Tutorial (pt4)

As it turned out, the girl and her parents were farmers from Olton- which was by chance because the tutorial could have made her from the village which would offer smaller rewards- and had left for a neighboring city to sell their better quality goods. Sadly, the road to the fake-as-hell place called Gobura was blocked- of course- by goblins. Go figure.

She spent three freaking days trapped under that wagon starving and dehydrating, waiting to either die or be dug out by the goblins. However, something or someone came up and disturbed them before I even arrived. After so long without water, though, she was already fading in and out so had no idea but I assumed it was a person with a once reliable rapier.

And a dog.

Now, the dog and the rapier belonged to me and the girl was currently eating some fish the once starving wolf hound managed to catch in the small pond. While all she wanted to do was go home to see a healer, I had to get myself rested and prepared for it because she could not travel on her own. Not only was she battered, she had been immobile for days.

Some things about the phrase 'use it or lose it' were true and the ability to use your body properly, especially while as beat up as she was, were one of those things. Luckily, I had a huge dog that looked like a curly husky but was the size of a St. Bernard. All I needed to do was take some branches from the shelter and make some cordage to craft a sled.

Even more luckily for the young lady, the wagon had some rope so I could use a simple goblin skin to fashion a crude harness on the dog and then tie him to the sled. My job was to carry the other end of the sled to take the weight off of the dog who was probably unused to this labor. However, before I could finish the harness, the dog wanted to run off.

It trotted off around the side of the fallen tree and started whining, forcing me to leave the girl and follow. The dog did not stop just on the other side of the tree, though, but continued on into the forestry until reaching a wall-like grove of cane trees. They were honestly pretty out of place in the flatland hardwood but marked a new boundary in the tutorial.

On the ground at the ground at this odd boundary was the ravished and somewhat rotting body of a man or woman wearing clothes not unlike mine. Theirs, though, were in moldy and stained tatters around a body that was stripped to the bone of flesh in most places. However, when I walked up, the body disappeared and left behind some loot.

[Acquired Dead Man's Dirk]

[Acquired Skill Book: First-Aid]

[Acquired Wool Cap]

[Tutorial Bonus Stage: Cleared]

[Tutorial Bonus Stage Clear Rating: S]

[Tutorial Bonus Stage Clear Reward: +20XP]

[Tutorial Bonus Stage Rating Bonus: Title: Treasure Hunter]

Opening my character page first thing after receiving a title or skill or perk, I look up Treasure Hunter only to find that unlike the purple, epic, Perfect Combo Start and the likewise purple Nature Neutral the treasure hunting title was only uncommon green and needed to be equipped to function. However, the other two did not. So, I equipped that plus-fifteen Luck.

Next I went to my player inventory and took out the rapier, dirk, cap, and skill book after checking their information. The rapier had a low durability, lower than my weapons, but it had an attack of fifteen while the dirk had an attack of ten like my spear but had a higher durability than any of my equipment. However, I did not receive an efficiency buff for it.

The cap, like the rest of my original outfit, gave me two defense but also increased my ice resistance by a whopping two percent. With twelve defense from armor and a base defense of four, one-fourth of my Endurance, I was probably pretty decently stacked for noob stats considering I halfway to level seven in a tutorial where I would normally come out somewhere between five and six.

As for my first skill book, First-Aid, the skill itself restored ten percent of my health points to myself or fifteen percent to an ally I am touching. For somebody without a class, a skill that could heal you was the difference between survival and starting a new character. At the cost of five mana points and a cool down of ten seconds between uses, I was satisfied.

More than that, I was extremely happy even with something that only did ten-percent because ten percent later was much more than ten percent now. My starting HP was one hundred and was currently one-thirty-two, the addition of twice my Endurance similar to Strength and carrying capacity. When my HP was a thousand, I could heal one hundred in ten seconds.

I learned the skill first thing and started making my way back to the goblin camp where the girl was finished eating. There, I lightly touched the girl's forehead and mentally cast the First-Aid skill before I forcibly finished the wolf hound's harness. Then when we were ready to go, I cast the fifteen-percent ally heal on the girl all over again.

In this fashion, the girl's condition steadily improved more and more until she could finally walk after reaching the intersection. There the girl actually led the way to Olton. She looked uncomfortable and depressed as she more or less dragged the walking stick I made for her, but she took the initiative to lead all on her own.

Conversation simply was not happening, I intended to go without a class for an 'ultimate' all-round character build because I intended to play mostly by myself and she was in no condition to be making small talk. Finally, though, something interesting happened in the form of a transparent red combat alert. Shortly after, three beetles showed up.

Because there were three of them and three of us, each of us were targeted. The wolf hound once again ate his out of the air, probably only leaving mandibles for loot again and I sliced mine down the middle with an overhead chop of the rapier. However, when I turned to target the last beetle the girl simply dropped to the ground out of the way of its diving attack.

Stepping in to guard the girl as the beetles circles up and back around, I simply stand in position with the rapier poised to thrust. However, when the beetle approached I never even got the chance to take action because a trimmed sapling tree suddenly swung up from the ground. The beetle probably never even knew what hit them before it simply died.

For a moment I wondered if the girl stealing my kill would disrupt my streak but I received no title notifications saying Perfect Combo would remain at part one. If she had messed me up, I might very well have killed her right then and there before leaving her on the roadside. The tutorial was a temporary server, anyway, so unless I got caught in the act it would not change anything.

Because the requirement for reaching level seven was two hundred and seventy-five experience and I was only around two-thirty I could only hope that I could still take the basic lessons for side skills like crafting and cooking to gain more experience. If not, I would be spending a lot of time harvesting bushes and trees making random primitive weapons and even knickknacks if I had to. It might be slow but I wanted to be able to say I was able to do it.

Luckily, another tree vermin appeared that the wolf hound and I took care of in the same way as before. Compared to the ivory incisors, pelt, and tail meat from the last one I only received another pelt and more tail meat to feed to the dog. I could not imagine the tough and fatty meat under the rough scaly skin was any good but the dog ate it happily.

After fighting the tree vermin, though, I no longer felt like sharing my experience and made the wolf follow the girl and made her follow from afar. That way when another trio of beetles appeared roughly half of the way to Olton they all targeted me on the 'front line'. Flying at me one after another roughly a second apart from each other, I earned nine experience, two mandibles, four chitin, and nine gold with three easy swipes of my rapier.

Half an hour later we arrived uneventfully at a small and quaint town divided by the road we traveled on. There were over a dozen residential cottages and houses for families in the middles of the town while around the road was a large three-story inn and handful of other businesses. Hemming in either half of the town were acres of cattle ranching on the far left and acres of crops on the far right just outside the town.

From the size and general health of both agricultural products compared to the size of the town's population I could tell that nobody around here should ever be going hungry. On top of this, the people were all relatively clean or wore some form of outer work clothing to take care of themselves. They were a simple but honest and smart people, from the looks of things.

Instead of going directly into town, though, the girl walk through the forestry just a few dozen yards from the wide open landscape of the town. I considered asking her why but then I realized this was a small place where everybody knew everybody as well as their grandmother in the next town over. They would ask questions she wanted to avoid.

So we soon ended up leaving the forest on the far left side of town not far from the farmland where a small farmhouse was situated on the edge of the residential area. Walking up to the door, the girl started to rely more and more heavily on her walking stick as the weight of reality seemed to settle upon her. Watching this from the outside, I was honestly somewhat amazed.

On the other hand, what kind of freaking video game had this kind of content?! Sure I was seventeen so most of my personal experiences in the game would be set to relative ratings, but this… was this necessary? If I had gotten the quest first this person would have been out of my hands and done with already!

Inside the simply furnished but clean farmhouse the girl collapsed on a sofa in the living room and in seconds she looked like she was dead to the world. Wondering how long the girl would be asleep for, I open my game menus and check how long I had been online to see that only an hour had passed in reality. It had been a couple of hours here already so the time flow differences between here and reality were not small.

After taking the time to study up on some of my character information and what little else I had access to, I decide to pass the time exploring the house. I did NOT take anything even though there was some jewelry in the master bedroom off to one side of the living room. However, I did help myself to the pantry and larder.

When the girl finally woke up again it was about two hours after falling asleep and now I was in the kitchen cooking some simple foods and acquiring cheesy experience for it. It was not much and it was not 'proper' cooking, but I had yet to receive the life skill and title for cooking and I could not get the title without being taught so I had to be careful.

"My name is Life Hack," I finally introduced myself after bringing a plate of eggs and beat and toast to the living room for the girl to eat. "If you want, you can just call me Hack. Is there anything else you need from me? There are things I still need to go do, I'm sorry."

The girl had only managed to take one or two bites before my words killed her appetite and she just stared down at her food. Finally, she says, "I'm Lana. Do you… do you have to go? I… there's so much I need to do about my parents, about the house… our crops… I don't have anymore family here but I have an aunt in the city, if you wait I can pay you for saving me and then I can pay you to escort me. Will you please take me to the city?"

"One thing at a time," I assure her softly. "Handle your business, I'll still be in town. I need to visit a few businesses and learn a few things while I have the opportunity. Doing it later will probably cost me money."

Looking suddenly hopeful, Lana says, "Rocar the blacksmith is one of our family friends! If you take me with you so I can explain what happened, he'll certainly give you better prices and products. While we're there I can talk to him about selling the house and giving someone else our crops."

"Selling the house is foolish," I argue. "This is a good place with good land, cutting ties with it could hurt you. Instead, rent the house and sell the crops to the renter. They'll buy the crops and then pay their rent with the money from them, nothing but profits for you and continual income from the renting. When do you want to head over?"

Looking down at her plate of food, Lana starts to answer but is suddenly cut off by a loud roaring coming from her stomach. Nodding my head because I had all the answer I needed, I say, "You stay here and eat, I'll go draw some water for you to take a bath. Trust me, you need one."

*