Tutorial Rewrite 72 (Patreon)

“So, um…” I say, intercepting them. “What exactly do you want me to do about it?...”

“”Obviously,”” the both of them say as one before glaring at each other, with Het continuing. “We need  you to decide,”

“Fairly!” Jirya chirps.

“Fairly, who deserves to rest here.”

I gulp. “Um, and I, uh, guess that saying b—both is out of the question?” The look on their faces says enough. “Okay, then, uh, um…” I look them both up and down. I could just pick one at random. It probably doesn’t really change anything, whichever one I pick. Both sides seem equal in strength. I know the two leaders equally badly.

“In that case, I think, that…” A little thought snakes its way inside my brain, wriggling inside the folds of my lobes and all the way into the very centre of my brain. There’s a simple solution to this. A solution that I have no choice but to choose, considering that I want to clear this stage completely. Is there really anything else I can say? Looking up at them both, I open my mouth. “Neither of you should rest here.”

Het grins and opens his mouth but his jaw instantly snaps shut again and when he looks down at me again, the only thing shining through his eyes is pure, sheer confusion. His grip on my shoulder tightens. I don’t react to it. “What do you mean by that? Ho-Jae?”

Jirya’s brows knit. “That’s not an answer,” she says. “Obviously, one of us deserves to—”

“No,” I say. I pull Het’s hand off my shoulder. “N—neither of you. You’re all, um, alive. You’ve got meat, and bones, and everything else, so you can’t rest here, like, uh, at all. Since you’re alive, you shouldn’t rest here.”

Het’s gaze burns into me like a branding iron. “So what do you think should be done?”

I look back down at my feet. I wring my hands. “You, um, you should… I can…” My hands are so sweaty. I’m glad I put on one of my backup leopard pelts before I came here but it isn’t helping.

“You’re gonna kill both sides or something?” Jirya says sharply, butting in close. I draw back. “Is that your grand solution? Wow, that’s so clever, Ho-Jae! This explains why you dropped out to pursue your pro gaming career. Obviously, you didn’t need to learn anything anymore, unlike us normies. I never knew you were so smart. If I’d known, I would’ve totally mooched off your smarts to get a perfect score on all my tests. Oh, wait, you didn’t do all that well on your tests, did you, Ho-Jae? That’s so weird! It must have been the school being pitted against you, that’s all. These tests are made to cater to the normie elite, so obviously, a pioneer of gaming like you would be left outside.”

She smiles at me. I hate it.

I look down again. I don’t want to see their faces. My face feels hot. My pulse beats quickly against my throat. “I—I—I was just—”

“You—you—you were just… what? Giving us the super-smart secret to how best to beat this floor? Just kill everyone? Psh,” she continues. “Is that really it? You can’t honestly be thinking that Ooohh I’m gonna be super edgy and cool and kill everyone wow look at me is the solution to every single floor, do you? Mediate between us. That’s all you need to do. Hear out both sides, understand which one has more valid points, and decide which of us deserves to win more. That’s all this is.”

Het steps closer to me. “Listen, Ho-Jae… You aren’t making this more complicated or something. If anything, you’re making this less complicated. But it’s not a good answer. It’s like how in a riddle, you aren’t meant to just give whatever answer works. You’re supposed to give the one answer that works the very best. You can’t brute-force riddles like you can put a hammer to a Rubix cube.” He puts a hand on my shoulder again. I want to shake it off but it’s too soft. “That’s your problem. You think all your issues are Rubix cubes when they’re really riddles. If you just met your problems with more grace, less violence, then—”

Something hot and RED wells up inside my head and I can’t really see anything anymore and he’s close enough so without really thinking without really acting at all in any form of logical and sound manner I leap at him like a Tasmanian devil and I claw at his face and I claw at his throat but he grabs me by the neck and he pulls me out of range, his arms being just a bit longer than mine, but I claw at his arm, tearing off his armour and exposing his flesh but before I can do anything to him deeper than a mere flesh wound, Jirya attacks me, a sword she’s suddenly holding cleanly slicing off my right arm.

Bad bad bad bad bad bad not good. I need to get away this isn’t good this is bad.

Using my left hand I break the fingers Het is holding my throat with and once I’m freed I jump down onto the ground landing on all fours, but my classmates—those horrible shades—are quickly upon me, and it is only through a combination of fetal position blowover, haste and four-footed running that I’m able to escape, first by leaping on top of their heads and then once I’m on the ground again rolling myself into a ball to escape into the forest.

I leap into the trees with the swiftness of a cat. My classmates follow me, but after only a few minutes, they realise the obvious in that they won’t be able to find me. When they return to the open glade, I follow them, if at a safe distance.

<You have learned:

Stalk Lv.8>

<You have learned:

Stealth Lv.10>

<You have learned:

Hidden Lv.1>

As we reach the open glade, I find that it has changed a fair bit.

There are now a number of tents, in different colours, yet placed together. There are far more people now than there were before. I think, if I look closely, I can notice people from the classes above and below mine, and even a few teachers.

…My entire school is here. I can’t exactly count all of the people here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a total of almost two thousand people.

…Did I make a mistake?

<Tutorial stage,

Hell Difficulty Seventh Floor

Boss Stage>

<[Clear Condition]

Defeat the undeserving shades.>

Hm. Okay, so, from what I can see, most of these people have a level between twenty and thirty. And as for me…

<Top—Status—Community>

<PrissyKittyPrincess

Human Level 32

Strength: 66

Agility: 107

Stamina: 98

Magic Power: 41>

Level 32. It’s slightly higher than the average among these guys, but the problem is that, well… I’m just a single guy. They’re around 2 000 strong. Sure, most of them have the bodies of tweens and teens, but to many, that isn’t exactly a detriment.

As I’m looking at them, I actually have a pretty good line of sight of how Het and Jirya discuss things together. Het’s got his arm all nice and bandaged, and since they haven’t exactly turned on each other, the case right now is most likely that they’ve joined forces. Hm.

Okay, I need to check something real quick.

I go into my personal messages and check Moleman’s profile. It’s still at F34, but whatever. This isn’t exactly urgent, I’m just a little desperate to know.

I start typing up a message.

<PrissyKittyPrincess[F7]: hey um

k quik question bt umm 4 f7

how do u normally beat all da

shades>

Aaaaand send. Good enough.

See, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that—

<You have received a message.>

Already? Well then, go right on ahead.

<SuperMoleman[F34]: I beat

floor 7 by mediating between the

two sides. If you sit them down and

discuss the matter, they can usually

come to an agreement, but from what

HookedOnBach[F16] has told me, on Hard,

you can’t mediate the conflict without

rallying one side against the other. Since

the shades normally look like your coworkers,

classmates or similar, I’ve heard that this

is often a very difficult choice. I need to

go now, we’re almost at the boss, but I still

wish you good luck!>

It is as I feared.

<PrissyKittyPrincess[F7]: kk thx u2>

So, in other words, my best strategy here was absolutely not to just go right on ahead and declare war on both sides, but rather to rally with one group, and then just before the other side was killed, while my side was weakened by them, I could kill them.

That is, unless the system doesn’t recognise the shades on your side to be enemies, which would in turn mean that you wouldn’t need to kill them in order to clear the stage completely.

Huh. I seriously picked every single incorrect dialogue option, didn’t I?

…Is it too late to come out of hiding and rally one side against the other?...

Probably. Ah, man…

…Hm. Then again, just because I pick one side doesn’t mean I can’t rally a side, right?

It just means that I’ll have to be a little bit more… Creative.