[You have obtained a sharp edged knife]
The sharp edged knife provided by the system fell down into the ground. The system provided weapons to everyone for survival. It was impartial like that. What Ark had found out earlier was that these knives would give out after only a few encounters with the monsters.
After all, the main condition for this scenario was survival and not attack. In his past life, Ark had foolishly tried to fight his way through a bunch of those monsters. That had netted him his first battle scar.
Other people would have gotten the same kind of weapons. Someone would probably get a brittle hammer or a rusty knife. Others would have great luck and would end up getting weapons they could comfortably use. The first scenario was the easiest out of all of the scenarios, but that did not mean it was easy. It was just easy compared to the grand scheme of things.
There were certain laws that governed the workings of the tower. The first law was absolute. No scenario or story was unbeatable. It was a simple rule and yet so profound. If nothing was unbeatable then what harm was there in trying? This was what allowed Ark to persevere through and climb the ranks of the tower.
As soon as the timer counted down to one, the once seemingly immobile monsters started to stir. People who had previously thought they were drunk blinked away their doubts as they staggered back. Some men turned tail and ran away. The women started screaming and the ones who were chivalrous stepped forward in a knightly manner.
Everybody had seen the system screen. At first, they had thought it was just an imagination, something that their brain made up in a drunken state of being. After all, the monsters were something that only a drunk person going through a nightmare could come up with. Another system message had popped up then, giving all of them some weapons. This sealed the deal. Something was amiss…something was very very wrong.
Humans by themselves were hard wired to think of certain things when they encountered monsters. Flight or fight response would kick in and the response always leaned towards the latter. They would think that it would be possible for them to survive if they just ran away but there was one thing they didn’t seem to realize. The tower in scenarios like these was ruthless. The town square was a pretty spacious area. That meant that more number of people were present at a certain amount of time. The monsters that would spawn would be directly proportional to that.
They started spawning everywhere. Every road was partially filled by these spawn. It was impossible for them to run away. Even if they did run away, it was not like there were no other monsters. It would catch up to them eventually. The monsters had finally stopped spawning. Even after the timer was over, there seemed to be no response from any of them.
Ark slowly scrutinized the monsters before him. He had never fought one personally before. In his past life, Ark had to fight brain dead zombies in the first scenario but these monsters were anything but that. The monsters were like a little baby. The resemblance stopped there. Its enlarged head gave away to two unhinged jaws from which jagged teeth grew like mad. The teeth were intermingled with each other, saliva slowly dripping down the concrete ground.
The monsters looked like some crude experiment of nature as it sat naked on the ground, only a loin cloth covering its nether regions. Small legs and long arms with claws sticking out were all it took Ark to identify the pasty skinned beasts as Dustbroods. Ark remembered something Artemis had told him a long time ago, ‘Dustbrood are not intelligent nor are they strong by themselves. Get them in a horde and they become a terror’. What was in front of Ark was more than a terror. It was a whole nightmare. Where ever he saw, he saw groups of Dustbroods standing still.
That was not the only thing Artemis had told him though. The Goddess of the Hunt had also told him the proper butchering techniques to use against a horde of Dustbroods. That was going to come in handy now. Three Dustbroods were slowly crawling towards him, their small legs giving them little help. Ark reached them first though and angled his knife in such a way that was almost horizontal to its jaw. It only took Ark a second to draw and withdraw his knives as three heads of confused Dustbroods fell down into the ground, dislocated.
The result was anticlimactic, to say the least. It would be too. The Dustbroods were particularly weak against edged weapons and when you factored in their weak point it became almost too easy. Their necks were only connected to their bodies through a single cartilage. It did not take a lot of time and effort to make them anyway. They mostly served as fodder. But even fodder could kill humans if they were not careful. A moment after Ark had finished killing the three Dustbroods, a notification greeted him
[You are the first to slay a monster]
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[You have obtained 1000 coins]
[You have obtained 60 coins]
[You have leveled up]
[Your story is slowly starting to form]
The familiar sound of notification pleased Ark. The achievement of being the first one to kill a monster had given him 1000 coins. It was a massive amount to get in the first scenario itself. The three Dustbrood on the other hand only gave him a measly 20 coins each, the lowest any monster could give. Ark thought that the coin distribution itself should have told him about the difficulty of the monster.
Ark felt strange leveling up. Every time someone leveled up, two of their attributes would increase randomly by one. If luck was on their side, they would also get an unallocated stat point. Ark had leveled up but there was no increase anywhere. He didn’t feel particularly strong or fast. Ark thought for a few moments before realizing that the status screen opened up during the second scenario. The first scenario was for gaining coins, the second scenario was to open their status screen, get used to it and allocate stat points and the third scenario was going to give them their card decks.
Ark sighed. It couldn’t be helped. The only thing he could do was kill enough Dustbrood and gain some coins. The road in front of him now was filled with Dustbroods blocking access to anyone who wanted to pass them. Ark though had absolutely no intention of passing them. Ark grinned from ear to ear. They were free points after all. On the outside, Ark looked like a maniac with two butcher knives in his hand slaughtering monsters. It was a pretty cool picture if Ark could comment on that fact.
Ark rushed forward. He did not think that the Dustbrood could injure him. He had adorned his coat and pants well enough to prevent the random scratches. Ark reached one of the Dustbroods in no time and slaughtered it in a matter of seconds. One Dustbrood turned to five and then five turned to twenty. It was ridiculously easy killing them. There was a single technique and Ark had mastered it to perfection. Even his seemingly weak body would be able to kill them easily. The only problem he could possibly face was running out of stamina. It did not look like it would run out any time soon.
Ark’s slow walk turned into a light jog as he continued to slaughter any monster he saw in his path. The real monster on the road was Ark himself. There were a few random scratches when Ark tried to kill ten of them at once. He had been about to be bitten when he tried to kill ten of them at once. He had survived because of his reflexes. He had forgotten that the body was his normal human body which had its own limitations. The level ups which should have been strengthening him continuously didn’t help either. He still had his normal body.
Ark had an inflated sense of confidence that he could do whatever he wanted to in the first scenario itself. That needed to stop immediately. He was human still, he would make mistakes. There was only one thing. He would not make the same mistake a second time. Still, Ark did not feel satisfied. The horde of Dustbrood seemed never ending. He continued to butcher them as he walked along the streets. The technique of killing them was still the same and all Ark had to do was repeat it over and over again. Suddenly, Ark realized that something was wrong.
The time it took him to kill a single Dustbrood was near about three to four seconds. The last Dustbrood that he killed took about a second more than it possibly should have. The butcher knives had become dull. Ark was surprised it took them so long to break down. The knife that was provided by the system would probably have taken less time to break down. Ark was not phased by this as he immediately called up the system shop.
[Connecting System Shop to Tower]
[INVALID]
[Connecting System Shop to Earth]
[System Shop Open]
The System shop would probably be connected to the tower in the second scenario. Ark was satisfied nonetheless. The window of the system shop was like a painting in stained glass. It was ethereal to look at. From the second scenario, it would probably display card decks, weapons, and other stuff but in the first scenario all the System Shop could show Ark were weapons. Ark immediately spent 1000 coins on a well maintained sword.
The System did say that the shop was connected to Earth but what that meant in essence was that it could only show items from Earth. The condition was guaranteed to be top notch if someone bought a sword which had ‘well maintained’ in its description. Ark did not care about those 1000 coins. He would probably get many times more than that because of achievements and such. The sword that appeared in front of Ark was an exact copy of the sword. It felt light on his hands and it was sharp enough to cut a few more Dustbroods. Now Ark had reach as well as strength. He was going to be a force to deal with
Within the next few minutes, Ark went around and hunted as many of the Dustbroods as he could. It was only after he killed off a Dustbrood, that he looked around to see the heads of decapitated Dustbroods looking on in horror. Some adorned faces of confusion while some had faces of terror. None had any sense of understanding that they were dead. The moment Ark was waiting for had finally come when a notification pinged to reward his achievement
[You have killed 500 Dustbrood within 10 minutes]
[You have taken minor points of damage]
[You have achieved a Legendary feat]
[You have obtained 5000 coins]
[You have obtained 5000 coins]
[Your story is being enriched]
It was the last notification that made Ark’s heart flutter.