"The levelling speed of skills outside of real combat or without a teacher is generally very slow, this is because the System does not actually care how much you practice, it is instead soley about whether or not you actually get better at the skill, and live combat tends to force one to improve in order to live, while the benefit of a teacher needs not be said."
-Excerpt from 'Skills and You', by Norwin Boyd
----------------------------------------
"First of all, we should introduce ourselves, say our combat roles, and what specifically we can do. Since I organized this group I'll go first, My name is Roxy, I am 24, and I want to get to as high a level as possible. I am a frontline fighter and I have a skill that lets me empower my strikes depending on how hard I get hit as well as crystal magic, though the only spells I have are shooting a spike and making a wall at the moment."(Roxy)
After her introduction, she turned to the person to her left, which was Jordan, and motioned for him to go next, most of us already knowing his age and whatnot from our talks before Arnold arrived, but the introductions helped to set the mood.
"Alright, my name is Jordan, I'm 35, and I just want to get strong enough to protect my family. I'm also a frontline fighter, but my schtick is that I can make echoes of myself to get an extra hit off or defend myself."(Jordan)
"I'm Mason, 20 years old, and I wanna explore once I get strong enough. I fight best at mid-long range, and I can control the elements and make magical constructs of various beasts using those elements, though I am currently limited to lightning and crystal and need to find areas with high density of elements to gain access to or improve them."(Mason)
"Amy, 19, I need to get stronger. I have a bow and can buff people, also I have a skill that tells me how dangerous a living thing is."(Amy)
"Oh, uh, I'm Arnold, and I'm 17, I guess I just want to level? I can reduce somethings attention on me and I can curse whatever I hit, though I only have increased pain and bleeding right now."(Arnold)
Once everyone finished their introductions, with Roxy giving me a look when I mentioned that I could control crystal, we started discussing our roles in combat more specifically, getting details on how specific skills worked, learning that Roxy essentially had a third resource bar that increased whenever she was hit that she could use to empower any physical skills or attacks, Jordan's echoes were limited to repeating exact actions, though they were apparently pretty cheap to make, Amy could buff speed, mana/stamina regen, and strength by a percentage, but each buff took a lot of mana, and her analysis skill told her somethings strength relative to her, though apparently it was really vague at level one. They also inquired about what specifically I meant when I said high density elements, so I explained elemental energies and attunements to them. What followed was everyone briefly demonstrating their abilities, or at least Jordan, Roxy, and I did as Amy and Arnold's skills didn't really have any visible effects, and the group immediately drew parallels between my constructs and Jordans echoes, though the both of us were able to tell that our skills operated on completely different rules and mechanics when we discussed them.
The next few hours were mostly spent talking amongst ourselves, planning how to fight with each other and any possible synergies or combinations we could do, planning to meet up and go into the forest the next day to make sure we could fight well in a group with one another, waiting a day so that Roxy could register us as a hunting group at the town hall. Over the course of our interactions, I was able to get a preliminary read on everyone's personalities, and thankfully they all seemed easy enough to get along with so I was optimistic about the hunt tomorrow. From what I could tell, Roxy carried herself with confidence and seemed to easily slide into the role of leader, which thankfully no one else seemed to want. Jordan seemed the most focused out of all of us, which we all understood when we learned that he had two kids that were too young for the tutorial that he was waiting for, one more month before they along with all the other kids arrived. Amy seemed withdrawn, barely speaking of her own initiative over the entire gathering, and while she had a constant glare on her face, her actual words weren't rude or dismissive, so I was pretty sure that that was just her resting face. Arnold was the biggest surprise when it came to his personality, as while in general he was just as unconfident and awkward as his first impression portrayed, jumping the few times Amy spoke to him, whenever the conversation went to fighting all of his nervousness seemed to evaporate, and he was actually the one that came up with most of the ideas for how to synergise our skills together.
When the conversation inevitably turned to our families and experiences in the tutorial, I learned that Roxy's group, who was made up of people she thought of as close friends, had split in two over an item, with the two that left being the reason that the last one was still unable to fight, apparently having a broken leg. Jordan had been with his wife, brother, and his brothers wife, and he had apparently managed to get the gem for his second class during the tutorial, though he only used it after they came to the town just in case they'd need to sell it, something that made me feel somewhat guilty as the thought of selling my class gem had never crossed my mind. Arnold was in a similar situation to myself, being with a group of friends, but they weren't interested in exploring the forest before they knew it was safe, and he was the only one with two classes. Amy's story was by far the saddest, as apparently she had been at college out of state and was in a tutorial with mostly strangers, her parents not even in the clearing when the tutorial ended, with her hoping it was just because they were too far away rather than the other, more grim possibility.
After sharing our stories and testing out a few combination attacks, my hesitance to train in public overshadowed by my reluctance to take relative strangers to my training area, as nice as the group seemed, we split up to go home for the night and prepare ourselves for the next day. Returning to my home and seeing that both of my parents were sitting at the table and talking about their day with each other, I figured that I had put off telling them my plans for too long as it was, so I sat and told them about my desire to explore.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
"Honey, where is this coming from? You used to hate travelling."(Mason's mom)
"Yeah, but before there weren't magical creatures flying around, or magical landscapes that paid physics no heed, or who knows what else, and now not only are those things real, but I can be the first person to see them, to go to lands that are actually untouched rather than just tourist traps curated to look wild despite being patrolled by people every day."(Mason)
"Exactly! The world is so much more dangerous than before, and if something were to happen you'd be on your own! We wouldn't even know, you just wouldn't come home one day!"(Mason's mom)
As my mom yelled at me, tears in her eyes and worry in her voice, seemingly finally letting the facade of normalcy and calm she had kept since we reunited crack, my father gave me a hard look that I returned unflinchingly, before he put a hand on my mother's shoulder.
"You're an adult, and I trust you to make your own decisions, but are you absolutely sure that this is what you want to do?"(Mason's dad)
"Yes, I've been thinking about it since the tutorial, and every time I think about doing something else it just feels wrong."(Mason)
Listening to my response while holding my gaze, my father slowly nodded at my determination before responding in a steady voice, his hand still on my mother's shoulder and squeezing to reassure her.
"Alright, if you're sure, but if you're gonna do it you're gonna do it right. That means you'll have to make preparations and an actual plan, got it?"(Mason's dad)
"Of course, I'm not planning to leave soon or anything, I just wanted to get this off my chest and tell you my plans."(Mason)
The rest of the night was spent reassuring my parents, mostly my mom, that I wasn't just going to disappear one day and that I still planned to make actual preparations and make sure that the town was in a good enough place that I was sure it wouldn't collapse while I was gone, talking with my dad about what kinds of tools I should bring, and if he knew anyone from working with the mayor that I could obtain said items from, having a rather long list by the time dinner rolled around with only a few leads on where I could obtain the items on it. Dinner itself was more or less the usual, though my revelation of my plans were the main topic of conversation, being a surprise to everyone but those in the tutorial with me, though I could tell that even they were somewhat surprised that it was still something I desired to do. Nevertheless, they all promised to help where they could, though the fact that I figured my departure was still a month or two off at the earliest did make a few people more relieved, namely Jason's mom who reacted almost as strong as my own mother as she had been a family friend for over a decade.
After dinner concluded and the next day rolled around, I spent an hour or two wasting time before heading to Roxy's house once more to meetup with the others, this time being the third to arrive after Arnold and Amy, Jonathan arriving within a few minutes of myself, and we all set off into the forest, not even attempting to look for anything until we were well past the fringes and deeper than I had gone with Leo and Jason previously.
"Alright, anyone have anything that'll help us find something to fight?"(Roxy)
"I have the [Tracking] skill, but I'm not picking anything up that isn't a rabbit or something small."(Amy)
Since we were here to practice group fighting rather than just hunting for points, we were ignoring anything that ran away or otherwise didn't want to engage with us, and since the few things we managed to see for long enough were all below level 10, we decided to go even deeper into the forest, the trees becoming thicker and taller until they towered above us like wooden skyscrapers, so thick around their base that I was unable to wrap my arms around even the thinnest of them, the thick canopy high in the sky blocking most of the light and making it impossible to tell the suns position as well as darkening the surroundings. The animals were also much more dense here, the few we saw being far larger than natural, as if to match the growth of the trees, as we caught sight of a level 10 rabbit the size of a labrador retriever darting into a burrow under one of the largest trees. Unfortunately we were deep enough into the forest that we didn't have much time for any actual fighting if we wanted to return to the town before sunset, and none of us brought supplies to camp with, but we were able to find a group of three giant deer who were so tall that my head only went to their chest, so Amy, Roxy, and I made the first move by firing two crystal spikes and an arrow, one at each opponent, and thankfully the trio ran at us rather than trying to flee, even herbivores being far more confrontational against anything they thought they had a chance against thanks to the advent of the System.
While Roxy charged to meet the deer, Amy and I both fell back while Jordan and Arnold went to intercept the other two. Roxy was the only one to take the charge head on, while Jordan and Arnold both attacked one of the legs of their respective deer from the side, but the deer seemed to have some kind of skill that enhanced their charge, as Roxy was knocked back even with her strength buffed by Amy before the fight, barely managing to stay on her feet, while both Jordan and Arnolds attacks failed to stop the other two, though they did leave deep gashes in their targets as they charged past them. With two deer charging towards us and no one in a position to intervene, I sent some Crystal energy into the ground, just barely managing to send it the few meters through the ground fast enough to intercept them as I stomped the ground and sent two large spikes thrusting upwards at them, only for them to unexpectedly stop their charge and jump backwards at the last moment, causing my spikes to miss and making me waste two hundred mana, but Amy was able to lodge an arrow into the gut of one of them as it jumped back, Jordan and Arnold managing to catch up after they halted their charge and forcing them into a melee, with white silhouettes trailing a few seconds behind Jordan to occasionally land an extra slash or act as a buffer to defend against a kick, easily handling his opponent. Arnold, however seemed to be struggling a bit, as while he did manage to dodge or block most attacks, he had only been able to land a small amount himself, and even though they were bleeding at a higher rate than they should, they were still shallow enough that blood loss would take a while to become relevant. Meanwhile Roxy was managing her deer fairly well, though it seemed that she was also struggling to land a counter, with the deer seemingly jumping away every time she swung. Even though I was pretty sure that everyone would be able to handle their own enemy given time, there was no reason not to interfere, so Amy and I both started sending attacks at the deer, creating openings for the other three to land solid blows and end their fights, Roxy managing to behead hers in a single blow, the red glow of her axe and visible tiredness on her face indicative of skill use, while the other two ended theirs much more normally, Arnold by slitting its throat and Jordan by stabbing it through the eye.
Congratulations, you have defeated a level 10 Giant Deer x3 and gained 150 EXP