A young man, looking to be around 20 years old, looked at his blank surroundings. His body felt strange, though that was understandable. No more was his skin wrinkled with age, now his body had returned to exactly where he was 60 years ago, when he was relatively simple and normal university student. However, things were about to change drastically. He knew that, right now, almost the entirety of humanity was in a similar situation as him, suddenly teleported to a strange and unfamiliar location. The only exception were those too young to be able to understand what was happening, thus being handled in a different way.
The young man also knew that there wasn't much he could do right now except waiting, so he sat on the white, featureless ground and closed his eyes, organizing his memories and deciding what he needed to do next. After a few minutes of waiting, which he was almost certain was done in order to get humans as afraid and confused as possible, something finally happened. Strange, orchestral music started playing and a dense, slightly golden fog showed up out of nowhere.
'These bastards are as arrogant and dramatic as ever, it seems. It’s the same as I remember.' The young man thought, not impressed with the spectacle building in front of his eyes. Finally, after much build up, a form emerged from the fog. Wearing a dapper suit, top hat and monocles, the creature would have been remarkably well-dressed if it was a human. Unfortunately, they weren't, so the outfit didn't look particularly good on the human-sized spider wearing it.
The young man didn't say anything about the creature's appearance, however. These bastards were extremely vain and arrogant, so displeasing them could have negative consequences. They technically weren't be able to control or change much about the Introduction or Tutorial of a species, but they could change an individual’s experience to be slightly harder than usual if they wished for and were petty enough. And they were very petty.
"Be grateful, human, to be able to land your eyes on one such as I! My true name would be unspeakable in your puny human languages, so I will allow you to reluctantly call me Shi. Me and my brethren have come to enlighten your pitiful species and allow you to join the Tourney, a trial in which your species will grow to become worthy of the Tourney or die trying!"
The creature said, it's voice chalky and irritating. The young man truly didn't know why these spiders were so unbearably arrogant. They weren’t particularly powerful or important among the species that composed the Tourney, only being chosen as their duty of messenger due to their ability to communicate cheaply and instantaneously through their Web.
Even then, the Tourney had other, more efficient means to pass information, even by itself, so the spiders purpose working as messengers seemed to only serve to keep them from overly irritating everyone else by being free to do whatever they wanted.
“All capable members of your species are being tested in an identical chamber to yours, and all shall be given equal chance to prove their worth. I don’t expect much given your species, but you should at least try to avoid death at such an early part of the journey.
You shall now be given time to choose from among the weapons created by humans, after which you will be tested with the most basic of combat encounters, which even the most pitiful member of our glorious species could face unarmed, and, should you survive, the proper Tutorial shall start. Good luck, you’ll need it.”
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The spider continued, unaware that the young man was currently roasting it in his mind. After it finished, it simply vanished again within the fog, behind which many shelves appeared, containing almost every single weapon humanity had ever created, from simple sticks and stones to swords and shield, and even guns and nuclear weapons. The Tourney really wasn’t holding anything back in regards to weapons.
Despite the fact that most people in this situation would probably try to get some sort of gun or firearm in order to defend themselves, thinking they would be the best possible choice, the young man didn’t even look in their direction, instead moving towards the section of the shelves containing ancient weapons. He knew that a gun might be useful at the start of the Tutorial but, with the lack of available bullets and the fact that most creatures beyond the Tutorial were going to be practically bullet proof, he didn’t think it would be a very good choice for most people.
Sure, when humans were finally integrated with the Tourney some people would obtain Classes that had to do with guns and made them much more useful, but that would only happen to a small part of the total population. The rest would be left with only useless pieces of metal they could only use to bash enemies with. Due to that reason and plenty of others, the young man decided on another weapon of choice.
Taking the wooden staff from one of the shelves, the young man moved it around and tried to learn how to use it effectively. Someone else might think it strange for a person in his situation to choose something so seemingly banal as a jō staff, but the circumstances of his previous life made it so that he couldn’t properly train with any weapons. In fact, he couldn’t do much more than simply observe what was happening around him and accumulate knowledge.
As such, a simple and immediately effective weapon like a staff, which didn’t need much or any training to start using, made for a perfect weapon for a complete beginner such as him, and it also wasn’t as heavy as most other staffs available. His current body wasn’t particularly athletic, he admitted, being mostly sustained on a diet of soft drinks and whatever food his meager student salary could afford him. At least he wasn’t overweight.
He would only need to hit his enemies as hard as he could and try and avoid the enemies hitting back!
As soon as he made his selection and mentally confirmed to himself that this was the weapon he was going to choose, the shelves started moving, sliding back into the thick fog and disappearing. Soon after, the ground under his feet rumbled and a large stage showed up around him, various stage light starting to move around the arena. If this had some more appropriate music besides the weird orchestra that still continued to play, this would almost seen like something he could see back on Earth. Well, besides the audience made of fog that started spectating the upcoming fight, of course. He didn’t think those were very common back home.
Suddenly, the wandering stage light seemed to find their targets, half of them converged on the young man, who stood in one corner of the immense stage, and the other half in the opposite corner, where the fog coalesced, mysterious rumbling coming from within. When it stopped, a small creature stepped out. The size would have been anticlimactic if not for the fact he was already expecting this, his body tensed up in order to be able to react as fast as possible.
He knew that, among the humans participating in this trial right now, the creature in front of him would cause the biggest amount of deaths among all possible enemies. Afterall, who would suspect a small puppy to be able to harm them in any way? What could the puppy even do?
Very bad things, the young man would answer, very bad things indeed.