Tutorial Rewrite 55 (Patreon)

When I open my eyes again, I’m back in the lobby.

<Top—Status—Community>

<00:00:02

Day 91>

<The fifth attempt will begin in

29:23:59:58>

<The fourth floor will open in

23:59:58>

And so, the fourth attempt has begun. Before I do anything else, I pull up the server list to check how many new challengers we have. Though, in the end, I only really care how many new people we have in one specific lobby.

<Status—Community—Top>

<Asia Server>

<Easy Lobby: 1 498/1 533

Normal Lobby: 316/320

Hard Lobby: 69/76

Hell Lobby: 8/8>

Six new people, huh? Not too shabby. If they’re smart about this, they might make it.

In hindsight, unless you’re really, really, really, really lucky, I think there’s only one real way to beat the first floor. Simply put, you’ve gotta train for it. You work up your resistances, specifically piercing and bleeding, and then you protect your head and chest right as you go into the floor. You could probably form a circle around the smallest challenger with your backs to them and hope to protect them like that. I spent a really long time nailing the idea that the very first minute is the deadliest into Virgil’s head, so I’ll just hope they follow her advice.

Even then, though, the best option would be to just remain in the lobby. At least you can live there. Some might say it’s a dreadful way to live, and that it might be better to die rather than simply survive. I don’t think those kinds of people have ever been in this sort of situation.

Dying is the worst alternative every single time. That’s just how it is.

Anyhow, I’ve got around 24 hours to waste, and I think I might know just how.

I really want to train up my quadrupedal running. I need it to be my first instinct. It needs to be faster than normal running.

With that goal in mind, I get to it.

<You have learned:

Hurry Lv.2>

<You have learned:

Hurry Lv.3>

<You have learned:

Crawl Lv.1>

<You have learned:

Hurry Lv.4>

<You have learned:

Crawl Lv.2>

The hours pass in a literal blur.

I only notice that time has passed at all when a message dings in.

<You have received a message.>

I open it.

<SuperMoleman[F24]: Hey Kitty.

Just wanted to do a quick check-in.

Floor 4 shouldn’t be any problem at all,

as long as you just do what the floor

clearly wants you to do. Since there aren’t

any real living enemies, there’s no problem if

you want to be a bit more creative.

Good luck!>

After a second’s thought, I type in a response.

<PrissyKittyPrincess[F4]:

kk thx>

And just like that, it begins.

<Floor 4 has opened.

Do you want to enter?>

<Yes/No>

Oh, absolutely.

Without even a second of hesitation, I press yes.

And the world buckles from now under and I only barely have time to catch my falling body before I’m standing again, staggering, my body swinging back and forth like I’m on a tightrope before I finally pull myself together and plant my feet firmly on the ground.

…Where the heck am I? It’s so dark it almost feels like I’ve gone blind or something. But I can feel grass beneath my feet, and I can hear a gentle wind blowing, and what seems to be leaves rustling, and it smells like a forest, so it has to be a forest. The question of whether I’ve gone blind or if it’s just extremely dark is easily answered by the only thing I can actually see.

A few feet in front of me, at the height of my knees, sits a bush. A bush that’s on fire. Surrounded by a few sticks shoved into the ground.

But it doesn’t sound like a fire. It isn’t crackling or anything, and I can’t feel any real heat from it. It’s just… on fire. It’s so surreal I can hardly react at all. But, since I am not swayed by weird stuff thanks to my gamer constitution, I inch closer.

…It really isn’t warm at all. If I run my hand above it, it doesn’t feel like anything, and my hand won’t even catch fire. Another weird thing is that even though I can feel that the wind coming from the hypothetical north, the fire is swaying towards the hypothetical east, as though there’s a hypothetical western wind blowing. It both looks and feels beyond odd. On the other hand, the whole phenomenon can be explained by one simple line.

It’s the tutorial.

<Tutorial stage,

Hell Difficulty Fourth Floor:

The Blind Pit.>

<[Clear Condition]

Bring the divine fire to

the holy chalice to banish the shades.>

Okay, first of all, this is clearly not a pit, second of all, I’m not technically blind, third of all, how do you expect me to bring this entire bush all the way to… wherever that chalice is?

Also, even more importantly, what the heck do you mean by shades?

Sniff sniff sniff. I can smell the chalice, I think. Metallic. Coming from… the hypothetical north. But I can’t smell anything else. Maybe by shades, it just means the darkness itself? I can imagine that this sort of supposedly holy fire could do something like that, but still. No need to word it so cryptically.

Well, guess I’d better get going. If there are no enemies to fight like Moleman claimed, then it should be fine to just walk there.

Squatting down, I thrust my hands into the soft dirt around the bush, sawing around the circumference of it before uprooting the entire thing. The fire sways in the air, but it remains pointed towards where I can smell the chalice. I wonder if this thing is actually any important?

Still, this forest is pretty spooky. I almost trip on rocks and crawling roots several times, which is, indeed, very spooky.

I walk. I walk. I walk. The chalice isn’t getting much closer, so it seems to be a longer trek than expected. Hopefully, it won’t take more than a week or so. It’d get awfully dull if I had to walk like this for an entire—

Something leaps out of the darkness and crashes on top of me, sandwiching the burning bush in my hand between my body and its own, and I stare up in wild terror at what I can only recognise as my own face.

It says nothing. I say nothing.

And then it starts clawing at me and like some caveman I start waving the burning bush at it, trying to scare it off, but it just leaps at me again, and with my hands occupied holding an entire damn bush, there isn’t much I can do as its claws tear into my exposed abdomen.

Hang on. I know this skill.

Is that… Eviscerate Level 6?

<You have learned:

Evisceration Resistance Lv.3>

My mind goes blank but before it can tear open my bowels completely my instincts kick in and I put the bush into my inventory, something I didn’t know I could do, and with the bush gone, all light drains from the forest completely. I leap to my feet, away from his claws.

<You have learned:

Blindness Resistance Lv.7>

Great, that doesn’t help at all.

I can’t see him. I can barely even hear him. The only reason I know he’s there at all is because I can just barely smell my own blood on his hands.

Slowly, I begin moving, just to keep going. If I stand still, he’ll get to me. My entire body and mind are on high alert. At least, that is until I trip on a rock and I hear something fly through the air and I only barely have time to stretch out my clawed right hand before I feel something stab itself onto it, and my hand goes through soft, wet bodily tissue. But I can tell he isn’t dead yet. I know this strategy.

Before he has time to start clawing at my face, I throw him to the side and leap a step back, and as soon as I hear his bony body tumble to the ground, I leap on top of him, my hands acting on instinct alone to completely tear up his bowel area, clawing and clawing and clawing and clawing, and as I feel his warm innards spray onto me, I can also feel his own clawed hands going after my own bowels, tearing up a hole and doing his absolute best to do to me what I am doing to him, but I was able to do him in first, which means that I am the final definitive victor.

His hands and arms slowly lose motion but I know how tenacious I can be, so even when there’s nothing left in the cavity that remains of his bowels, I still keep ripping and tearing, pulling out his lungs and his heart and his spinal cord and his brain until I know for certain he is no more.

<Shade (Lv.18) Defeated>