New Quest:

Tutorial Cave

Conditions:

Cleanse all tutorial creatures from the cave

Rewards:

Experience

Description:

The creatures in this cave offer little challenge to prepared adventurers.

The other side of the door was, unsurprisingly, more cave. The party sat still, staring into the twelve-foot-wide hallway, waiting for something to appear. There was nothing, and after what felt like minutes, but was most likely only seconds, Jesse poked Richard’s arm.

“What?” Richard whispered, not looking away from the hallway.

“You’re first, dude.” Jesse motioned forward, and Richard, getting the hint, started moving.

There was no sound apart from the party’s footsteps as they walked down the hallway. The eerie silence did not help their nerves and the party moved at a snail’s pace.

Finally, after several minutes of seeing nothing but hallway, they rounded a corner into a large room. Marlene immediately turned and vomited on the wall. When Wyatt entered the room, he saw why.

Strewn about the floor, were the bodies of large rats. They were each the size of a dog, with dark brown fur, and large front teeth.

“What the hell?” shouted Richard, as he rushed to push his kids back down the hallway, sparing them the sight. “What is going on here? What are those?”

“Cave rats,” whispered Jesse, clearly less excited than he had been.

“Why are they dead?” asked Brad, his dark face turning a shade lighter as he clearly fought back his own vomit.

Wyatt and Chuck moved to the closest body, and the archer put a hand on a foot.

“He’s right,” he stated over his shoulder, “It says ‘Cave Rat, level one. Dead.’”

“This is all some kind of dream,” Angela muttered as she walked into the room, gingerly avoiding the blood that covered the floor.

What is going on? Wyatt thought. These rats are all level one. If this really is a tutorial, they would be the perfect creature to fight. But why are they dead?

Wyatt examined the bodies more closely. They all looked like they were torn apart, most likely by something massive, and the blood, he realized, was fresh

“What could have done this?” asked Brad. The others, except for Marlene and her two kids, were in the room now, trying to find answers. Margie was sitting down by the doorway; her face was absent of the fear the others were showing.

Great, she’s senile too, thought Wyatt. “Something very big,” he said out loud, answering Brad’s question, “let’s keep moving.”

The room had two exits, excluding the one they came from. Choosing one at random, the party regrouped. Richard and Marlene held their kids, covering their eyes as they crossed the carnage filled room. They moved at a faster pace than before, trying to distance themselves from what they had seen.

“I feel a breeze!” exclaimed Jesse after a few minutes of quiet walking, the sudden noise startling the others, and he ran ahead of them excitedly.

“Wait!” Called out Brad as the young mage rounded a bend in the cave. The party picked up the pace, trying to catch up. When they came around the bend themselves, they stopped.

Jesse stood a few yards away from them, unmoving and staring at something in front of him. As Wyatt looked past the young man, he realized what had him frozen in fear.

A massive monster was standing in front of him. It had to crouch just to fit into the fifteen-foot-tall corridor, and its massive body almost reached the wall on either side. Its grey skin was rough, and Wyatt saw large warts covering most of it.

The thing reached a hand out, grabbing Jesse by the torso. Its hand easily held both of the young mage’s arms in place, and it reached out with the other to grab his head. Then, with unnatural ease, Jesse’s head came off in a shower of blood, and the young mage’s body fell to the floor.

“Run,” Wyatt whispered to the others, hoping that this thing, whatever it was, would be too distracted to notice them. They ducked back behind the bend and began running back to the room with the rats. When they got there, Richard, still in front and holding Isaac in his arms, turned down the tunnel they hadn’t taken before.

“Wait,” called Marlene from the back of the group. The group jumped and turned, startled by the sudden noise. Richard drew his sword and went to his wife.

“What, what’s going on?” he asked, looking for any sign on danger.

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“I can’t,” the healer panted, “I can’t, I’m too tired.”

Wyatt looked in the corner of his vision and saw that his stamina was down to 20. He recalled the conversation they had earlier about their attributes and knew that Marlene’s stamina had to be completely empty.

“We have to keep moving,” said Chuck, fear evident in his voice.

“What the hell was that?” asked Angela, panting.

“I think it was a troll,” answered Wyatt, “Chuck is right though, we can’t stop.”

“It.. it just killed the kid,” Brad stammered, “What the hell tutorial is this? The quest said the creatures offer little challenge, what is going on?”

“Where’s the old lady?” came a small voice from behind the group. They all turned to Cecilia, who was staring back down the tunnel.

Wyatt looked around for Margie, only now realizing she was not with them. “She probably couldn’t keep up,” he said, thinking back on the comment she made about her walker.

“We have to keep moving,” repeated Chuck.

“We can’t leave her to that troll.”

“Let’s face it, she’s not going to make it. She’s probably the only reason that thing hasn’t caught up by now, we have to go.”

Wyatt knew the archer was right. But he couldn’t just leave someone to die. “Keep going, I’ll catch up when I have Margie.”

The others gave the young man a look that told him they thought he was crazy, but none of them argued. He turned and walked quickly down the cave tunnel they had just come from, hoping desperately the troll was moving away from them.

Wyatt moved at a slight jog, keeping an eye on his stamina bar. He noticed the drain was much slower as he jogged, but it did still drain him. When he finally saw the old lady leaning against a wall, his heart sank. He thought she was dead, at first, as she seemed completely still. As he got closer, however, she turned and looked him in the eyes, smiling more than anyone should given the situation. His luck had held out, and he let out a held breath in relief.

“Come on,” he whispered to her, reaching out a hand to help her move.

“Oh, hello, young man,” she said much louder, “Did you see where the other man went? I could have sworn he was here just a few seconds ago.”

Wyatt grabbed her, not wanting to risk waiting around any longer than he had to, and half carried her back the way they came. With the added weight of the old lady, coupled with his debilitatingly low strength score, the trip back was much slower. Wyatt even noticed his stamina bar still being drained, most likely due to the added strain of supporting Margie.

About halfway back, he noticed his stamina had stopped dropping. In fact, it was starting to fill back up, albeit slowly. It was then he noticed he could hear humming, and realized Margie was singing softly to herself.

It must be a bardic ability! This old lady might prove useful after all! With that thought, the mage looked to the edges of his vision. Thinking back on his gaming days, he knew there should be an icon somewhere to show him what she was doing. Sure enough, on the top right of his vision was a symbol that was very obviously a bardic effect. A circle had appeared with a music note in the center of it. As he concentrated on it, a small tooltip styled prompt appeared next to it:

Status:

Bardic Song

Affect:

Increases mana and stamina regeneration by 25%

With the added boost to his stamina regeneration, he was able to pick up his pace, and soon he was back in the room with the dead rats. He took the path to follow the rest of his party, and eventually emerged into another room, larger than the first, filled with more rat corpses.

“You made it back,” said Richard, noticing Wyatt step into the room with them, “and with Margie, too.”

Wyatt saw Chuck and Brad looking around the far side of the room while the rest of the group was doubled over near where he had come from, breathing heavily. Wyatt put Margie down next to them and told her not to stop humming. She gave no evidence of hearing him, but her humming continued, nonetheless.

“Margie has an ability that will speed up your regeneration,” Wyatt told the group, “We will need to leave quickly as soon as we find a way out.”

He looked around the large room. There were roughly ten rat corpses strewn about, and several small patches of moss along the walls. He walked over to the largest patch, realizing that it was the only thing that broke the monotony of the cave wall, and began running his hand through it.

Wyatt stopped when his hand caught on something. Moving the moss out of the way, he could make out the outline of a lever. He pulled it, and was rewarded with a notification:

You have gained a new skill:

Perception – Level 1

Wyatt barely had time to read the prompt when a portion of the wall he was standing in front of began to recede into the ground. The noise it made as it opened startled everyone in the room, and more than one of them looked at Wyatt in horror.

“What the hell was that?” demanded Brad as he stormed towards the mage, “Are you trying to attract that troll thing to us?”

“It wasn’t on purpose,” Wyatt answered, motioning at the newly formed doorway, “We need to find a way out, maybe this is it.”

Brad only now realized what had caused the noise, and looked into the doorway, his anger seeming to subside. He looked to Wyatt, still not happy, but nodded as he understood. The two of them looked back at the others, and the barbarian motioned with his hands that everything was fine as Chuck, bow drawn in response to the noise, came to join them.

The three walked into the narrow hallway, Brad’s large single bladed axe leading the way. Moss and spiderwebs hung down from the ceiling in equal parts, and Wyatt held his torch low to prevent setting any of it on fire. Even with the dim light, they could see the hallway open up into a room just ahead of them.

Brad stopped in front of the mage suddenly and ducked low just shy of crossing the threshold. Wyatt looked past him to see why. Six more rats were in the room ahead, these ones living. They were sniffing and scurrying around what looked like a small chest in the center of the room and hadn’t yet noticed the trio as they crouched in the hallway.

“It looks like we are going to get a chance to see how combat works here,” Chuck whispered from behind Wyatt.

“It seems we will get something out of this tutorial after all,” Wyatt replied.

“Should we go back for the others?”

“No, let them catch their breath. If these are the real tutorial creatures we were meant to fight, this shouldn’t be an issue.” Wyatt didn’t entirely know if that was the truth, but his experience with gaming made him feel confident in his answer. “I should be able to incapacitate one of them, maybe two with my Daze spell. Chuck, can you hit one with your bow?”

“Guess we will find out, but I’ve never used one.”

“Do the best you can. If any get close, Brad will have to engage them with his axe.” Wyatt turned towards the barbarian. “Can you do that?”

“Gladly,” he whispered back with barely contained rage. Wyatt had to wonder if the man was simply angry at the situation, or if his class, generally being associated with “raging”, had anything to do with the fire in his eyes as he glared down a group of overgrown rats.

Putting his thoughts aside, Wyatt prepared his spell.