As Adam finished hiking up the mountain, he came across a mountain wall with an archway made of rocks leading deep inside a dimly lit cave.
The only light source seemed to be the lanterns mounted on the walls, casting a warm and cozy glow throughout the passage.
Adam turned around, and from the mountain, he saw the forest stretching for kilometers and the cottage in the distance, covered by the orange glow of the setting sun.
At that moment, he heard loud panting, and Adam saw a group of four injured-looking players climbing the mountain from a different place than him.
They took a longer route and a more difficult one.
After they arrived at the same spot, they almost collapsed on the spot. However, they then realized that there was already someone there, and they quickly pointed their weapons at him.
"Whoah, calm down." Adam put his arms up in the air and slightly backed off towards the archway.
"Ugh..." A player with disheveled blond hair pointed his three-pointed pitchfork at Adam and shouted. "Give me your food, shield, and water, now!"
Adam slowly lowered his arms and chuckled. 'They must've been attacked by other players; otherwise, they wouldn't be so hostile. It seems that it's already starting—the fight for resources.'
"W-why are you laughing?!" The blond-haired player shouted and slowly approached Adam with the pitchfork, while his other friends were trying to replenish their stamina as they had been running away for a while now.
"You look a little bit fatigued; maybe sit down and relax." Adam stepped inside the cave. "Or you'll die."
"D-die?" The blond-haired player erupted into laughter. "A-at least I have a proper weapon!"
"I could take you," Adam said with a smile.
"As if!" The blond-haired player screamed and ran towards Adam, driving his pitchfork forward.
While escaping from the group that attacked him, he had already used all his food and drink. He desperately needed them, as no one else in his group was willing to share.
Adam put the shield in front of him and parried the pitchfork. The pitchfork slammed into the cave wall, causing its sharp points to get stuck.
"Urgh!" The blond-haired player cried out, trying to pull the pitchfork free.
At that moment, Adam slammed the shield into the player's face, sending him stumbling across the ground towards his friends.
As his friends stopped him from ending up rolling down the mountain, they turned towards Adam and saw him pull the pitchfork free from the wall.
"And now I have a weapon." Adam spun the pitchfork around and pointed it at the group of players. "Not a weapon I am most familiar with, but this shall do."
"Argh!" The three of the blond-haired friends lunged forward and approached the cave entrance with their weapons in hand.
However, as soon as they stepped inside the cave, they noticed they couldn't walk side-by-side and instead had to attack Adam individually. There wasn't enough space.
However, they didn't think much of it.
A man with thick eyebrows approached Adam with a baton in hand. He was more muscular than his opponent, so he expected this to be an easy victory as long he gets a clean hit.
He lifted his baton and smashed it down like a blacksmith hammering a piece of hot metal.
Adam raised the shield above his hand as soon as the baton struck it, and he bent his knees slightly to reduce the impact.
Then he grabbed the pitchfork tightly and stabbed it through the man's waist like a farmer stabbing through a haystack.
"Argh!" The man cried out and saw his health plummet as the result of catastrophic hit.
[-25 HP]
[HP: 2/50]
He was already injured before the fight and was only able to increase it to 27 HP with the food found in his backpack.
However, now that he was also in a bleeding state, he slowly lost his health.
[-1 HP]
[-1 HP]
At last, his body fell lifelessly to the ground.
His friends let out few gasps of shock as they saw their strongest member die like nothing.
Adam had gotten used to the sight of gaining experience from the kill—however, now, no such thing appeared, as it wasn't possible in the tutorial.
Adam quickly jumped over the corpse and stabbed the pitchfork through another player's face. He drove the pitchfork to the ground, with the player's face stuck in it and as soon as the player's head crashed into the ground, the light left his eyes, and he also died.
The red-haired player, who saw two of his friends die, quickly backed off from the cave and turned around to jump off the mountain.
It wasn't a big fall, but he ended up rolling down like a boulder and eventually hitting a little bit too many rocks on the way and dying because of the loss of health.
The blond-haired player's eyes shook as he watched Adam walk out of the cave, blood-stained pitchfork in hand.
He then chuckled and put his arms up in the air. "A-All right, I give up. You can kill me."
"Appreciated." Adam raised the pitchfork and beheaded the blond-haired player swiftly.
As he looked at the three corpses, he went to check their backpacks and saw they had eaten most of their rations and drank all their water.
It frustrated him slightly, but he found a few claws and teeth belonging to some animals and also received their weapons.
Including the pitchfork, one had a baton, and the third one had a mallet.
He tossed the baton and mallet into his inventory, planning to sell them later, and he also put the claws and the teeth inside his inventory.
However, he put the bags found inside their backpacks inside his own backpack.
He didn't want to put his inventory completely full, as the game had such a mechanic that the more items on the inventory, the heavier it felt to move.
Adam glanced at the corpses and saw them turn transparent with each passing second, as if they were about to vanish.
He then looked at the archway, saw its strange engravings, and then stepped inside the cave, walking over the corpses.
As he ventured deeper into the mountain, he started hearing the echoing of weapons and the roars of creatures.
'Hmm, someone is fighting close. That could mean no one has reached boss yet.'
With the shield and pitchfork in hand, he picked up his pace and soon walked out of the passage. He entered a spacious room with another archway on the other side of the room.
However, in the middle of the room, four different groups of players and one solo player were fighting against a large, four-legged creature with a barbed-wired tail and the appearance of a black-furred wolf.
It looked difficult to defeat such a beast, even with over a dozen players gathered.
"Tch!" Donald wanted to attack, but one of the different groups managed to do it before, which made timing the attack difficult.
He wanted to kill everyone else in the room, but he didn't want to attract their anger, so he tried to be patient.
Near their group, Seth was holding a steel shortsword, which looked to be very high quality.
As some players saw the sword, a tinge of greed appeared in their eyes.
'Hmm, they are still blocked by Black Wolf, huh.' Adam thought and was somewhat surprised to see Seth, but when he saw his weapon, he felt a slight pity. 'Oh, he received the best weapon of the early tutorial. How unfortunate; he'll be killed soon.'
At that moment, more footsteps came from the passageway.
"Yawn, well, look what we have here." A grinning man tapped his machete against his shoulder. He had a tattoo covering half of his face, and there were silver earrings adorning his ears.
Beside him, two of his friends were also tattooed from head to toe—one with brass knuckles and the other holding a large knife.
Adam looked over his shoulder at them and had a brief surprise flash by his eyes before his gaze turned into the calm look, which he had carried since the start of the tutorial.
'These guys... I know them.'