I

Eva knew she had to act quickly if she was going to kill the landwalkers before the monsters became too abundant. She Charged★ a couple of times to reach them quickly, and chucked a Fireball▲ as soon as she thought she could hit a target with it. Observe✦ put the group at around level 11, no real surprises there. The Fireball▲ wouldn’t be enough to kill, but it would be able to do around half the damage needed, she guessed. It struck the landwalker closest to her, singeing its back. As it turned, she lashed out with an air Infused★ slash to its neck. It immediately slumped to the ground.

The other landwalkers turned towards her, as did the two captive humans. The women shrunk back from the violence, pulling against their bonds. The ones holding them didn’t react very strongly, only continuing towards the town with a bit more urgency. There were four that drew weapons and came towards Eva looking for a fight. Their equipment was a step better than what the humans in the fort had to work with. Their weapons were of similar quality to her shortsword and their armor—while leather like her own—showed a much higher quality of fabrication.

The four landwalkers looked trained to fight—something that she’d yet to see in any of the humans she’d worked with. Some humans had good instincts—and some had fought with firearms—but there wasn't anyone who’d used cold weapons from what she could tell. These landwalkers were different. They were prepared for the Tutorial in a way only she—and anyone who’d been forced to participate in the Training—had been. They would be tougher than humans to fight and they might have some group tactics; but on the other hand, she was stronger and faster than them by a significant margin.

Eva Charged★ the nearest landwalker and struck it with an air Infused★ Pierce✦. It Blocked her attack with a flourish before attempting to counter attack. She was easily able to Dodge★, and the added Stats stuck around long enough for her next strike to carve deeply through the alien’s body. She got an experience notification shortly thereafter.

Immediately after striking down the first landwalker in the group, she needed to Dodge★ one strike and block another with her shield. The remaining three landwalkers were on her. Three on one was probably closer to even as far as Stats were concerned, however there was definitely a quality advantage over quantity when things were that close. Especially when one well-placed poke with her sword would be enough to end a life.

Eva struck back but was Parried by one of the landwalkers. She had to Dodge★ several counter blows before attacking with one of her own. It went back and forth a handful of times before Eva got fed up with the deadlock. Remembering that Charge★ was for more than closing the gap between her and her enemies, she backed off and Charged★ into the group again with her shield as a battering ram. She was able to knock one of the landwalkers to the ground. With parity broken, she was able to kill one of the two still standing before the one on the ground was able to get to its feet and challenge her. As there were only two remaining, they swiftly fell before her blade and Skills.

Left standing were the two women and their captors, who had moved about 25 yards from the fight in the time it took Eva to take care of the five landwalkers. She Charged★ three times to close the gap. Although she had to dodge around the terrified women who were being used as shields by the two landwalkers, she was easily able to handle the enemies.

She cut the ropes binding the woman and started moving them towards the relative safety of the trees when she saw a flash of light in the corner of her eye. It was the same type of light that she’d seen in the training when monsters were spawned. She turned towards it and saw tall creatures that looked like a cross between a human and a goblin. Orcs, according to Observe✦.

“Quickly grab a weapon!” she said to the two women following her.

One of them rushed and picked up a sword from one of the landwalkers she killed. The woman kicked the corpse in disgust. The other woman, however, looked to be in a daze. Eva didn’t know if it was the trauma over the last day or the stress of the Tutorial in general, but she was suffering from some kind of shock. She would be useless in the fight against the monsters.

Thinking quickly, she picked the woman up and did her best to secure her in a sitting position in a tree about ten feet off the ground. Hopefully far enough up that the orcs wouldn’t bother her, and secure enough that she wouldn’t fall out.

“Ok,” she said to the woman with the sword, “I’m going to kill as many as I can. Get up in the tree with her and try to protect her from anything that gets too close.”

The woman nodded. It was time to steal experience from the landwalkers.

The first orc that she saw spawn in Charged Eva. She Dodged★ and tried to cut its head off with an air Infused★ slice. This almost worked, but she was very surprised to see the monster’s skin begin to knit itself back together slowly. It had some serious health regeneration! She thought back to some of the games she used to play and remembered something about fire being more effective. Before the orc had the opportunity to recover, she slashed at it again. With her sword being Infused★ with fire—rather than air—the wound she made cauterized and did not heal. She got the experience notification as soon as her sword separated its head from its body.

Orc killed, 10 Experience awarded

A

As soon as she killed the first orc, several more came to take its place. The flashes of light that signaled the appearance of a new monster dropped all around her. Every so often a larger—but not brighter—light would go off, dropping an elite or boss monster in its place. The elites looked like heavily armored versions of the base orcs with big two-handed swords like they were compensating for something.

Eva hacked and slashed the horde with her fire Infused★ sword. Though the orcs had a lot more health and some decent strength, they were fairly slow and easy for her to finish off with a couple well-placed strikes. The only real challenge was keeping up with the amount of Stamina she had to burn through to fight in close quarters with many enemies nearby.

Every now and then, she would throw out a Fireball▲ at the orcs. Though the effect was not an explosion, it did a fair bit of damage by setting the orcs hit on fire. The initial damage was not enough to kill outright, but the burning damage added up to a dead orc each and every time. With her Mana regeneration, she was able to throw one out every minute or two, while still keeping enough for her other Skills.

While killing the orcs, Eva was able to take a look over at the town every now and then. The landwalkers had archers on the walls that shot out towards the incoming waves of orcs. There were formations of melee fighters near the gates, with magic users in both areas. She could see gouts of flame, water, and other things coming from the couple dozen or so mages they seemed to have. It took them almost fifteen minutes to figure out that fire was the answer to dealing with the orcs. During that time, a not-so-insignificant number of the invaders were killed.

Turning her attention back to the fight, she found one of the elites closing in to take a stab at her. Observe✦ called it an orc warrior. That was just an obvious—and rather useless—assessment from the skill. The brute swung its massive sword at her, though she was able to easily Dodge★ out of the way. Despite it being level 18, it was still quite slow. Her counter attack had only a small effect on the orc warrior. Although its armor did a fairly good job of protecting its body from her blade, she did damage it severely when she struck using fire.

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The back and forth combat attracted more of the lesser orcs to begin attacking her as well. She set the closest ones ablaze with a few Fireballs▲, which made the others back off long enough for her to fight the orc warrior alone. While the orc warrior had impressive Strength and Stamina, the fire damage she repeatedly dealt it was enough to weaken it quickly. After only a thirty second bout, the first elite she faced that day was dead.

The experience from the elite was only around twice that of the more common versions, but it took a lot longer for her to kill. It really wasn’t worth the time when she considered that she wanted to steal the experience from the landwalkers rather than protect the town. Still, Eva relished a bit of a challenge to sharpen her actual skills rather than the bonuses given by the system. She knew that compared to the landwalkers she’d fought before the orcs appeared, she did not have nearly as much training on how to fight despite having more live combat experience. It was something that she needed to keep working on.

Orcs fell in droves as the minutes dragged on. Soon enough, their numbers dwindled enough that she was able to see the final big fight between the landwalkers and one of the bosses. With the numbers of orcs at the start, there had been two bosses rather than one like she’d been used to at the village. She didn’t see the first go down, but she did see the second. It took about 10 landwalkers to do the job, and two of them were killed to do it. She scoffed. She could do that alone. Easily. She considered throwing a couple of Fireballs▲ at the landwalkers, but decided not to antagonize them when their entire army was prepared to fight all comers.

II

With the fighting over, Eva felt a heavy item fall into her arms. She’d placed first, again. Even with their army, she was superior as an individual. She’d been mostly hidden in the trees during the fighting, but anyone astute enough would have been able to see the mess she had created. Even if they wouldn’t be quick about it, she decided not to stick around to see their reaction.

Eva made her way back to where the two women had been. The one she had bound to the tree was still there, staring off into nothing like she had before the fighting began. The other, however, was a bit bloodied. She had a few cuts that slowly oozed blood into hastily-made bandages. As far as Eva could tell, the woman would survive, if a little banged up. She had no more potions to give the woman without going to the village first.

“I see you both made it,” she said.

“It was tough, but I survived,” the woman answered.

“Good. Let’s get her down from the tree and get you both back to the village.”

The woman nodded in agreement. Eva undid the rope tying the second woman and lowered her down. She held the woman’s hand and led both of them towards the fort and then again towards the village beyond. It took them around four hours to reach the gates, just in time for the sun to set.

III

With them both safely escorted, it was time for Eva to go through her experience and her newly acquired gear. She Observed✦ her new equipment.

Hauberk★

It didn’t show much besides the name. However, it was the final push she needed to upgrade Observe✦ to Journeyman★ and finally see what was going on with her new equipment.

Choose a Journeyman rank upgrade for Observe✦

Hide level from beings of the same tier or lower

Hide weaknesses from beings of the same tier or lower

Show hidden values for beings of the same tier or lower

Show weaknesses of beings of a lower tier

Reduce mana consumption by 1%

Eva went with the third option. Even if she couldn’t see their weaknesses, she could at least see their true level if they didn’t have it hidden. She was getting pretty close to her first Adept✶ Skill with Infuse Weapon★ and Swords★ both being at level 10 journeyman★. She Observed★ the Hauberk★ once again.

Hauberk★

Health + 67

Intelligence + 8

5% of physical damage taken as dark

It was good armor to be sure, but without some way to repair it, there was little incentive for her to use it aside from the few Stats she would gain by using medium armor over light armor. That just wasn’t good enough when she knew one hard fight was all it would take to have no armor again. Without a good way to store it for later use, she would have no real option but to sell it. Hopefully she could get a good price for the armor now that there were a lot of shards floating around.

Smoke from fires burning orc bodies filled her senses as she entered the village. It smelled a bit like pork mixed with the smell of burning human flesh. It was not pleasant. The mood inside was more somber than usual. She guessed that there had been more casualties against the orcs without her around to help out than there had been in the past. Maybe as a reaction to that—or to the attack against the dungeon camp—there were several watchtowers under construction around the inside of the village wall for archers to shoot from.

It was still early enough that the market had yet to close. Wanting to rid herself of the weighty armor in her hands, she went to a familiar face who had upgraded his place of business into an actual stall.

“Good evening,” the potion seller said, “what can I do for you?”

“I’d like to sell this,” she said, dropping the Hauberk onto the stall, “and pick up some more potions.”

“Hmm,” he said.

The man looked at the armor for a moment before nodding his head.

“Good quality, fair enhancements. I could give you ten Novice Shards✦ or two Journeyman Shards★ for it, half as much again if you take store credit instead of the physical shards.”

“Hmm,” Eva though. The store credit made the most sense, since it would get her more potions, which she would need if she was going to finish her goal of conquering the dungeon on her own. “Store credit. I’ll trade that in for as many Health and Stamina potions as I can get with that.”

“Sure thing.”

She took the potions and put them into her backpack. She ended up with five Health Potions✦ and ten Stamina Potions✦. That should be more than enough for her to take on the boss.

“Will that be all tonight?”

Eva threw out an Observe★ on the man before answering. She was surprised by what she saw. He was level 12! His class was something called a Potioneer. What rank that was, she had no idea. Observe★ never seemed to give that kind of info for classes.

“How did you get to level 12 already when I’ve never seen you fight before?” she blurted out.

“Fighting’s not the only way to get experience,” he chuckled. “Turns out that when you create items, you get a portion of the experience gained in that fight. It’s not a large amount, but it adds up when you’ve equipped a large number of people. Take the potions, for example. When you fight a monster and drink one during combat, I will get a tenth of the experience you get from that fight.”

“That’s pretty interesting. Anything else been going on, besides that raid on the dungeon camp?”

“Not much, really. The fight today seemed to be a difficult one. There were a fair number of casualties. The council seems to be responding to the attack against the dungeon by fortifying the camp there and adding some towers here just in case the village gets attacked.”

“Seems reasonable to me, I guess.”

“Mhm. So where have you been? I didn’t see you yesterday.”

“I was at the dungeon camp when the attack happened. Well, inside the dungeon, anyway. Came out to see the aftermath. Friend of mine got killed by those fuckers, so I went after ‘em. There are traitors working with landwalkers and doing some really nasty shit. Got 50 of ‘em and found where the landwalker base is. Killed a few of those alien shits, too.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you. I’m going to make those cunts sorry for my loss, too.”

“I’m sure you will.”

“Thanks for listening to me rant. I’m Eva, by the way.”

“Lex.”

“Well, Lex, I’ll catch you later. I’ve got a dungeon to take my anger out on.”

“Good luck.”

Eva nodded her head and went towards the central fire pits to get some food before going to see what had been done with the dungeon camp while she had been away.