As Dylan moved his muscles, warming up for the day’s training, he took the opportunity to survey a few parts of the town he hadn’t yet had the chance to see since his return. What he found was more of what he’d seen on his walk the other day. Damaged buildings transforming into demolition sites and empty lots the closer they were to the wall.

After passing through the center of town, Dylan ran northeast. He wanted to see the burnt farmland his father had mentioned and was taking a circuitous path that would go by it.

In total, Fairbasin had four training fields. The smallest stood close to the town’s heart and was the one that Lucas had mentioned fleeing toward; the others were on the southeast side of town, in an open space between the residential area and the wall. All three fields were built together in a large complex that bordered the town’s enclosed farmland. The largest, the one Hensly had been using when the break had happened, took up more than half of the complex’s space while two medium-sized grounds occupied the rest.

Dylan’s destination was one of those two medium training grounds, and his route would take him to the edge of the farmland and then south to reach the training complex.

He’d been no stranger to running as both a warmup and form of exercise before the Tutorial, and as he moved, he tried to focus on the changes in his body since he’d been initiated by the System. At 7.8, his physical power still wasn’t at tier one, but it was enough to make the journey through town easier than it’d been in the past. His muscles didn’t strain as much; each stride didn’t take as much of his energy; and his breathing was unusually smooth.

It wasn’t something he’d noticed often in the Tutorial. At first, he’d simply been testing the abilities of his class, and later, he’d been preoccupied with survival. But as he moved now, with nothing to pull his mind from his body, Dylan felt a small current of mana running through his veins. Invigorating pulses washed through his muscles and tendons. Like the beating of his own heart, it wasn’t something he could directly control, but as he sped or slowed his pace, the mana current changed to support him. Rushing when he ran. Ambling when he walked.

Dylan guessed the amount of support the mana current could give was tied to the physical power stat. He imagined that if his was a newborn stream, someone like his father would probably have a steady river. He didn’t even want to think about how much wider and more active it would be for the world’s high-end combat power. Nearly every established country was backed by at least one tier four powerhouse, and while there were no confirmed tier fives, there were always rumors about someone advancing in secret.

Tier five, Dylan thought, that means class stats at 100,000. He shook his head. It was too far beyond him right now.

Another minute saw the buildings on either side of him open up, and as he turned to his right, he could see the farmland. Or what was left of it.

Fairbasin had designated around five hundred acres on the east side of town for agriculture, and from what Dylan could see, more than two-thirds of that was now a charred mess. A rough path running from the town to a newly repaired section of the wall had been cleared, but everything else looked like a wasteland.

If this is the result of Hensly’s area attacks, what’s the land outside of town look like by now?

Because Fairbasin’s protective cover had extended an average of fifty yards beyond the wall, the town was circled by a collection of small farms and other related businesses. The land there had been less desirable than what was behind the wall, but it had still been seen as safe enough for development. Until the protective cover had failed after being overloaded by the mana storm.

His father hadn’t mentioned it, but Dylan now assumed that everything that had been out there was now lost. It would have faced the first wave of attacks on the night of the break. And after a week of defensive battles where that land was no doubt the front line in the fight against the dungeon monsters, all of it must have now been in ruins.

The thought combined with the scene in front of him to remind Dylan of a time when he’d been eight years old. His mother had heard a rumor of a rare plant that would only grow in the immediate aftermath of a wildfire before dying just a few hours after germination. When an unusually violent thunderstorm had caused a portion of the forest near Fairbasin to burn, she’d felt looking for the plant could be a fun excursion for the family and a good learning opportunity for her children. With his father acting as an escort, Dylan had joined his brother and mother in wandering around the charred remains of the woods.

Of course, they didn’t find anything. Looking back at it now, Dylan wasn’t even sure if his mother had believed the rumor in the first place. Knowing her, it seemed more likely that she’d just made an excuse to spend the day with her family outside of town.

But even still, she’d taken the opportunity to educate her sons about both the flora in the area and the effects of the wildfire. Taking the plant they’d supposedly been looking for as an example, she’d emphasized that despite the apparent tragedy to the forest, there was also an opportunity for new growth.

Since then, Dylan had seen the area twice. Both times he’d still been accompanying his mother while she’d been working in the woods, and with each visit to the site, he’d been amazed at just how quickly the charred earth and vegetation had recovered.

Dylan compared the scenes in his memories with the image of the burnt land in front of him. With the help of the people in the town, he knew the fields could be reborn even faster than that section of forest had been. The classes of those who owned or worked on the farms were often capable of enriching the soil and speeding plant growth. All they needed now was time and safety to bring the area back to life.

We all need that, Dylan thought, looking out to the newly repaired wall beyond the scorched farmland, but he knew that time and safety would remain nebulous concepts for the people of Fairbasin until the town could solve the dungeon break.

He doubted how much he could help right now, but with the world on the brink of advancement, dangerous situations like this would soon become more and more common. He needed to be stronger. Even if, like that forest wildfire, the world’s new dangers could also bring opportunities for its people’s new growth, anyone who wanted to seize those opportunities needed to work hard and be prepared.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Dylan shook his head and continued jogging to the training ground, and in the last minute of his run, he wondered just how much of the place was actually working.

All of Fairbasin’s training grounds had been designed by a firm out of Middlepass specializing in enchantments and manatech. About a decade ago the town had pooled together some of its resources to have them upgraded, and while the facilities weren’t cutting edge, they did offer several convenient advanced features. Features that required mana crystals.

With current concerns about a crystal shortage, Dylan thought it unlikely that much, if anything, would be powered, but having spent a fair amount of time in one or another of the training grounds with his father while growing up, he was familiar enough with their operation to know that some of the enchantments didn’t require active power to work. They could maintain their functions by simply absorbing the mana in the air; some were even designed to accept the input of human mana, storing and then running off of it.

If he recalled correctly, the big dampening enchantment around the sparring ring was like that. But he knew that the protective cover over the ring was not; it needed crystals. Without the power it required, it wouldn’t work, leaving only the dampening enchantment and a short wall that came up to just below Dylan’s chest to protect those outside the ring from stray attacks that failed to find their target.

With us all being near the bottom end of tier one, it’ll probably be enough to stop anything we can come up with, Dylan mused, slowing to a walk just outside the training ground, but it couldn’t hurt to keep an eye out just in case anything makes it past the dampener.

Remembering his speculation about the power he could produce by making Phantom Rally his Favored Card, Dylan felt that he could make an attack strong enough to pass through the enchantment. It may be unlikely, but he couldn’t dismiss the possibility that there were other members of this year’s Tutorial group who could also use special means to make attacks beyond the traditional capabilities of their stats.

Although the members of the guard on training duty would probably be watching to block anything that might harm the newly awakened teens under their charge, being cautious wasn’t a bad habit to get into.

As Dylan entered the grounds, he moved to an unoccupied corner and started to stretch while observing the area around him.

Including the three members of the guard assigned to help the newly awakened, there were just under a dozen people using the facilities. A few boys and girls were warming up to Dylan’s right. In the ring, a pair of boys were sparring under Risha’s watch, and in the section of the field equipped with training mannequins, a man Dylan recognized but couldn’t name was helping a girl practice archery. Another man, a Warrior with a shaved head named Bennet, stood by the small warehouse that housed the practice weapons, observing everyone else.

Less than I expected, Dylan thought. It wasn't even a tenth of the newly awakened, but he supposed the day was still young.

According to his father, there had been 157 people in Faribasin who’d turned eighteen since the last Tutorial, and of those, 112 had successfully awakened their classes. Unfortunately, 34 were confirmed dead in the dungeon break, and the whereabouts of the remaining 11 were unknown.

Dylan hoped that they were still in the Tutorial, but as time passed, that became less and less likely. It was rare for anyone to return from the Tutorial after ten days, and Dylan assumed that was the reason the town would be making an announcement about what to do with his group soon. Waiting much longer would be pointless.

Reflecting on the numbers, Dylan once again realized that if no one else came back, it would mean that more than a quarter of his peers were gone.

Dylan sighed, finished with his stretching. As easy as it would be to wallow in worry and loss, it wouldn’t help. If the town could make it through this crisis, there would still be a chance to mourn, but if he was careless, Dylan could easily find himself joining the others.

Putting the thoughts from his mind, he began to run through the basic exercises his father had taught him when he was young, but after only a few minutes, he stopped. They were easier than before. As it had during his run to get here, the small current of mana circulated through his body, helping to strengthen and refresh his muscles.

After thinking about it for a moment, Dylan summoned his deck. He didn’t play anything; he just let his turns pass by, drawing and discarding cards until his hand was filled with Basic Energy. His father had suggested using the pressure he felt when holding energy as a training tool, and he planned to do just that. But first, he was curious about something.

Dylan wanted to know if the limit on how much energy he could hold had increased with his stats. In the Tutorial, he’d felt the pressure on him double with each point of energy he’d added, and had found, at most, he could hold seven points. When he’d added the eighth, he’d collapsed, unable to move. He’d even had trouble breathing. It hadn’t been until his deck had dissipated after he’d been forced into mana exhaustion that the pressure had begun to lessen, allowing him to get up again.

But his stats had more than doubled since then. Maybe he could hold more energy now.

As he began to play the cards in his hand, Dylan felt the weight of the pressure around him grow. At the same time, he noticed the current of mana running through his veins become more vigorous. It had, indeed, become easier to handle the same levels of energy since the last time he'd done this test in the Tutorial, but it wasn’t as much of an improvement as he’d hoped. At seven points, he wasn’t struggling as much as the first time he’d done the experiment, but it was still clear that adding anything more would see him on the ground.

Mana exhaustion was never a good thing. It took a period of extended rest to fully recover from, and forcing himself to endure it just to test his limits would not help Dylan’s training plan. He let his deck go, and felt the energy slowly drain from him before he began to meditate to recover his mana.

After it was full, he stood again, resummoning his deck. Considering the weight each increase in energy had given him, he felt that four points would be the best choice to train with. It was heavy without being unbearable. Seeing that his deck enhancement already gave him two energy, for his current purpose, all he needed now was an Intermediate Energy card, so he hadn’t bothered to restore the deck after his earlier experiment.

Dylan waited a few turns for the card, played it, and once again began the exercises his father had taught him as a child. This time, rather than being easier than he was used to, they were harder. The energy pressed down on him, slowing all of his actions, and the current of mana swimming through his veins pressed back.

It wasn’t long before Dylan was sweating and taking heavy breaths.

I wonder if I look strange doing this. He forced himself not to check if anyone was watching him. These are pretty standard movements, and it must seem like I’m trying to practice them deep underwater while everyone else is in the empty air.

When he noticed his mana get close to bottoming out, Dylan stopped, once again letting his deck dissipate. The pressure lessened, and he closed his eyes to take a series of deep breaths.

Doing that once or twice a day should definitely have a good effect over time, he mused, but I can’t imagine doing it with a set of weighted training clothes without reducing the amount of energy.

Dylan walked over to the side of the warehouse where he could get some water and splashed it on his face before having a drink. He then sat down on the spot to begin a second round of meditation. It took longer to regain his mana than before, but the added rest time helped restore his tired muscles.

As he once again stretched and stood up, he noticed that a few more of his newly awakened peers had spread around the training ground. No one he currently felt like speaking with, though.

“Alright,” he whispered, walking to an open space not far from the training mannequins, “the warmup’s over.”