Octavius’s eyes widened as he realized what the figures were. The shadows were quickly growing longer, and the blue-green flame becoming more clear. His lips turned down into a grimace as he eyed his spear. The glow wasn’t noticeable in the daylight, but soon it would stand out like a massive glowing target.

He separated the spear into halves as quietly as he could. The spear was placed in the sling on his rucksack, and he continued to observe the thralls. It was obvious that they were in some type of distress. They were scanning the forest around them with sharp beady eyes. Octavius wondered if something had tipped them off to his presence. No, that’s not it. If they knew I was here, they would have drawn weapons.

From a distance, he couldn’t see how they were armed and armored. He knew that using identify against higher-level targets from such a distance was a long shot, but he tried anyway. The skill level of his identify was getting higher and higher. It seemed as if its level was not high enough, as his identify failed to bring any results.

He needed to get closer. His fingers reached into his belt pouch and removed the illusion ring. He slipped it on and vanished. Where he stood, only a small distortion remained. Suddenly, he had an idea. He reached behind himself and gripped the shaft of his spear. Anticipation flooded him when the white glow failed to reflect off the leaves around him.

He assembled the spear by feel and removed his rucksack. His boots fell silently onto the packed dirt of the ground as he approached the campsite. He froze when one of the thralls began to wave its hands, signing aggressively. After a moment with no change, he continued to approach stealthily.

When he entered within a dozen feet of them, he tried using identify again. This time it worked.

Drecz - Thrall (F) (Lvl 22) (Rogue)

Fezlx - Thrall (F) (Lvl 19) (Mage)

Kizevc - Thrall (F) (Lvl 20) (Rogue)

They were about the same level as the first one he had found. The difference was, only one of these was a mage.

As he approached further, one of them, Kizevc, smacked the smallest of the three and spoke, “You’ve gone mad, Fez! There is nothing here except the animals. I would have known if there was, my perception is three higher than yours! Are you trying to make me mad?”

The smallest one appeared to hunch in on itself, “Sorry, I swear to Lizne, I heard something. I guess it was a beast.”

Octavius kept an eye on his mana counter as he listened in on them. Kizevc sighed, “It's fine. We are all high strung from a fortnight out here. At least we are returning to base the day after tomorrow.”

The one who hadn’t spoken before cut in, “Which means we will have to make it count. Me and Kize will go check out their camp, Fez you will stay here again. There are enough of them in the camp that there would be a risk of one finding you while your mana is recharging.” This thrall spoke with a deep, hoarse voice. If it were a human, Octavius would say that it smoked three packs a day for years.

Octavius stopped his advance behind a log that was only a few feet from them. The smallest spoke again, this time with a pained voice, “Come on! I can hide well enough, let me go with -”

“No! You will stay here.” Drecz interrupted.

“Fine! Ugh, next class evolution, I am going for a class with stealth.”

The one who had originally spoken burst out laughing, “You’d never be allowed; you’d lose your mana affinity! You’d have wasted all the points you put in intelligence.”

The mage sulked quietly as the other two started talking about their dinner, some sort of stew apparently. Octavius had waited for the conversation to finish, hoping to find out more. It looked like these thralls knew more about the system than him. They had mentioned a camp, which implies that they weren’t native to the area.

The mana counter at the side of his vision was quickly counting down; he needed to pick what to do. The thralls were obviously part of a larger group that was organized and well-armed. They were sending scouts to spy on a human group. That meant that they were likely hostile towards humans, though he couldn’t be entirely sure.

He would have liked to capture them, but that would mean holding back. If they were hostile towards humans, it meant that he couldn’t risk them doing as they pleased. He didn’t have enough information. If this were back on Earth, he would never have approved of a mission with this little intel.

If he could determine if they were hostile, he could attack and not worry about killing them. The mana counter in his vision ticked down to half. He stood carefully and slipped the ring off of his finger, “Hey, what are you guys?”

The three thralls spun to face him. They had a decent approximation of surprise on their alien features. Instead of questioning him or even inviting him to sit with them, Drecz scoffed and waved its hand at Kizevc, “Go deal with it.”

Octavius smirked. That was proof enough of their intentions. Kizevc, the younger rogue, stood and drew a long curved blade from his waist. Octavius made sure to angle his body so that a thin tree trunk was in between the thralls and his spear. Kizevc spoke as it approached, “Finally! Some fun! There more of you out there too? The more the merrier.”

The thrall approached in a relaxed manner. It clearly didn’t think that a level 10 human would be able to defeat it. As soon as the thrall got within four feet of Octavius, he stepped to the left and revealed the soft glow of his spear. He angled his spear and thrust in a fluid motion.

He had learned that they had some form of an exoskeleton from the thrall he had killed. Additionally, he knew that wherever the thrall was currently bending, it was soft.

His spear struck the thrall's neck just as it began to react. It skipped along the hard exoskeleton of its neck before reaching a soft spot.

The spear blade penetrated deeply, only stopping when it slammed against the inside of the exoskeleton at the back of the thrall’s skull.

You have slain Kizevc - Thrall (F) (Lvl 20) and gained 2500 EXP (1/2)(20)(1)(2)(1.25)(100)

As the other two thralls jumped to their feet, Octavius tried to remove his spear. He jerked on the shaft, only for it to stop suddenly. He cursed under his breath. The thrall didn’t have the time to harden its exoskeleton before he was stabbed, but it hardened after the spear entered it. The spear was stuck.

He released his spear and slipped his ring back on. His hand closed around his combat knife, and he drew it from his belt. The older rogue was quickly approaching Octavius. He moved strangely, with quick jerks and fast movements. Octavius could immediately tell that this thrall was experienced; it was moving in such a way that as much of its exoskeleton was hardened as possible.

The mage, however, was fumbling in a leather pouch on its belt. Octavius immediately designated the mage as his priority target. If it went invisible and he lost it, it could escape and warn its friends or kill him when his own guard was down.

Octavius sprinted at the mage. It quickly got its finger into the ring, and Octavius lost sight of it. However, he didn’t slow down. He was within a dozen feet, and once the mage turned invisible, it would try to discover the situation. It hadn’t been paying attention when Octavius had vanished, and thus when it saw the area in front of it as empty, it didn’t feel the need to move.

That was a mistake that it soon realized when Octavius barreled into it. He drove his knife into where he estimated its center mass was. His knife scraped off the exoskeleton, leaving a gouge but no real damage. The force of the charge set them both sprawling. Octavius’s fingers slipped from his knife.

He frowned. This would be a perfect position to grapple with the thrall and take it out, but you couldn’t hyperextend a joint when your opponent didn’t have traditional joints. He felt the thrall try to throw him off, but he had height and weight on it. He mounted the torso of the thrall and felt it with his hands until he found its head.

The thrall’s long fingers gripped and pulled at his head, but he ignored them as he tried to find a weakness to exploit. He knew the rogue would have noticed the sound of the struggle and was most likely advancing on them. His fingers found the indents of the creature's sunken eyes and dug in.

The thrall below him let out a high pitched keening sound. It thrashed and bucked as Octavius buried his thumbs into its eye sockets. After he was sure that the thrall was blind, he rolled off of it to his right.

He scrambled to his feet and scanned the forest floor for his combat knife. As the older rogue approached, it kicked his blade without noticing. The rogue was focused on the illusioned thrall on the ground. The wounded thrall was definitely disturbing the area around it enough that it could be seen as engaging in combat. In actuality, it was thrashing wildly in pain and shock.

Octavius circled the rogue slowly, careful not to make a single sound. When he reached his knife, he crouched and lifted it. The illusion wrapped around the knife, and he checked the amount of time he had left. He had a little more than a minute. His mana reserves were low enough that he was starting to develop a headache, but he ignored it.

He stalked the rogue as it kicked at the flailing thrall mage. It clearly didn’t care about injuring its companion but didn’t want to kill the downed mage. If it did, it would’ve done so already. When its kick met the keening thrall and sent it flying, it knew something was wrong. In that instant, Octavius attacked.

He leapt onto the creature’s back, wrapping his legs around its torso and left arm around its neck. This thrall was stronger than Octavius, but that wouldn’t matter if he could kill it before it got the chance to use its strength. He reached around the thrall with his right hand and stabbed its face with his combat knife.

The blade scraped along its hardened exoskeleton, and Octavius pulled it towards his best guess at the position of the thrall’s eyes. The thrall dropped its knife and grabbed at him. The left hand of the thrall gripped his shirt, and its right caught his arm.

The thrall moved to pull him off of its back, but Octavius braced the pommel of his knife with his left hand and squeezed with his entire body. Now the thrall was resisting the strength of most of his upper body with only one arm. Predictably, it failed to stop the knife from stabbing through its eye.

The knife failed to find any hard substance behind the thrall’s eye and entered its brain. The moment it did so, the force holding Octavius’s arm back slackened, and the creature fell backward.

You have slain Drecz - Thrall (F) (Lvl 22) and gained 2750 EXP (1/2)(22)(1)(2)(1.25)(100)

Octavius rolled the body of the thrall off of him and stood. He removed his enchanted ring and became visible once again. His lungs heaved as he took a deep breath before walking over to the first thrall he killed. Guess I should go for the eyes if I ever fight these things again.

In the time the fight had taken, the hard exoskeleton of the first thrall had softened enough for Octavius to work his spear out. He walked over to the blinded thrall and crouched next to it. He poked the now silent mage. Nothing happened.

He reached forward and gripped the thrall. His eyebrows furrowed when his fingers came into contact with the iron-hard exoskeleton. Even its joints were frozen solid. He could hear the creature breathe, but that was the only sound it made. He concluded that it was unconscious. Perhaps it was the thrall’s version of shock; maybe he had accidentally done more damage than he intended to when incapacitating it or the thrall rogue had with its kick. Or the thrall could be faking.

He dragged the unconscious thrall over to the blue-green flame that they were cooking above. Quickly, he gathered a few small branches and set them on top of the thrall. Now, if it moved, he could see. He fetched his other supplies and began to prepare the rabbit as he waited for the thrall to awake. There were questions that he wanted answers to.

Soon an hour had passed. The breathing of the thrall had steadied, but it remained unconscious. In that time, Octavius had dragged the corpses of the other thralls into a dense copse of trees after checking them over for any valuables. They didn’t have any enchanted items, something that was apparently reserved for the mage. He had left their armor and weapons. They had long knives and studded leather armor, but he couldn’t fit into the armor and didn’t need the knives.

He sat down next to the colored flames to wait. A grunt of dissatisfaction emerged when he viewed his status page.

Name

Octavius J. Asher

Race

Human (F)

Level

10 - 5623/50000

Class

Spearman

Titles

Forerunner

Health

489/500

Stamina

573/600

Mana

213/460

Strength

40

Dexterity

45

Agility

33

Constitution

30

Vitality

25

Perception

25

Intelligence

23

Wisdom

19

Will

31

Free Points

0

Status Effects

Mana Drained (Fading) - You have used a significant portion of your mana. You suffer from mild mental pain. This status effect will disappear with time. Further mana use can exacerbate the effect.

Skills

Identify (Lvl 12)

Speech (MAX)

Instant Thrust (Lvl 1)

Whirlwind (Lvl 1)

Spear Fighting Affinity (Lvl 1)

He had completely forgotten his new skills. He was disappointed in himself for failing to use them in the intense fight. It would take time and practice until the use of skills became an instinctual part of his fighting style. While it was likely true that he would have used his skills in the fight as he wasn’t familiar with their intricacies, that was not true of his opponents. In the end, he was lucky that none of the thralls had caught him off guard with a skill.

He resolved not only to practice his own skills in the future but also to plan for others' use of their own. He filed away what he knew of the skills of the warrior and rogue class. It would be beneficial for him to learn about the skills of the other common classes. He didn’t know the skills of mages, but it didn’t seem to be able to help them much in close quarters combat.

The headache from his intense mana use had faded greatly after half an hour, and he checked his mana counter. It had recovered a bit but wasn’t close to full yet. Damn, that illusion ring uses mana like crazy. At least I was able to use it in actual combat and only got a headache … after … a … few … min - “SHIT!”

He jumped to his feet and hurried over to the nearly invisible thrall. It had been invisible for over an hour. If the rate of consumption of the thrall’s ring was the same as his own, the thrall would have a hundred and fifty intelligence! The only thing that Octavius could think of that would make that possible was that the mage class gave a mana affinity like his spear fighting affinity, but that didn’t matter at the moment. Even if it had a skill that decreased mana cost, the thrall had to be nearly out of mana.

He urgently felt along the thrall’s left arm until he came to its hand. After a moment of searching, he failed to find a ring on that hand. His fingers jumped to its other hand. He searched its bent fingers and found the smooth surface of the ring.

The thrall’s hand was formed into a fist, and Octavius worked his fingers under its own. He tried to pry its fingers open, but its joints were entirely locked up. He needed to remove the ring.

His hand found the hilt of his combat knife, and he drew it. The first thing he tried was to damage the ring itself, but his knife scraped harmlessly off the band of metal. Next, he tried to dig his blade below its fingers and cut its finger off, but its exoskeleton was too hard. He cursed softly and drew the arm of the thrall into his lap.

Once it was stabilized, he used the sharp sawteeth on his combat knife's lower two inches to saw away at its wrist. The shape of its hand meant that he couldn’t easily remove a single finger, and cutting through the wrist would be easier than its entire fist.

He sawed away for a full minute before the thrall began to vibrate wildly. It was as if all of its muscles were tensing and releasing rapidly under its exoskeleton. He just held onto its hand tighter and forced his knife back and forth as fast as he could.

He was barely halfway through the thrall’s wrist when it snapped back to visibility with a crisp cracking sound. The ring on its finger had a single crack running down it. His body bent forward until his ear was just above the thrall’s mouth. It wasn’t breathing.

He slumped back, extremely displeased with the situation. Not only did he fail to get any information from the thrall, but he also didn’t even get the EXP from killing it.

Over the next half hour, he pocketed the cracked ring and dragged the mage's corpse into the same spot as the rogues. After he was done, he went about removing all evidence of his and the thralls’ presence at the clearing. He had used a stick that he had ignited in the fire for light, not wanting to waste more of his flashlight’s battery, before extinguishing the stick and tossing it into some bushes.

Once all of his work was done, he climbed into a tree to fall asleep. Laying his head back against the tree, he wondered what the thralls really were and what they were doing in the Tutorial. Just as he began to think of what they could be, a sharp crack brought his attention to the forest floor. Looking over the edge of the branch, he saw the shape of a deer in the starlight. Deciding that it posed no threat, he leaned back once more. What was I thinking about again? I can't seem to remember, he frowned as he puzzled over it. After a few minutes without remembering, he closed his eyes to sleep. I'll remember it soon if it's important.