E- had been showing on the top side of Shen's vision for a long while when he finally saw the goal, a large island with golden grass at the very end of the road.
No one was there yet.
Shen hadn't seen anyone for a while now, so he should be the first. His E-tier learning ability, Concepts, and footwork gave him that much of an advantage.
There was an island between his current one and the goal. It was barely wide enough for one foot and a dozen thousand yards long. Shen got a system message as soon as he jumped on it.
Tutorial - 7th Stage - Final Boss
This island is this stage's final boss.
You'll have to deal with different things as you progress through. All effects will be cumulative, meaning they will pile on top of each other.
Shen decreased his speed a little for extra stability. The first thousand yards went through without any issue.
Then the path started shaking.
Shen only kept to the island because he been forewarned. The tremor was sudden and severe, forcing him to lower his center of gravity and slow down even more.
The knowledge he got from the Concept of War told him he should actually speed up and run ahead. That should be the best strategy in a race's final boss.
And yet...
And yet, Shen was unsatisfied with the E-.
He wanted to improve his understanding of agility, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to do so. He would rush if anyone got behind him, but until then, he would focus on getting more efficient at his E- agility.
His speed dropped to almost a halt as he proceeded. It started very slow, but he got better at it as he moved on. Soon enough, he could keep a walking speed.
That's when the path started swinging on top of shaking. It went from left to right, up to down, and Shen was once again forced to slow down and get used to it. And get used he did. It didn't take long to get back to walking speed, though he kept his legs bent and his arms open wide for extra balance.
The path became irregular after a certain point—while still swinging and shaking. It went up, down, left, and right. It wasn't such a big issue until it started changing while he moved, like a snake.
That change proved he should be running, for it was just slow enough that he wouldn't have to deal with it if he was going fast.
Shen kept his pace.
After that, fireballs also started materializing from all sides to hit him. Once again, if he were running fast enough, he would've been able to avoid that. At his speed, he had to dodge it all.
From then on, he became as slow as a snail.
Hours later—fortunately still without anyone behind him—Shen felt like he was walking on a moving cord. Every step was a chore. He had long stopped even being able to spare the attention to his current agility. A single moment of inattention would spell his doom.
The path moved, twisted, and shook. Parts of it randomly became irregular or turned into spikes and back. Fireballs, arrows, bolts, ice shards, pieces of rock, throwing knives, water jets, and light beams tried to hit him. Shen barely dodged everything, his agility, footwork, and Concepts taken to the very extremes.
And then there was wind.
The gust of wind came with no warning. Shen was dodging one of the red beams of light when the wind pushed him to the side. There was no avoiding it, only withstanding.
For all that the ground changed, the movements it made were predictable if you paid attention. Like a snake, the things further down did the same as those before them.
So when the gust unexpectedly pushed Shen, he jumped and twisted in the air, going in-between an arrow and a throwing knife, and hit the ground that had just gotten in place to get him.
Other gusts followed, but they didn't surprise him anymore. The random pushes were challenging but nothing else.
Shen coped, adapted, then thrived.
The gusts became a constant wind that pushed him from different sides at random. The Gale Footwork had not been created to deal with constant pressure, but the upgraded Elusive Gale Footwork managed, if barely.
Shen positioned his body to make himself aerodynamic, harder for the wind to catch, elusive. He moved sideways even when it made it harder to dodge because not doing so would make the wind push him off the edge.
Or would it?
Suddenly, Shen understood what his problem had been all along.
He had been halfway through to positioning sideways when he stopped and let the wind hit him head-on. It pushed him, but instead of throwing him off the edge, it shoved him back just enough to avoid an incoming fireball. His footwork told him that that would put him in a bad situation...
...but Zephyr told him to become one with the wind.
He let go of his footwork and focused on his agility and Concept of Zephyr. The Elusive Gale Footwork was just a technique created by brilliant yet fallible minds. On the other hand, Zephyr came straight from the Laws of Wind, something so vast Shen couldn't even begin to comprehend.
So he let the Concept of Zephyr guide him.
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He was afraid, but he was also a cultivator. Cultivators defied the heavens, yet they used the heavens' power to achieve that. His own footwork had been created by borrowing from insights from the Concept of the Gale.
War and Combat also came to his assistance. War told him where everything around was and where his path would be. Combat made it clear what were the best moves to take.
And Zephyr made him flow.
Shen stepped lightly and gently. He danced and twisted, jumped and somersaulted, walked and halted.
He saw the wind and incoming attacks as a complex pattern of unending obstacles trying to limit him, yet he was Boundless and couldn't be contained.
Amid all that complexity, he found a simple, thin, Sharp thread of complete danger avoidance leading to victory.
He was Warring Zephyr, Combative Zephyr, Sharp Zephyr, and Boundless Zephyr.
He was a tiny part of the endless Wind.
He understood secrets of the gentle breeze that he had never glanced at before. He peered into insights that he could barely understand. He pulled them into his very being.
He became One with Zephyr.
And from Oneness came complexity. He found himself thinking and doing every single step of his Elusive Gale Footwork. Zephyr wasn't a gale, but it was elusive. It was enough for the footwork.
He started with the simple steps, foundational ones. How to walk to attack, defend, or stand; how to turn his ankles and still his posture; how to breathe with every movement. Then he moved on to complex sets, circumstantial and unstable footings, tiptoeing on the edge of defeat.
His Footwork, he realized, was a tool. A good one. A lacking one.
One he could improve.
Shen threw some of his footwork's moves away, improved some with Zephyr, and created many, many others. The Gale Footwork had aggressiveness aplenty, and there was a time and place for that, but sometimes, softness and subtlety were required instead.
Shen drew from the Concept of Zephyr and made a footwork that fit him, his Path.
The more he changed his footwork, the better he understood the aspects of the Concept he was using. Like someone learning math, every equation he solved with the techniques he had just learned made him better at those techniques. The Concept of Zephyr had never before been clearer to him.
It became clear enough for him to glance at its full grandness...
....see its end...
...and conclude he was lacking.
Shen had never been more sure that he had no chance of mastering the Concept of Zephyr before the end of the tutorial.
There was so much yet to learn! He was less than halfway through, and it already helped him so much! How much more wonders would he draw from it?
Eventually, he stopped improving. There was only so much that little final boss could help him with. He felt all his other Concepts had profited from the experience, though Zephyr had undoubtedly been the one that reached the furthest.
The twisting and deadly path held no danger to him after that. He strolled unconcerned, avoiding death by a hair's breadth, jumping from one path's bend to another unworried about the endless abyss waiting for him below.
And then, he stepped ahead and reached the final island.
He had won.
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The sudden change of environment shocked Shen awake from the state he had found himself in.
An E letter was on the top side of his vision, proving he had mastered E- agility. That didn't surprise him after what he had just gone through. What was surprising was seeing hundreds of people already there.
There had been none when he started the final boss, and no one had gone through him. How could they be there already?
Shen turned to look at the path that had been moving so much an instant ago and found the long floating island standing perfectly still and unchanged. He couldn't even feel any breeze nearby. It was as if he had gone through an illusion.
His confusion was cleared when someone jumped from the previous island into the narrow path and disappeared. Each competitor traversed the final boss alone.
With that out of the way, he checked the notifications and message the system had sent him.
| Skill Name Change — Elusive Gale Footwork → Zephyr-Gale Footwork
| Skill Level Up — Zephyr-Gale Footwork (D+) — Level 5
| Skill Sync Complete — Zephyr-Gale Footwork (D+) — Level 5
Part of his enlightenment had come from the system sending him information about the changed Skill. It was a bit disappointing, but it only went to show how valuable and impressive Skills were.
Tutorial - 7th Stage
You have passed.
Please wait for the other age groups to conclude the stage.
| Stage clear reward: +10,000 AP
| Total AP: 102,924 AP
Shen bet there was a special reward for being first, but his Path was strengthened, and that sufficed.
He moved to a random stop and sat down to meditate and think of everything he had just learned.
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"Waaaaaaahhrrr!" a man in his thirties roared in commemoration as soon as he reached the island. Behind him, dozens of people of similar age who had almost made it to the narrow island were enveloped by light and taken away.
Only the top 10% of each age group would win. That man had been the last of his age group; all others had been expelled from the Pioneer Tutorial.
In fact, he had been the last overall, for light surrounded all winners next and took them to individual islands a few yards wide.
Tutorial - Achievements
It's time to teach you about Achievements and Titles.
Achievements are a record of accomplishments acknowledged by the system. Completing the Pioneer Tutorial will grant you the very rare Pioneer Achievement. Only the 80 people in your entire race who complete this tutorial will ever have it.
With acknowledgment comes privilege. Some places are only accessible for people with the right amount of Achievements or specific Achievements. Likewise, some positions in the Multiverse Alliance require Achievements.
You can choose whether to public show or hide your Achievements, but some people with higher system access might see it regardless.
You can see anyone's public Achievements by Inspecting them. You can then Inspect the Achievements themselves to learn more about them.
There is always a different reward for earning each Achievement.
Shen thought Achievements were like the badgers of honor awarded by the Immortal Emperor. Only the worthy could get them, and some groups were exclusive to that select elite.
Tutorial - Titles
Titles are also rewarded by the Guardian System, but only to those who do something grand and unique worthy of multiverse-wide recognition.
This Pioneer Tutorial's Administrator is a being who received the title Dreamer and is more commonly addressed as such rather than by their name.
Receiving a Title comes with no direct rewards, but whatever is done to achieve them almost always leads to great riches anyway.
Titles are always public.
You can see anyone's Titles by Inspecting them. You can then Inspect the Titles themselves to learn more about them.
About 10% of Guardians have Achievements.
Due to their reach and possibilities, A-ranks have the most Titles. Even among them, less than 0.1% are Titled.
So, Achievements were a way to recognize elites—maybe that was why the tutorial focused on 10% so much—and Titles were for the dragons among serpents.
Try as he might, Shen couldn't think of anything similar to Titles in the Eternal Empire, except perhaps the Immortal Emperor himself. Shen had no idea what was the Emperor's name; he only knew the man's title, and it was grand indeed.
He was impressed that a Titled being was conducting the Pioneer Tutorial. Yet, it also worried him how much leeway such Titled beings were given.
Shen remembered the message about psychological care, and it seemed the Dreamer wouldn't have cared about any trauma caused by the Void Spawn if they hadn't been forced to do so. And that trauma care was needed if everyone who gave in to the Void also gave up on the Pioneer Tutorial right after.
Shen smelled politics, and it irked him.
Then came the message explaining the next stage, and he wondered if it would be disrespectful to the Dreamer to yawn while reading it.