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. While he ate he thought about how he should prepare for each wave. It didn’t take him long to come to the conclusion that all he could do was check his weapons and check his Mana level. After finishing his food and water 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.

Leo imagined 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 Fireball.

Once again it zipped to its target and exploded. Leo waited until the smoke cleared before moving forward to check the damage. In no time a horrid smell hit his nose and caused him to recoil for a brief moment. The smell reminded him of some retched mix between rotting garbage and burnt animals. He threw up a little and covered his nose before returning to action.

Leo turned to see the smoke had cleared and the goblins were nothing but burnt husks. A moment later he heard the ding notifying him the wave was complete.

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

Relief overwhelmed Leo now 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 Mana usage was. He repeated the process to check his Mana and was surprised that his Soul only felt 30% lighter.

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

Leo spent the rest period trying to cast the new spell he had ‘learned’ called Flamethrower. He inspected the veil to find a new symbol had been added to the blank canvas. This one was decently smaller than the one for Fireball and its structure and quality were perfect compared to the rough edges and lines that made up Fireball.

Leo assumed the method to cast would be the same and so he began channeling his Mana into the new symbol while holding his hand out, palms facing outwards. When the symbol had its fill of Mana he pushed the resulting construct of Mana out of his hands. Leo marveled at the results, two streams of powerful jets of flame extended to about six feet and lasted for around four seconds.

Leo was in the process of checking how much Mana it had used when he remembered to check the timer. In less than ten seconds a new wave would arrive so he hurried to equip himself with his rifle. Mana would have to be used as a last resort.

When the timer hit 0 a new monster revealed itself in the form of a trio of dark grey wolves whose shoulders sat a head higher than the goblins.

They sniffed the air 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 the concussive force knocking it off its feet.

Taking stock of the other two wolves he saw that they were now in a full on sprint at him no longer bothering with strategy. 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 in the effort 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 just in time to stop the wolf’s jaws from clamping down on his neck. His arms struggled against the weight of the creature and he was stuck in a standstill until the wolf raked its claws across his chest.

“Oh. Fuck, that hurts!”

Now that one of the wolf’s paws was off of his body he had a small window to escape the mount. He waited until the wolf pushed down on his weapon and that is when he feigned resistance throwing the wolf off balance. This freed his body enough to slide out from under the wolf and he used this opportunity to kick the wolf away from him. As soon as he could he sat up and started spraying bullets into the downed beast.

Leo began casting Fireball to finish off the beast but a familiar ding brought reprieve to his mind and he let the Mana return to his body. Soon after the adrenaline stopped numbing the pain of his chest wound. When he looked down he found that the wounds weren’t as deep as he would have thought, but there was still a decent amount of blood leaking from them.

Leo dropped the gun and caught his breath, wincing in pain. 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, his mind constantly replaying every inch of the battle.

‘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.’

Leo only had two minutes to prepare for the next wave by the time he had fully bandaged himself. He collected himself and prepared the .50 cal machine gun for the next round. The weapon was prepped and ready. Leo wanted to test something with his mana.

When he was pinned by the wolf he was lucky that the wolf had given him an opening to escape. The fight made him realize that in a world with superpowered monsters and fantastical dangers around every corner he was like a flimsy piece of paper to a wood chipper. The fear of his ever increasing mortality was finally settling in. How could he achieve what had kept him going all of these years if he could get torn to shreds at any moment.

“FFFUUUCCCKKK!” he released his frustration out into the world. As amazing as all this was, he still felt as powerless as he did that night he lost Hannah. Just thinking of her made him so angry. Filled him with so much hate. Not hate towards her killers, but towards himself. Leo hadn’t done anything until it was too late.

“No. Not again. I’m not going to let that happen again. I promise Hannah. Never again will I be powerless to save you.” Leo found his resolve and settled his mind on becoming stronger than the Universe would allow. All so he would never feel that gut wrenching feeling of being powerless.

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, New Spell: ‘Kinetic Push’, 3,600 System Points.

Would You like to proceed to the next wave?

0:04 Remaining

Yes/No

Leo 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.

He completed the full scan and 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 last second possible before he dodge rolled to the side. After he recovered he turned to face his previous spot and found the birds in a tangle of each other's bodies.

While they were still flopping about, grounded, he lifted both of his hands and channeled as much of his Mana as the Flamethrower symbol could take. A short while later his ears greeted him with the crackling and popping of the roasted corpses.

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 he sat 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.”

He let out a deep sigh as he let his shoulders drop in sadness before he decided he wouldn’t waste any second he had and went about discovering more about his Mana.

Leo closed his eyes and started to take deep breaths to clear his mind. He focused on the veil to his Soul and how the Mana flowed freely through the veil only meeting slight resistance as it passed through. Then he followed how Mana circulated through his pathways.

From the veil Mana traveled down his arm until it pooled at his palm. He also noticed a stream of Mana flowing back up his arm to his Soul. He wanted to see if he could channel Mana out of his body without casting spells. Leo focused on a small cluster of Mana that rested in his palm and pushed it out of his hand. He kept his focus on the Mana as it left his body and he was stunned by how it felt when the Mana left his skin.

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 into his body. When the first droplets entered his body the Mana naturally rejoined the flow, 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.

He laid down at the trigger end of his machine gun and listened for the direction his enemies would come 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 pulled 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.

‘Hmm. Maybe I just tap shoot them from now on until I need to go full auto.’

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 tall 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 to 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.

Leo approached its head on full alert knowing that at any second it could lash out with one of its arms and end him instantly. Sword drawn, Leo continued his approach. He was about five feet from the creature’s head when he could hear the labored breathing of a dying animal. He moved in for the kill searching for a weak point to end its life the fastest.

He didn’t spot any weak points on its head like a human’s temple so he settled on stabbing 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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