The light faded and I found myself in a rounded room with walls made of bark and leaves, the ceiling opening up to the sky above. Below my feet was a carpet of springy moss, under which I could feel the hard, smooth texture of wood. I could tell that I was in the Yggdrasil, after all, where else would you find such a big tree, but not on the same platform that I had been previously standing on. If I remembered correctly, this was probably the hollowed out part at the top of the tree, where, according to the story, the Humans rescued from the Decay would be brought, and be “judged” by the representatives of each of the Faerie Courts. Then, the player would go through a few “tests” that taught them the game mechanics, be appointed a Champion of Briarwood, and be sent on their way. Easy stuff, mostly telling you what keys to press and providing advice on skill usage. Ordinarily, I’d scoff at the notion of going through the tutorial again, but now that I was physically inside my character, combat and dodging would probably take some getting used to, and the tutorial was the best place to get acquainted. Also because I had to get through the tutorial quests first before I could unlock the Class Change quest to get my sweet sweet Kobold speed back.

“Human!” I glanced up as two glowing figures materialised in front of me. Their images wavered in the air unsteadily, flickering in and out of sight like an old film tape. The one on the left, the one who spoke, was a tall, spindly lady whose back was hunched like a tall bridge over a ravine, with a woody complexion almost concealed by a thick mass of hair that swayed like willows. Her clothes draped over her with a sort of airy texture, light and folding, which I recognised as the Weeping Willows equipment set for Druids, but longer and moved like water. Her fingers, just as long and spindly as her limbs, were curled around a large, intricate staff with Briarwood’s crest carved into the surface of it. The one on the right was an evil looking figure dressed in grey, with a ragged scarf that fluttered in some mysterious wind and a leather vest fitted with what looked like a lot of throwing knives. A raggedy, greyer version of the Kobold’s Rogue Wind equipment set. In terms of stature, he didn’t look too different from the Faerie Guards stationed outside the Wall. Tall, muscular, looked like he did a hundred pushups per day with one hand. He looked just like the Faerie Guards, aside from the fact that the part above his neck just ended in a dried, shrivelled up stump, his actual head dangling from the roots of its hair by his belt, a nasty, drooling expression plastered on its face. It was tall, taller than I was, but compared to how tall the tree lady was, it was a midget.

Ghillie Dhu, the Dryad, member of the Seelie Court, and Dullahan, the Headless Horseman, member of the Unseelie Court. I remembered those two. You met them at the beginning of the game, and they told you the basic parts of the lore and how The Decay was an asshole. They were the two who were supposed to baby me through the game controls in the first part of the tutorial quest. But something was off. From the way they just flickered in and out of existence made me think that these two weren’t the actual characters. I mean, Poppy didn’t flicker, and she, too, was an NPC. Maybe these were just holograms. After all, if all the NPCs were real people in this world, unless they had cloning powers unknown to me, each quest relevant NPC couldn’t exactly be in multiple places at once babysitting different players. It would make sense if the real deal didn’t want to show up for something as trivial as a tutorial.

“Human!” this time it was Dullahan that spoke, the drooling head opening and shutting its mouth like a fish out of water. “How dare you show such defiance before divine beings such as us! Know your place and kneel!”

[Press C to kneel or crouch. Press WASD while holding down C to sneak.]

I don’t see a fucking C button to press, thanks a lot, System.

Unfortunately, from what I knew of Dullahan from the story mode and event quests, he was a pretty scary boss with a very short temper. I probably couldn’t handle him at Level 8 without my speed upgraded. Even if this was a hologram, it was probably best to play along and complain about the System later. I manually got down on one knee and bowed my head, peeking at them through the corner of my eye.

The Dullahan hologram harrumphed in grudging satisfaction. Ghillie Dhu (The players called her Jilly, mainly because few of us really knew how to pronounce obscure Scottish names) shook her head, her hair swaying to and fro gently.

“Peace, Dullahan. The child did not ask for this,” she said calmly, her voice soothing. “The fault lies with The Decay, who stole away so many Human children for his cruel experiments. Both us Faeries and this Human child are victims of his ploys.”

Child, eh? Preset dialogue. I guess my character is supposed to look like a toddler at this stage. Makes it kinda awkward. Actually, the other option would be even worse. I wouldn’t be able to walk at all with the leg tripping Ethereal Cape on.

“Let them be stolen,” Dullahan spat. “Why must we clean up after The Decay’s messes? After all the Changelings he has let fall into the hands of Humans.”

“And whose fault was it that The Decay succumbed to Ruin?” Jilly said scathingly. “None of this would have happened had the Unseelie Court been diligent in raising their Prince.”

The dangling head scoffed.

“Our Prince? Surely, you jest. The Unseelie Court claims no ties with those who have fallen from grace.”

“I am sure Princess Rosa would disagree. But no matter. That is a topic for another day,” Hologram Jilly turned back to me. “Welcome Human, to Briarwood, the last sanctuary for Faerie kind. You were stolen away from your kin by The Decay, a creature corrupted by Death and Ruin, and a Changeling left in your place so that none may know of your disappearance. By the grace of our beloved Briar Princess Rosa, you were rescued from The Decay’s dreaded fortress and brought here, to the safety of the Inner City.”

“Whether it is safe, however, depends on how capable you are,” Dullahan interjected. “We don’t enjoy the company of Humans.”

“The Unseelie Court doesn’t enjoy the company of Humans. The Seelie Court, on the other hand, is perfectly alright with it unless you fall from grace like The Decay did. After all, it is the will of Princess Rosa,” Jilly sniffed. “Yet the fiend is correct. Due to the barrier that our wise King Oberon set up to protect Faeries from Ruin, you may not leave Briarwood until you have proven to be a loyal Champion of the kingdom.”

Honestly, you never got to leave Briarwood even after becoming a “loyal Champion of the kingdom”, because beyond the barrier was the edge of the map. You’d go sprawling into the void. Who the fuck knows where The Decay gets all his Human babies.

“Show us your worth, and we may grant you the blessings to become one of us,” Jilly raised a long, crooked finger. “Now rise.”

[WASD to move. Press space to jump.]

If you say so.

I got up from my knelt position and did a jig. There was no reaction from the two flickering figures. Turns out my speculation was right. Just holograms. Wow, I feel smart for once. Maybe getting pummeled in Richard’s Chess matches had raised my IQ.

“Spry, I see,” Dullahan grumbled. “As expected of the offspring of those meddling Humans. Let’s see how you fare in battle. I grant you a blade, and the skill of Status.”

[Base skill Status already obtained. Request to System for base skill Status cancelled.]

Dullahan raised his hand and a small knife appeared at my feet, promptly getting sucked up into my Inventory by Magnet.

[Obtained Training Knife (N)]

[Press Tab to open Settings. Select Status to-]

“Equip Training Knife,” I recited.

The blunt looking knife magically reappeared in a very shoddy sheath at my side. I pulled it out and did a few test swings. Felt natural enough. Coming to this world seemed to have given my body the ability to know how to use a weapon. Maybe I was worrying too much.

“Let us spar, Human,” hologram Dullahan drew his sword with his free hand in one swift motion, his nasty head yammering its teeth at me. “Show me your potential.”

[Press right mouse button to parry]

Excuse me what? Do I look like I have a mouse I can u-

Dullahan clicked his tongue, then before I could blink, he was right in front of me, the wrinkled, knotted end of the stump practically shoved in my face.

Fuck.

I stumbled backwards, my foot catching on the hem of the Ethereal Cape sending me tumbling to the ground, the wind of the the attack passing over my nose with a metallic swoosh. How do holograms make that feel so real?

I scrambled up from the ground to take a clumsy stance. Dullahan had already retreated back to his original position, his sword by his side.

[Press right mouse button to parry]

Hey, wait I’m not ready-

He came again, streaking forwards in a blur of grey and scarlet.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

He’s fast. Actually, no. He’s slow compared to the version in his boss fight, now that I look at it. He’s obnoxiously slow, in fact, but damn, it feels a lot more different when you see it right up in your face instead of on a screen.

If the Help menu hadn’t been lying about how I used the controls like these popups were…

I brought up the Training Knife horizontally in front of my face. As if possessed, my arm snapped into position to take the full blow of the sword, a loud metallic clang filling the air as the knife caught the blade and pushed it back. My arm did a cool swish movement, before landing by my side, once again under my control.

Motion commands, they were a part of the Keybinding feature, except the most basic and commonly used commands had already been Keybinded for you. Essentially, you could bind a certain action or skill to a specific gesture with any requirements you wanted. For example, according to the Help menu, the parry command only worked while you were in combat. Even if you didn’t actually know how to dodge, or parry or swing a sword, as long as you did the Keybinded gesture at the right time, the System would do it for you. A pretty useful feature, though I’d rather be able to learn how to parry myself without having to use the Keybinded command. If I knew how to do it on my own, that would leave more possible gestures for using skills without having me yell the voice commands all the time. Kobolds are an assassin class, how would you feel if a supposedly sneaky assassin yelled “SNEAK ATTACK!” at the top of his lungs while coming at you from behind? Also, practicing would probably also make me less jumpy when seeing ripped, headless jocks come running at me.

Of course, easier said than done.

[Press Z to dodge]

No, no, no, not yet. I want to try to get the parry right on my own first.

Dullahan came blurring at me again. I tried my best to focus on his figure, how he moved his weapon and his stance. Trying to see how he moved, trying to be perceptive, the very thing that I was bad at being. Even if I didn’t ever learn how to parry, I’d still have to be able to get used to things rushing at me like this. It was one thing, timing attacks on a screen, but a whole other thing in real life. You had to coax your frozen limbs to start moving, your brain to react. And in order to react, I had to be able to see what was happening.

Now of course, there was a small nagging voice in my head that kept telling me to “just speedrun the tutorial so we can do the Class Change quest already.” It was tempting, very tempting, in fact, since I already knew that what I was trying to accomplish wouldn’t exactly take a very short amount of time. Trying to raise your reaction time was hard, coding actions into muscle memory harder, like how it’d take several months for a kid to learn how to ride a bike. It took time, countless little failures in order to get what you’d wanted. Back in the other world, I’d trained my reaction time to keep up with all the action going on on screen in by fighting the same boss over and over again. Reaction time was important in Briarwood Rebirth, especially if you played a speed class. Again and again I’d gone into the same arena to fight a low level speed type boss. To only hit the dodge button the split second I saw the bot controlled monster raise its weapon. It had taken over a thousand tries to get it right, but once I got it, repeating the action was as easy as drinking water. I was trying to replicate that reaction time, but instead of pushing a button in response, it’d be performing a certain action. And hopefully, with my arm being forcefully jerked so many times, I’d eventually learn how to do it without using the command.

Time. I had time. Two to three days until Richard finished my new Copper Dagger. And since I didn’t have to eat, sleep or pee, I could just keep going at it as long as I was patient.

And as Johan had always complained to me, I could be extremely patient if I wanted to be.

“Only when you want to be,” to be more specific, but that was beside the point.

Dullahan blurred at me, I did the parry command, and the System told me to “press Z to dodge”. Rinse and repeat. Again, and again, and again. I’m pretty sure the tutorial wasn’t meant to be exploited like this but I’d rather do this kind of grinding in a safe environment than while tussling with a random mob. Slowly, the blur became a rush, and the rush became a lunge. On the Nth try, I could finally see his back foot brace against the floor, his thigh muscles bunching up. I could see him lean forwards nearing the ground, putting his weight into the lunge as he pushed off and traversed a distance two times his expected stride in one step. I could see his weapon come arcing from his left shoulder to his right, and, just almost out of sight, his left hand held out for balance. For a hologram, there sure were a lot of details. Then again, they were probably made using the originals’ movement sets as a base.

Good, good, I could see it now, that at least means that, in case I happen to run into any surprises while grinding to fill my equipment collection (still high up on my list of things to do), I wouldn’t be as startled as I was when Dullahan first came rushing at me.

If I could see…

I waited for his weapon to come arcing around, then, with a sense of bold recklessness, tried to imitate the parry without using the command.

A loud crash, and the knife flew out of my hands like a dove out of a magician’s hat. My thumb snapped backwards at what looked (and felt) like a very painful angle, my cheek smarting from where I had essentially punched myself from the force of Dullahan’s attack.

The knife landed with a clatter a few feet away, Dullahan once again returning to his original position. Out of the corner of my eye, my HP appeared, the bar representing my health glowing a bloody red colour. Then it went down by a small portion.

[Press Z to dodge.]

Shocker, parrying needs a lot more emphasis on how you distribute your force instead of just how you move your arm. It’s almost as shocking as “if you bend your knee the wrong way, you break your leg”. If you jump out in front of a moving car, you get run over. If you get killed, you die. It’s almost as if that’s not common sense.

That’s what I get for being cocky and thinking that I’ve somehow become more capable.

Though, I thought to myself while sucking my sore thumb, at least this happened in the tutorial, and not in some obscure dungeon. Who knows, with my level of dumbassery, I might end up putting my head inside a monster’s mouth and asking it not to eat me. Even if I couldn’t actually die permanently, I’m pretty sure dying isn’t exactly a great experience. Better keep the idiot juice to the newbie areas.

It took another long round of messing with Dullahan’s sparring system to get the parry right. Another long round to be able to dodge. And even then, my actions were far from as perfect as they had been when the System was doing the hand holding with Keybinded commands. There was always something wrong, either the posture, or the way I was using force, or how my leg was positioned. I hadn’t even gotten around to obeying the “Press left mouse button to attack” popup and I was already inclined to give up. But I kept telling myself that it’d be worth it. Back then, I’d wanted to quit trying to hone my reaction time while I still had the luxury of sitting in front of the screen. Had that been worth it? Definitely. Same with this. It pays off. If I know how to do all the basic fighting stuff, and all the physical skills without having to use motion commands, I’ll have a lot more Keybind gestures I can use for all the magical ones. Then, I wouldn’t have to say a long ass skill name, I wouldn’t have to announce my presence to the whole world, and I could use a lot more skills than just the meagre five you could bind to the keys on your keyboard.

Well, hopefully it’d pay off. I liked the idea of effortlessly breezing through dungeons on my future grinding runs.

By the time I had gotten the dodge and the parry down to at least an acceptable level, the “Press left mouse button to attack” reminder had already produced a small fortune of at least a hundred popup screens. How long had it been? I didn’t remember, but at this level, I could read and respond to Dullahan’s movements well enough, even after he’d switched his attack method out of the blue. I felt inclined to boast at finally being able to do something cool, physically. Of course, anything that I was able to do now was clearly due to the effect of stats on my body. I didn’t remember being able to jump this high in the other world. Heck, I wasn’t even able to lift a small chair with one hand, there’s no way I’d have been able to block Dullahan’s attacks, let alone parry them. But the sense of satisfaction that my terribly inefficient and hastily thrown together training session was working. Anyways, at this stage, I could probably rely on myself during dungeon grinding instead of using the motion commands. Maybe I’d still need them for tougher boss fights, but in regards to smaller mobs, I could probably defend against them well enough without tripping over my own feet.

Time to move on.

[Press left mouse button to attack.]

Dullahan raised his sword and did his lunge again, only this time it was a thrust instead of a swipe. I sidestepped the attack, and swung my knife. As per usual, the System took control, adjusting my aim and posture, so that my attack squarely hit its target. Bullseye. The knife cut deep into Dullahan’s arm, ripping through the fabric of his sleeves and raising a small spray of blood. Dullahan’s HP bar appeared above his head and dropped by a small fraction.

It seemed as if the motion command was the attack itself. Like auto aim but with posture included. If that was the case, I felt inclined to be a bit lazy on training my attacks.

“Not bad, Human,” Hologram Dullahan boomed, inspecting his arm. “Your skills are passable.”

From the difficulty of his actual boss fight, I knew that that was a huge fucking lie.

“In recognition of your strength, I grant you the skill of Inventory.”

[Base skill Inventory already obtained. Request to System for base skill Inventory cancelled.]

[Press E to open up settings, then select Inventory.]

Blah blah, boring tutorial stuff. I unequipped my Training Knife and dumped it into my Inventory as instructed.

“The Unseelie Court recognises your potential. As long as you remain loyal to Briarwood, we will not harm you.”

[Tutorial Quest - Changeling - Clear

Exp +200

+50G

Unlocked Achievement: Born of Man

Completed the first main quest.]

50G. Even the tutorial was less stingy than Rue was.

“Despite what Dullahan said, we are not quite done yet, Human,” Jilly finally spoke up, her head bobbing down to my level. “You may have passed the Unseelie Court’s brutish test of strength, but the Seelie Court wishes to judge you by your ability to create rather than destroy.”

“Go, out beyond the Wall of the Inner City to the Hallowed Moors, and bring me three sprigs of St John’s Wort. Then return here and you will be given further instructions.”

A familiar light once again flooded my vision, shrouding over my view of hologram Dullahan and Jilly as a quest clear screen popped up in my face.

[Main Quest #2 Received

Tutorial Quest - The Art of Creation (⅓)

Travel to the Hallowed Moors in the Outer City and collect 3 St John’s Wort. Area marked on Map.]

[Warping to the entrance of Yggdrasil.]

When the light faded, I found myself back on the platform at the top of the steps, facing the door that led to three places at once.

A fetch quest, eh? And the first part to three too. Presumably trying to teach me the three aspects to crafting that I could try. I didn’t remember this part, but then again, it had been a long time since I last had to do the tutorial. Maybe I should ask Marge about the details of the other two fetch quests so I could finish them in one go.

Speaking of Marge, I still had to submit an application to the Chosen Ones’ Alliance. Thanks to the stupid Help menu telling me to voice command everything, I knew exactly how to do that.

“Guild Application.”

A screen popped up containing a form that I had to fill in. What Guild I wanted to join, a message for the Guild, the classic stuff. COA (Chosen Ones’ Alliance is a mouthful) had a few special requirements you had to fulfil, such as being a Chosen One, as well as asking about what Class you were, what your playstyle was like, as well as the level of cooperation and services you were willing to offer to the Guild. I guess they were really concerned about the whole sharing resources deal. I decided to add a message at the end of my application asking Marge to lend me some equipment in case some of the tutorial fetch quests decided to tell me to go dungeon diving. After filling in the form, I sent it off to the Guildmaster (Marge was the Guildmaster, wasn’t she?) for approval.

Now that that was done and over with, time to head over to the Hallowed Moors. If I remembered correctly, it was somewhere near the Western entrance to the Inner City…

“Chosen One.”

I stopped in my tracks as a familiar yet foreign voice filled my ears. A voice that sounded like delicate bells, their tiny jingling light and sweet. A voice filled with determination and a sort of childlike innocence. A voice that, despite how perfect and beautiful it was, sounded hollow and void of sincerity.

I turned my head towards the voice.

Standing in front of the door I had just come from was Rosa.