Just a bit over two days have passed, and I am sitting in the branches of one of the bigger trees surrounding the bunker.
At this point the monsters almost seem to avoid me, the place seems to have been recognized as my territory after my short expeditions to level up. I have to go further and further to hunt now, but I make the effort every once in a while.
Over the past two days, I’ve been working with a few of the higher tier unfinished items, converting them into epics. Leaving me 5,600 shards richer after selling them to the shop. Then I sold piles of materials, mana stones, and some of the weird robes. Anything I had in excess or lacked a use for.
That alone has gained me another 3,800 shards. And that's us going through the Veil Ignition Station twice given that we haven’t gone back since we returned, supposedly Dave is still preparing some important stuff.
My current number of shards is 25,392. The cheapest arcane items start at 100,000 and the cheapest arcane passives aren’t available for less than 200,000, it seems so expensive. Gaining either of them on this floor seems like it will be impossible.
So what am I doing out here?
Waiting for my minion, obviously.
Why outside?
I want to get to her before my Duplicate can turn her against me. We can't have that, and I'm sure he would try.
I escaped while he was watching Dave like a hawk. My duplicate doesn't have the benefit of a counter, he doesn't have access to the quest interface, system shop, or any other system functions. So he can only estimate when she will return, and I did my best to confuse him. I even left an orb in the Bunker to imitate my mana signature while I escaped in secret.
Congratulations! Your disciple will now return to the 5th floor! Bear in mind that you have to keep your disciple alive for two weeks longer. The environment on the 5th floor will become much more dangerous during that time!
And here she is.
Vega carefully emerges from an invisible portal. There she is, just beneath the tree I’m sitting in.
Just then, her senses pulse into the area like sonar, and her heartbeat accelerates as her skills activate. She envelops her dagger in pale blue mana and lowers her stance. I don’t even bother trying to hide as her senses touch me. She lifts her face, and her ruby-like eyes meet mine from below.
A giant smile blooms on her face, “Master!” she shouts.
“You have stopped scanning your area. That's a day of me calling you minion, and you can't complain.”
It's hard to describe the relief I feel. And seeing someone be so happy just to see me is still weird. I land beside her only for my tiny minion to immediately hug me.
“It's fine! Master can call me minion!” she embraces me with the full force her small frame can manage.
I lift her into my arms where she rests against my chest, listening to my heart.
“I’m glad to see you well, Vega,” I say, pulling her closer, and she nods with a smile.
Then I feel the orb down in the bunker disappear and someone trying to reconnect to the anchor I used to get here. But that person finds themselves unable to do so as I expected that and removed the connection with black mana.
“Okay, minion, now listen, this is serious,” I say. Setting her on the ground and kneeling in front of her. “There is a guy that looks like me and acts like me. But that person cannot be trusted no matter what!”
“Looks like master?” Vega asks.
In the distance, I feel an explosion of kinetic energy, and a figure lifts high into the air. Quickly followed by waves of mana scanning the area for us, but my pre-prepared barrier activates, and I hide us for a bit longer.
“Yes, but you have only one master, right? You wouldn't turn against me?”
“I would not!”
“Good disciple,” I caress her hair and poke her cute pointy horn. “He probably isn't a bad guy and won't hurt you, but don't get tricked, okay? It's a test.”
“A test from master,” her eyes wide. “I’ll do my best!”
Right after that, my duplicate descends on us, absorbing the kinetic energy of his landing without causing any shockwaves. “You asshole! You are trying to turn my precious Vega against me!” he immediately complains.
My minion, wary, starts flicking her eyes between me and him. “T-two of them,” she mumbles.
“Vega, come to your master. I want a hug!” the creep says, but surprisingly, Vega seems to hesitate, her eyes rapidly flicking between us.
Wow, does she really want to be called Vega so badly?
“I can't!” she says finally and moves behind me.
“You lost, loser,” I put my hand on Vega’s head and turn to him. “You are scaring MY disciple, so calm down.”
“Oh come on, that's straight-up evil. I just want to poke those tiny pointy horns. I’m not asking for much. I'm stressed too, you know!”
“Go and hug Dave or something.”
“Does Dave look like master too?” Vega asks innocently from behind me.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“You are confusing our poor minion you asshole original, just look.” The duplicate moves close and leans to look at Vega behind my back, who returns his gaze with her curious ruby eyes.
“Is this part of Bambi’s curse?” she asks.
“As if, it's him being a smartass. Come on, one hug,” he turns to me.
“Aren't you too… well, weird?” I ask.
“You can take it easy. I’m going to disappear in a week or two, so I need my ESM.“
“ESM?”
“Emotional Support Minion! When we upgrade our Mantle, you can go first, and I’ll help you create a stronger epic item so you can get more shards.”
“Sure, deal. Vega, you can call this man Uncle Nathaniel but never call him master, okay?” I then let go of her, and before she can complain, my duplicate grabs her and hugs her.
“S-stop. Let me go!” My minion squeaks while trying to push him away, but she can’t really do anything.
Somehow it reminds me of that time I petted the poor Ashenwolf after waking him up in his cave. I wonder how that guy is doing.
“So, how is the progress?” I ask.
“Almost done, but we will have to decide what to do with the minion before heading to the station again. And did you ask her yet?” he pinches her nose, pulls her horn, and when he finally lets her go, my minion rushes to me.
She grabs my clothes and kicks me in the shin before hiding behind my back, “Traitor!”
“Anyway, minion, did you try to ask the questions I told you to ask?” I ask.
After fixing her hair and clothes a bit and while pouting, she looks up at me, “Yes, I did! But the people I asked didn’t know much.”
“Oh, how did you end up asking them?” The Duplicate creates a chair from mana and sits down.
Seeing that, Vega gulps. “I will answer if you create one for me as well!” she tries somewhat sneakily.
Knowing she would answer even without it, the Duplicate still creates one, and then we watch as Vega plops down and tries to sit in a similar lazy manner as my duplicate.
So cute.
“I made them talk after…” She lifts her fists and swings them a few times, clearly gesturing at what she did to the guys.
Oh my. That's my disciple.
“I did what master told me, I found someone who had hurt me and put on the mask master bought. Then I hid my mana as much as possible and changed the way I moved. The mask changed my voice, and then I kept asking!”
The mask she mentioned is the only valuable item I sent with her. A rare mask that has some sort of confusion against weak minded individuals and changes the voice.
“But master. I remember that man hitting me every time I passed by his inn, but he was really weak now. I think I'm the strongest one in our village too!”
“You can beat everyone when you become even stronger. Right now, they could hire someone to kill you, so be patient.”
“Right! So I asked the question, but he didn’t know anything about the tutorial. He only said something about our predecessors, long long ago, going through the tutorial. Only the chosen ones entered and gained great power. He called them First Generation.”
“Huh, that makes sense. But isn’t that interesting?” the Duplicate mumbles. “Did he tell you if the tutorial repeated again?”
“I didn’t ask, I’m sorry uncle!”
“It’s fine,” I answer instead and turn to the duplicate. “So the system takes a bunch of people from a planet and puts them through the tutorial. The survivors return and become the so-called First Generation?”
He speaks in turn, expanding on the thought, “After that, more people from the planet join the system, but without the advantages of people who went through the tutorial?”
“Or could it be that only descendants of people who went through the tutorial get the ability to interact with the system?”
“That doesn’t make any sense. We saw a lot of people with levels on the floors. There wasn’t anyone without a class.”
“They may have gone through the tutorial tens of thousands of years ago, perhaps the descendants of the first generation replaced those who couldn’t access the system.”
He ponders, “That feels off, I like the theory that people from the tutorial return to Earth, and then slowly other people from Earth start awakening and joining the system. Maybe it is all even caused by mana leaking from the people who return to Earth.”
I turn to Vega and ask, “Did he know anything else about the First Generation?”
“Nothing!”
The duplicate sighs, “So if we are right, there are 10 rounds of the tutorial. We are in the 5th round. Every round of the tutorial contains four difficulties, and each difficulty has 10 groups. 2000 people to split into ten groups in easy, a thousand in normal, 500 for hard, and 250 for hell. Overall that’s,” he counts, “3750 people for each round. If we are right and there will be 10 rounds, that’s 37,500 people in the tutorial.”
I continue, “Out of them, how many will survive? 20,000 people in Easy difficulty so maybe 10-15 thousand of them? Out of 10,000 in Normal, probably around 6 to 8 thousand, out of 5,000 in Hard, probably two thousand? And out of 2,500 in Hell what? Somewhere between 100 and 500, maybe 100 of them enter Beyond, and what, maybe 10-20 survive?”
“The tutorial does become harder as floors pass and plenty of people might decide to stay on one of the nicer floors. Someone from Hard difficulty who gets to a higher floor might become stronger than someone from hell who decided to stay on the 4th floor.”
“That’s true. Minion, any info on your Absolute or Champions?”
“They knew nothing! I even bent the hand he used to hit me just like you showed me, master, but he said nothing.”
“Pairing?”
“Nothing!”
“System shop outside of the tutorial?”
“They didn’t know about it! They said there is no such thing.”
“At what levels do primary class upgrades happen?”
“He was only level 40, he got only the 1st one and didn’t know.”
The duplicate looks at her, “Wow, our cute Vega beat up someone 10 levels higher. Is this how proud parents feel?”
Both of us ignore him, and I continue to ask a few more questions, but Vega doesn’t have any answers. But that is to be expected, looking at the small village where she lives.
“Good job, minion, you did well.”
“Thank you, master!”
After turning to my duplicate, I lift one of my eyebrows, and he sighs, “As promised, you get the Mantle upgrade first, and I will help you create a better epic item.”
The chair made with [Regalia] disappears as he stands in a smooth motion and turns to Vega, “I’m glad you made it back safely, disciple,” he says.
To that, Vega thinks for a moment, then smiles, giving him a nod.
Observing him carefully, I notice a hint of relief in his eyes. Even though he hasn’t shown it very much, he is happy to even get that much. Our minion is just that precious a little thing.
As we head back to the bunker, both of us notice that the Mana Radiation has started to become worse, and monsters from all parts of the Valley are fighting and moving erratically.
And the Veil becomes just a bit more visible hanging in the air, just a tiny bit, but almost enough to be able to see it with the naked eye.
The system didn’t joke, and as it said, the difficulty will gradually increase.