Scrutinous eyes inspected the information laid out before him. His name was unavailable, and he couldn’t remember what it was on his own. The resulting feeling was eerie. He felt… empty, not knowing who he was. Maybe a little lost too. He remembered things about his past, vividly, he just couldn’t seem to recall his own identity. He saw no point in sitting around stressing over it, though, so he moved on for the time being.

He had only just completed his first quest and he was now level three, but his stats seemed frustratingly low. He had no way of confirming his suspicions, seeing as he didn’t know what the average person’s stats were at all, but he still wasn’t all too happy about the values he saw.

His skills were an entirely different story. Three maxed out skills to start off with? He knew that those were his cheat skills. Did he choose them himself and lose his memory of doing so or did whatever higher power that transported him to this world decide them for him? It didn’t matter either way, since he would have to do his best with them regardless, but he still pondered on it.

Even though linguistics was self explanatory, he still checked out the information on it just like the rest of his skills.

‘Transcendent Eye: Gives the user the ability to inspect the status of all things.’

‘Affinity: Boosts the user’s compatibility with all learnable fields.’

‘Linguistics: Automatically translates all spoken and written languages.’

‘Punch: Strengthens bare handed attacks.’

‘Dodge: Increases the user’s ability to successfully evade danger.’

His next course of action was to inspect his class.

‘Dungeon Master: The class given to those tasked with maintaining their own dungeon.

Class skills unlocked at levels 5, 20, and 50.’

He felt as though he heard something rustling in the bushes nearby so his attention snapped to that direction. He had already recovered physically from his first fight, but was he mentally ready to jump back into the fray? He wanted to level up and figure out more about his class as quickly as possible, but he wanted to do it safely as well if he could.

His adrenaline pumped once again as he scrambled to his feet and waited for something to jump out at him, but after a while he realized that he was waiting for nothing, so he relaxed and took the time to examine his surroundings.

The trees were tall and thick, with branches that looked too high for him to reach and bark that looked more like metal than anything else. He hadn’t paid much attention to it until now, but the silver trees even had blue leaves instead of the green ones he would normally expect from vegetation. If the goblin and the magical status screen weren’t dead giveaways that this was another world, the trees would have definitely sealed the deal.

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‘Quest Generated: Complete the Tutorial(Nightmare)!

Conditions: Locate and defeat the hidden boss monster of the Final Forest.’

The difficulty seemed to be automatically set to nightmare, and that should’ve frustrated him more than it did. He was a little upset, but if he were to be totally honest with himself he felt excited by the thought of pressing times ahead of him. How could he not? Sure, he wanted to get home to his family, but he knew how these things normally worked. He had to complete some monumental task first before he could make it back home, and to do that he would need all the strength he could obtain. He reasoned that he had no choice but to fully apply himself to the goal at hand.

Status. He thought to himself. Just as he suspected, his status screen appeared before him. This is good. Now I don’t have to make any sound and potentially reveal myself.

He continued to familiarize himself with the System that he was now tethered to. He summoned his new weapon from his inventory, calling it to his hand with nothing more than his thoughts. As he swung the stone blade in the air a few times, he couldn’t help but notice how natural it felt in his hand. Was he completely delusional, or was something else at play here?

After he had his fill of that, he released the weapon and returned it back to his inventory. He attempted to try and feel the mana that was now apparently inside of him, but since he didn’t immediately recognize the energy within him he figured he’d need more concentration to actually tap into it, and that would first require shelter. So, seeing as there was no time limit on the quest given to him, he decided that he would secure his basic necessities before anything else.

His menu thankfully had a minimap function in it, but it didn’t show him anything besides the small clearing he was already inside of. Was this a byproduct of the difficulty that was assigned to him, or was this a function implemented to encourage participants to fully explore their surroundings so that they don’t miss anything? Considering the fact that there was even such a thing as a hidden boss, he was leaning toward the second possibility. Plus, it made his circumstances less daunting if he moved with the thought of finding something rare whenever he embarked. It made it more of an adventure than a task.

So, after a brief once over of everything he had to his person, which consisted of the Flo Milli lavender hoodie he wore, his dark gray cotton shorts, his wallet, his black crocs, and the blade in his inventory; he set off into the forest.

He took it slow at first. He didn’t know what could be around any tree or lurking in any bush, and he severely doubted his own ability to handle anything that may make an appearance before him. He had been subconsciously tuning out the sounds of teeming life within the forest, but now that he had to listen for any and everything around him, he was now painfully aware of every bird’s caw and every rustle that came along with the wind. Bugs buzzed incessantly, monkeys cried out in the trees, and predators roared in the distant backgrounds.

He heard a loud splash off to his right and veered off in the direction of it. Whatever it was, it had to at least be around some kind of water to be making that kind of sound. He told himself to be prepared to see anything, but still his heart sank to his chest as he neared the space where the treeline stopped and gave way to plain grass, which then gradually became jet black rocks of varying sizes and shapes clearly ground away over time by the running waters of the sparkling white river before him. In those waters stood a hulking behemoth of a wolf, tearing into the freshly slaughtered body of a golden scaled fish that had to at least be the size of a heavy duty pickup truck.

He couldn’t even tell what unnerved him so much about the sight. Was it the sheer magnitude of their sizes that made him feel helplessly minuscule? Was it the raw gore of seeing so much blood plastered against the stained tan fur of the wolf directly on display for him? Or was it a sense of awe because he knew that he was in the presence of an existence that stood over his own? The status of the creature showed him information that he instinctively knew somehow.

‘Name:

Level: 50

Race: Blue Moon Wolf

Title: Hidden Boss’

This was the enemy he had to defeat for the tutorial.