Interesting that it allows you to choose your alignment.

Jett was lying on his back, a big System screen in front of his eyes, mulling over the options.

Quest Finding your Path completed!

You have chosen to embark on a new Path, forging your own destiny!

Choose one of the following three alignments and continue walking your new path:

Rune Crafting Delving into the secrets of runes and all its applications, you use their power to craft a large variety of items.

Runic Array Crafting Delving into the secrets of runes and magical arrays, you use your knowledge to lay down powerful formations.

Runic Scripture Crafting

Delving into the secrets of runes, you use their power to engrave your will onto reality.

None of the descriptions were overly, well, descriptive. But thankfully Jett had a pretty good idea what everything implied.

The first option was a general do-all alignment, something that was actually extremely hard to get when you had to transition from other alignments. Rune magic was an extremely broad field and an alignment that just said Rune Crafting could basically mean anything, from array crafting to binding spells into rune stones to body augmentation via rune tattoos and so on.

The other two choices were specializations, Runic Array Crafting being the one Jett had expected to get in the first place. It was basically focused on the very thing he had just done, creating any kind of magical formation based on rune magic.

Meanwhile, Runic Scripture Crafting was a bit of an odd one. One thing it gave you were skills related to making single runes simply… better, in some qualitative way. But its much more esoteric use was to bind Words of Power onto a medium, such as a scroll, allowing anyone to use them. And even more esoteric was when one figured out that a medium could be air or even reality itself and then the people using Runic Scriptures truly went haywire. Including Jett, who had done some really weird things with them in the past.

However, Words of Power weren’t even a thing until the early Silver grades, making him wonder why the alignment was even offered in the Tutorial in the first place.

Then again, he didn’t even know why crafting alignments weren’t offered in the Tutorial either, so there was that.

Jett dismissed the System window and stared up at the sky.

What now…

He had kind of achieved his main objective. Which was to figure out if it was possible to get a crafting alignment this early on.

He wasn’t particularly interested in trying to start a crafting revolution right away by pursuing the path further.

No, the only thing he really had left as a goal in this regression was figuring out some of the weird things that had been happening.

His plan after running away from Lukas and that girl had been to upgrade his Swordsmanship skill, which he had, with admittedly a bit of luck, achieved sooner than he expected, and then to craft an item.

After which he had wanted to slowly make his way back to the lake and see if he could maybe kidnap the girl and question her or something.

Oh, and perhaps make some plans as to how he was gonna make others get a crafting alignment quest in some future regression. Though that seemed to be like a bit of a pain to pull off, so he wasn’t very motivated to think about it.

Another thing that was currently very much demotivating was him feeling like absolute shit.

The blood loss coupled with his already dehydrated state lead to him being almost unable to sit upright, much less stand up and walk away. His body felt weak and cold, his head hurt and his heart was overworking itself trying to pump the remaining blood around.

A drawn out groan escaped his lips.

I overdid it a little with the crafting session, eh?

Hmm…

He attempted to sit up again and did manage to do it, but any further seemed truly futile and he lay down again with a sigh.

Fuck.

He groaned again.

Should I… just end it here?

****

“Okay, just to clarify, you saw Lukas fighting another man, saw him getting injured and then promptly fainted at the sight of blood?”

Laira swallowed at the sharp stare of the man in front of her. That she had to look down on him despite the bigger block of wood he was sitting on didn’t make it any less intense.

“Yes, I…”

“And you had also lost your weapon just a few minutes prior when you had to run away from some boars?” Brett interrupted her.

She shot a glance at the massive war hammer standing on its head next to Brett.

“Well, it…”

Brett sighed, once again interrupting her.

“Unlike you, I’m gonna be honest. I don’t believe you one bit. But-”, he raised his hand, stopping her from giving a reply, “I understand that you might have your reasons to not trust me. It hasn’t even been two days in this world and there are already people killing each other for skills. It makes sense to be distrustful of strangers.”

“However,” he opened his arms, gesturing around the camp and the people, “we truly have no nefarious intentions in mind. We are all working together to get stronger and survive these trials. We want to build something new in this world. And we can only do that by being honest with each other and by cooperating.”

He looked her into the eyes and Laira once more had to gulp.

Honestly she wasn’t even sure why she didn’t want to tell Brett anything about her weird skill or what had truly happened, but something inside of her just felt averse to the idea.

Perhaps it was her sister rubbing off on her. Cleo had been distrustful of others from the very start and the fact that there were indeed people who went around killing others had only affirmed Cleo in her decision that strangers were no good.

Laira didn’t think quite that bad about others, and Brett and the others in the camp did seem like good people, but still. She didn’t know what they would do once they figured out that something was very different with her alignment and skill.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

When she had entered the camp after a lengthy discussion with Lukas, who had wanted to make sure she would never call Brett a “dwarf” again, there had only been three people left in it, the rest had gone out to fight all the wolves who had suddenly approached the lake.

After giving Lukas into the care of one of them, she had talked a little with the two others, asking a few questions about their time in the Tutorial so far and also about the camp.

Their answers had made her realize just how unique her situation was. Although their skills also sounded quite good, none of them came anywhere close to the uniqueness and also weirdness of her own skill. And of course none of them even assumed that somebody didn’t get an actual weapon at the beginning. There were no other choices, after all.

And then there was also the fact that Cleo hadn’t shown up at the camp, which made Laira extra uneasy. She still thought her sister was probably alright, but it did make her worry. And also increased her reluctance to disclose anything important to Brett.

I truly hope you are alright sis…

Brett cleared his throat to get her attention again.

He looked at her for a bit before tilting his head and asking another question.

“Do you know why I’m the leader of this camp?”

Laira shook her head.

He grinned at her, before picking up his hammer and flexing his muscles.

“Because I’m the strongest!”

She was too stunned to reply, only staring at the small man.

He chuckled. “It’s true! I may not look like it, but there is no one here that can beat me in combat.”

“But why, “ Laira said, finally having enough courage to ask a question on her own, “why is the strongest leading? Shouldn’t the one who is best at, well, leading lead?”

Brett turned serious and raised an eyebrow at her. “Am I that bad at leading?”

“What? No, I mean…,” Laira sputtered.

The short man stared at her as she tried to explain herself and then burst into laughter.

“I’m just kidding! No, it’s a valid question. But dear Laira, ask yourself this: Why would you trust anyone’s orders? The orders of someone you have never met before? Of someone you have no idea what they are actually capable of?”

He shook his head.

“I would never follow anyone who didn’t prove that they are willing to face the same danger themselves. And not just willing. They have to show that they are good at it, no, the best at facing it. That they are someone you can feel confident in following into battle. That they won’t be someone who simply orders you to charge from the back, but someone who charges first themselves. Someone who you know that, even if you are on the brink of failure, on the brink of succumbing to the enemy, won’t falter. Because they are stronger than you. So that when you are about to fall, you will know that they can still fight and protect you even if you yourself can’t.”

“And that person,” he said, pointing at himself, “is me.”

Laira couldn’t help but nod at the commander’s words. What he said had truth to it and she understood how he was able to so quickly gain the trust of the others and successfully build a camp in the middle of nowhere.

In this world where everyone had to constantly fight to get stronger, only the strongest had any right to tell them what was right or wrong.

“I see that you understand,” he smiled at her.

“I think I do,” she replied, once again nodding her head.

Gathering her courage once again, she continued.

“But I have to apologize. There were some untruths about what I said, however I’m still not comfortable to disclose what exactly has happened, as it is intricately tied to my skills and I would rather not have someone know what exactly I can do.”

She stood up from her makeshift seat and continued, Brett looking decidedly unhappy about her decision. “I guess Lukas will tell you more about what had happened anyways, once he wakes up. But for now I would like to have some more time to think about what I want to tell you about myself.”

Brett also stood up, which made him even smaller than when he was sitting, and looked at her slightly disapprovingly.

“Again, I understand,” he grumbled, “it’s hard to trust strangers. So take some time to consider things. I will ask for you again once Lukas has recovered somewhat and I have heard his side of the story. However, keep in mind one thing,” he said, gripping her arm and making her look down into his eyes, “This camp is based on honest cooperation. If you do not want to cooperate, then that is your right, but then you’ll have to leave.”

His eyes turned hard at the last bit.

“This is not a refugee camp. We are all doing our part here.”

Laira gave him a terse nod, removing her arm from his grip and then turned around, quickly walking away. She could feel him staring after her, his gaze burning into her back while she rubbed her arm where she could still feel his fingers.

He is right of course…, she grumbled.

Inwardly, Laira knew that Brett was doing the correct thing. She was hiding something and he just wanted to know what was going on. And he was right that she couldn’t just expect support without even wanting to disclose some basic facts about herself.

But still, she felt wrong simply going around and spreading to the world that she was different. She couldn’t quite rationalize why, but it was simply the way she felt.

She sighed, trying to calm her emotions.

Maybe I’m just being silly…

Though she could already hear her sister telling her that she was being awesome and doing the correct thing. But then again, her sister was kind of biased in that regard anyways.

She stopped walking when she faced an obstacle and only now noticed where her feet had taken her. Ducking a little she made her way inside a small hut made of sticks, sitting down next to Lukas.

He was still sleeping, recovering from the fights and his wounds. The worst injury had been a long cut on his side from his fight with that one man, which had been bandaged with some cloth stripes that had been washed with boiling water.

Laira watched as his chest heaved up and down slowly, his quiet breaths calming her as well.

She hadn’t told him anything about her skill either, and he had also never asked about it, somehow making her trust him a little more than Brett. It also helped that he had basically saved her life today.

Mhhhh…

Lying down on the ground next to him, she thought about what to do. The only thing that was truly important to her now was to reunite with Cleo; something she probably wasn’t able to do alone.

In fact, going out alone was probably a death sentence, especially if her only defense was a skill that knocked her out every time she used it.

Maybe there is no way around it… I’ll have to decide to trust the people here and work together with them. Maybe they will then help me find my sister.

Laira sighed and closed her eyes, her exhaustion from the fight making her quickly doze off as well.

****

“What the hell happened to you?”

Jett lifted his eyes from his dagger, stopping his ruminations about if he should end his life or not and looked towards the newcomers.

A woman with black hair looked down on him, eyeing the scene curiously. He looked at her axe hanging from her side, then at the lanky man who stood a bit behind her, his bow in hand and an arrow already nocked, ready to shoot at any moment. Then he looked back up again into her inquisitive, blue eyes.

“I slipped and fell onto my dagger. Multiple times. Truly a harrowing experience, I’ll let you know.”

She snorted and rolled her eyes at him, apparently not believing his story in the slightest.

“But it’s fortunate that you are here,” he continued, flashing her the best smile he could muster, “would you mind handing me some of your water? I’ve gotten a little thirsty.”

She hesitated for a bit and then took out a small waterskin, evidently self-made from crude rawhide, and dangled it in front of him.

He reached out for it, but she pulled it back just before he could grab it.

“If,” she said, smiling, “you tell us what actually happened here.”

Jett contemplated for a bit if he should mess with them more - maybe call them by their childhood nicknames or tell them some other intimate story about themselves - but alas, he really was dying of thirst here. Literally.

And either he died now or he tried continuing this regression. Dying didn’t sound too bad to be honest, but he had contemplated it for the last hour or so already and in the end, something was holding him back.

He really wanted to figure out what was up with that one girl and he feared that whatever had happened this regression, it would be gone should he reset.

I’m just too hard-working for my own good, he sighed internally.

“Alright, alright. I have a skill that lets me build some magical items. You can take a look.”

He pointed towards the stone disc with the magic array.

“Put your finger on the rune that looks like a circle with a couple lines going towards the center and you shall see.”

She frowned and then stepped towards the disc, picking it up.

She turned and rotated it around, gasping audibly when she saw his work. She stood there for a while, her eyes wandering around the stone, admiring the many metal circles and runes. Her gaze lingered especially long on the softly glowing charge indicators.

It didn't taker her too long to spot the rune he had described. She hesitated a bit, giving him a quick look, then gently placed her thumb on it.

The disc rumbled a bit and then shot light mana directly upwards.

“Ahhhhh!”

She dropped the disc and stumbled backwards, blinded by the intense light.

“Claire!” The hitherto quiet man rushed forward, checking if she was okay.

Jett, amidst the chaos, extended his arm.

“Can I have my water now?”