Something wasn’t sitting right with Leo. The numbers he was receiving for each of the waves that he had little actual trouble with seemed to be very off.

This caused a seed of discomfort to grow within him because the only reasonable reasons for it were that the world he was going into was very challenging and the Tutorial was boosting the points to give humans a greater chance at survival or that the System had miscalculated the power in combat of the weapons humans had developed and gave us what would be extremely difficult waves if we didn’t have them.

There were other possible but less likely reasons like the point scale was very large, but that wouldn’t explain the sharp increase in points per creature killed.

Only 5 waves to get from 50 per goblin to 9,000 for a troll. In the end he concluded that whatever the answer was it didn’t change his end goal of clearing as many waves as possible.

He spent the rest of the rest time practicing turning his mana into different effects he could think of; electricity, water, light, and he attempted to control the broken remains of his gun but that had used up to much mana for not much effect.

Collapsing onto his back with a deep sigh Leo was beginning to wonder if he had just prepared too well or if the Tutorial was broken after four waves. He had completed twenty waves since defeating the troll and the monsters had just been flat out devolving in threat level.

First it was hobgoblins which turned out to be glorified goblins, but somehow earned him 900 xp a head. Next were the bears, just slightly larger than what could be found on earth and then there were drakes. Initially scared of their looks and supposed link to dragons in the stories he read he was readily let down as their scales melted under heavy gunfire.

The waves had continued like this until the last one where he fought something that couldn’t be damaged by bullets, shadow terrors. Apparently they were some manifestation of mana attuned to the shadows that could only be damaged by use of mana. They lost quickly under the intense flames of his flamethrower spell.

The only thing keeping Leo interested in clearing waves was the prospect of learning everything he could about mana. His difficulty in working metal with mana in his initial trial really rubbed him the wrong way as that was all he worked on the last twenty waves.

It turned out that he couldn’t just imagine the effect he wanted his mana to produce on the gun and release it. He had to slowly infuse the matter with his mana and then control it that way.

The only thought that came to his mind when he considered what it would take to hand craft things by mana was, expensive. It had taken 90% of his maximum mana to just mend all the pieces together on the outside.

He still had to work out the minor imperfections left and work on some of the smaller damaged pieces, but he didn’t want to think about how long that would take as his control at that fine grain of a level wasn’t getting him anywhere.

Leo had decided to take a real break for this rest period which was just over two hours. After eating and drinking he laid down for a nap. He was happily dreaming about all the magic he would be able to do one day now that he had mana when he was abruptly woken from his sleep by hands shaking him like he was a rug to be cleaned of dirt and dust.

“Hey! Hey! Come on mister you have to get up, the Elves are almost here. You have to wake up.” a panicked but steady voice shouted into his ear.

After rubbing at his eyes until he cleared his sleepiness Leo found himself to be lying behind a group of humans unleashing an endless stream of bullets at what appeared to be a rather nasty looking bunch of Elves.

Each of them had long smooth dark silver hair that flowed to their lower backs. All pairs of eyes a black center surrounded by pulsing red. They wore sadistic smiles on their faces as they slowly marched towards the humans, walking comfortably behind what appeared to be an impenetrable barrier that enveloped their whole group.

Then he looked to the source of the voice that woke him and found a rather hardy looking female who was still yelling at him to get up.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m up. Where’s my .50 cal?” he asked annoyed that she was still yelling as if he was still asleep.

“I don’t know. We haven’t had a chance to look around yet. We were just teleported here and told that only one group could survive, us versus the Elves.” she explained glancing at the situation that was slowly growing dire. The Elves were now 100 feet away when they started drawing their weapons, some had swords others had bows and there were a few who drew mana to their hands.

Leo started looking around for his machine gun and found just a few feet behind him in the opposite direction of the action. He went over and picked it up before setting it down between some of the humans and laying down in position to fire.

As soon as he pressed the trigger the Elves’ march stopped, their barrier taking real damage from the more powerful weapon. A look of irritation took over the leader’s face and he motioned to some of his warriors who broke off the pack with their own but smaller barriers. Leo noticed this and told the woman who woke him to take over for him.

“Hey! What are you doing? Are you leaving us?” she yelled in anger at him.

‘Idiot’ was all he could think of the woman as although he was walking away from the battle, it wasn’t to leave. He grabbed his sword from his pile of gear and placed the remaining grenades and explosives in their appropriate slots around his body before drawing his sword.

The Elves who had broken off had started cutting down the humans by the time he turned around. He sprinted head first into one of the Elves and tackled him to the ground then as quickly as they landed he got back up and made space between him and the Elf he tackled.

The Elf had a confused look on his face as he stared down Leo as he got back on his feet. Leo only smiled and turned his back as he waved a finger that held a loose ring on it. This only pushed the Elf into anger before he burst into flames falling to the ground.

By the time the other attacker noticed his comrade had fallen Leo had repeated the same tactic as before and soon all he and the remaining 5 humans had to worry about were the last 3 Elves sitting behind what had to be a whittling barrier as the woman hadn’t let up her suppressing fire.

Soon though she and the other humans ran out of ammo and had nothing left to offer to the fight.

“Can any of you do anything without guns?” Leo asked hoping to gain at least one other person for the upcoming fight.

All of them nodded no and he handed out a grenade to each of them.

“Don’t spend it all in one place now, you hear me?” he said with a chuckle, mocking the good ole’ quote.

The lead Elf had stopped 20 feet from the humans before speaking, “I wish to offer my condolences to you brave human. I initially planned on ending each and every one of you swiftly and painlessly because of your pitiful attempts at retaliation, but because you have taken two of my own I must offer you an enemy’s death, slow and painful.” that sadistic smile returning to his face as he took his fighting stance.

“Oh yeah, well same to you. Except I’ll keep you around to ask you some questions.” Leo responded trying to match the Elf’s level of grandiose, but falling considerably short.

“Then let our dance begin.”

The Elf lunged with his sword aiming to take Leo’s head clean off only to hit fresh air as Leo ducked dropping his sword and tackled the Elf to the ground.

“Do not think you can get me with the same trick human. I have warded myself against fire already. Pathetic.” he said with disgust on his face.

“Oh don’t worry there won’t be much fire this time, just a big boom. I really hope you survive this. But then again maybe your companions back there could answer my questions.” Leo finished taunting the haughty Elf before detonating each of his explosives the force launching him into the air.

Leo came crashing down into his pile of gear, thankfully still protected by his force field, and just laid there exhausted. ‘Ahhh, they fall for it every time.’

Knowing he had to finish off the remaining Elves Leo got up only to see the remaining humans cut open dying on the ground as the two girls marched towards him.

“Well shit. At least I don’t have to kill the other humans myself.”

“Hey, ladies. Now I know I probably just killed your dad or your hubby or whatever you got going on back on your world, but let me make the same offer to you he made to me, sort of.” Leo said with a grin really hoping their guard will drop.

“Nice try you pathetic pig. We’re going to enjoy peeling the skin from your face as we make you suffer.” they responded in unison.

When they were five feet away approaching him carefully he lifted both of his palms towards them and smiled.

“Freeze.” Large swaths of flame shot forth from each of his hands that put napalm to shame. Screams that made him flinch almost broke his concentration enough to stop his spells but he knew he had to keep going until they stopped.

Shortly after the ear piercing screams ended he cut the flow of mana to his hands, now fully spent and took a look at his handy work. Both girls now charred husks of their former selves and probably just a few more seconds from being complete ash.

“It was a damn shame I couldn’t ask you questions, but I’ll find my answers eventually as long as I’m still alive.”

Leo walked over to where the last 5 humans were cut down to check who was still alive since he hadn’t heard a ding.

“Tootaloo, anyone home.”

“Ugh, over h-here.” he heard a soft squeak from the woman who had woken him up earlier.

“Damn, what sweet irony is this, right? You’re the one to wake me up thinking we were on the same team and now here we are, me having to kill you. Sorry you had to suffer for so long.” Leo spoke solemnly, mostly for himself before stabbing his sword through her head bringing the ding-a-ling.

Final Wave complete.

6 enemies killed

Rewards: 1,319,000xp 6x Elves of the Blood Moon Unto Un’Ver’A’Sherraii, 500,000 System Points.

Would You like to proceed to the Shop?

1:15:00 Remaining

Yes/No

It only took him 30 minutes to gather all the gear he could still find intact and decided to wait until he got out of here to check it.

Selecting ‘Yes’ he then found himself what one would imagine a Fantasy world tavern to look like except it was completely empty and quiet except for him and the barkeep.

He was a gruff looking dwarf who was missing an eye and a few fingers on the hand that was holding the mug he was currently wiping down.

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen a solo party here. Were you the miracle survivor or did you get here by yerself? Oh, and take a seat I’ll get ‘ya a drink.”

Taking a seat Leo watched the Dwarf float over to his table with two drinks in hand. The Dwarf plopped down into a seat of his own before sliding the mug over to Leo.

“Drink up. You won’t be able to get stuff this good for a long time, if you ever make it that far. But if what you say is true I imagine you’ll get there just fine.” the Dwarf said.

Leo took a sip and was shocked at how smoothly it went down and how warm it made his whole being feel.

“My god what is that stuff? I need more.”

“That’ll be Dwarfhen Heartehn’s secret brew. It’s packed full of the purest mana you could ever find. And maybe later, I only have enough to give one to each party who makes it here.” the Dwarf replied laughing in pride at his drink.

“What’s your name? It sort of gets old thinking of you as ‘The Dwarf’.”

“Me name be Kylyhagaard. And what’s yours me boi.”

“That would be Leo. You’ve said it twice now, people who make it ‘here’, do you mean complete the Tutorial or something else.”

“Not complete the Tutorial, complete the Waves. It happens every ten to twenty integrations ever since the Tutorial was put in place which is nice I guess if it means more planets survive the Incursions.”

Perking up at the mention of something new but important Leo probed deeper, “Incursions? You mean like demons coming from another dimension to consume all life?” Leo guessed sarcastically making himself laugh.

“Oh pretty close, not demons though. Just the Eldritch energy. It seeps into our universe and starts consuming mana until it has consumed every bit of mana in a universe before moving on to the next.” Kylyhagaard corrected with deep sadness in his voice.

“Ah, I see. So how does someone defeating the Waves make a planet more likely to survive Incursions?”

“Well, because of the power you gain from the System Shop you usually end up becoming the undisputed ruler of the planet if you’re not stupid, and you have to be not stupid to beat the Waves, and usually once a ruler that absolute takes over everything moves relatively smoothly in the proper direction to defend against Incursions.”

“And what exactly are these Incursions? Do portals from beyond open up and spit out monsters from our nightmare’s nightmares?”

“Hmm, not exactly but close. Eldritch seeps into our universe and manifests in many ways; dungeons, dungeon worlds, Eldritch Bosses, and run of the mill monsters like you saw during the Waves.”

“I see. I can guess what the bosses and dungeons are, but how exactly do the dungeon worlds work?”

“Dungeon worlds are the product of the right concentration of Eldritch seeping into our universe at the right location leading to the System to attach a pocket dimension that turns the energy into resources usable by the inhabitants who have access to the world, usually through clearly marked portals throughout the world it's attached to.

I’d like to see the High Council try and take the planet from you if your new planet gets a dungeon world.”

“So how long do we have before the High Council starts trying to take over our world?”

A puzzled look found its way to the Kylyhagaard’s face, “Odd. You’re not going to ask why the Council would try and take your planet even though ‘we all have to participate in pushing the Eldritch back across all System worlds’?”

“Eh, not really. I already know they want it for the resources. Believe me, my planet had its fare share of resource grabbers throughout history.” Leo responded with a smile.

“Well then, you’ll have about 90 years depending on how many new worlds there are and the Eldritch seep rate.”

“So am I supposed to do something with you or are you just the bonus Tutorial Helper incase I had anymore questions?”

“Oh, sorry. I’m also where you can access the shop and be of assistance there.” he spoke before making a swift gesture that resulted in a list of items he could purchase with System Points.

“So Kylyhagaard, can you recommend anything for me as a must buy?”

“Not really given I don’t know your style of fighting or what you want to do once you get to your world.”

“Alright, well what’s the limit to what you can do with mana? I was testing it pretty thoroughly and it seems that the only limit to what you can do is imagination, control and the amount of mana you have. Is there some sort of hard limit or underlying rules to what it can do?”

“Not to me knowledge, as most everyone understands it it is the energy with which everything is as it is. The only two things that stand beyond it are the System and the Eldritch.”

“So I could imagine something completely impossible and it would happen?”

“Mmmm, theoretically I guess but depending on what it was it would take a nearly impossible amount of mana to accomplish.”

“What about methods of generating more mana? Do stars give it off naturally or something or is there always the same amount as there always was.”

“Mmm beyond mana crystals found naturally and mana from creatures and the ambient air there’s not much in the way of generating more mana.”

“I know sentient beings have a soul to store and generate mana, but how do things like plants or animals get their mana.”

“I don’t know, it’s just life ma boi.”

‘Looks like I’ll have to do more research, but I’m pretty sure I know how to make butloads of mana.’

It only took him a few minutes of careful searching to find the two things he wanted most from the shop.

Soul Split | 500,000 Mana Lake | 300,000

“Alright, I’ve purchased everything I wanted. Oh, one last question. How do i get a class? The Tutorial never mentioned that one/”

“You’ll have the option to unlock a class at Race level 10.”

“Thanks Kylyhagaard, I guess I’ll see ya out there if I ever go through another Tutorial.” Leo remarked.

After Leo had disappeared Kylyhagaard let out a long sigh. “Oh dear System what have you done this time. I pray for our future my friends.”

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