Chapter 16: Battle Blues

The sounds of prolonged fighting continue to ring through the moonlit Paxdom Fields, and a humanoid beast totters and stumbles as it closes in on a kneeling boy. Excreting a grimy black substance from every one of its pores, it lifts a clawed arm, and brings it down in a wide arc—

“What are you doing, zoning out now? Come on, wake up, the battle is waiting!”

Diegi, lost in his thoughts, is saved from another quick decapitation by Equo dragging him out of an attacking monster’s range. Then Equo, with his unoccupied hand, points one of his shortswords at the groaning beast as a deterrent. While all this is happening, it takes Diegi a moment to catch up with the changes in his surroundings.

“Ah…? Ah… yeah…”

That’s right. Vivian had already dumped Diegi onto the squashed grass and gleefully leapt into battle against the hordes of roving tutorial monsters, crowing about the achievements she was about to rack up for herself. Most of the other adventurers had, too. Only the spellcasters and, for some reason, Equo had hung back here near Paxdom’s northern gate. Not that it helped— even here, at the last line of defense, well over a dozen monsters were already running rampant.

Equo, working quickly, unsheathes three more of his shortswords from those low-hanging belts of his and holds two in each hand. Then, leaping high into the air with a woop, he spins and tosses the blades. The swords glow a dusty orange and leave a trail of sparkling stars as they sharply descend— signifying the activation of a Skill, specifically that of Sword-type Skill ‘Sword Meteor.’ It’s probably because of the Skill’s assistance that each and every one finds its mark and impales two monsters each through their chest-equivalents, killing eight in one go. With a flourish, Equo lands back on the ground and offers the kneeling Diegi a hand.

“These beasts aren’t so tough. Come on, boy, where’s your spirit? With a Strength attribute as high as yours, I’m sure a single blow would be even to vanquish them! Try fighting a few!”

> Ah yes, the high attribute you just arbitrarily decided I had without even bothering to confirm your guesswork with me. The one that, in reality, is currently at a whopping total of 1. Is that it? Is that the one you’re referring to!?

Diegi, keeping his rather unfair thoughts in his head, allows Equo to pull him up but still moves with a hint of unnatural sluggishness. Shaking his head to clear the cobwebs, Diegi starts trying to think productively.

> This monster is what killed me back then, on route to Paxdom. I’m surprised it didn’t just despawn after I died. Actually, scratch that thought. More importantly— why are there so many of them!? No matter what variation of the tutorial you’re playing, there’s never any more than one.

Another sludge covered limb appears in the corner of his vision. There’s barely any time to react; with no other choice, Diegi’s subconscious takes over and his body prepares to evade on its own. An awakening of his primal instincts, allowing him to—

“Eeeek!”

*spush*

With a squeak and a muddy squish, Diegi’s brilliant primal instincts direct him to stumble backwards and trip onto the squashy grass. It’s a horribly awkward maneuver, an embarrassing one even, and as Diegi looks up at his oppressor getting ready to lop his head off once more, he sees— the monster, totally off balance from the followup of its excessively wide swing. Turns out that even his panic-induced clumsiness is sufficient to dodge one of these beasts’ wildly inaccurate strikes. There’s no mistaking those deliberately sluggish movements and awful aiming skills— it’s the bona fide, developer-programmed tutorial monster that he’d fought before.

Wait… the same that he’d fought before?

> Oh, hold on. That means I can actually help for once!

Diegi turns to the swordsman next to him and quickly spits out some instructions.

“Equo, no need to be wary with these things. You’ve been fighting at a safe distance, but just trust me here— they only attack with wide arm swings! Get in close and don’t worry about any other kind of attack!”

Equo quirks his eyebrows at the abruptly given and frankly ridiculous advice, inquisitively looking over at Diegi’s face. When he sees that Diegi’s dead serious, however, Equo adjusts his fighting stance appropriately. He loosens up, and instead of being on guard for clever tricks or nuanced movements he focuses solely on landing his own sword strikes. Vertical, horizontal, diagonal, stepping back to avoid a wide swing, repeat and repeat and repeat, his swords seem to leave lingering impressions behind them as their sharp points continually rend the air.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

In a blur of movement spanning only a few seconds, Equo slays around eight foes. Before the beasts’ carcasses are even done hitting the ground, he spares a second to look over at DIegi and holds out his palm, smiling even wider than before.

“Hey hey, you’re right! Even for monsters, the beasts are pretty simple-minded. No need for caution here, ha ha!”

> Yeah, that’s the point. It would make for a pretty shitty tutorial if the first monster in any MMORPG was super strong and adaptable. I probably woulda quit playing MYTH if that’d happened to me.

Diegi slaps Equo’s open palm and peers around the battlefield, at the vast swarms of tutorial monsters barely visible in the dim lighting. At first the sheer number had been intimidating, but if each one went down as fast as the eight Equo had killed, this battle would be a cinch. But clearly, that hadn’t been the case for the guards— Diegi can see groups of them still furiously waging battles with ridiculous amounts of beasts, hours after the monster attack had first started. Sucks for them.

> At any rate, now that I’ve got some strong adventurer party members like Vivian and Equo with me, these Terries don’t seem so scary anymore. I can probably just sit back, relax, and—

A voice rings out from further ahead, preventing Diegi from completing the half baked thought.

“Oi! You adventurers, back there! Stop killing so many of them! They can— gah!!”

The voice cuts off with a grunt, as if taking a sudden impact.

Diegi strains his eyes to see in the moonlight. Not far away from the rear line, two guards are surrounded by a small mob of monsters. Was one of them the one who had shouted? One guard has long black hair, the other close-cropped orange, and judging by their unkempt clothing and plentiful bloody scratches, they overall look like they’re in pretty bad shape. Diegi shakes his head and sighs knowingly, doing his best to keep his expression somber.

> I guess the guards really are weaker than me, bleeding this much from dealing with a couple Terries. I mean, at least I was able to evade them for a bit. These guys are trained guards, and they’re getting their asses beat! Even needed to call on adventurers as backup. What are they, babies?

Diegi starts to calm down, remarking that of all the monsters who could have attacked the city, the tutorial monsters were probably the best option. The adventurer reinforcements would probably kill all the beasts in mere minutes, and even better than that— he’d learned the guards were all just total noobs. A small snicker leaks from Diegi’s lips despite his best efforts… a grade A troll such as himself can’t help but imagine vivid scenarios of the tricks he could play on them if they really were all that weak.

> Maybe after the adventurers deal with all these mobs and after I get that end of tutorial level-up, I’ll swing by the barracks and cause a little havoc. I’ve never trolled an NPC before, ha ha! It’s gonna be so… wait… what’s going on!?

But just before he can let his breath out in a relieved sigh, he sees a phenomenon he hadn’t at all been expecting. Equo had truly been efficient after having taken Diegi’s advice— piles of dead monsters litter the fields around him. Dead. Monsters. Dead. Dead. Diegi can even see the beginning of the carcasses’ disintegration. They’re dead.

“So… am I hallucinating or what?”

But out of their corpses, come a fresh wave of… new monsters? Identical to the ones that were slain, rising from the bodies of the fallen like butterflies breaking out of a cocoon.

Unwilling to believe it, Diegi furiously rubs his eyes and looks again, but they’re still there.

“What the hell!? Since when could Terry do that? Automod, did you beef up the tutorial difficulty or something!?”

Even knowing that the strangely absent AI overlord likely won’t respond, Diegi shrieks out his frustration. It’s not just the monsters’ physical bodies that are multiplying, but also the digital prompt windows above their head. The words on the floating blue screens are growing more and more garbled with each iteration. Soon, Diegi won’t even be able to read the text anymore.

Ironically, despite the screens’ obscured nature, the system’s message is clear— as far as the game-world is concerned, Diegi still hasn't passed the Tutorial’s monster-slaying stage.

> Oh, I get it. The tutorial monster killed me and dipped, but I never actually followed the prompt and defeated it. So that’s why the prompts hadn’t been showing up all this time, eh? Because I was stuck on this one step? So even if I had managed to register at the guild, it probably wouldn’t have counted as clearing the tutorial… damn it!

“Oh, not again! Boy, you must get out of your head!”

Once again, Equo roughly tugs Diegi away from a monster’s attack and counters with a punch that sends the monster flying, though without killing it. The swordsman is bright— even without Diegi telling him anything explicitly, he’s figured out that slaying the beasts is what’s leading to their quick duplication.

> And we just released a huge pack of adventurers who don’t know that crucial fact into the battlefield… oh God. What’s gonna happen? I bet Vivian by herself has already killed droves of ‘em!

Diegi quickly thanks Equo for the save, forgetting his pride in the heat of the moment, and is forced to dodge a few more strikes as soon as he’s released from Equo’s grasp. A swing comes in low, Diegi hops over it. Another swing aimed at his midsection a moment later, Diegi takes a step back. Even for someone as inexperienced in battle as him, it isn’t terribly difficult to outwit these foes. And yet, when there are this many of them attacking at once, he can’t dodge successfully for too long. One grimy monster’s clawed hands almost make contact, but it’s incinerated by a large fireball just before it can. Probably the work of a spellcasting adventurer, supporting from the rear.

Diegi looks on as the tutorial monster who’d almost hit him crumbles into ash. Is it just him, or is it taking a little longer than normal to spawn new monsters? Had he found the monsters’ weakness?? Regardless, he starts to take a small step back, voicing his thoughts under his breath:

“Oh, shit, an opening! I’ll retreat for now, and—”

“““““Uuuuughhh”””””

Diegi unfortunately only gets a few extra seconds of grace period before new beasts rise from the smoldering ashes and give a low, toneless groan.

“So, not even burning the body will stop that respawn phenomenon, huh? But too bad for them— I’ll find something that will.”

Diegi mutters to himself as he scuttles backwards and watches the new round of tutorial monsters begin their slow advance. He doesn’t know why it took him so long to realize; it's like the fireball snapped him to his senses. Of course, what he should be doing is looking for is a way to stop the respawning instead of engaging the monsters directly in battle. And thanks to the disastrous escape attempt in the alley, he has the perfect tool to do so.

“Now that I’ve got a little space between myself and these Terries, now’s the perfect time to use it. That new Skill, Perception. Oh, this is gonna be so cool!”

So Diegi says, with a cocky grin returning to his face for the first time in a while. Completely ignoring the fact that a battle of guards and adventurers against a whole monster invasion— with the fate of a city at stake, no less— really isn’t the time to be worried about coolness or anything like that. No, even as he stands in the middle of a crisis with blood and mud being spattered all around him, the thought doesn't even cross his mind. Really, will he ever get his priorities in order?