Hunter's body was the first one materializes into white light and fade away from the prism prison. His vision blurred away into dizzying streaks of warped darkness and light.
Just a second later, though, everything settled, and color returned to his vision, introducing him to a new world.
The Tutorial world.
It sounded harmless, but this was one of the most devastating worlds out of the entire Trial. Maybe not in difficulty, because higher worlds were larger and more dangerous, but in sheer shock value?
In getting people who had no idea what was going on to realize the sheer brutality of what they had been thrown into?
Then yes, the Tutorial World was the most devastating.
Hunter took in a short breath, feeling how thin the air was. He was at the top of a cliff.
Cracked, bleached white rock sprawled out all around him, forming a platform that he alone stood upon for now.
Fog clouded the area, making every step a venture into the unknown, and a howling wind whistled its mournful tune, as if singing an elegy for the many that would die from here on out.
There was enough space on top of this cliff for only about a hundred people, but Hunter knew that through the fog, in the distance, there were ten more identical cliffs that would house the rest of the people coming through.
Regardless of where everyone spawned, they all had to go to the same place: down.
Down to the base of the cliff where the first 'boss', the Liberator, would be.
Hunter did not waste time gawking around at the cliff or peering down at the hundred plus meter fall or wondering how to get down.
Some people would probably even die by just tripping and slipping even at this basic juncture, especially when people started to spawn en masse and crowd each other out in panic in this low visibility fog.
Hunter checked his inventory, knowing that his dagger that would be there, and withdrew it.
<<
-Dagger
Rank: Common
Type: Light/One-Handed
Description:
An ordinary dagger. The basic weapon of the Assassin class.
>>>
Hunter held the dagger with the blade facing down in one hand. The weight of it felt natural to him. As he expected, his body had already Imprinted.
Ordinarily, it took new Seekers approximately a week for their bodies to acclimate to the system, their minds and reflexes getting used to the sudden boosts.
This process was called 'Imprinting', but Hunter did not seem like he had to go through it, though he was prepared to have dealt with it regardless.
Hunter made his way down the top of the cliff with a breakneck sprint. The cliff naturally created a spiral path around itself that winded around itself twelve times before it fed out to ground level.
It was a dangerous path because the fog was thickest at higher elevations, making every single step a gamble as to whether one would place their feet wrong, fall and die, or slip on a rock and fall and die.
But Hunter had the path down memorized like the back of his hand, and so he felt more than confident enough to just break out into a sprint. He knew where every bump in the path was, where there were faults that would break under pressure, and where the path grew thin.
Not even thirty seconds passed before the first monsters appeared.
Hunter knew the spawn locations of each and every monster in this level as well, of course.
As Hunter rushed through the spiral path, he felt a chill behind his back. He did not turn around and kept sprinting because he knew what was there already.
Skeletal arms dressed in tattered black robes would have emerged from the cliff wall, grabbing at where Hunter was.
These were Wraiths that could hide in solid surfaces reaching out for their prey.
When they sensed warm life forms nearby, they phased out of their hiding spots and grabbed those nearest to them, initiating a grab attack that, at this level, was instantly fatal if someone did not help.
Not to mention the panic the Wraiths would cause suddenly emerging. They would force people to trip and fall off the cliff from that alone, likely.
However, Wraiths always had a two second delay between the time they sensed someone in their range and when they emerged.
As a result, they punished Seekers who were overly cautious and slow in their steps.
Hunter, however, sprinting like a madman, not even caring of their existence, was far past the Wraiths by the time they emerged.
Hunter kept going down, passing by five more Wraiths.
Good thing about Wraiths was that once they emerged from their hiding spots, they did not go back in, instead just wandering about in aimless, limited range patterns until they were aggroed again, and when Wraiths were exposed, they were weak, handled with some difficulty by the normal level 1 Seeker and easily by a group.
And because Hunter had revealed the Wraiths, he had likely already saved over a hundred lives.
Though he would not waste his own time to directly save lives for now, helping others like this as a trailblazer was something he had no reservations doing.
Hunter also did not bother killing the Wraiths because he wanted to get to the boss as soon as possible.
Not because Hunter was nice enough to let others behind kill the Wraiths to level up.
More because every single world had a level cap to which a Seeker could level to.
Likely to encourage Seekers to move on to higher levels.
This meant wasting time with random mobs was exactly that: a waste of time.
But that was only after a Seeker had leveled up to the max of the world. Hunter was still just level 0.
Then why did Hunter not choose to kill the Wraiths? He could dispatch them pretty easily with his knowledge of their movement patterns.
The answer was simple. Because he was confident he could kill the boss of this Tutorial World at level 0 .
Perhaps, for anyone else, it might have sounded like sheer insanity, but Hunter was confident he could beat the boss without leveling up even once, saving huge amounts of time.
Hunter stopped for breath in a safe zone after some sprinting. His body was weak, far, far weaker than it had been before he had returned, so he needed time to rest.
Regardless, he was almost a third of the way down from the cliff now when the others would be mustering the courage even to take their first few steps.
There would be some leader types that would rally the Seekers down, and after the first dozen or so deaths, they would get a sense that their survival truly was on the line. Those that could shove away their panic and let their survival instincts take over would live.
Those that continued to panic would die.
This was the cruelty of the Tutorial World. Only the worthy survived.
No, this was the cruelty of the Trials in general.
It was harsh, but it was better that the new Seekers learned what it was like to live in the Trials now rather than later.
Hunter kept up his sprinting pace, leaping over a dark spot on the ground where a skeleton monster would emerge to grab a hapless Seeker's legs.
The more Hunter moved, the more the gap between him and the others would increase because they would only get slowed down actually fighting monsters or dealing with other distractions.
Distractions like this.
Hunter looked ahead at a yawning gap in the path. Because the air was foggy, it was impossible to see below the gap, but intuitively, one would think it would lead to a fatal fall.
This meant most would just choose to jump over the gap and continue onwards.
This was the wrong thing to do.
Hunter used his skill [Sneak], and his body grew slightly transparent. The reduced visibility from this skill was not too useful because at the end of the day, Hunter was still visible. It just lowered detection range against basic mobs, andit was not nearly as good as proper stealth skills that could render the self properly invisible.
What was useful however was its ability to reduce fall damage. Seemingly useless on this world where any fall meant hurtling down an entire cliff where no amount of fall reduction would help.
Hunter did not hesitate as he leaped into the gap, taking the fall and letting the fog swarm over him.