"The acceptance of sharing status screens tends to be a massive divide between cultures. I have personally experienced places that have used showing your status screen as a greeting as well as ones where merely asking is considered rude to the point of causing conflict."
-Excerpt from The Wonderful Worlds by Nigel Spikeberry
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After reading everyone's stat sheets and skill, or in my case trait, descriptions, we went on to talk about what we should do, namely whether we should actually fight in the tutorial or just find a safe place to wait it out. While I was the most avid reader of our group, none of them were unfamiliar with the system apocalypse genre, and none of them had all that much more faith in humanity than me, so we decided pretty quickly that we needed to make use of this tutorial to at least get strong enough to protect ourselves from any psychopaths that we end up with after the tutorial, since after the 30 days we would be teleported to wherever the system designates as a good place to build a city with a much larger group of people.
With our approach to the tutorial decided, the conversation of how to fight the most effectively as a group was next. Naturally, Leo took the front accompanied by Jackson as they had the melee classes, and while I could also fight melee with my staff some quick experimentation showed that I could accurately shoot a lightning bolt up to about 5 meters away with only about 10 mana so it was decided that I would act as a rearguard but move up if needed. Jason, lacking any melee ability and armed with only a set of metallic cards, was naturally set to be the designated long range support, as he had almost double my range with his cards and could throw them hard enough to lodge them in a tree.
With Leo leading the discussion we quickly came up with a number of simple strategies, mostly copied from video games, for whatever combat situations we could think of. Since we didn't actually know what monsters were in the tutorial aside from goblins we tried to make our strategies as flexible as possible to account for different monsters that might appear. That said, none of us were hardened combat veterans so the tension in the air was still very thick as we set out to try and find food or a good place to camp when night fell. Thankfully we each had three brown bars that the system identified as ration bars so while it was still important to find a food source, we weren't totally screwed if we didn't find one today.
The first hour or two of walking was pretty uneventful, and was a great demonstration of how safe the inner zone was, as we failed to come across a single animal, which led us to believe that the initial goblin attack was more of a welcome to the tutorial than a common event, causing the tension to reduce to the point that we started making small talk, mostly revolving around the fact that magic and monsters were now real. My time walking was mostly spent familiarizing myself with the lightning I was able to control, making it dance between my fingers and giving Jason a static shock when he wasn't paying attention, which he responded to by throwing a card in front of my feet to make me trip. It seemed that while I could feel the lightning and move it around inside my body, it wouldn't actually reduce my mana until it left my body and even continuously chaining lightning weakly between my fingers barely cost one mana per minute, while static shocks took one mana every three or four, leading me to believe that reabsorbing the lightning either refunded some of the cost or let me reroute the energy to be reused.
But inevitably, after about 3 hours of waling Leo stopped us and pointed towards ahead where a gaggle of goblins were. There were 4 goblins that we could see, meaning that we were matched numerically, and examining them with intent cause the system to reveal-
Goblin - Level 1
Since they hadn't yet noticed us, too occupied with a mangled rabbit corpse that they were either eating or just mutilating, Leo had everyone retreat so that we could make a proper plan of attack. None of the goblins were armed and the only clothing they wore was loincloths, so we had the definite edge in the fight since we were all armed and armored. With a whispered back and forth we decided to blitz them starting with me shooting lightning with all of my mana to take out or stun as many as I can while everyone else hides in the bushes and Jason pelts them with cards while they close the distance, with Jackson and Leo ready to intercept once they get too close. This was both to be as cautious as possible, trying to take at least one out with my opening so that we would have the number advantage, as well as to see what my limits were, as I had only tested my control with small amounts of mana while we were walking.
Personally, I was pretty excited for the plan as I had yet to see what I could do if I pumped everything into one attack, though I wasn't excited for the headache that I knew using all my mana at once would cause. Sneaking towards the goblins I could feel the anticipation rising. Just a few more feet. A few more-
*SNAP*
Shit, ah well, guess this'll have to do. Right as the goblins looked towards me I thrust out my hands and willed the Lightning out with everything I've got, dedicating all of my mana to the one attack. Eager to please, the lightning shot out of my fingertips like thick snakes as it went to the goblins in a blinding flash.
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*KRAKOOOM*
Congratulations, you have defeated a level 1 Goblin x3 and gained 300 EXP Congratulations, you have levelled up! x2 You have 12 free points to assign
After the light faded, with the noise still ringing in my ears, I looked towards the remnants of the goblins, just in time to see a green blur collide with me, knocking me to the ground and making me drop my quarterstaff. Reacting only after my back hit the ground I covered my face with my forearms and tried to knee the goblin in the back to no effect as I felt claws rake against my skin and heard the growling of the final goblin as it rained blow after blow on me. Thankfully, my situation didn't last very long as after only a terrifying seconds I heard a grunt before the goblin was kicked from on top of me and then swiftly stabbed with a spear.
Congratulations, you have defeated a level 1 Goblin and gained 50 EXP
With the last goblin taken care of, I gingerly got to my feet while examining the damage both to my body and to the original group of goblins. While the damage to my body was nothing more than some scratches and bruises, the result of my all out attack left me speechless and more than a little sick. Where there was once three goblins there was now vaguely humanoid pieces of charcoal, and while the burnt corpses weren't quite as bad to look at as ones killed with more physical means, the smell of burnt flesh left little to the imagination about what was under the cracked and blackened skin. Eager to take my mind off of my recent actions, I quickly opened up my status sheet to assign my free points.
Name: Mason King Race: Human(+6 free points per level) Level: 3 SP: 3 Classes: Elementalist(Rare) Titles: N/A Attunements [Lightning I] EXP: 0 EXP to next level: 350 Mana: 0/150 Stamina: 50/70 STR: 8 INT: 16 DEX: 10 WIL: 19 END: 7 WIS: 13(+2) 12 Free points available Skills: N/A Traits: [Elementalist]
Despite my higher stats, I did not feel particularly smarter, and while I was tempted to min-max and dump my free points into my mental stats, the ease of which the goblin knocked me down and my incapability to do anything once it had was a very persuasive argument against that. As for saving my points, as can be seen by my zero mana despite my total increasing, any on the spot increases will likely be too late to actually achieve anything. With that decided I put 4 points into both STR and END and put the last 4 into WIS, since it was clear that my class, or at the very least my Lightning was very mana intensive. Stats taken care of, I moved onto the next distraction and started talking with my friends, who still seemed vaguely shocked by what I had just done, though we were all handling the corpses far better than the first time.
"Well I just gained 2 levels from that, 300 from the first three and 50 from the last."(Mason)
Maybe seeing my strained smile, or perhaps just as eager to ignore the carcasses as I was, everyone gave a recount of their EXP gains.
"I only got EXP from the last one and it gave me 50, which pushed me into level 2."(Leo)
"I-I also got 50 from the last one but I still need 50 for level 2."(Jackson)
"Well, I got jack shit, which is also what I did, so I can't really complain."(Jason)
"Hmm if you, Jackson, and I all got 50 EXP then that means the last goblin gave a total of 150, despite it being the same as the others, so EXP is probably reduced when fought by a group, but not outright divided, maybe a flat rate dependent on how many more people we had, or some more complicated equation."(Leo)
Saying his theory, which reminded me that Leo was not only the physically strongest among us but also the best at math, Leo quickly devolved into muttering about possibilities like he always did when a video game complex or interesting mechanics. Meanwhile, I steeled myself and examined the corpses for loot orbs, only to retch and still end up with nothing as it seems like the loot drop is either lower than expected, or we were just unlucky. Either way, none of us were particularly keen on staying here so we gathered up and once again set off.
This time the walk was a bit more lively as, contrary to my anxieties about how my friends would look at me after I vaporized other living creatures, my display made everyone more excited as opposed to afraid. Now, rather than being tense and looking towards every bush, everyone was theorizing what amazing things their classes will let them do in the future, with Jason being the most excited as he had a rare class as well, and Jackson being more subdued than usual as he clutched his spear in his hand. Seeing him being quieter than usual, which for him was already quieter than most, I slowed my pace until we were walking side by side.
"Don't worry so much, I'm sure that you'll be able to evolve your class into something cool soon enough."(Mason)
"Evolve?"(Jackson)
"Yeah, didn't your AI tell you? Classes can evolve into higher rarities at certain milestones, though he would only tell me about the first one at 50."(Mason)
"Right, right. Yes it did, but with everything happening I guess I forgot."(Jackson)
"Yeah dude, I bet soon enough you'll have some super-legendary class and everyone will be throwing themselves at your feet!"(Jason)
As he said this, Jason mimed throwing himself at Jacksons feet which drew a short laugh or at least a smile from all of us. Thankfully, the rest of the trek was uneventful as we managed to find a few berry bushes with ripe berries and a medium-sized clearing to use as a campsite. Deciding that we were still close enough to the starting zone to trust the berries, we all had an unsatisfying but filling meal by a fire that I had lit by sparking lightning between my fingers to light some dry twigs and leaves. Since I was still low on mana I was excused from the first watch, and with the events from today being as draining as they were, I quickly fell asleep, despite the lack of bedding or particularly smooth ground.