Layton

We were huddled together around Kent when he suddenly sat up and clutched his heart. I let out a breath of relief. I didn’t want to see anyone die today. Or ever for that matter. Kent’s eyes glazed over as he read something we couldn’t see.

“What were you thinking!” Brock suddenly shouted at him. Kent winced and opened his mouth. “No! You don’t get to make up any excuses. You went ballistic! Me and Minya were up on that hill.” At this he gestured over his shoulder. “And we saw you going crazy. You weren’t just fighting them, you were ruthlessly murdering them!” Brock finished, jabbing his finger at Kent’s shocked face.

“Brock, I thought-” Kent started to say before Brock cut him off.

“No,you didn’t think, that's the problem.

Kent grumbled and sat back down. “Fine, I’ll just sit here and pretend that I didn’t take out a boss.”

“How did you do that anyway?” I asked genuinely curious.

“I kind of just used all of my skills and spells simultaneously and took them all by surprise.”

Announcement for all humans of the planet earth! The Nightmare difficulty player Kent has solo killed a boss! As such all of your difficulties will be lowered by ⅕. This is something that has never happened on the first day of the tutorial, and your lives will be easier because of it!

I quickly read over the information and was pleasantly surprised that it would make other peoples lives that much easier because of what Kent had accomplished.

Hey guys this announcement is only for you 6. Since you have killed a boss so quickly you each get to ask me one question, and afterwards I will give you a tip. Now, who wants to go first?

I was the first to respond. “How do we make our spells stronger? I know it's possible but you didn’t tell us how.” I was genuinely curious and wanted to know how to upgrade my spells.

Good question. You can upgrade spells 2 different ways. One is to repeatedly use it and gain mastery over it. This method usually just enhances the old spell. The second method is to try to alter the spell in a few different ways to make it more efficient and powerful. This method takes a lot of time though but it is usually way more powerful than the other method.

Brock spoke up next. “Are there ways to improve our skills?” I nodded that would’ve been my next question.

Yes, You must improve its effectiveness and power with the skill through personal trial and error.

Drake was up next. “What is dao?”

Well that is a question I was not expecting. Hmmm. Well the dao is the origin and source of all things. The very ground you stand on is made up of dao. Everyone has a specific type of dao. No person's dao is the same. You can’t meditate dao until later but you can prepare yourself for it by meditating on who you are and what you believe.

Meditation is something that I had done before it helped accentuate my inner beauty so I understood the concept of meditation and how it was applicable in this situation. What I was really interested in was this dao. It made up everything? So was I made up of dao? It brought up a lot of questions.

Minya was the next to ask a question. “What are the most effective ways to level?”

There are multiple ways but the 2 most effective I would say are either going solo against creatures your level or getting a party together and taking on creatures that are more powerful than you.

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Minya nodded. “Thanks.” That was really useful information leveling up faster meant faster power spikes which in turn led to getting out of this accursed place faster.

Emily spoke up next. “This is more of a personal question, how exactly does mana manipulation work?”

Mana manipulation is a little interesting; it lets you tinker with spells very easily and will make upgrading your spells far easier. Most of what mana manipulation is is just experimenting with it. For example, you could make your heal spell more widespread to affect multiple people at once.

Emily nodded in understanding. “That makes a lot more sense, thank you.

Oh stop you're making me blush. (=

I furrowed my brow, did it just say (=? How did one even do that? I needed to understand how to speak emojis.

We had all asked our questions with one exception, Kent. I turned to him and gestured for him to speak. Fire burned in his eyes as he asked a question I would’ve never asked but seemed obvious now that I thought about it.

“How do we get as powerful as we can in the shortest amount of time?”

Ha! I knew you were bound for greatness! Here is your answer, the faster you can reach level 10 is when you can start to get truly powerful. I would suggest meditating a little though before you try to pass that limit. For that is when you will get your path. And Kent you just might get two paths which will lead to an even further skyrocketing in power, with drawbacks of course.

Now for my final advice. Get to know each other well, because just one of you can become a monster but all of you combined can become an insurmountable foe for your enemies.

The presence of the Grand AI left and we were left with our thoughts. “So that was something.” I began. “It gave us a lot of really good advice. I think we should pay attention to the knowledge that has been given to us.”

Brock nodded his head. “Yes I agree with the pretty lady, we should try to do all of the things that it advised us to do.” at the pretty lady comment I flushed. This was no time to talk about looks! … maybe later though because I was definitely pretty. You can’t win beauty pageants being ugly after all.

Kent joined in. “I am going to start meditating, you guys should try to grind out some levels at the goblin camp. Most of the guards and lieutenants are still alive and should help you level. Also we should try to experiment with our skills and spells before dark sometime today. We need to be prepared as much as we can before nighttime comes, that quest probably means something big is going to happen around nighttime.”

Emily spoke up. “I am going to experiment with my mana manipulation, but you guys need to level up to catch up to us.”

I was confused. “Us? I thought only Kent power leveled?”

She shook her head. “Yeah, but I was in his party at the time so I was given half xp.”

Kent made an ahh noise. “So that's why I didn’t get a higher level, you were still a part of my party!”

Emily flinched. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to steal all of your levels.”

Kent smiled reassuringly and waved her off. “No, no, it's all good it's actually really good that someone else got levels out of my little adventure. You guys can keep talking if you want but I am off to meditate on my inner dragon.”

His inner dragon? What did he mean by that? Was it a trait he had or something? Now I was genuinely curious. Kent walked off and sat at the edge of the clearing and got into the classic lotus position. And suddenly a spectral dragon appeared encircling him, slowly rotating around him.

The dragon was beautiful! It was black with gold and had an azure glow around him. It didn’t seem to have wings but it was floating just fine, like Chinese dragons did, but its appearance looked more like the dragons us Americans were used to.

Emily went over to another empty spot and sat down. Her hands started to glow with a light green and she seemed to be trying to change it. It was floating around her and spinning and she was looking at it intensely.

Minya looked over and saw me gaping. “Well, we're not going to get stronger just by sitting here let's go!”

Brock agreed. “We need to hold our own. Right now those two are more powerful than us, we need to even up the power scale.”

I nodded. “Let's get serious.” I looked over and noticed that the way that Brock and Minya had come from was full of trees with holes in them. I pointed. “Why do those trees have holes in them?”

Minya and Brock both blushed. “Um… some goblins were hiding in trees so I punched all of the trees to get rid of them.” Brock said sheepishly.

I sighed. Were me and Drake the only competent people here?

“Off to adventure!” Drake shouted and ran off into the forest in the direction that Kent had come from.

Just me then.