“Help! We need a healer! Please!” the man whose name TJ didn’t know continued screaming. Stanton didn’t hesitate to turn from walking into the firehouse.

“Where?” He demanded.

“Up there.” The man panted while pointing up the road towards the church. “Just up the turn past the church.”

The man tried to explain more, but Stanton didn’t pay him any heed. Instead, he sprinted down the road in the direction of the person that needed help. TJ tried to follow suit, but even after activating Divine Transformation, he was far from capable of catching up to the sprightly old man. Just about a minute had passed since the man’s screams had become audible, and already Stanton had run nearly a mile towards the person who needed support.

TJ watched as Stanton turned the corner and disappeared from view. By the time TJ turned to corner to be able to see what was happening, Stanton was holding a thrashing man he recognized with one hand, the other on a nearby tree. A faint green glow passed through the Druid and into the fallen Disciple. As TJ watched, Jordan, the healer that he’d accompanied on the first hunt the day before, stilled. Fearing the worst, TJ continued running forward. Jordan’s body remained still, and TJ readied himself to give apologies and commiserations.

Just as he opened his mouth to do so, though, Jordan gasped and choked out an uncomfortably full mouthful of blood. Only now that he was so close could TJ tell that Jordan had been cut in the base of his throat, the still wet blood staining his shirt. The recovering Disciple continued to retch and gag, red spittle dribbling from the corners of his mouth.

“Keep moving.” Stanton commanded, looking at their surroundings and evaluating whatever surrounded them. “We’ll talk once we’re safe.”

Nobody argued with the statement, and the haggard two dozen people stood up, a few coyote corpses slung across their shoulders, and resumed traveling towards town. Blood and torn clothing accessorized every member of the hunting party, and the, if not excited, at least battle-ready faces that had filled every face the night before, were now downcast, fearful, and hesitant. The few minutes that followed passed in near silence, the crunching of feet on gravel and the quiet whisper of the wind being the only things that TJ could hear. As it frequently did, the wind seemed to be trying to say something to him, and this time, TJ indulged it.

Unsurprisingly, it had nothing of note to say. What little he could understand was simply that it wanted there to be more water so that it could carry a storm. TJ almost doubted what he’d heard from it before, the few warnings he’d felt from the omnipresent air. He sighed and shook it from his mind. Instead, he recentered himself, looking at the people surrounding him. They were exhausted at best, and needed a rest. Their leader, a woman it took TJ a moment to recognize as Natalie the Acolyte, the one Zig called Nat, was limping, favoring her right leg.

The party as a whole relaxed somewhat as they stepped into the bounds of the city proper, definitely well past the border denoting the safe zone. Even so, the harried and exhausted group didn’t cease looking around until they dispersed to enter wherever they could sneak in a rest.

“What happened?” TJ asked Natalie as she doggedly continued her path towards the firehouse. “Did anyone die?”

She sighed. “Thank all that’s holy, no. It got close for a lot more than just Jordan, though.”

“Ok. And how did it all happen?” TJ insisted.

“Started off normal enough. Ran into a couple wild animals, nothing new. No pukwudgies, though that wasn’t too weird. Couple people said we should go a bit deeper, see if we couldn’t find anything there. I didn’t want to at first, Laura’d said something about how it was good to be cautious today. Eventually, we just weren’t running into anything, and so we decided to go deeper, get some experience, you know? There were a couple things we ran into, but nothing dangerous. Until it suddenly was.

“A ton of pukwudgies surrounded us all at once, their spears focused on the Disciples. Course, we were protecting them, so the Zealots and Acolytes took the most hits, Kailani helped a lot with keeping them away. Honestly, she’s one of the main reasons we got away. She’s got her water magic or whatever, and that kept a lot of the second wave of spears from hitting us. We fought our way out of them, killing a couple, but we were surrounded and more focused on getting out of there. Once we got out, it seemed like we were gonna make it. Lots of wounded, but nobody died so we were feeling pretty good. Our Disciples all exhausted themselves to heal everybody up enough to keep moving.

“Just as we got far enough away to think that we were home free, the pukwudgies returned for a final volley. We weren’t ready. Jordan got the worst of it, with the spear in his throat. Everyone else got hit once, but Jordan…” Natalie took a shuddering breath. “I was pretty sure he was dead. If Jake hadn’t thought to go get help as fast as he did, I’m sure Jordan would have died. Thank you, by the way,” Natalie said, looking at Stanton. “If you hadn’t hurried as much as you did, then we would have lost him.”

Stanton raised a hand dismissively. “Just in time, that’s all. Glad he’s gonna pull through.”

“I’m going to see if there’s someone available to heal me.” Natalie said as she limped towards the firehouse. TJ let her go, clenching his jaw in worry. If the pukwudgies alone were posing such a threat to the right now, how were they going to deal with everything else that was going to come? Just under nine days remained, and though the total number of pukwudgies and other monsters in the Tutorial wasn’t going to change, the number was only going to grow.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I think we might be up shit creek.” Stanton said, watching her go. “You got any ideas?”

“I should ask you. You fought in Vietnam, you’ve got experience.”

“Don’t ask me. Don’t know anything. All I can say is that we don’t have the numbers to do what the military usually does. A guerrilla force usually works that way because they’ve got fewer numbers and arms than the people they’re ambushing. That’s not what’s happening here. We’re outnumbered, and if we count the wendigos and any other nightmarish Elite monster out there, we’re outgunned too. It’s a superior number of guerrillas, so we need to limit our casualties while killing as many of them as possible.”

“Yeah, that’s true, but you just told me to kill more of them than they kill of us.”

“At its core, the way to win a fight is to win the damned fight. Forgive me for not having some amazing wisdom regarding how to counteract the constant attacks of a force of goblins that can turn invisible and keep growing in number.” Stanton’s usual good humor had melted away, a real frustration and anger touching his words. “So yeah, for now, my plan is to kill as many of them as I can manage. You have anything else to add?”

TJ shook his head. “Just that we need to get as many people Occupations and levels as fast as we can manage. I’ve got an idea to help with that in town, but I think we need to push everyone to at least level 5 in their Class, ideally by the end of today or tomorrow.”

“That’s a hard ask, kid.”

“For now, that’s all I can add.”

Stanton grunted, a little of his good humor returning. “I’ll let Laura know you’re looking for her if I run into her. Isn’t there something you were meaning to be doing?”

TJ scoffed. “I guess. I’ll be back at the cabin. When you see her, let Laura know that I’d like to see some of her notes on Occupations today as well.”

Stanton nodded before walking into the firehouse. By the time TJ had jogged to the cabin, still with his nearly forgotten bag of weapons in his backpack, Stanton had carried someone out of the firehouse and towards a nearby towering tree. While the old man gained experience for his Occupation, TJ decided it was finally time to go about creating some shoes that would last him a little longer. He Appraised the javelina hides he’d set to cure just a couple days ago.

Item: Tanned javelina hide, Dirt. A hide removed from a javelina’s corpse. It has been tanned, the process artificially accelerated by the creator’s presence in a Tutorial. Due to its preparation by the brain-tanning method, the leather of the hide is more supple than it would have been if created by other methods. It can be used to provide an increase in resistance to environmental cold, or as a material in creating equipment.

Though he hadn’t expected otherwise, the wholly ordinary nature of these hides was disappointing compared to the inherently magical and impressive natures of the materials gathered from the wendigos. The wind seemed to titter something in TJ’s ear as he sighed and allowed his mind to relax. He’d been so focused and stressed and driven these last few days that he hadn’t noticed the wind’s constant desire to communicate with him. As he gathered up the materials to make a pair of moccasins with soles so thick they were better called shoes, TJ idly listened to the winds’ whispers, though they didn’t seem to mean anything.

Finally, with the gut and leather laid out in front of him, TJ pulled his personal Wendigo Blade from his jacket pocket and placed it on the table. He was ready to begin the creation.

Of course, that was when Laura knocked on the door.

“Come in!” TJ shouted, trying to hold any frustration from his tone. Nearly as soon as he spoke, the door swung wide open and Stanton gestured for Laura to walk in. She did, and TJ couldn’t help but notice she’d finally abandoned the pantsuit entirely. Now, she wore what just about everyone was–some variation of jeans, boots or sneakers, and a jacket over a tee shirt.

“Stanton said you had something to show me in here?” Laura asked. TJ noticed that there was a small fleck of blood on the cuff of her jacket and nowhere else. A mischievous part of him considered alerting her of the fact, but the rest of him quickly tamped that down.

“I have some weapons to pass on to other people, and some other things to talk with you about. Seems like the thing I wanted to talk about has already come up though.”

“Alright. Then start with the weapons, I suppose.” Laura looked disinterested, and when she saw the blades, she couldn’t hide the brief moment of disgust that flashed over her face. Then, when she saw the haft of the war pick for what it was, she actually dropped it to the table.

“Are you serious?”

“Appraise them.”

Laura cocked her head and did so, before then reluctantly gathering the items up. “Do you have a bag, or a towel or something so I don’t have to hold all these? They’re frankly disgusting.”

“Sure.” Stanton answered before walking into the bathroom down the hall to collect a towel. While he did so, Laura continued to look at TJ.

“There must be something more, or else you wouldn’t have asked me to come.”

“That’s true. Look, those weapons there represent less than half of the materials from the two wendigos. I can keep processing them and getting experience. Frankly, I’d like to because they represent a lot of experience. However, you can see that the weapons are only of the quality that they are because of the materials. I didn’t do anything special. I’ve gotten some pretty stellar Skill options presented to me because I made these. It’d probably be in our best interest to ensure that as many people as possible reach higher levels and have as high quality Skills as possible, so I’m, well, not offering because they’re not all just mine, but I’m saying that maybe we should have some other people work on this too.”

“So that’s why you asked that I bring a copy of the Occupations found within the town.” Laura nodded. “Makes sense. It isn’t necessary, though. I’ve already memorized everyone’s Class, Occupation, if they have it, and Bloodline. I’ll round up whoever has an Occupation that can benefit from this, as well as any who haven’t yet acquired an Occupation. We need to push everyone who hasn’t gained an Occupation yet to make more deliberate strides towards that. Though there were several deaths this morning, it may push the more hesitant to greater effort.”

After dropping that bombshell, Laura stood, gathered the weapons all together in the towel Stanton brought, and walked out the door. “Thank you, TJ. Was there anything else?”

“I was going to talk about the monsters getting smarter, but it looks like we’ve all already seen that.”

“Yes. Would you do me a favor on that account?”

“Sure?”

“Next time you’re out there, kill as many of the fuckers as you can.”

Without another word, Laura stalked out of the house.