She awoke to the sound of knocking. She sat up abruptly, nearly hitting her head on the wall she had been sleeping against. She got up quickly and went to the door, passing a still sleeping Thomas with his glasses on the ground next to him. When she opened the door, she saw Aaron on the other side.

“Hello, Karolina. There’s someone that Mr. Buckley wants you to meet,” he said, and then turned around and started walking without waiting for her to respond. She stared at the back of his head in disbelief, and then began to follow him.

She followed him in silence as he walked towards the edge of the camp, starting to get angry. Who does he think he is? Does he think being Buckley’s toady means that he doesn’t have to be polite? She takes a deep breath and tries to swallow down her anger. Yelling at him won’t help anything.

After a few minutes they arrived at the edge of the forest. Waiting for them is a dark-haired woman, tapping her foot impatiently. She had a narrow face and brown eyes. She looked like she was in her early twenties, and was wearing a green tunic, a brown overcoat, and leather boots.

“Finally. It feels like I’ve been waiting forever,” she said, her foot coming to a halt.

Aaron ignored her and turned back to Karolina. “This is Ada King.” Ada gave a short little wave, seemingly unbothered by being ignored by Aaron. She reflexively inspected her.

Ada King: [Human (F) / Scout] - Level 2

Aaron continued. “She is likely the only Scout in camp, and volunteered to map out the area to see what the surrounding forest is like and scout out what threats there are. Mr. Buckley would like you to protect her as she does so, as Scout is an explicitly non-combat class."

He remained standing there, seemingly waiting for something. After a few moments, she realized what it was.

“Sure,” she said. “I can do that." This certainly wasn’t the joint decision making that she had been promised. It seemed that, just as she had anticipated, Buckley couldn't be trusted to hold to his promises.

She was still going to have to work with him, because the benefits of doing so outweighed the drawbacks, and she wasn’t yet in a position to go against him directly. However, their arrangement was now definitely a short-term one.

With her acceptance secured, Aaron nodded at her and then left without a second glance. She looked over at Ada, who didn’t say anything until Aaron was out of earshot.

“I don’t need protection, especially from someone who apparently can’t protect themselves,” she said, conspicuously eyeing Karolina’s still-bloodstained gi. “I only agreed to this because it seemed faster than arguing about it. You can stay here, and do whatever it is that you do, but I’m going into the woods alone. See ya!”

And with that, her legs were covered in a light film of red energy, and she ran off at a speed that Karolina could never hope to match. Karolina stared after her, both irritated and disappointed. Who did she think she is? Couldn’t protect herself? Let’s see her handle three goblins on her own.

She wondered why she was so disappointed that she couldn’t get out there with Ada. It certainly wasn’t because she liked the woman; Ada had been nothing but rude to her. No, it was something else, something that felt intrinsic to her. She thought back to the goblin fight yesterday.

She had never realized how strong her protective instincts were before she had seen that arrow heading for Thomas. She didn’t have any siblings, and had never really been in a position where she needed to protect someone. However, when Thomas was in danger, she hadn’t hesitated to do whatever she needed to do to protect him, and it had felt good.

She enjoyed protecting others, and if she was being honest, she enjoyed fighting as well. The feeling of crushing a goblin’s skull under her fist, of dodging a blade by a hair, was a rush like no other. She was beginning to realize why the System had thought that the Monk class was the best option for her.

She was glad that she had figured out why she had wanted to go with Ada. She wasn’t sure if what she had figured out was particularly deep, but she felt like she knew herself a little better, and that was always good.

Just as she was about to head back into camp, she saw a group of four standing on the edge of the forest in the distance. She walked towards them, curious about what they were doing. As she got closer, she saw that the group was composed of two leather-armored warriors, one blue-robed magician, and one person carrying a bow who had to be an archer. It seemed that they were about to head into the forest.

“Room for one more? Everyone could use a little extra protection,” she called once she got close enough. Just because Ada didn’t want her protection didn’t mean that she couldn’t help anyone else. She saw them turn and face her, and then the archer nodded, apparently the leader of this group.

They all introduced themselves, and she introduced herself in turn. She was only going to step in if they needed it, she explained, because she wasn’t sure how strong the enemies in the woods close to camp were and she didn’t want any deaths on her conscience. They laughed a little, full of confidence in their new skills, but agreed to let her come along anyway.

She followed them into the forest, keeping a few steps behind them. They talked and laughed among themselves and didn’t make any effort to include her, and she was fine with that. They were already friends, and her friend was back at camp.

The first monster that they ran into was something called a direwolf, only level one. It was about the size of a normal wolf, with slate-gray fur, yellow eyes, and sharp teeth. Adam, the archer, managed to put an arrow in it, and Darryl, one of the warriors, managed to stab it with a skill similar to Strong Blow. After that, the direwolf was finished; all that was left was for Cerys, the magician, to deal the finishing blow.

As she witnessed them cheering and high-fiving, she missed Thomas. She wasn’t part of this group, not really, so she couldn’t share in their victory celebration.

She only had to step in one time the entire morning that they were out there; the four of them were engaging a group of three direwolves, and a level two goblin wielding a rusty dagger charged out of the forest and tried to stab Adam in the back.

She managed to interpose herself between them and knock the goblin’s arm off balance with her left hand, while her red energy-infused right fist planted itself in the goblin’s throat.

As the goblin fell to the ground, its soul already disappearing, she marveled at her fist. Apparently, she had leveled up enough that a single punch was all it took to kill a goblin.

As Adam effusively thanked her, she felt a smile begin to grow on her face. This was right. This was good. This was what she wanted to do with her life—be the kind of person who was able to protect and help others.

Besides that little bit of excitement, the original group of four was able to handle everything that they came up against. By the time they found their way back to the camp, the sun had just started the other half of its journey across the sky. They thanked her for her help and then walked off into the camp.

She wasn’t sure if she wanted to do that again. Yes, it was safer for her and for them, but she hadn’t leveled up once. She wanted to get as much out of this tutorial as she possibly could, and this didn’t seem like the way to do it.

As she didn’t really have anything else pressing to do, she went off to find Thomas. He was in a group of a few other magicians, attempting to do some kind of magic. She waved at him, and he gave up on whatever he was doing and came over to her.

“Hello. Sorry that I missed you this morning. I’m a pretty heavy sleeper,” he said, rubbing the back of his head.

“Don’t worry about it. Glad that at least you were able to get a good night’s rest. That lodge is an awful place to try to go to sleep,” she chuckled. “Anyway, what are you all working on there?”

“Oh, we’re trying to figure out Convert Mana, the magician skill that we don’t know how to use. I’m pretty sure that whatever Selena was doing when she healed us is similar to how it works, but I can't figure it out. It’s so frustrating! I’ve never not been able to figure something out before, but here there’s no internet to look stuff up on or books to check,” he groaned.

She could see from his soul how much this was truly paining him. He had relied on his intelligence his whole life, and here he felt like it was failing him. “Have you considered asking Selena for help? Even if she doesn’t know exactly what she’s doing, maybe she can still provide an example?”

He just stared at her for a second, and then his face brightened. “It might not work, but it’s at least something new to try. Thanks, Karolina!" he awkwardly held out his hand for a fist bump, and once he received it he rushed back off to the other magicians to share the new plan.

She smiled at his retreating form. It was still nice to see his enthusiasm for magic. Speaking of magic, there was something that Buckley mentioned yesterday that she wanted to see. She walked toward the center of camp, passing plenty of oddly-dressed people milling around. Finally, she saw it: a waist-high pyramid made of some kind of white metal, covered with strange, glowing blue symbols. She inspected it.

Satiety Generator (C): A device created by an enchanter to ensure that nothing starves. All living creatures within a large radius of this device have their hunger and thirst sated.

It did seem to do what Buckley said it did. Incredible. What they could have accomplished if they had devices like this in the old world. She looked at the advanced-looking magical device more closely. It definitely didn’t seem like it belonged in this run-down camp.

She reached out to touch it, but was stopped by a blue barrier that sprung into existence. She studied the barrier, intrigued. She poked it, curious, and found that it was solid to the touch. She pulled her hand back. Probably best not to mess with it.

After satisfying her curiosity, she started heading back to the lodge when she spotted Thomas still speaking energetically with his little group of magicians. Well, he was busy, so she should probably make herself busy, too. She headed back out into the woods, making sure to stay close to the camp so she could always find her way back.

She carefully crept through the forest, only ever attacking monsters that were on their own. After a spate of level one and two direwolves, she finally spotted a level three goblin, killed it, and finally reached level five. As it was getting dark, she decided that it was a good time to head back to camp.

As she was lying on the uncomfortable ground of the lodge, Thomas already snoring across the room, she checked the tutorial status.

Tutorial Status:

Aspirants Remaining: 1901/2000

Time Remaining: 98 Days | 15 Hours | 22 Minutes

Percentage Conquered: 10%

Ninety-nine people were dead. Some of them could even be from her own camp and she would have no idea. She needed to get stronger. She wasn’t going to die here, and she wasn’t going to let anyone she cared about die here, either.

She checked her status.

Status:

Name: Karolina Grant

Level: 5

Race: [Human (F)]

Class: [Monk]

Health: 190/190

Stamina: 180/180

Mana: 170/170

Stats:

Str: 23

End: 18

Dex: 25

Con: 19

Int: 20

Wis: 17

Free Points: 5

She looked at her stats in surprise. She really needed to start checking her status more often. She wasn’t sure exactly how stats translated to physical ability, but she had twice the strength stat that she had when she first looked at her status. That certainly explained how she was able to kill all the low-level enemies that she had faced today in a single blow.

She noticed that she had five free points, which from her limited video game knowledge she could guess were able to be allocated to any stat. She wasn’t sure what it said about reality that it was now apparently based off of video games.

She had no idea how she wanted to allocate her free points, so for the time being she decided to leave them unallocated. As she drifted off to sleep, she reaffirmed her resolve to herself: she was going to be powerful in this new world. No matter what.

* * * * * * *

Over the next few days, she did her best to turn those words into reality by establishing a new routine. In the morning she was led by Aaron to a new spot on the periphery of the camp each day, where she would meet with Ada. Ada would wait for Aaron to leave, and then say something derogatory, self-aggrandizing, or both, and then leave.

She had no idea why she hadn’t told Aaron or Buckley what was happening, especially when she was confronted with such gems as, “You’d only slow me down,” or “You just punch things, right? I can do that." Maybe it was because she saw something of herself in Ada: a stubborn determination to do what she thought was best, regardless of anyone else.

Or maybe she just didn’t care enough about the whole matter to waste her time trying to intervene. Ada was a grown-up, after all. She could make her own decisions.

Anyway, after seeing off Ada, she would go around and try to find a group heading out into the woods that she could protect if they got in over their heads. Over time, it seemed that more groups were forming and going out into the wilds, which she saw as a positive sign.

After finding a group and protecting them until they were back in camp, she took a short break to talk to Thomas. He and his group of magicians seemed to be making real progress on figuring out Convert Mana, the magician skill that had frustrated Thomas earlier, and according to him they were nearing a breakthrough.

After that, she went out on her own to hunt monsters. She was definitely getting diminishing returns, as there were both fewer low-level monsters near the camp and those monsters were giving her less experience. She did manage to get up to level seven, but that was probably the limit of what she could get from killing these weak monsters.

Besides just experience, the weak monsters that she killed gave her another benefit: she got more combat experience and learned more about her skills and their limits. Her class had given her three skills: Unarmed Combat Mastery, Strong Blow, and Combat Perception.

Unarmed Combat Mastery had filled her mind with the basics of unarmed combat, but little else. She knew how to throw a punch, land a kick, and jump over things, but not much beyond that. She didn’t know any stances, blocks, or fancy holds—not that those would work on wolves or goblins, anyway. The skill did occasionally give her flashes of insight into how to do something beyond the basics that it had taught her, but that was unreliable and couldn’t be counted on.

Strong Blow strengthened her blows, allowing her to use stamina to hit harder and faster. It had a much better defined limit than Unarmed Combat Mastery: it only ever used ten stamina, no more and no less. While that might have been good when she had less stamina, it now sharply limited how much it could strengthen her attacks. She hadn’t yet run into a situation where that was a problem, but she knew that it was just a matter of time.

Combat Perception was the most useful yet most limited skill that she had. When she used it on an object, she was able to instinctively understand the object’s motion. This allowed her to catch arrows and easily avoid daggers. It also seemed to have an unmentioned secondary effect, slightly speeding up her perception of the world so she could actually react to the information the skill gave.

Combat Perception only worked on objects, however, which meant that it was completely useless against direwolves. Against goblins, however, it was invaluable. Using it, she was able to easily avoid and act around their deadly weapons. The skill had several other disadvantages besides the target limit, however. It drained a lot of mana, so she could only use it sparingly. She could also only use it on one object at a time, so if she faced multiple well-coordinated goblins, like she would have in her first battle if Thomas hadn’t intervened, then the skill was much less useful.

On the fourth day of the tutorial, something happened that broke her routine. She was wandering farther from the camp than she usually did, trying to find stronger monsters, when she heard the scream. It was ear-piercing and filled with blood-curdling terror. Before she had the chance to consider anything, she found herself sprinting deeper into the woods, toward where the sound was coming from. Someone was about to die, and she needed to help them.