Tyler awoke to beeping. An alarm was going off in his head, and with his lack of sleep, all he could manage was to suffer. After managing to use the confusion in his head to clear the pain from the alarm, he pushed the big button on his companion UI. His sleeping roll, in it's upgraded glory, managed to wake Tyler up shortly before sunrise.
He looked across the tent, and saw that he was alone. He sighed, hoping he was going to be up early enough to actually eat some breakfast, failing thanks to his late night reviewing his complicated accessory. He struggled to his knees, rolling up his sleeping roll, and putting it into his bag. He stepped out of the tent, and he saw the AI standing by the cold fire pit, staring off to the east. The rumbling was louder now, and no longer a rumble on the distance, but the roar of a beast.
Tyler was in his body, the system deciding that he was finished with the basics of the tutorial, no longer a child. He did a couple stretches, trying to forget the feelings of being in a childs body. The last thing he would want to do is smash his face climbing into the back of the cart. He approached the fire, looking east hoping to see what Moore saw.
"Pack the tent, pack the camp, and set up the cart. I will take care of the horses, when you are ready. I would normally say take your time, but time is short this morning." She turned to Tyler, "Hurry and pack up, we need to get going."
Tyler turned to the tent, an option popped up on his companion UI.
Purchase express instructions? Current Price: Free
Yes / No
He selected yes, taking the look on powerful AI's face seriously. The instructions for taking the tent apart changed, and one node appeared at the tent flap. He pulled on it, curious to see what would happen. As he pulled back, the tent supports pulled inwards from the bottom, then began to form a pile. As the upper corners pulled away from the canvas cover, the corners grouped together, folding up the large canvas in seconds, which normally took 15 minutes.
Tyler watched in amazement, never hearing about this option for taking down a camp. Many raids had been crippled by PvP clans taking advantage of the time camps took to take apart. If a raid couldn't take their base apart quickly enough, they would find themselves without a spawn point for their raid. Months of work could be lost from the failure, long lived clans having fallen apart from such a loss.
He didn't get any option for the camp, but since there was nothing to do as the campfire was out, he moved onto the wagon.
Purchase express instructions? Current Price: Free
Yes / No
Selecting yes, he watched as the cart brakes moved away from the wheels. The heavy trunk that contained all the wagons items floated into the air, then into the back of the cart. The extended display table folded up, the awning folding in, leather straps fastening them into place. Tyler walked up to the cart, amazed by seeing all the progress done in seconds. He called to the AI, letting her know that the cart was ready.
He climbed into the front of the cart, watching the AI smoothly attaching the horses to the cart. After what felt like seconds, the AI was beside Tyler, and the cart was moving. It wasn't long until Tyler felt the reigns pushed into his hands. "Quickly now, take the reigns." The AI wasn't even looking at Tyler, she was looking behind the cart, to the east. "There isn't much time."
Turn Left
A yellow line outlined his left hand, and the outline moved upward. He mimicked the action with his hand, and the cart pulled left. Right when the wagon changed directions, Tyler's peaceful world came to a crashing end. An explosion went off where the cart was supposed to be, a piece of dirt hitting Tyler in the side of the head. He closed his right eye instinctively, trying to protect it from the impact of dirt.
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Fourth leapt to her feet, and jumped into the back of the Cart. Tyler began to turn around, wanting to see where the explosion had come from. The roaring at his back made it easy for his imagination to run wild with a demon now close behind the cart. "NO!!!" The AI screamed, "Your fight is to finish the tutorial, this fight back here is mine!"
On queue, a message appeared.
Turn Right
A yellow lined appeared on his right hand, making the motion to pull on the reign. He did the motion, the cart reacting immediately. Instead of an explosion, a spike of ice came up from the ground, Tyler feeling the change of temperature on the air. Before Tyler could try to look around;
Slow down
Yellow lines appearing on both hands, pulling back slowly. Following the motion again, the cart slowed to a walk, horses bravely fighting their urge to run away wildly. Tyler could hear chanting behind him, calming him to the vision of a stone wall appearing in front of the cart. Four's hand shot out over Tyler's right shoulder. Before Tyler even knew what was happening, he could feel impact in his chest, a burst of air errupting from the AIs hand, the rock wall in front exploding backwards. "GO!" The AI bellowed.
Speed up
The yellow outlines quickly moved up and down, Tyler, not waiting for the demonstration to finish, the cart took off. Tyler turned his head, seeing fire in his peripheral vision quickly approaching the cart from the rear.
Go faster
Tyler repeated the motion, the horses biting down and going full bore. Tyler held on as best he could, the bumps of the road throwing him side to side. He kept his eyes ahead as a battle raged behind him, he followed the instructions given to him, including at one point climbing up on one of the horses to perform repairs while at speed.
As Tyler followed a simple direction to turn, the right side of the cart smashed into a large rock, sending one side of the cart into the air. Feeling a slam from the back of the cart, the cart slammed back onto four wheels, quickly having one of the wheels flying off into the woods. The cart slammed to a halt, and Tyler's eyes shut on impact. A second later, he opened his eyes to the peaceful feeling of flying through the air, quickly ending as his shoulder slammed into the ground. As soon as his shoulder hit, his body bounced, his body spinning in the air.
His body was numb from the first impact, the system taking over and numbing the incoming punishment. It would determine what Tyler went through, and assigned debuffs and pain after the event. His body came down, stopping quickly, not hitting the ground, but a large tree. Everything came to an end, as he gracefully finished his fall to the ground with his face, his health bar quickly dropped to a blinking red sliver.
He rolled his head to the side, bringing Four into view. She had her hands in the air, chains flying out of them, forming a spinning disc in the air. Fire was spreading across the disc, burning trees in every direction. She pulled one hand away, and quickly made a few forms with it, then raised it back in the air. The chains stopped flowing out of her hands, but the spinning disc of chains stayed in the air.
She quickly ran over to the horses, which were desperately pulling at the disabled cart, and began pulling at the straps. As she worked, she looked over at Tyler, and a voice came to Tylers head.
"I'm going to take the horses, and bring Seven away from here. Seven came here to try and prevent you from finishing the tutorial, he failed, so now he is just trying to destroy everything." Tyler just looked, his body too damaged to do anything, the pain assigned to his situation pinning him to the ground. "You are close to Myneria, you just have to figure out how to heal yourself, then repair the cart. Good Luck."
The AI pulled at one last strap, and the horses stepped away from the wreckage. As they moved away from the cart, wings of yellow light appeared on the horses, both horses turning white. Four jumped on the back of one of the horses, looked back once, and in with a couple beats of the wings, the horses were gone in the air.
As Tyler watched the horses fly off into the sky, he was thinking things couldn't get any worse than escaping explosions and meteors falling from the sky to the tune of a tutorial walk through, then getting slammed to the ground going mach chicken. Then, on top of being next to dead at the base of a tree, possibly to be the first person to fail the introductory tutorial, and to be abandoned by his tutorial guide.
As he looked up, watching the horses fly off, he came to realize that things could in fact get much worse. Unable to move, Tyler could only look up in horror, as the sky above him were filled with dragons of all colors.