I set my tent up which took me longer than I am proud of, also went in the direction of the stream of water I had heard earlier, which proved to be inside the safe zone, drank some water and filled up my waterskin. I was feeling a bit more comfortable and quite proud of what I had done so far, I had thought things through to a degree and was confident in my survival for a bit.
Checking the time, it all had taken about 3 hours, there was no way to tell what time of the day it was but assuming I got here at 11am I suspected it to be around 2pm or so.
With things a bit more organized and feeling a bit more comfortable with my situation, I started thinking about some of the things that I hadn’t previously. For starters, I thought we were going to train on how to use Essence in a more cultivation type of style, how would that work I had no idea, but it seemed as I was wrong. Maybe essence was just a currency we acquired through some methods and used it to better ourselves by buying the knowledge? If so, we would just be using a blueprint and not really creating anything. But then again if you had a skill to let’s say carve wood, and it helped you carve wood with millimetric precision, wouldn’t that be created with the assistance of Essence? What is going to happen to Earth? How are people going to behave, are they going to steal other people’s points? What is going to happen to my mom, she was pretty much the only family I had left, and she lived in a different country, I am not sure I would be able to help her even if I got out of the tutorial. What is going to happen to the kids and elderly? If everything can only be bought through towns, I am sure there will be people trying to control them and charging a tax. For god’s sakes, there is always going to be taxes, isn’t it? Fuck me…
The waterfall of thoughts kept coming and I had to control myself to stop, there was no point, literally no point getting carried away with things I couldn’t control or know, the best thing I could do at the moment was to focus on path ahead. The last thing I hadn’t checked was the Quest tab, I mentalised my Quest Tab as I had got a notification for multiple entries on it as soon as I arrived at the tutorial Zone.
Description
Reward
1. Survive
Survive until the end of the tutorial in 6 months
5000 Essence (Skill): Extra Skill Slot (Title): Survivor (5)
1. Hunt
Kill Beast (1)
100 Essence
1. Hunt
Kill Beasts (100)
500 Essence
1. Hunt
Kill Beasts (1,000)
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
1,000 Essence
1. Hunt
Kill Beasts (10,000)
5,000 Essence
(Title): Tutorial Beast Slayer
1. Hunt
Kill Boss Beast – (1)
1,000 Essence
1. Hunt
Kill Boss Beast – (10)
5,000 Essence
(Title) Tutorial Boss Slayer
1. Hunt
Kill Area Boss Nuuk Snarl – (1)
5,000 Essence
(Title)
After reading through my quests, it became abundant clear that this tutorial was all about survival and the training was only a metaphor for killing beasts. Not sure what beasts were in the context of this area, were they animals or maybe mutated animals? Probably something between those lines, at least it didn’t say other humans, I am not sure how I felt about killing people, while thinking about killing no one in specific didn’t sound so bad I am sure when it came to do it, I probably wouldn’t have the guts. Can you safely say you would be able to kill someone for no specific reason but to profit from it? Nah, fuck that... I still wasn’t sure if there were other people around, I assumed there would be.
Taking a deep breath and gathering what I would take, I decided to bring a couple of dried rations just in case, water, my spear obviously and my dagger was already attached to me. As soon as I stepped outside of the clearing, I lost my sense of calm and tranquillity, mind you, I didn’t feel threatened, but I didn’t feel at ease either. I mentally activated ‘Hide Presence’, and I knew a bit better how to walk through the forest doing minimal sounds and seemingly how to blend in with the greenery. I was very, very jumpy and I knew the skill wasn’t as effective as It could be due to my anxiety, I kept walking from tree to tree mostly ducking, there was a lot of vegetation so it wasn’t that difficult to hide, I held my spear with both hands.
I estimated I walked for about 30 minutes, I really didn’t go that far considering how slow I was taking things in, I walked without coming across anything, my ‘Detect Danger’ didn’t alert me at any point which just made me more anxious if anything, not that I wanted to find something, but I was just very wary there would be things out there. At some point I escalated a tree, drank some water and had two bites of my dried ration, stayed up there for about 10 minutes, I was focusing on ‘Hide Presence’, I was taking controlled breaths and stayed as still as I could only really moving my eyes, and it was then I came across my first encounter.
Animal: Lazuli Wood Mouse
Using ‘Analyse’ proved me with a bit more information than using it on objects, it came with a prompt that this was an animal and not really a beast, I guess that proved my theory that beasts would be either some sort of mutated animal or an actual monster. Also the mouse in question, didn’t really seem any different than your average house mouse apart from his colour, which was blueish, to be expected seeing as it were like me and would try to blend in with the environment.
…
I decided not to attempt to kill any of the animals I had come across for now, as they seemed inoffensive, and I assumed they wouldn’t give anything like essence, probably just meat and pelt, or whatever else you could extract from them. I felt like if I really needed food without having to rely on essence to buy I could hunt a few mice, how hard could it be? I got down the tree, walked a bit longer in the same direction I had been walking before, making sure to every now and then carve a little arrow on trees to point me back to the direction I had been walking from. I spent about an hour and a half walking? Not sure, I felt strange for being in the Extreme tutorial without finding any Monsters, it was odd. Maybe that’s why it was Extreme, cos you wouldn’t come across anything? Nah that couldn’t be it. After walking for so long I had realised that the trees and vegetation were changing, the ground became a bit more rocky and the vegetation more sparse as the trees grew in size and girth.
Once again, I decided to get up on a tree and do the same process, eat and rest for a bit and then I would head back. It was getting late; And that’s when I started feeling the ground shaking, and the tremors were getting stronger, I could also now hear noise in the distance, confused but manly scared for dear life I stayed very still at the top of the tree where I was and focused on ‘Detect Danger’ I couldn’t really feel anything but that’s when I saw someone running towards me, he clearly was unaware of my location, I focused on the creature with ‘Analyse’.
Beast [Boss]: Wild Boar [Level: 22]
Shit!