Tutorial

Where only a moment before was his campus now stood an open space with only 6 evenly spaced pillars near Seth. As far as the eye could see in each direction there was only a vast empty expanse, almost like a clear night's sky but without any stars. The platform that he was on seemed to only extend for a few meters beyond the stone pillars and then abruptly fell off.

'What the hell?'

Seth fell to his knees, overcome with the sudden strangeness before him. He knew he had to be hallucinating but it felt so real that he had trouble steadying himself.

'Can you feel a hallucination? Am I passed out?'

As he was considering this his eyes fell on the words displayed in the corner of his vision.

'TUTORIAL START, TESTING PROFICIENCY RATING TO DETERMINE LEVEL OF TRAINING NEEDED'

Seth didn't understand what that meant, but as soon as he read those words another notification popped up in the center of his field of vision.

'3….2….1….START'

Before Seth could form a question the floor began to fall away under his knees. He scrambled forward but every place that he touched seemed to begin falling the moment he made contact. His flailing limbs shot forward as quickly as they could and after a few seconds he managed to stand again but still anywhere he touched began to descend, and holes were beginning to show under the platform into the ominous dark. Now that he was hopping around he looked again at the message.

'TESTING OPERATOR, SURVIVE UNTIL TIME RUNS OUT'

Beneath this message was a timer counting down.

'179….178…..177'

"I have to keep this up for three more minutes!?"

Seth was shouting at the top of his lungs now, terrified that if he stopped moving he would fall to his death. As the timer ticked past 120 he started to run out of places to move to, and by 90 he was down to only a few steps left. It was at this point that he realized the pillars hadn't been effected at all by the floor falling away.

'I can't be sure this will work but I'm out of options..'

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and jumped off of the last remaining bit of floor he could find. The column smacked into his chest, knocking the wind out of him and nearly making him lose his grip, but the fear overpowered the pain and he managed to grasp the column.

He counted the seconds as they passed, waiting to see if the column would begin falling, but it held firm. He looked around and saw the vast darkness around him, with all remaining near him being the pillars.

'If I waited another second I'd be dead…'

His arms were aching but he held firm against the pillar. After what seemed like an eternity the timer finally reached zero and all of a sudden the floor was back, as if nothing had happened at all.

'OPERATOR TESTING COMPLETE'

'COMPILING RESULTS…..'

'OPERATOR ATTRIBUTES ARE:

STRENGTH 1

AGILITY 2

CONSTITUTION 1

INTELLIGENCE 2

SPECIAL 1

OVERALL LEVEL 1

CREATING TUTORIAL TO MATCH LEVEL'

Seth was in a stupor. He had narrowly escaped dying a moment ago but now he had this thing judging his performance and saying that he was essentially useless in almost every category!

'COMBAT TUTORIAL READY TO BEGIN, SELECT A WEAPON TO START'

A table covered in every kind of weapon, from ancient swords to modern rifles, appeared in front of Seth. The message displayed in front of him seemed to be waiting for his selection to continue. He took a moment and looked over each choice, he wasn't much of a fighter so even though he'd never shot a gun he selected a large rifle and a handgun. Looking at the table he thought it couldn't hurt to be over prepared so he also grabbed a sword with a belt hung scabbard and was going to grab a pocket full of small daggers when he noticed a small metallic box that was curved on one side.

He grabbed the box and looked it over, it seemed contoured on one side to fit snuggly over one side of his forearm. He tried slowly pressing it to his arm and to his surprise it attached itself firmly without any visible mechanism. He wiggled it around but nothing seemed to happen.

Remembering how his voice had activated the interface he cautiously spoke to the box.

"Activate?"

As soon as the words passed his lips he felt a rush of air cover every inch of his skin and he felt his ears pop like he was in a rising airplane. After a split second everything was quiet again.

'What the hell was that…'

Despite his thoughts nothing seemed to happen. He shrugged and reached to take off the box but once his hand was on top of the device he found he couldn't pull it. He struggled and strained for few moments but could not get it free.

'Whatever, this is all some kind of hallucination anyway.'

With a newfound resolution to continue until he woke up from this weird dream, he left the small table, took a deep breath, and said,

"Interface, begin combat tutorial."

Just as before the words morphed in front of his eyes and gave instructions.

'COMBAT TUTORIAL COMMENCING, ENEMIES OF INCREASING DIFFICULTY WILL APPEAR UNTIL THE OPERATOR IS NO LONGER ABLE TO DEFEAT THEM OR TIME RUNS OUT'

'Seems simple enough'

Seth was settling in to the idea that he was having a video game dream and was ready to see how he did. He had the rifle in his hands and after a moment of waiting he saw a strange looking thing walk out from behind the pillar directly across from him. He thought about calling out to see if it was friendly, however the moment Seth hesitated the bulbous form lunged toward him at a frightening speed.

Never having been in a situation like this Seth had a moment of panic hit him, he fell backwards in surprise but managed to half-aim the rifle in his arms at the creature lunging toward him. The creature howled as he was hit but with Seth's lack of focus he had only managed to hit the things legs and now it was obviously enraged. Before he could do anything else the creature was on top of him.

Even up close Seth couldn't make out what the thing was supposed to be, a mass of flesh without any real definition that was only vaguely human in shape. All the features that should have been on the face of the being were covered in rough tufts of flesh, the only thing that was defined was an overly large mouth that was letting out a terrible scream.

Before Seth could get over his revulsion the thing raised its gnarled arms over its head and started raining down blows on the head of the man below. Seth flinched and prepared for the pain but to his surprise it didn't hurt, he opened his eyes and saw the thing reeling back for another hit and then he saw it, a translucent film had covered his body everywhere that the thing had hit him. There was no time to think about what was going on so he leveled the rifle at the things head and shot until it fell off of him in a heap.

He stood up and looked over himself and noticed that the box on his wrist had a light on it now that was sectioned in ten pieces, half of which were gone. The film like covering on his body started to disappear from the areas that he had been attacked and as they did he saw the dark sections of the light begin to light up again. That's when he realized what had happened.

"I have a shield?"

Seth nearly jumped and fist pumped when he realized he was untouchable now, but before he was able to celebrate too much he saw another two of the same strange creatures appear near another one of the pillars nearby. With his newfound confidence he started walking toward them and only took a moment to look at the countdown.

'10:25 REMAINING'

"Yeah... I can make that."