The Platform within the Tutorial

Sharon Lia was little more than a counselor for the middle school she worked at. She wasn’t a fighter. She had no training in combat. And she never wanted to see any sort of combat.

But here she is, comforting a man whose friend had just fallen off of a platform into an abyss of darkness no doubt dying in the process. After she had killed a rabid and rather large dog with flames coating its fangs using her electro hands ability which is apparently called a skill instead.

She lets out a sigh as she rubs the man’s back, the man – of whom she had never so much as met before – still catching his breath from his bout of crying. Then she turns to look at the others of the bunch.

Sharon and the man she’s been babysitting for a little while – the guy in the business suit named Charles – ran into the two construction workers after running from a hound for a while. And they only decided to fight the thing after running for a while and realizing it would be better to team up with them than flee. Even if their fight in the end didn’t actually have the construction workers helping them.

She was rather surprised when this third group of people joined them though. And even more so when one of them ran towards the construction workers to help them.

But that was all she saw of the battle, having to focus on the hound in front of her with all of her attention. Even if the new arrivals were coming to help her.

At least these people didn’t bring any more hounds with them.

Sharon looks up at that thought before focusing on the girl who ran in with the pocket knife. And it doesn’t take long for her to recognize the girl as the recently awakened coma patient.

Which makes her briefly wonder if she’s gonna have another person she’ll be needing to comfort.

But then she notices how unnaturally calm the girl is.

Strange…

The girl has two relatively large crimson and black raven wings sticking out of her back, somehow magically through her clothes. Meanwhile she’s wearing casual clothes albeit with a lot of red and black.

Which raises some flags in and of itself considering that she was in a hospital gown when she last saw her. But that could be explained by the System or Tutorial possibly giving them to her to replace the hospital gown.

What concerns Sharon the most though are twofold.

One, the look in the girl’s eyes. An empty one that she’s seen before, ignoring the liquid crimson state of her eyes.

Generally from those who completely cut themselves off of everything and everyone around them in their own minds. More often than not due to some form of trauma or a mistreated upbringing.

And it’s not an easy matter to make them open up again, much less care.

Just the mere fact that the girl seems to be focusing on System menus – judging by the movements of her eyes – right after someone died amongst them proves how much her apathy has grown.

Sharon feels conflicted seeing the girl. Because part of her wants to help the girl, but another part realizes it would be useless. Since they should only have around half an hour left before the second phase of the tutorial ends. And when it does end, there’s no telling whether she’ll ever see the girl again or not.

Then there’s the other matter that is raising flags in her head.

The fact that she recognizes the girl’s appearance.

But after studying her for a few minutes, she shakes her head, deciding that she looks too different to be that girl. Because not only does she look younger than the girl in question was a little over a year ago when the accident happened, but that girl didn’t have glowing red eyes or raven wings.

Sharon suddenly feels startled and hurriedly looks away when the girl in question glances at her. But Sharon looks back at her again several seconds later, finding the girl to once again be focusing on her System interface without paying Sharon any mind.

In the end, Sharon decides to keep an eye on the girl without directly trying to do anything.

If she still meets up with the girl after this phase of the tutorial, she’ll try to counsel her. But if she doesn’t, then it would be best for her to get the girl out of her head.

So she refocuses her attention on the construction worker who seems to be calming down a bit.

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Ashley

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Good. The woman stopped sending me those odd looks. Looks that make me feel like she’s trying to pick me apart.

Because they made me rather uncomfortable.

Anyways, I refocus my attention on the Skill Tree in my vision as the others awkwardly stand around and the woman continues comforting the construction worker.

When it comes to new skills in the Dark Hound Skill Tree, one new skill was added to the tree for me to unlock if I want to. With this skill being a skill called Dark Howl. Which basically just sends an uncomfortable soundwave through the air that attacks the mind.

Sounds interesting to me. Although I’m not sure how well I can howl.

But what I find most interesting is the new Skill Tree I got, along with the new root skill I unlocked in it. The one from the construction worker.

Energy Blade is very useful as it lets me use up four bars of mana to manifest a blade made of pure energy. Or I can use a secondary energy to manifest a blade of that type of energy.

Which means I can manifest a blade of chaos energy.

So yay for that. Finally a combat skill I can use.

Although it might be best to wait on that till after the second phase ends. Since it’s probably a bad idea to go around using the skill of the guy who died amongst us in front of them.

One of them might recognize it.

As for the other skills of the Skill Tree-

Before I can check them, the woman stands up and says, “Let’s start introducing ourselves. My name is Sharon Lia, and I’m a middle school counselor.”

“Sean Peterson,” Sean answers right away. “Second year high school student.”

Then the others go through with that introduction spiel again with Julie once again introducing me to them. At which point Sharon sends me that look again. Which is still uncomfortable.

The new people introduce themselves too, with the man in the business suit having mostly recovered by now, and the construction worker having recovered as well.

Meanwhile the business suit guy is named Charles Fredrickson, and the construction worker is named Benny. He wouldn’t say anything else about his name though. So we’re just left with Benny.

Then Sharon suggests we start moving across the platforms to build up Skill Points as we talk. But in reality, even after we start doing that, no one really talks much.

One of the people with us died after all. Even if they seemed relatively okay when introducing themselves.

I’m personally fine with the quiet though. Actually prefer it that way.

Gives me time to look at the unlockable skills as we walk over the course of the next ten or so minutes. Most of which were more expensive than the ones in the Dark Hound Skill Tree. And quite a bit more numerous with the man’s Skill Tree having a little over a dozen skills in it.

Of the skills, all of them are energy manifestation skills. Where it lets the user manifest a tool or weapon of some sort. Whether a gun, a shovel, a knife, blade, or whatever. And they’re split between three different tracks. The left one for tools, the middle for ranged weapons, and the right for melee weapons.

A rather well organized tree.

Each branch has a different number of skills in them though. With the tools branch having five, the melee weapons branch having three, and the ranged weapons branch having three. Which equals twelve skills with the root skill added in.

Of the tools, there is one for an energy shovel, one for an energy pickaxe, an energy axe, energy hammer, and an energy wrench. A rather varied lot of skills.

Then for the melee weapons, there’s a hand axe meant for combat, a spear, and a longsword.

And for the ranged weapons, there’s a gun at the very end of the tree, a bow, and a crossbow.

Not sure if they come with ammo though.

And they all cost more and more Skill Points the further down the tree they are. With the first ones in the tree costing a hundred Skill Points and the last ones costing far more than that.

Overall, I’d say this Skill Tree is the most convenient for me. Even if it’s not the flashiest one or anything like that.

Very useful.

Eventually we run into another group of people. A much larger group this time. And all at level one just like everyone else here with varied numbers of potential skills in their Skill Trees.

But unlike the previous times, we actually don’t join together with them. Because they aren’t exactly friendly.

A few of the people in it even look like thugs. And they shoot us looks as if they’re trying to decide whether to kill us for Skill Points or not.

They decide not to in the end though. Not sure why.

And we just pass right on by each other.

Then time slowly begins to pass with us occasionally running into a few more groups, some more hounds, and adding a couple new members to our own group.

A couple of the hounds I even manage to kill and Assimilate the Skill Trees of. Which also teaches me that apparently I can only take the root skills of three creatures with the same Skill Tree name. Any more and it will just add the skills in their Skill Tree, including the root skill, to the unlockable skills in the Skill Trees I already have. Without giving me any new unlocked skills in the process.

Which is good to learn, but I doubt it’ll matter too much outside of dealing with monsters.

Although that’s assuming all monsters are like these ones in that regard.

Also, looking at my Skill Trees isn’t the only thing I’ve managed to do during this time. Or rather, managed to learn about.

Since Sean has been busy trying all sorts of things with the System. And through his experimenting, we all learn a few more features.

First, other than the identify feature he found, there’s also an ‘analyze’ feature that can be used by simply thinking the word while looking at an item and wanting to see details about it. Although mostly all it does is give a description of it along with stating some of the boosts it gives to your stats if it gives any.

Most of the stuff we have doesn’t give any boost. Other than my knife, which gives three points to PHY and has a camouflage feature.

Then there’s a progression bar when you focus on one of your skills. He noticed it after apparently leveling his fire bolt skill up on accident, making the bar appear after that. Probably due to how many times he wastefully used it while missing.

And lastly, there’s the point of the health bar. Which no one has paid much attention to until now.

Sean noticed it when he got hurt in a fight and decided for some bizarre reason to test it out a bit by hurting himself – angering his friends in the process – but the health bar seems to indicate regeneration more than anything. The more it’s filled, the faster you heal. With empty health meaning no healing at all and full health meaning supernatural speed healing to the point that you can actually, albeit barely, see it healing in front of your eyes.

I repeat though, only barely.

All of which is good intel to have.

Then the hour finally draws to a close and a bright light flashes all around us, blinding me once again.

And just like with the start of this phase, I feel myself being moved, or rather, teleported somewhere else.

Time to see what’s next.