In his dreams, a large empty space took hold of his mind. He floated through a black void curiously wondering what was happening. He was way more in control then normal dreaming.
Maybe, this was just a consequence of the integration. He floated through space thinking about what this place was. Suddenly as if zooming through space, the world became full of strings.
He watched strings get cut and new strings come from nothing. There was something weird happening with him and he knew it.
Whatever all these strings were was definitely connected to the energy he had felt earlier. What was it. Jaycee couldn't figure it out and got shook awake.
Rubbing his eyes and sitting up he looked at Lady. She had shaken him awake because of the sun rising. He could hear the howls and roars of beasts again. Looking at his resource pool he was quite impressed.
It had been about 5 hours of sleep and his stamina had been refilled entirely after being empty last night. Apparently sleep was less required now, seeing as he felt great despite the exhausting day before.
Standing up he gripped his wand and rustled through his sack. Throwing out the raw meat that had been out a little longer than he would prefer he checked on how many potions he had left.
He had three health potions left and Lady had 3 health potions and 2 mana potions. His hand snapped up creating a barrier of flames as a wild dog had lunged at his neck from a nearby bush. The dog was thrown back by the barrier and was killed moments later.
Lady seemed startled by the sudden near death encounter. Unbothered, Jaycee buttoned his satchel close and stood up straight. He hadn't forgotten how there was still beasts around every corner. And without all the other eyes looking it would be easier to get snuck up on. "Let's go. Goal right now is to find a group of friendlies we can join. I imagine there's quite a few groups merging and creating large groups. I'd feel comfortable stepping back from being with you then." He said.
He wasn't sure what drove him to protect the mute woman. He reasoned it could be some sort of savior complex in which he automatically tried to protect the weakest in the group. It could just as easily be because she's the only person capable of healing him through long term damage.
His potions would run out when he had to use them and he may have died long before if it had not been for Lady healing him inbetween each encounter. She wasn't incompetent she just didn't speak. During combat encounters she had a sharp eye that avoided danger and stayed behind her heavy warriors. That was the only reason she survived the stupid beaver earlier.
She followed behind him her eyes trained on her surroundings. Jaycee led the way the tip of his wand circling constantly. He had a few short comings he would work on in the coming days. The only thing keeping him alive was his powerful offense and decent agility.
He needed something to give him a faster way of avoiding, maybe some sort of temporary speed boosting skill. Or he needed to get defensive. Definitely one of them at least has to happen or he would die. His ear twitched as a screen appeared in front of him.
'One day has passed in the tutorial.
18,709/20,000 tutorial participants remaining.
Tutorial entertainment rating: 5.4/10
Watching you now: Knight Tybost, Holy Priest Aidan, Incinerator, Monk of Stone'
Jaycee looked at the screen with great curiosity. He wasn't sure how big this tutorial was but he had suspected there were a lot of people here.
More than a thousand had died in the first day. Many were certainly from beasts but there were plenty to other humans, Jaycee himself being a reason. He found it interesting how the life and death of all the tutorial participants seemed to be show for these characters.
The rating wasn't great so clearly he had something he needed to do better, or the whole tutorial was just uninteresting. Clearly the morals of these priests and knights were not entirely great.
But who were these figures with their weird god like names. 'Are they…' Jaycee had guessed it right in his first go. Gods existed, and there were a lot of them.
Many of them treated the tutorial as a show, and potentially scouted out future potential to bless or interact with. "Do you have spectators too?" He asked Lady who looked at a screen of her own not that Jaycee could see the screen, just her looking in a random direction. She nodded and put 1 finger up. "One? Ok cool." He shrugged and continued his walk deeper into the forest.
He assumed that the tutorial was one large circle with the giant castle in the middle. The sky was just blue with no clouds or even discernible weather differences. He wasn't even sure it was sky but just a giant dome with a makeshift sun in the ceiling. They had probably started on the outskirts where they would eventually push toward the middle meeting higher level beasts and joining other humans as everyone pushed to the middle.
Or at least that's what he imagined the tutorial to be. It would be sound, mechanically speaking. They were attacked several times by all kinds of creatures. But everytime Jaycees explosive fire magic demolished the still relatively low leveled beasts.
When he had killed the humans he gained what he assumed was the TP they had gained as well as levels from killing them as well. He was now level 8 in his class as well as level 4 human and feeling stronger than ever. His stats had ballooned too,
Strength: 11
Agility: 15
Endurance: 12
Vitality: 10
Toughness: 11
Wisdom: 21
Intelligence: 30
Perception: 26
Willpower: 21
Free points: 3
HP:100/100
MP:269/300
SP:117/120
It seemed that he gained a level in his race for each two levels of his class. He also had three free points but he decided to save those for a rainy day.
They went the whole day walking at a near constant pace, only stopping for Jaycee to solo a group of beasts. He theorized that they had just gotten really unlucky with most of their encounters so far and that most of the fights were supposed to be like the wild dogs they faced before entering the fort.
Because all of these groups were similar in strength and were just busy work for Jaycee. The spears of condensed flame energy took very good care of the beasts.
In fact by the end of the day, the skill was newly developed. He didn't know how or what it meant but a skill called
'Skill Gained Orange: Explosive Flame Construct'
Create stable constructs that blow up on contact.
It had actually been contributing the knife constructs he made to this skill creation as well. He also now knew that Orange was above Red in the rarity/power scale.
He wasn't sure how impressive it was to create a skill or even how good Orange was in the grand scheme of things. Just as they were going to settle down for the night, figures brushed aside some brush behind the duo.