I woke to the glow of the rising sun, birds chirping and the wind making branches sway. Day 5. I could hear others already awake walking around and the clinking of pots and pans. Sitting up I took a minute to take in the view. The sun was already in the sky so I didn't get to see the sunrise, but it was still beautiful nonetheless. Facing the sun in the east with the mountains to the north and the forest to the south made it seem like it was a scene from a movie. Wait, does the sun still rise in the east? The map from the beginning showed that it was east but if we weren't on Earth anymore, then I couldn't take it as a fact.
"What's got you thinking so deeply this early in the morning? I'm surprised you're even up given the hour." I turned to see my dad walking over with a cup of something in his hand. He must have seen my facial expression morph from thoughtful to excited so he added, "It's water. You've seen how expensive luxury goods are. It's not worth it."
"It should be against the law to deny someone their coffee." That was another thing that was odd about the way that the store organized what tab each good was under. Since coffee wasn't a food and not necessary for survival, it was labeled a luxury good. Not only did it have the price of a luxury good, it was also classified as a stimulant from the caffeine and that carried its own added price. You would think there was a discount since it was technically addictive, but no, that would be too generous.
"I'm not sure there are any laws anymore." He said taking a seat next to me, to share in facing the view.
Huh, I didn't even think about that. How many people have already died from this? How many people are gonna die before this is over? There won't be a government to come back to, so who's gonna enforce the law? I guess it's gonna come down to whoever has the biggest stick. He must have known where my mind was going so he spoke again to cut it off.
"I didn't come over here to have that conversation, that's for another time. What were you thinking about before I said anything?"
"What? Oh, I was thinking about how we don't know if the sun still rises in the east." I said. He must have found my thoughts funny because he started laughing when I told him.
"What? What's so funny?" I asked.
"Only you would think something like that right now. Most of us are trying to figure out how we are gonna survive and protect our children while you're over here pondering about the universe." He said still chuckling to himself.
"Everything that we can change we are already working on changing, and anything we can't, well that's not really worth getting worked up about. You know what saying I'm talking about" I couldn't remember the exact words to the quote I was talking about but he should know what I was referring to.
My thoughts were simple. If it was something that we couldn't change, it wasn't worth the effort to fret over it. I couldn't send us back home. I didn't know any more than the next guy about what was in store for us. I was never the kind of person to worry about that kind of thing. I left that to my sister.
"I know you think that way, but aren't you worried about our safety? What if the next wave isn't as easy as the others? What if someone gets hurt? Or worse?" I could tell he was worried. It was in his tone and the way he spoke.
"What can we do differently though? The only thing I can think of is to go off hunting every animal we come across trying to level up, but I think that will lead us to an early grave faster than doing nothing will." I said.
"I know son, but it feels like we aren't doing enough." He sighed and shook his head.
"We don't even know what we are doing. What does leveling up even mean? Is that what we should be doing, out leveling up as quickly as we can." I said while gesturing towards the forest, "There is still too much we don't know to be jumping to conclusions."
"Hah, you would think that you were the older one here." He said.
"Since we are talking about the future, what are we gonna do when others come?" I mentioned, trying to figure out if there were any plans toward the other 'participants' in this tutorial.
"I don't know son..." He repeated in a quieter tone, "I don't know."
The conversation lapsed into silence after that. We just sat in silence and took in the view. Not soon after, breakfast was ready and we got up to start our day.
"You know it's actually a prayer." He said before I could walk away.
"What?" I turned back around to face him with a questioning look on my face. I didn't know what he was talking about.
"The saying you were referencing earlier, it's a prayer," He said before retelling the full saying I had forgotten, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."
I made a face at that revelation. He knew how I felt about religion. We had discussed it in depth multiple times over the years and my stance never changed. I wasn't a fan of knowing that it was a prayer and not a saying, but the message was good nonetheless.
"You know what I mean." I shot back. He just laughed and walked away.
With the influx in the amount of points from the second wave, I could see more things that were bought from the store. Extra clothes, soap, and toiletries were the most common. I spent some of my points and got some myself. All together they weren't that expensive being around 20 points total, but when that was the equivalent of hunting a level 5 animal alone, it made it seem expensive.
With the second wave, there were enough data points to confidently say that the amount of points earned was the level squared. A level 1 animal gave 1 point, a level 2 gave 4, and so on. If it was taken down as a group the points were split between the attackers, with the lion's share going to the person who dealt the killing blow. With that mystery solved, it showed that if things kept going the way they were, points weren't going to be as scarce as we thought.
Everyone got around 15 from the first wave and that was with level 1 or 2 enemies. The second wave had level 2 and 3 enemies and gave 40 points for clearing the wave. The initial timeline of getting the wall in 25 waves was going to have to be revised. Right now, the progress sat at 1,156/5,000. At this rate, we would get the wall in a few more waves.
What no one was mentioning was the fact that the beast's level would also keep increasing. Not everyone leveled during this last wave, most of us made it to level 3 but some didn't. Everyone could see the writing on the wall. We were already outnumbered every wave, and soon we would also be out-leveled. Something would have to change.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
----------------------------------------
Time ticked on, days flowed into nights and back into days. We continued working throughout. I did different things during the day from my usual gathering of wood, to helping with construction when that crew needed manpower. I also found the time to go on a few more hunting trips.
The bear was found to be too high at level of 15, so we tabled the discussion of hunting it. Other beasts were fair game. There were a few more boars that met their end, along with a few birds which were around level 4 that started to attack the scouts when they went out. There were a few bats that came out when the sun set that were getting too close to the camp that we had to put down.
Thankfully there was a healer with [Cleanse], because the smell of blood would have attracted a number of beasts that we could do without. She had the job of using it on all the food before we ate to make sure there weren't any viruses or similar diseases. That was definitely a skill that I was going to purchase if I could get the points for it.
The construction crew since the start of the tutorial made; a smokehouse, several lean-to structures for shelter, and several different spikes to help with the defense during the waves. One of which -if the pattern holds- is set for today. They also dug a hole and constructed an outhouse which, in the twenty-first century, I never thought I would find myself using. We bathed in the river with some makeshift walls for privacy, but really they were one strong wind away from a communal bath. The one good thing about all this was that the kids were loving it.
They treated it as if it was a vacation and the whole family was camping in the woods. They fussed over the food and the sleeping arrangements, but what kid doesn't? Their laughter and playing took away from the subtle tension in the air, the uncertainty of the wave that was to come.
We were more prepared for this wave than any of the others. We had experienced two waves previously and we have some defenses to help this time. They weren't as sturdy as they could have been, but they had to be movable since we didn't know which direction they were needed in. The first wave came from the east and the second from the south. We couldn't be certain that the pattern would continue being clockwise and come from the west.
It wasn't a risk that we were willing to take being wrong, so we made them movable. Another thing that we prepared for the upcoming wave were rocks and javelins for the warriors to throw before the wave closed in. With the steady increase in strength from leveling and training, the average warrior sat at around 15 points in strength.
Now that was by no means superhuman, but it was enough to do considerable damage with a rock or sharp projectile. There was no way to measure, but it felt like we were at what used to be the peak of the human body in terms of strength. We could lift things by ourselves that took two or three people to lift when we first got here. It was like being an Olympic athlete. The rogues had the highest increase in agility and they could move surprisingly quickly. One of them even made the joke that he could beat Usain Bolt in a race until we informed him that the sprinter most likely got the same increase in ability from leveling as well. That took the wind out of his sails.
Now that we had some idea of what we were preparing for, the work moved a lot faster. The two days in between waves flew by. From the combination of labor and hunting, I got an increase in strength and endurance. Some of the construction required some more detailed work with whittling wood into notches and joints so everything would fit together. Every non-ranged fighter had three javelins that were of about wrist thickness -maybe a little less- and 4 feet long, for a total of around 60. Smoothing the sides and sharpening the tip took a lot of time and effort which gave a point of agility. That was the first time that I had gotten a point of agility which was good news.
After I found out that wisdom increased with the use of mana, I made sure to use them frequently making sure that I was never full-on mana wasting a chance to train. Sensing mana was still beyond my ability so knowing how much mana I had was difficult, but there was a discussion about it and a few of the mages had a better grasp of it than the rest of us did. They said it was more of a feeling than anything else. It wasn't like hunger or thirst, but you could tell when you were full. There was a feeling that came with it, just like there was a feeling of extreme exhaustion when you ran out of mana.
After using a skill and waiting for my mana to top off I got a vague sense of what they were talking about. It took me most of the day and a decent amount of tries but I could tell when I was full now, and that was progress. I was by no means the best at it, and if I was being honest, I wasn't even average. The mages could actively gauge how much they had and how many attacks they had left in the tank. Some of the warriors could even do the same after practicing it.
With our constant experiments, we found out how to train the rest of the stats. Strength was obvious, increasing through strenuous activity. Agility could be increased through fine motor activity, like carving, or through quick bursts of movement, like sprinting. Perception training was the most esoteric. It wasn't just eyesight that the stat governed. There was a magical side to it as well that someone found out through meditation of all things. When using the skill to replenish mana quicker, they tried extending their senses out, trying to see the mana in the air. That got them an increase of perception that no one has been able to replicate since.
Fortitude and Vitality were tied together somewhat. Fortitude was increased through training the body to withstand injuries, reminiscent of walking on coals. No one was that extreme here, but there were more than a few injuries that trained fortitude during our stay here. Vitality increased through healing injuries, naturally, so they often increased together.
The three magical stats were all tied with mana usage -I know, shocker.- in some way. Wisdom was the easiest, only requiring use. We figured that it was like a muscle and the more you stressed it, it would grow. We still couldn't figure out how much bigger our mana pool was per point of increase. The mages with the best sense for it couldn't get an accurate judgment.
Acumen could be trained by cycling mana throughout the body in different loops and circuits or by trying to manually pull in mana from the surroundings. I failed at both so I was still not sure I got what I was supposed to be doing. Intelligence was trained with various magical activities, most of which I couldn't perform. The mages trained by forming the skill for whatever attack they had, but holding it for as long as they could before releasing it. It became harder and harder to keep the skill from unraveling that trained the stat. Warriors had it harder without any attack skills to use. All of our skills started with activation, there was no delaying.
So instead of delaying activation, we trained to extend the duration of our skills. My skill Power Strike specifically didn't last very long, maybe a few seconds total. Keeping the skill activated took a decent amount of effort and was the best way of training intelligence for me personally. It also had the added effect of helping get used to the skill and learning its ins and outs.
In addition to our usual hour of training each day, which was mostly sparring and mock battles of varying amounts of people on each side, we added in different exercises to train stats during the day while we could. Using skills throughout the day in different manners trained most of the magical ones, and the hard work trained strength and endurance. Not many people wanted to train fortitude and vitality, but there were a few who attempted to. I was not one of them. I took some time at any point in the day to do some exercises for agility and perception so they weren't left out.
When tallied up over the past two days, I got an increase in strength, agility, endurance, and wisdom. I felt good about the increases and couldn't wait to keep going. It was kind of addicting watching the numbers going up, and feeling the difference in my body. I brought up my status sheet to review my progress.
Name: Christopher Zalenski
Race: Human(H)
Class: Warrior – Level 3
Profession: None
Faction: Zalenski Family (Temporary)
Strength- 17
Agility- 8
Perception- 10
Fortitude- 11
Endurance- 12
Vitality - 12
Intelligence- 8
Wisdom- 7
Acumen- 6
Free Points: 1
Laws: None
Skills: Power Strike, Fortified Body
Coins: 0
Points: 37
Seeing the visible change was gratifying, but not as good as the change in my body. I felt strong in a way I've never before. I slimmed down and had biceps that could be prominently seen. I didn't have a six-pack or abs, but I could feel my core muscles were there. Looking over my status sheet I noticed I forgot to place my free point from my last level. After thinking about it a bit I placed it in agility. When it increased to 8 I noticed that swinging my axe was easier to get right, and it made recovering from mistakes far easier. I also didn't know if I would run into issues if my stats got too far apart.
Everyone did light work in the morning and tried not to venture too far away from the camp just in case the wave started early. It didn't. Noon rolled around and we all heard the notification.
Defend your claim!
Wave Start: 0:59
Well, let's get this over with.