Welcome to the Forest of Ancient Oaks! You may teleport back to this floor from the entrance or exit of any other floor. There is not a single hostile creature on this floor, so sleep safe knowing you have nothing to worry about except for one another. There are plenty of entrances to the next floor, so feel free to head down as soon as you are ready!

With that ominous message, the blue screen of guidance finally decided it was time to leave me alone. For the first time since that blackhole damn near killed me, I had no blue screen in my vision. That had made everything start feeling more real, and I can feel my heartrate begin to quicken as the gravity of this whole situation begins to hit me.

Thankfully, somebody actually speaks up before I can start to spiral. It’s Ben, my “former” boss.

“Well, is everyone okay?” He asks. Everybody gives some version of “I think” or “As okay as I can be”. After receiving these confirmations, he continues with a much more serious tone.

“I’d like to confirm one thing before we actually talk about what is happening.” Ben says. “We are all in agreement that if this really has effected everybody in on the planet, we are not going to be telling a single soul this was our fault, correct?”

To that, every single person present agreed. Nobody wanted to be stuck with the blame of turning out world upside down. It was certain to slip at some point, but hopefully by then people are used to this enough that we’d only get shunned by society rather than beaten to death, or more probably, hacked to death by the new weapons that our attackers would likely have.

I say that because everybody was holding some kind of weapon, presumably based off of the class they chose. We also had various kinds of armor, though I don’t really know if you could call the robes I wore “armor”.

Everybody who had chosen fighter, which was 4 of the 12 people in our little group, wore chainmail armor and had both a short sword and shield. The sole archer of the group had leather armor and a bow. He also had a quiver slung over his shoulder, filled with dozens of arrows. The two healers both wore white robes and had a wand with a yellow gem at the tip. Us five mages wore purple robes and had wands with purple gems at the end of them.

A few seconds of staring at my own wand made another one of the blue screens pop up, this one far shorter than the others.

Mage’s wand (Common)

A wand granted for the purposes of the tutorial. Slightly increases the effectiveness of any spell channeled through it. Infusing significant amounts of mana repairs the wand over time.

I did the same thing for my robe, expecting and getting a similar result.

Mage’s robe (Common)

A robe granted for the purpose of the tutorial. Passively stores excess mana siphoned from the wearer, allowing the user to store more mana for immediate use. Uses stored mana to repair itself over time.

Well, that was simple. I guess having more mana was more important than extra protection for a mage like me. Better to make sure an enemy can never reach me at all than have to deal with them when they do. Who knows, maybe eventually I could make a shield of mana to act as protection and have little need for armor. Actually, what was the armor even meant to protect us against?

“So, uh, what do we do now?” Asks Rebecca, one of the researches I’d worked with.

“Well we need to find a source of food if we are stuck here for almost half a year.” Ben said, and nods of agreement went all around. He turns to one of the two healers. “Jeremy, you were an eagle scout right? Do you think you’d be able to forage enough for us to eat? At the very least, do you think you could teach us to forage so we can all pitch in?”

“Well if we did decide to forage instead of hunt, I’d definitely need to teach you how to. There is just no way I can forage for twelve people all on my own.” Jeremy responds. “Hell, I don’t even know if I could tell what’s good to eat or not. The plants here could be different from what we are used to.”

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“That's a good point...” Ben admits, thinking to himself. Just then, the archer of the group speaks up.

“I don’t think we’ll have to worry about eating for now at least.” He says. “Look.”

We all look where the man was pointing and spot two deer grazing not too far away.

“Do you think you can hit them at this distance?” Ben asks the archer.

“I’m not sure, but if all the mages try casting some spells at it we might manage to injure one of them enough to catch up and kill it.”

“Alright.” Ben says, motioning to everyone. “Mages, line up and get ready to throw some magic at them.”

We all get in a line shoulder to shoulder. We made sure nobody was behind anyone else. Wouldn’t want a stray bolt hitting somebody in the back. On Bens word, we all fire off a bolt of mana, and the archer shoots his bow.

It is a lot harder aiming the bolt of mana than I thought it’d be. Casting the spell itself had been easy, it felt almost instinctual as I felt something flow through my body, into my hand, and out the front of the wand. Through sheer luck, my bolt of mana had managed to hit the hind leg of the closest deer, leaving a crater in the leg of the deer just above the hoof. The archers arrow had dropped more than he’d expected, but still managed to hit the deer in the other hind leg. It fell over while the other started running, and we all quickly ran over.

Jeremy grabbed a sword from one of the fighters and quickly put the poor creature out of it’s misery. A quick stab to the head was all it took.

*You have slain Deer (level 1). Experience gain reduced due to the size of your party*

The adrenaline looked like it was coursing through about half of the people present. Most had pale faces or a grimace they tried to hide. Me, Ben, and Jeremy all were the only one’s who didn’t seem affected by having to kill the deer. I'd gone hunting before, so it wasn't exactly my first time having killed something.

“Alright, someone grab it and lets go find a river or some other source of water. We don’t just need to eat to live.”

Ben’s words seemed to snap everyone out of their trance, and soon two of the fighters were carrying the deer as we walked. It didn’t take too long for us to find a river. We had walked up and down it a bit, but eventually settled on a spot after we found a staircase dug out into the dirt near the river. There was an unnatural darkness to it, and we agreed that it was almost certainly the entrance to the next floor. Within an hour we had a fire going and a few skewers of deer meat hanging over it.

We’d managed to put our combined 16 PHD’s together to figure out a way to distill some water. That was probably 16 PHD’s more than was really required, but we kept joking to each other about who’s education had made them the most prepared for this. We’d all decided that Jeremy wasn’t to be included since he had been an eagle scout. Clearly his education should be disregarded since he’d been trained to do the exact thing we were doing instead of some barely adjacent activity.

After everyone had eaten and gotten at least a little bit of what little water had been distilled so far, we sat down and had a serious discussion about what was next.

“So, who’s gonna go?” Ben asked the group. “I assume there is at least one person present who wants to go explore the next floor that the blue screen had mentioned.”

There was an awkward silence for a few seconds, and I cleared my throat. “I uh... I think I am going to go check out what the next floor is like. I don’t want to just be sitting around for six months doing nothing but surviving.”

There is another beat of silence.

“Anyone else?” Ben asks, but nobody speaks up. There were clearly a few people deep in thought, but none that seemed overly eager to go exploring right away. Everyone was still reeling from everything happening so suddenly.

“That’s fine.” Ben continues. “We don’t know what’s on the next floor, but I agree with River that we can’t just sit here for the next six months doing nothing. Once we have some reliable way to eat and drink, I will also be going onto the next floor.”

Everyone seems to cheer up a bit at that from the somber mood. It seems they hadn’t been thinking about how they could just go down the stairs later on. Everyone starts talking amongst themselves, and I hear several of them discuss how they are going to go tomorrow after getting a good rest.

Now, me? I’m not that patient of a person.

Ben knew me well. He knew I would rather go out and do something stupid than sit around doing absolutely nothing. He also knew I was the type of person to get to a task as soon as I could, and often hyper fixate on it until it was done. There was more than once that he had to drag me away from my work and tell me to go to bed, as I would just be too far gone in my own little world to remember my body had needs.

While everyone was talking with one another, Ben stepped aside with me, far enough away that the rest of the group couldn’t hear us.

“Please River, if you are going to be going to the next floor, try to be back quickly, I’m sure everyone’s minds would be put at ease knowing that you didn’t immediately die going down there.”

“I will.” I say, not arguing. “But this is a tutorial after all. I don’t know for what, but usually tutorials aren’t going to try and kill those it is training.”

“I know, just please be careful anyways.”

“I will.” I say, sincerely meaning it. If I didn’t come back and I did happen to die, well at least I wouldn’t be getting yelled at.

After giving me a goodbye pat on the back, he went to tell the others I was leaving while I was already walking down the stairs. Neither of us wanted anybody to feel pressured to go now or to try and stop me, which was why I was leaving before he told them.

As I walk down the stairs, a screen appears in front of me.

Teleporting down to floor 2: Goblins forest