right at its exposed stomach and the added flames brought the creature falling on its back.

“TIMBER!!!” he shouted in joy cupping his hands around his mouth. The creature’s movements had stopped soon after it hit the ground but he hadn’t heard the customary ding.

Approaching its head on full alert knowing that at any second it could lash out with one of its arms and end him instantly he drew his sword. About five feet from its head is when he could hear its labored breathing and so he moved in for the kill.

He didn’t spot any weak points on its head like a human’s temple so he stabbed his sword as deep as he could through its ear and a ding rang out as he pulled the blade from its head.

Wave 6 complete.

1 enemies killed

Rewards: 9000xp 1x troll, 3300 System Points.

Would You like to proceed to the next wave?

15:00 Remaining

Yes/No

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