After collecting the numerous Kobold bodies, Tyler carried on down the same track. While that had been a good step, he still had nearly 800 monsters to kill and less than 3 days to do it. He doubted the monsters would always be so grouped up, and while smaller groups would be easier to kill, they also would limit his progress. Additionally he was starting to notice how wide the gap between levelling up was becoming. He was happy with his progress so far, but he had realised that if he had stayed hunting goblins in the forest he probably wouldn’t have reached level 7 before the end of the tutorial. While this wasn’t exactly how he saw his life going, he was surprised how easily he slipped into it. It certainly beat telesales. Also he had magic. Alright he wasn’t going to be wiping out hoards of monsters with it anytime soon., but still. Magic! With that thought spurring him on, he began to cast his arrows as he walked, firing them at the mountain side. He wanted to improve his casting, and practise seemed like the way to do that. When he finally saw another group of enemies, he was mid cast and took advantage of that fact. Before they even noticed him, 2 kobolds were dead. This time he kept casting, and actually managed to take out 2 more before the enemies reached him. He was drawing his sword when he found the real challenge. This group was slightly smaller than the last, although he didn’t have time to count. The problem was the kobolds weren’t alone. As the spear wielding lizards came towards him, a dozen of the ugliest looking creatures Tyler had even seen launched themselves down from the cliff side above. For the first time he recognised them before the fight. Harpies. Thankfully they didn’t appear to have any ranged attacks, but as he engaged the first kobold, a harpy dove down and swiped a clawed hand at him, tearing into his cheek. Tyler cursed and jumped back. He hadn’t fought anything in the air yet and other than his arrows, he wasn’t sure on the best way of doing it. If he swung his sword upwards to deal with the flying monsters, he would leave his body exposed to the kobolds spears. On the other hand, dealing with the kobolds left the harpies with a free run to attack him. Inwardly he cursed. Switching to a one handed sword hold, he started the motions for his fire arrow with his now free left hand. He couldn’t really attack like this, he wasn’t anywhere near skilled enough with his sword yet, but he could defend their jabs as long as he kept the kobolds in front of him. Soon enough his arrow was ready, and the first harpy fell to the floor. To his delight it landed on a kobold in the middle of the pack, causing something akin to a road block. The joy lasted only seconds however, as a spear came jabbing towards his throat. Head back in the game, he began conjuring another arrow. As time went on, Tyler’s confidence rose, and soon enough light attacks with his sword joined the arrows taking out harpies. The kobolds clearly weren’t in a rush to kill him, but there were a large number waiting for the opportunity to try, and it would only take a single well placed attack to ruin his day. Based on the earlier fight, he doubted they would be able to kill him, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt as they tried. As soon as the last harpy fell, Tyler leapt into the same tactic he used in the first fight, getting in close and forcing the kobolds onto the back foot. Claw.

“Sometimes my brain doesn’t even make sense to me”

Tyler huffed as he spun a spear from the side and took out another kobold with his blade. Before long he was once again standing in a sea of monster bodies, reading through a familiar screen.

[Battle Complete]

[42 x Kobolds Lvl.5 defeated]

[12 x Harpies Lvl. 5 defeated]

[2700xp gained]

[Level Up!]

[You have reached Level. 8]

[3 Stat points awarded]

[5120xp remaining to reach Level 9]

Once again, Tyler gave himself a short break to let the adrenaline leave his system, using the time to do level maths. Contrary to his own expectations, he had levelled up again in a single fight. Was that because of the large number of monsters, or was levelling up meant to be easy? 5120xp sounded like a lot, but he had made more than that in his last 2 battles alone. Unless he was mistaken, he would get that after a little over 100 kobolds, which he needed to do for the quest anyway. He started doing the mental maths, and realised that as long as all the monsters he killed were over level 5, he would manage to reach level 10 by completing the quest. That seemed, generous. For the first time Tyler questioned his own progress. He has this image of himself as leading the pack, but if a single quest would take him up to level 10, then perhaps others were already there. He had also wasted a lot of time wondering the forest to find goblins, because he had wanted to avoid the areas with lots of other people.

“Damn it. Okay so no more messing around. I can fit maybe another 50 monsters in my ring, then I’ll head back to the guild and see if there’s an area with higher ranked monsters. Even if I save that for the last day, I’ll need all the help I can get.”

Sure enough the next fight left him with a filled storage ring, forcing him to leave 18 of the 47 kobold corpses out on the mountain. As before he ran all the way back to the guild, depositing the bodies at the merchant for 5 copper a each. That left him with over 10 silver, and he decided to shop before heading out. At the moment the size of his ring was holding him back, limiting the time spent hunting. If he could buy another ring, or a bigger one, then he could increase the time between return trips. He worked out he still had just under 700 monsters to kill before his quest was complete, so if each ring took about 150 monsters then with another he would only need to make 2 more return trips before the quest was complete. When he finally found one, he was shocked at the price. 10 silver for another F grade ring. He could afford it, but that was all his money. Or at least near all of it. Ultimately it didn’t matter though. This would increase his earning potential, so he had to do it. After speaking to the merchant however he learned something very interesting. Storage rings had 2 limits, the rank, and the users mana. It was only because of his insane mana pool that he could store as much as he was. Most people would never be able to support 2 storage rings, or if they did they would be useless for other things due to the high mana drain. Tyler filed that away, and slipped on the new ring cautiously. Thankfully he didn’t feel any sort of strain; but he supposed that might change when the rings actually had contents. While he was there he also asked for advice on getting his armour repaired, but was told it would need specific skills I was unlikely to find until the world was more established. Looking at it, the actual leather armour was fine. In fact the places where it has been torn earlier were even fine. Tyler mentally filed that away and focussed on the robe, which was torn to shreds. Full of regret, he slid it off over his head and tucked it into his ring. With his distinct lack of funds he couldn’t replace it right now, so instead he headed downstairs from the merchant section and straight to the receptionists. After the usual polite greeting, he asked his question.

“All areas have the potential to house strong monsters, but the mountains have the highest starting level. From there the more warriors they defeat, the more experience they gain and the stronger they get, much like yourself. Certain creatures, like dragons for example, will also get stronger with age, but you won’t find anything like in the tutorial. For now, if you want guaranteed results then I suggest you clear the mountains. New monsters spawn every day, so you will have plenty of targets.” This receptionist was an older woman, although with the same customer service smile.

“Are the mountain monsters always the same, or is there like a boss creature if you get far enough in?”

Her smile widened to a beam

“Excellent question. Each region of the tutorial has a monster ruling over it. While not guaranteed, this is something you are likely to see as your world becomes established, so it helps you prepare. There is actually a quest for each of these rulers, if you would like me to add the mountain region to your active quests?”

Tyler immediately agreed, and held out his wrist to be updated. At least this way if he failed to kill all 1000 monsters, he would still have a quest to try and hand in.

After returning to the mountains, Tyler spent the next 2 days making his way as far in as possible. As he had suspected, he had been required to make 2 trips back, selling a total of 648 monsters before returning for what he knew would be his final trip. He had checked with the guild office, and he had a little under 9 hours left before the end of the tutorial. That meant he needed to average 4 monsters an hour. If this had been earlier in the week he would have found the idea ridiculously easy, but as the guild had warned him, the high number of monsters he faced when first arriving at the mountain range was largely a result of nobody thinning their numbers. As time had gone on he had found the groups to be smaller and smaller, until the average was now what he called scouting parties of 5 or 6 kobolds at a time. Even the harpies, so annoying in the early days due to their groupings, had now become solo hunters. At most they would be in a pair. Truthfully, if he hadn’t accepted the quest to kill the area boss he would probably have tried hunting somewhere else by now. He was sick of the mountains. Thankfully it was just a few hour to go, and he had estimated that he was about 90% of the way to the top. It was difficult to be sure, the route dropped and turned around the mountain a lot, but he had spent a lot more time there than he liked to think about, and basing it on his experiences nearer the base. Thankfully because he had cleared so many monsters from the trails already, catching up to where he had left off was easy. His speed had increased even more since reaching level 10, to the point where when he returned to the scene of his last fight, the monsters he had been forced to leave behind were still lying there. He quickly scooped them into his ring, before carrying on up the mountain. He was fairly well off now, at least judging by the prices here in tutorial, with 32 gold in his guild bank account. The guild had stressed to him again that after the tutorial, any kit he could buy would be made by earths own crafters, meaning it was likely to be of a low quality for the foreseeable future. He had therefore headed straight to the blacksmith, only to find out that they didn’t stock anything better than his current sword during the tutorial. His armour was still in great shape, and apparently could fix itself, so Tyler had ended up just leaving the coins in his bank, something he had found a little depressing. He hadn’t thought much about the world post tutorial, focusing instead on staying alive and battling monsters, but he knew the humans who had held power before, the politicians and millionaires who were used to running the world, would be severely against using a brand new currency they didn’t control, and that they didn’t inherit stacks of. Although now that he thought about it, there weren’t many of them in great physical shape. He frowned to himself, thinking of his country’s idiot prime minister. If he had been assigned as a warrior class then there was next to no chance the man was still alive. Would people even have jobs after this. The way the guild sold it, the world would be completely changed, what would that mean for peoples lives? Sighing Tyler tried to push it out his mind. He was still worried about his sister, although he expected she had been given a crafter class. At 18 she was just about to start college studying chemical engineering. If that didn’t get you into alchemy Taylor had no idea what would. He dispatched 2 groups of kobolds as he let his mind wonder, bringing his remaining target to 26 more monsters to finish his quest. To his reckoning he had about 7 hours left, which should be plenty. Finally he turned round a bend in the trail, and found himself standing in a large clearing, clearly near the top of the mountain. It was boxed in on all sides and lying dead centre, fast asleep, was something straight from Tyler’s nightmares.