Tutorial Rewrite 69 (Patreon)

I’m back in the mud, but this time I’m ready. I know what to expect, so the spooky wailing wind isn’t all that spooky anymore. Just a little spooky. K—kind of spooky.

“Oooohhh…”

Time to show these zombies what for.

Without waiting for it to appear, I start clomping towards it on all fours. My great values sniffer can’t smell the shades, but I can still smell them normally because of the whole rotting-flesh-necrotic-tissue deal. Not to mention the sound of the pained moaning.

<You have learned:

Enhanced Scent Lv.4>

…I’m not sure if I actually want that, though. Now the smell is even worse. Wow, gee, thanks.

<You have learned:

Enhanced BalanceLv.2>

—That I do like. It’s subtle, but it lets me run better, with more agility, so when I leap off the muddy ground and hook my teeth into the neck of a poor gombie (goblin-zombie), I don’t slip in the slightest. Wonderful!

And now, I need to do some experimenting. What’s the least amount of flesh I need to eat in order to kill the zombie?

Let’s see here… Nomch. Nomch. Nomch. Nomch. Chewchewchewchew.

Okay, so, from my observations, if you eat the entire head, put the skull in your inventory, slurp up all vital organs, dissect the rest of the gombie and then put that in your inventory, then it dies. Yes.

<Shade (Lv.21) Defeated.>

And now that I’ve got a simple and easy-to-do way of defeating these gombies, there’s no need to fear anymore!

With a skip in my step, I continue crawling across the mud. If I was in a cartoon, I’d be walking with a comedic bounce. I can already feel the necrotic meat in my belly start to have adverse effects but it’s fine!

Sniff sniff sniff. Is that rotten meat I smell?

Bounding across the mud, I make my way to my next victim.

And so begins my gombie slaughter.

The closer I got to the lair, the more gombies there were, and the more bones littered the mud. It was actually becoming kind of a hazard. No matter where you stepped, there would always be a piece of bone. Watching. Waiting for you to step on it wrong and leave you howling like a kid on Christmas morning accidentally stepping on a lego.

It actually got to a point with the gombies were I was being ganged up on by not just several of them, but several dozen. They’re all pretty weak—they don’t actually do any real damage—but once there were enough of them, the little scratches of damage they made amounted into real wounds. Wounds that festered.

Or, at least, they tried to fester, but by this point, my bacteria, virus, parasite, necrosis, nausea, ulcer, parasite, and inflammation tolerances had all reached the Resistance level, with Necrosis and Bacteria even being at Protection, so it was more of an annoyance than anything else.

A general observation, however, was that the gombies would always approach me, no matter where I was, and no matter what I did. If I stayed still, they would flood my position.

So that’s exactly what I did.

Once I had the supposed lair in sight, which really was just a little cave, I set up camp and waited for the gombies to come to me. After only a few days of this, no more gombies would come for my head, which supports the realistic conclusion that I’ve done away with all the gombies. Great success! And it only took me a little over a week. Neat.

That leaves me with the lair.

I have no idea what awaits inside it, but I think it’s fair to say that whatever it is, it’s probably what made all of these bones. Considering that the bones are in a pretty whole state without much damage, it wouldn’t be strange to assume that whoever made them ate the person whole. But this is a magical fantasy world. It doesn’t need to be a huge frog or a huge lizard or a huge snake. It could be a huge boar, or a huge cat, or even a huge bird. It isn’t fair to assure these sorts of things.

I stare at the lair from a few paces away.

See, it’s moments like these when I wish I wore armour and had a cool sword or something. Then I could hunker down and spent an hour or so polishing it and readying armour and sharpening my sword. Preparing myself and all that. As it is, when I now enter that lair, we’ll be on equal ground. No, actually, I’ll be at a slight disadvantage! If the thing in there isn’t sleeping, then we will actually be fighting on its home ground. It’s not that I’m screwed or anything, I just think it’s unfair that I don’t have an advantage while it does. That’s all.

But enough about that. Into the lair I go!

I’ve barely even had time to set foot inside the maw of the lair’s entrance before the boss stage message pops up.

<Tutorial stage,

Hell Difficulty Sixth Floor

Boss Stage>

<[Clear Condition]

Defeat the vile Cerberus.>

…Cerberus? As in, like, the three-headed dog?

Man, assuming it’s as big as the mythologies make it out to be, I’m sure to get one heck of a hide out of it. Unless a certain goddess decides that it isn’t fashionable and lets it get taken by the taxman, that is. I’m starting to get really tired of being in debt. They did say in the forums that you can get a wish once you beat the tenth stage, so it might be a good idea to use it to clear my debt. Maybe.

But that’s only possible if I beat this here doggy.

Since the inside of the lair isn’t covered in mud, I’m able to stand back up on both legs. For some reason, after a week of crawling and running around on all fours, this feels weird. I’d better keep myself half-crouched just in case I get jumped.

That said, this cave really does have a lot of skeletons in it, huh? I mean, this is enough skeletons to fill an entire haunted mansion and more. You could probably make a swimming pool full of the bonemeal you’d get if you ground them all up. I almost want to grab a few to put in my inventory, but it’ll just get sold for one point per hundred heads anyway, so there’s no real point to it. Sighing, I pass them by.

I can smell it. The dog. Wet dog. That’s what it smells like in here. But the path is very straight, and there aren’t really any diverging paths, so there isn’t really any need to track it.

After only a few minutes of walking, I reach a large, dome-shaped cavern, with the furthermost wall covered up by a small mountain of bones and skulls. And in front of that great pile of bones sits a massive hound, roughly the size of a barge, with three heads in total, one in the middle and two resting just below its mighty snout. All three heads have the appearance of a greyish wolf, though they have differently coloured eyes. The lower two heads each only have one eye each while the greater head atop them sits eyeless and blind. The two eyes roll to me as one and I freeze in place. The head on the right, with its eye of yellow, whines at me.

<Sit.>

I sit down. Something slimy slithers its way across my brain and I remember something important that I hadn’t thought about before.

I’ve forgotten who my master is.

The head on the left barks.

<See me.>

I look up, and I see my master. He sits before me, draped in gold and silver, with a coat of finest black velvet. He is disappointed in me. I broke another vase. How could I have been so clumsy? I’m pathetic. I shouldn’t be allowed in the house.

<Did I permit you to meet my gaze?>

My face falls to the floor in mere milliseconds. N—no, master. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…

<Raise your face.>

I hesitate, but he hates when I hesitate, so I lift my head to face him. His expression softens.

<I didn’t mean to raise my voice at you.>

You were right to, master. I was being bad again. I didn’t mean to, but I still did wrong. Thank you, master.

Master reaches out his hand. I look at it, wide-eyed.

A bark resounds through the back of my head.

<Paw.>

I place my hand on his.

My hand disappears.

It isn’t there anymore. It hurts but then I hear a droning whine in the back of my head and I’m okay. Master is so good to me, to only punish me so little as to take my hand and nothing more. Other masters would have killed me because I’m foolish and clumsy. But he is so kind to me. I am grateful, master.

<You have learned:

Delusion Tolerance Lv.1>

<You have learned:

Delusion Tolerance Lv.2>

<You have learned:

Delusion Tolerance Lv.3>

<You have learned:

Hallucination Protection Lv.2>