After Henry and the other trainees learned how to adjust the strength of their , they practised transferring the force into weapons by pairing up and taking turns tossing rocks and hitting them with sticks. Moving the energy to the head of the stick was simple enough; the main challenge was the timing. After activating , there was a 0.2-second delay before the force manifested, and, for the shortest-duration, maximum-power strike, the attack needed to connect with the target within 0.5 seconds or the energy would dissipate.

Henry found this part easy. In his guild's VR gym, the equivalent system required verbal cues to activate, whereas using his thoughts now was faster and smoother.

A trainee beside him, though, was having a miserable experience. No matter how hard the kid tried, the rocks he struck kept falling pathetically short.

The struggling trainee called for help from the bald trainer. "Instructor Apari, what's the problem? I've invested heavily in Strength, but it's not going very far."

Henry shook his head - this poor lout's innate motor skills were worse than his.

"The Strength provided by the Universe acts in unison with the strength provided by your muscles," explained the instructor. "Unlike in The Sagas, you won't be able to go around destroying your enemies with a kiss of your lips. To hit hard, you must swing hard."

The trainee, hearing this, felt dismayed. At school, he'd opted out of Physical Education classes, so he was a bit uncoordinated. Would his dreams end here, right when he was starting the game?

"I just wanted to be a dope-ass knight..." the trainee muttered under his breath.

Henry, his own journey beginning with a similar realisation of his limitations, felt some sympathy. "Are you or your parents filthy rich?".

"Excuse me?" replied the trainee. "I'm not sure I understood the question."

"Filthy rich," Henry clarified. "Hypothetically, could your parents afford to buy you a private jet for your birthday? And if you were to set that jet on fire, would they disown you or would they offer to buy a replacement?"

The trainee looked at him like he was mad.

Henry shrugged.

It had been worth a stab in the dark.

With him quitting Saana, it'd be a smart decision to sell off some of his excess Legendary quests, and he had one for a knight-like Fighter class specialisation that would be suitable for someone with trash skills - the player would become a slow-moving, armoured juggernaut that hobbled around the battle swinging a 15-metre long halberd. The only catch was that completing the quest required burning about 64 sextillion hyper-inflated New Zealand dollars worth of materials, enough to buy a mid-range private jet. Obviously, Henry wouldn't demand the quest's completion price, just a fifteenth of it.

Henry, in a charitable mood, gave the broke noob a free alternative. "If you're attached to the whole melee-thing, try becoming a Fauna-spec Earthfriend."

"What's that?"

"You transform into an animal and smack dudes with your paws. Without opposable thumbs, there's a pretty high skill floor."

That'd been part of Henry's own motive for picking the Class. Hulk smashing noobs as a gorilla would require less dexterity than weapons - although he would still experiment with Earthfriend styles using weapons mixed with self-healing and shooting celestial light beams.

"Oh," the struggling trainee was pleasantly surprised. "That doesn't sound too bad—"

Henry put a palm in their face. "I'm over this conversation. Direct any further inquiries to the game's official forums."

"Big Bro, that's rude!" said Handsome Dan, who'd been throwing rocks for Henry to hit throughout the exchange.

Henry shrugged, replying to the kid through message.

-Anonymous: Rude or polite, a concern for such distinctions is a luxury that can come only after we ensure the safety of the world. Quick, throw the rocks faster; I don't feel prepared enough to face the looming dangers.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

He was only half-joking here. While the over-sized boar had been trivial, he estimated the difficulty of this questline would ramp up exponentially, this over-sized wolf being at least ten times the difficulty. What's more, the noob tutorial contained one last monster after the wolves, and, if those had a corresponding monster-king boss, that creature should be harder still. He might get dumped straight into fighting The Great Black One - although that seemed somewhat unlikely because, compared to his level 4 character, a level 240+ boss monster would be hundreds of billions of times his strength, if not trillions.

After the trainees mastered the stick, the very last part of the lesson had them practising with their weapons of choice. The instructor taught them to change the distribution of the force depending on the type of attack, with a slash, for example, requiring a long, even empowerment coating, while a stab required one concentrated around the tip. They also learned that weapon types had different maximum force limits, with bulkier weapons generally having a higher potential.

Overall, it was an informative lesson, and most people involved felt enriched for enduring it.

When the trainees had finished the lesson, they were approached by a Beast Tamer from the Empire recruiting classes for a mission against the Grey Wolves. A scout had caught the movements of a pack of three thousand wolves attacking boars 750 metres south of their position. Most of the wolves were non-sentient, except for a few coordinating their movements. The Beast Tamer and his higher-level subordinates planned to eliminate the leaders and use a blockade to trap the rest, which the trainees would then be tasked with cleaning up. For a reward, every Wolf Tail the trainees submitted would earn them one whole Slum Point.

Henry, not caring about Slum Points but needing to kill 15 wolves to progress to the tutorial's next and final stage, saw an opportunity to collect his booty without having to enter the wolfs' forest territory and confront the boss monster. Yet another level skip falling into his lap, he signalled for the bald trainer to accept, which the man, now bribed onto his side, did.

Before they set off with a mob of 250 other noobs, the bald trainer gave them a crash course on the Grey Wolves' fight mechanics.

Individually, the wolves were less challenging than the boars. Their skills were , an attack on a 6-second cooldown; , an AOE damage buff; and , where they hung onto a limb for five seconds while their defence was tripled. Most of the complexity of fighting them arose from their pack nature, the wolves by default operating in groups of five. The trainees would, in turn, have to fight them as groups of six. Usually, monsters would outnumber players, but this was, after all, a tutorial.

For tactics, the trainer recommended that five of the members draw the attention of one wolf each by damaging them. During the predictable, non-sentient Bloodlust state, monsters adhered to conventional MMO aggro mechanics. They focused their attacks on whoever had the highest 'Threat', a number generated by damage-dealt, healing-performed, and special threat-invoking abilities. While the five players separated the wolves, the remaining player would travel amongst them acting as a reserve/executioner. Wolves had a trait called - when one of the members of the pack reached zero HP, the others would ignore what they were doing and try to save the wolf by dogpiling its assailant. This state ended when the endangered wolf died, so the ‘trick’ was to kill them ASAP.

A meathead raised a questioning hand. “Bald Bro, why don't we have more than one reserve? Wouldn't that be easier?”

“No," replied Instructor Apari. "Attacking a pack with more than six will cause them to enter the Sentient Bloodlust state you all saw earlier.”

Just as using high-level gear would trigger Sentience, so would attacking a monster with too many people. The limit for most monsters was six, the fundamental unit size in Saana. However, this varied from monster to monster; for example, the hardest dungeons had 5000-player limits, while World Bosses, like Farg of the Drought Curse, had none.

Pressed for time, the trainer skipped the drills. The wolves were designed to be an introduction to Saana's group combat, so fighting them wasn't too complex.

“But, remember," warned Instructor Apari, "if you encounter any Sentient wolves out there, you must retreat immediately. Without the Bloodlust Formulaisms, they'll likely kill you off one by one." He shot a glance at the monkey-masked student, a small hope that the latter would fall victim to this fate. "Arrange yourselves."

The class quickly began splitting into teams and chatting excitedly about the mission. An atmosphere of youthful optimism infected their conversation, everyone hungry to test their new ability and participate in the valiant struggle against the wolves. In this fantasy world of magic and monsters, who knew what amazing events might be hiding on the horizon? Perhaps, one of them would become the hero who slew the boss monster.

Henry, mistaking the trainer's glance for conspiratorial approval, the two of them getting in quick before ditching, gave another nod. He then approached the handsome meathead from earlier.

“Together, then?" he asked. "Me, you, your buddies?"

Dan, picking his handsome nostrils, was surprised. “You don't want to fight alone, Big Bro?”

Henry clasped his hands behind his back sage-like. “For all the versatility of the axe, only a fool would use it to bake a cake. Sometimes you must humble yourself and choose the spoon.”

In truth, he wanted pawns for blocking any Sentient wolves that might show up. The incident with the boars had taught him a hard lesson. He needed to avoid the smart ones; otherwise, they might snitch on him to their leader or get him sucked into another wormhole.

"Sick," replied Handsome Dan. "Let's grab some mates!"