So that didn't go well. It probably could have gone worse, though. It definitely could have gone worse. Fortunately the bot gave me a lot of information, including the beginnings of a plan on how to fix things. Not that it intended to give me that information, but figuring out systems is par for the course. Just don't ask anything philosophical or expect the runaround. I still don't understand the whole "gaming, game, game" thing I tried asking about before.

I walked through a maze of corridors. Normally this would take hours of exploration to find what you needed and get where you needed to go, but I had a map. I'm not completely sure what the point of this confusing setup is, but my best guess is that it has to do with planning and impulse control? The place where we all entered had a lot of accommodations, restaurants and hotels, but we were only given limited currency to prepare for the next set of challenges. I could easily see some rich kid thinking that creature comforts were more important than weapons. I hadn't made that mistake.

Instead I had bought a gun with extra ammo, a pair of bracers, and all the staples fantasy adventurers supposedly need for their first mission. That included a backpack, some rations, a self filling water-bottle, some rope, a bedroll, a fire starter, and a folding shovel. No ten foot pole, unfortunately. I stuffed most of it in my hammer space, and almost questioned buying the backpack except that it was cheep and sturdy so might be useful. Most of my starting cash went into buying my weapon and the bracers, in typical gaming fashion. I also bought some hiking boots and a leather jacket that looked tough enough to offer some protection, just in case. Unfortunately my credits were based off my level so I didn't have enough to buy some of the fun energy weapons or other high-tech offerings. I did splurge on the alien water bottle that seemed to pull the water directly out of the air, but that was all I could afford.

Now I just needed to find a portal to the main part of the Tutorial, and maybe even a group to challenge it with. A lot of portals were filled and closed, due to the time limit, but those didn't interest me anyway. By asking enough questions I had learned that, while many had secondary objectives, every single portal had the same primary objective: Survive. Your tutorial run ended when you died and not before. The secondary objectives, what each portal was actually labeled for, could help; but ultimately the end goal was the same. A "Construction Worker" portal would have you have you building defenses, then you would try to survive. A "Social Ball" portal would have you convincing other people to let you survive at their expense. Nothing told people that "not dying" was the tutorial goal and so people flocked away from the pure combat tutorials thinking they could avoid death or major injury. I, however, needed a pure combat portal. Pure combat was the closest analogy to the simulated combat of video games that I could expect to get, and it wasn't like I had any other relevant skills to pull from.

I thought that finding a group this close to deadline would be difficult, especially one that would accept me despite my level, but then I saw her. It was the nerdiest thing I had ever seen with my own eyes, and it was beautiful. Some girl had dressed herself up like an honest-to-god magical girl, complete with floating sparkles surrounding her and a pink and white dress. She looked mostly asian but was tall enough that I wondered if she might have a mixed heritage. Then I noticed that next to her was a superhero looking guy with a cape and there was also a guy who was covered in glowing cybernetics with a full robot hand that went up to the elbow. There was a guy in a fur suit and a stern looking girl with a whip. The more I looked the weirder the people in the group seemed, maybe even weird enough to take in a low leveled guy like me? I approached the one who seemed to be in charge, the superhero dressed in blue and gold, to start up a conversation. He had a heroic physique, a heroic jawline, and a less than heroic mullet for his hair; but it all came together decently enough.

"Hey there, you have room for one more?" I asked, nodding toward the group.

"I like the whole 'mad max' thing you got going there," he said, nodding toward my getup. "The more the merrier, I say. You got here just in time, we were going to head on in."

"Mad Max?" I asked, I didn't think I looked that cobbled together.

He smiled and waved his hand at me. "That weird eye-piece looks super high-tech. Combine it with the leather jacket, boots and jeans and you could be a modern guy with a single trick. But then you offset it with the archaic bracers, the gun, and the traveling backpack..." I glanced at myself again. Ok, so maybe I was a bit of a cobbled together mess. "What you really need now are some giant shoulder pads and a metal chain to complete the look. Or a baseball bat with spikes through it, but that might be too much."

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"Maybe," I hedged, "but there really isn't enough time to do more shopping."

He made a considering noise but was called away before he could say anything more. As for myself, I wondered off toward the group until I ended up next to the guy with the cybernetic arm.

"Nice eyepiece," he commented after a minute of silence, nodding toward it. The thing looked like a hearing aid merged with a see through eye-patch, but high-tech. "what does it do?"

I saw no real point in hiding it, "It connects to a high-tech computer." I said, then continued. "Nice arm."

"It lets me build stuff out of scrap." he replied. There were a few seconds of silence between us before we both seemed to mutually accept each other's presence. "Donnie Bravet. Mechanical Constructor. Level 6." He spoke in introduction. "My hand lets me build stuff and I got downloaded into my brain the knowhow to build better stuff."

"Johnny Max Riker. Computer Operator. Level 1." I answered as his eyebrow started to rise. "My class is all about using my computer to control stuff, but I use the eyepiece as a peripheral because the implant has funny effects on people's personalities." He gave me a funny look and seemed like he, the half cyborg, was going to say something, but I jumped back in before he could. "I'm not against getting my character all souped up, I just don't want it to screw up my decision making process."

"What do you mean by 'funny effects' on their personalities? And how do you know?" he asked, somewhat defensively and somewhat nervously.

"I asked the computer in the first room." I explained. "Apparently having a computer hooked directly into your brain that counts up all the odds of everything makes people more likely to make decisions based on those odds; becoming more cautious and calculating no matter what happens. I doubt it is something you need to worry about."

He nodded, visibly relaxing. "So is your class any good?" he asked.

I shrugged. "It is hard to say yet. I need more things for my computer to connect with to get any real use out of it. So far it is about as useful as a good cellphone, but everyone has one of those. Also, my level is really low, I got screwed over by bad luck."

"You aren't kidding," he said with a nod of his head. "The average is supposed to be level 5. I didn't know you could start out as low as you did."

"You know stuff like the average level?" I asked. "Aren't Players supposed to keep stuff secret from civilians?"

He wobbled his hand side to side. "That is mostly about not unduly influencing people getting in; unfair advantage or forcing them on a certain path type of stuff. At least that's how I was told it was. It's mostly about protecting the new players."

"You think there is something more to it than that?" I asked conspiratorially.

He took a few seconds, then seemed to change his mind. "Heck if I know. I guess we'll find out about it soon enough."

I nodded in acceptance, deciding to change the subject. "So maybe you can help me out. What should I look forward to when I level up. All I got at level 1 was a computer shoved into hammer-space and an attempt at shoving one inside my head."

He smiled excitedly. "It's super cool. I mean, I was good at building stuff before, but now I can just grab some materials and just know how I can break it down and use it for something new. That's probably not what your getting at, though." He shrugged before continuing "It's all pretty simple. You get some points and a bunch of options, mostly related to your class. Your class gives you free points that give you free stuff, but most of those have to be spent on your Path. That's tech for both of us. The rest, really depends on what you have access to. You want more tech, you need to have the tech. Stuff like that. I'm pretty sure someone is selling whatever you might want. Stuff you buy with points is important, they become part of your character so you get to keep them if you die; and I'm pretty sure dying happens a lot. Also, if you have a good enough pod, they become options..."

Wow, what a surprisingly helpful info dump. "So what did you have to do to start out with such a high level? Is it something I can do?"

"That?" he asked, seemingly somewhat surprised, "It is based on your highest starting stats. My Mind stat, both aspects of it, are above average and high enough to increase my starting level. Why? What type of stats did it give you?"

I sighed. "1's and 5's across the board. Though I think the system finally had mercy on me to bump them all up to 10." He gave me a look, "And yeah, I know I shouldn't be able to stand or walk or, I don't know, breathe with stats that low. I'm just 'lucky' I guess." I raised my hands in a 'what are you going to do' type gesture.

"Yeah, good luck was that," he answered back with an eye roll.

We didn't get anymore time to talk as the superhero yelled out loudly to get people's attention and started ushering everyone into the portal.