"Congratulations!" said the smiling woman.
She was a woman of 170 centimeters and, while not excessively so, of an athletic build. Her brown hair was braided to keep it shorter than it actually was and typically draped over her left shoulder towards her front. Her eyes were of a light brown and would appear to sparkle in the right light. She was several years older than her current companion, a teenaged boy, though how many was a mystery. Currently, she was wearing a mid-length skirt over a set of thick leather leggings for protection. A leather breastplate and arm guards protected her torso and arms respectively, covering the complimentary tunic to the skirt. Over all this, she was also currently wearing a white apron securely tied at her back.
The boy whom she had congratulated turned from the corpse of the beast he had just slain. Blood splatter on his face would normally draw the attention of companions, but the woman focused on his eyes. His eyes were still wide with shock and shifting to remain alert. The woman approached, pulling a clean handkerchief from the pocket of her apron and began to wipe the blood from his face.
"Daniel?" she asked sternly in order to focus his attention.
The boy's eyes snapped to hers.
"It's okay. You did it."
Daniel's shoulders slumped as he finally relaxed and let out a breath.
"I did, didn't I? That lizard hide was so tough though!" he said.
Protodrake, she thought, I'll have to show him Identification before he leaves.
"Yes, it is. What do you expect from a dungeon boss?" she commented, stuffing the used handkerchief back into her apron pocket.
"I don't really know," Daniel replied sheepishly, "When you said I was ready for the dungeon I was excited. But now I wonder if I'm really ready. Is there any other element to the Tutorial?"
The woman smiled.
"Officially? No. You probably have the notification already for your transfer, correct?"
She waited while the boy checked his status, unable to see that sort of information even if she were to use her own skill to try. He nodded.
"But I realized there's one more thing I should teach you before you go. Plus I should treat you to a good meal before you go too."
Daniel perked up at hearing about food. All the boys did. Some of the girls too, but every boy.
"Awesome! Let's go!"
With smiles on their faces they selected the Exit Dungeon button on their respective statuses.
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A wooden cottage sat at the base of a hill, next to a river. Cottage was perhaps an understatement, as it was built from the sturdy logs of the nearby forest, making it more of a log cabin. The woman called it the cottage though. The rush of the river and the steady rumbling of the water wheel, powered by said river, mixed with the babble of the chickens in their coop. It was a picturesque homesteading type set up.
Inside, the woman set down a bowl of protodrake stew in front of Daniel. She also handed him several slices of bread she had just made that morning topped with a rich, creamy butter.
"How is the Identify coming along?" she asked as she sat down to her own meal.
"Pretty good," he replied between mouthfuls, "Why didn't you show me this earlier?"
"I forgot."
She chuckled as she ate.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
"You forgot?" Daniel asked.
"There's a lot to know about the Tutorial. I didn't even know about Identify until… well let's just say a while in."
"You don't just teach it to everybody?"
"I should. But most develop it on their own. Any guesses as to why you didn't?" she taunted.
Daniel looked embarrassed.
"Exactly. As I said, you don't take enough time to look at your situation. The Tutorial is easy compared to the world you're going to."
Daniel looked confused now.
"But you can't leave. How do you know?" he asked.
She jerked a thumb over towards the bookshelf practically overflowing with books.
"It's not for show. Not much to do after the chores. As you all pass through I've collected a bunch of stories. So yes, I haven't left but I have a few guesses."
"Oh. I guess that makes sense."
The conversation continued alongside the meal, mostly with Daniel describing his past. The woman made mental notes about everything, remembering so as to write them down later. After dinner, Daniel went outside for some last minute training while the woman retired for the evening.
"He'll be gone tomorrow," she murmured to herself quietly.
After changing into her nightwear, she fell onto her bed and stared at the ceiling. Tears formed at the corners of her eyes as she prepared for the coming heartache. Silently, she grieved until sleep overtook her.
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As the morning sun began its shift into its afternoon form, both Daniel and the woman were climbing a hill towards an unnatural construction that sat atop. There was a stone obelisk engraved with a bunch of strange runes at the center of a ring of archways. The archways were crudely constructed out of three large stones each, giving it a look similar to that of Stonehenge.
“Well, off you go Daniel,” said the woman.
He turned to her.
“Thank you. I don't know if I could have done it without your guidance.”
“Oh, I think you would have. Just maybe not as smoothly as I showed you and without other tips and skills,” she laughed.
“True. Your build is locked in after the Tutorial. It could have been hard beyond here.”
Daniel stepped into the circle of archways, advancing to the central obelisk. He placed his hand on the obelisk and apparently received the notification. His form began to shimmer as the magic lit up the runes around the stonework and engulfed him.
“Goodbye Tess! Thank you again!”
And with a final flash of light, Daniel was gone. Tess let out a sigh and walked into the circle herself, reaching for the central obelisk. A notification popped up in her vision.
Tutorial must be completed before exiting. Player ‘Theresa’ has not completed the Tutorial.
“Yep. Same as always,” she said as she felt her heart sink.
Theresa, or Tess as she preferred, had been summoned to this strange Tutorial place a long time ago. She had struggled through learning the ropes and tricks through the use of the MSI Tutorial, just as everyone else did. Yet when she had come here to the obelisk, she was met with the denial notification.
Every day, the Tutorial reset the monsters spawns and the loot chests scattered throughout, yet no matter how fast she eliminated every monster or found each chest, the notification did not change. Tess could only conclude that she was stuck. It was then that the next summoned person arrived.
Tess assisted them, helping guide them through the Tutorial in a way that she had never had. Yet when they left the Tutorial, she was still denied. And so the cycle continued, and Tess refined her assistance while continuously diversifying her build. Eventually, her guidance was better than the MSI Tutorial screens, for she had mastered the Tutorial. Time passed and hundreds of others passed through her care, yet for Tess she never aged, as though being within the Tutorial had frozen her aging physically, if not mentally.
It was still a lingering hope that somehow she might escape this mundane, relatively unchanging landscape. Alas each new arrival would end up departing after a few days under her tutelage. And so Tess had taken to amassing the tales of those passing through, giving her a wealth of knowledge on the potential of the world, or worlds, beyond the Tutorial.
Her fingers lingering just a moment longer on the obelisk as she reluctantly moved away, Tess stepped out of the circle. It was time to head back to the cottage. A new person would not appear until tomorrow's respawn time, so she wanted to be ready to be there for them.
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Elsewhere
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The lesser deity in charge of maintaining the System pulled out another clump of hair in frustration, only for it to grow back in immediately.
“Why? How?” he screamed at the screen filled with code.
The screen showed no response to a vague questioning.
“It has to be a bug in the main System database, not the copies for the clients. I've viewed too many and found no reason. It's not even like the heroes break the rules of the System, they are just so stacked when they come out of the…”
He paused mid sentence. His hands jerked as he pulled up the System's Tutorial level code and started going over it thoroughly.
“What is that?” he murmured as he found and examined a blob of red colored code.