Priam stared at Victoire before nodding.

"As you wish."

With a knot in her stomach, the young woman forced herself to smile. It is for the best.

"What's the plan?" Victoire asked to change the subject.

"The Tutorial started an hour ago,” said Priam after checking his watch. “We have a week to find a portal—a short time. There are a hundred on Earth, too few to search randomly."

"The Tutorial is sponsored by someone," Victoire remembered. "We'll get our first reward in twenty-three hours. Could be the position of a portal."

"Possible, but it's an Impossible quest. I doubt they'll give us all the information so easily."

"Are we supposed to figure it out ourselves?"

"It's a possibility. The portals could be visible from afar, and their location is not necessarily random. The seven wonders of the world, some modern monuments, etc."

"I don't like that option. It relies too much on luck," grimaced Victoire.

"Me neither. I find it stupid: if we were in the middle of the ocean when we accepted this Tutorial, we wouldn't stand a chance."

"Maybe luck is an essential component of this Tutorial?"

"Possible. The beings behind all this are clearly alien. It would be presumptuous to think we understand their logic. However, there is another possibility." Priam raised his index finger. "The System has mechanics that resemble those of an RPG. We've received a quest, skills, and attributes. A specific action may unlock the location of the portals."

"What kind of actions?"

Priam grimaced. "The dangerous kind."

image [https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/ABLVV84bDIHlfZscSCnj3OPB7g0RlKTfqtSDNcXEaanoglUO6qDTqp5Uumo3j4OGD_ZdIYffT40nkmKPbJRlo2SoYdkp-qCixEYS4sb9lwYHcTK55TzFZJKasmgHTeODrwRrq_FRemrCeDlTdGpHy2QoyQJb=w1181-h295-s-no?authuser=0]Victoire stifled a yawn as she followed Priam. The sun had barely risen, illuminating the empty roads. It felt like they were alone in the world. It was an illusion: terrifying screams had often awakened them during the night.

Priam raised his hand, and Victoire froze. The young man stopped and listened intently. In his other hand, he held a long stick. Its blackened tip had been hardened with a blowtorch. A hiking backpack and his grandfather's hunting rifle completed Priam's panoply. Far from being a weapon of war, its presence was nevertheless reassuring.

"Let's cross," Priam whispered.

Nodding, Victoire followed him. A dark spot caught her eye, and she paled. On her right, about thirty meters away, a dog lay in a pool of blood. The Labrador's body had been half-devoured. Victoire felt her stomach churn. Before she could vomit, Priam blocked her view.

"Don't look."

A few minutes later, they arrived at a sandy beach. In front of them, Arcachon Bay stretched peacefully. The water reflected the sky and the splendid colors of the sunrise. Less than two kilometers on their right, the entrance to the bay flowed into the ocean. On their left, several columns of smoke rose from the peninsula and the mainland. The dry, warm summer air combined with automobile and domestic accidents was wreaking havoc.

Priam placed his hiking backpack on the sand and unfolded an old map.

Victoire took the opportunity to open her own bag and grab one of the bottles she had brought. Priam had insisted on taking seven liters of water per person in addition to some food. A few medicines and clothes completed their possessions. Enough to last a week, but not too much to overload themselves.

"So?" she asked after taking a sip.

"There's an airfield on the other side of the bay, next to Arcachon. It's five kilometers inland," said Priam, pointing across the bay. "Eight kilometers from here as the crow flies."

Victoire grimaced. The portion of the bay in front of them was three kilometers wide. It was impossible to swim across for an untrained person. On the other side of the water, Victoire could see the Dune of Pilat—the highest in Europe.

"Are you sure you want to go there?"

Priam nodded as he folded his map. "We don't have a choice. We'll have to hurry when we’ll find out where the portal is. With a microlight, we could cover fifteen hundred kilometers without worrying about encountering a human driven mad... Or worse."

Victoire shivered at the thought of the creature that had disemboweled the Labrador.

"How do we cross?"

Priam pointed to the hundred or so boats waiting on the water, simply tethered to moorings. "We can take a motorboat and be there in half an hour. Or a sailboat, but then we'll depend on the wind."

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Having grown up on the bay, Priam was a competent sailor.

"Do you have a motorboat license?"

"If the police catch us, I'll pay the fine."

Victoire chuckled. "Do you have a preference?"

"The sailboat is safe and quiet. The motorboat is fast and noisy. Let’s go with the former."

Victoire turned to the bay. The blue of the water, the yellow of the sand, the gray of the sky, and the green of the forest on the horizon created an enchanted and familiar landscape. Yet, for the first time, Victoire felt her stomach knot with fear. The deep water seemed to harbor nightmarish creatures.

"I'm scared," she confessed. "Can't we go around?"

Priam shook his head. "The bay isn't wide, but it extends far inland. Going around it on foot would take us a day or two, during which we'd be exposed on the beach."

"We could—"

A growl cut Victoire off as she turned around. Twenty meters behind them, a woman emerged from a thicket of brambles. The thorns had torn her body and T-shirt, revealing a battered physique. She was injured.

"Ma'am, don't come any closer," Priam warned, dropping his bag and rifle. He grabbed his stick while Victoire headed for the firearm. She had never hurt anyone, but the woman's wild and enraged appearance suggested that words alone wouldn't resolve this conflict.

"As a last resort," Priam said, seeing Victoire's initiative. "The noise will give away our position."

Victoire swallowed hard and grabbed the gun as the woman began to run.

"Ma'am!" Priam exclaimed.

Trying to raise the rifle, Victoire began to tremble. Her strength left her as the hostile woman advanced toward Priam. The prospect of hurting someone paralyzed her.

Everything happened in an instant. Priam crouched, placing the base of his improvised spear against the ground. Driven by her momentum and rage, the woman impaled herself on it. The hardened wooden stake pierced her chest, puncturing her heart.

The woman collapsed onto Priam, who groaned in shock. Victoire rushed forward as her boyfriend pushed the corpse away with a frantic gesture. The dead woman lay motionless on her back. Her furious features relaxed as Priam got up, breathing heavily.

Shocked, Victoire opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She watched the corpse without moving. A noise snapped her out of her stupor: Priam was moving away. Covered in blood, he staggered toward the water.

"You—"

"Not now," he muttered before diving in.

image [https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/ABLVV84bDIHlfZscSCnj3OPB7g0RlKTfqtSDNcXEaanoglUO6qDTqp5Uumo3j4OGD_ZdIYffT40nkmKPbJRlo2SoYdkp-qCixEYS4sb9lwYHcTK55TzFZJKasmgHTeODrwRrq_FRemrCeDlTdGpHy2QoyQJb=w1181-h295-s-no?authuser=0]Half an hour later, Victoire assisted in hoisting the sails of a small catamaran. Priam worked in silence, shirtless. He had buried his bloodied T-shirt in the sand.

"I'll steer to find the best wind angle. Could you handle the mainsail rigging?" asked Priam.

Victoire breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing his voice. She knew her boyfriend, knew that his silence was due to stress, and also knew that it was best not to rush him.

"Sorry for staying quiet," he apologized. "I needed some time to think."

"I understand." Victoire paused. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really," he sighed, seeming exhausted. The Tutorial had started about ten hours ago, and he had already had to kill someone. "There's nothing to say. She was... You saw her. Or it."

The image of the woman's corpse flashed back into Victoire's mind, and she swallowed hard. The slit eyes, the violet blood, and the long nails didn't belong to a human. In her savagery, the woman would have slaughtered them.

"She was… corrupted," Victoire replied. "You saved our lives when I couldn't pull the trigger."

Priam remained silent. The sound of the wind in the sails filled the silence before he spoke again.

"... I'm sorry," Priam murmured.

"About what?"

"You find yourself in a hostile world when you hate violence. All because the selfish person I am dreams of being free," Priam said through gritted teeth.

Victoire let go of the sail and approached Priam to take his hand.

"I chose this challenge because I wanted to stay with you, that's true," Victoire confessed. "But it's my decision. If I love you enough to follow you to hell, you can't do anything about it. You're selfish, and I'm a fool hopelessly in love."

Priam squeezed her hand. "You—"

Victoire interrupted him.

"You already have enough trouble managing your feelings without considering mine. You have plenty of qualities, my love, but your heart still eludes your mind. Besides, I don't know how you would survive without me."

Priam raised an eyebrow. "I'd be cold at night?"

"You would have reached the airfield, and then what? You don't know how to pilot a microlight."

The retort stunned Priam. "I… Well, I’d have learned from a book."

"You're a genius, my love, but you sometimes overestimate yourself,” smiled Victoire. “I'll handle the plane, and you'll handle the monsters. Now, tell me what's wrong."

Victoire knew Priam well enough to know there was a problem. Her boyfriend was never defeatist. One of the qualities that had stolen Victoire's heart was his determination. He was an icebreaker who cleared insurmountable obstacles using sharp logic and holistic intelligence.

"... When I killed the creature, I received a notification. The nearest portal is at the top of the Eiffel Tower."

Victoire's eyes widened. Paris was a city of over two million people in a very small area. How many corrupted humans were roaming the capital?

"How are we going to do this?" she asked after a short pause.

"I don't know. The thing on the beach impaled itself on my spear. If it had dodged, it would have torn out my throat with its teeth. I've seen enough zombie movies to know that firearms are a bad idea. Even if we trained for a week, our attributes would still be too weak to cross an ocean of monsters," Priam grimaced as he rummaged through his bag.

Pulling out a knife, he began to cut the rope at the front of the boat. At the other end, a concrete slab buried in the sand kept the boat in place.

"I've been thinking, but I can't find a solution," Priam sighed. Victoire realized that his eyes weren't afraid. They were fatalistic.

Priam was pragmatic enough to understand that they had almost no chance of surviving this Tutorial.