When Nick’s senses unscrambled, he found himself standing in someone’s living room. It was simultaneously the most normal and the most bizarre setting he’d seen since his new life began. He looked over his shoulder, only to discover that Bandit was gone, spirited away to wherever the rest of the tribe had vanished.
He looked around in disbelief, the wild racing of his pulse slowly steadying. The contrast between the summit and this room was staggering, to the extent that he was having trouble processing what he was seeing.
Everything is so… ordinary. A lounge chair. A comfy couch. A fire crackling merrily in the hearth. One second, Nick had been fighting for his life against the unbridled power of the searstorm, and the next, he was completely safe. Cozy and warm. Surrounded by the relics of his former life.
Looking at the family portraits on the walls, depicting people and places that likely no longer existed, he expected someone to walk in and tell him that he’d been in a coma or caught in the throes of a psychotic break.
But the gear on his body, the pack on his back, and the pain of his wounds were evidence that everything that had happened to him was real.
Whatever was going on, it didn’t change what Nick was going to do next. Uncaring of the grime caked across his body, he set down his pack and plopped into the recliner. He took the weight off his feet, enjoying the realization that, for now, nothing was trying to kill him.
After a month of sleeping on rocks, needles, and branches, the chair felt miraculously soft. Putting all his questions and concerns on hold, Nick sank into the cushions, letting the stress in his muscles melt away.
He sat there for what must have been hours when a message appeared in front of his eyes. For the first time in what felt like ages, the System was the bearer of good news instead of bad. Nick broke into a broad grin as he started to read.
System Message: Quest update.
Congratulations. You have completed the quest: “System Tutorial.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Additional bonus objectives completed:
* Tutorial Dungeon cleared.
* Survived a searstorm while caught in the open.
* Defeated numerous higher-level beasts at once and claimed their territory.
* Befriended 2 species of beasts.
* Survived close encounters with numerous apex predators.
* Helped a species survive the tutorial that would have perished otherwise.
* Discovered 7 Exploration Reward Chests.
* Significant conditioning of baseline attributes.
* Capped a starting skill before Level 10.
* Completed a tutorial intended for beasts in a solo run.
* Completed a tutorial significantly more arduous than the default settings.
Taking this into account, your performance has been rated as: Exemplary.
Additional experience and essence have been awarded.
Distributing [Gold] quest reward and bonus [Copper] and [Iron] quest rewards…
“Hold that thought,” a voice echoed across the chamber as a door in the wall cracked open. A door that hadn’t been there until that moment. The voice was eerily familiar. Nick knew that he’d heard it before, but he couldn’t quite place it.
Before he could collect his thoughts, a figure stepped through and entered the room, taking a seat in the chair facing Nick. Too exhausted to think straight, he didn’t even try to make sense of what was happening. Instead, he took a long look at the person sitting across from him.
It was a man with long white hair, streaked here and there with bands of gray. He wore a blue silk coat, dark pants, and worn brown boots. Despite the normalcy of his appearance, Nick was certain that the man wasn’t human.
He projected an atmosphere of menace and unimaginable power. Nick had the sense that there were endless worlds circling behind him, trapped in his aura like rats in a cage; that if he were so inclined, the man could end Nick’s life without batting an eye.
That was when he remembered where he’d last heard the voice. Adrenaline surged into his arteries as alarm bells resounded inside his head. It was the same voice that he’d heard booming out from the void during the final moments of his orientation. Taltos.
“Hello, Nick.” The Mad God met Nick’s gaze. His mind reeled, struggling to take in this latest twist as Taltos offered him a Cheshire cat grin. “How lovely to see you again. Congratulations on surviving your tutorial. It’s time for us to have a friendly chat about the fate of your home world.”
Despite his disorientation, those words demanded Nick’s full attention. He listened with every fiber of his being as the Mad God’s eyes stared into his own.
“But before we get to that, how would you like to slip out of that basic class and into something more… comfortable? I have an offer that is simply to die for. Quite literally in this case.”
END OF BOOK ONE