Jacob dashed through the burning hallways coming to a stop at a four-way intersection. He glanced in all directions taking in his options. To his left was a door like the one he had seen in his room. To his right, a path leading to a stairwell. Ahead of him stretched another hallway ending in a t-intersection.

Jacob turned to make his way to the stairwell when he heard a pounding on the door that was now behind him. He took three cautious steps back towards the door waiting for another sound. The cracking of wood thundered out causing Jacob to jump back startled. He turned tail stumbling over his feet when the door shattered into dozens of pieces.

A crimson demon roared victoriously in the shattered doorframe flexing his bulging muscles. “Free at last!” The demon’s eyes settled on Jacob and the smoke bellowing out from the hallway. “So, you’re the one who triggered the escape sequence early! Well no time to waste. I’m Kronos a demon warrior and you are?”

Jacob stared in shock at Kronos. “Uh… I’m Veralic, a half-devil support mage… I didn’t know I would be in a tutorial with another player so soon.”

Kronos grimaced, his posture drooping. “Oh no, don’t tell me this is your first tutorial?”

Jacob hesitated, “Yes, why do you ask?

Kronos muttered a curse to himself, “Here I was hoping you had experience since you triggered the escape sequence so early. I should have known better.”

Kronos looked down the hallway Jacob had escaped from and back the other way. “Look, the escape scenario is pretty standard. First, we make our way out of the basement and into the manor above. Next, we hit the supply room by the guard station to unlock the rest of our class features, usually taking out four to six guards in the process. Our last step after unlocking the rest of our class skills is making our way to the courtyard for a scripted boss fight. From there we escape through a portal back to our homeland, Atropos.”

Kronos brushed past Jacob leading the way up the stairs. “Follow my lead and conserve your mana for fights only. Do you have your support magic active yet?”

Jacob shook his head. “No, I managed to unlock one of my offensive abilities first. I assume my support abilities will be unlocked at the supply room you mentioned.”

“Ok, stick behind me then. You’re probably too squishy to fight any of the guards. We’ll need to funnel them to limit their numbers in combat.” Kronos paused looking back at Jacob. “Did you see any other prisoner cells?”

Jacob pointed back at the unexplored hallway, “I hadn’t checked as I was planning on high tailing it out of here.”

Kronos muttered under his breath, “We need to go back and—”

Shouting and the clash of combat could be heard coming from the unexplored hallway. “Never mind. That player is only good for buying us time now.”

“Shouldn’t we go back and help him? Don’t we need him for the boss fight?” protested Jacob.

“No way am I risking a Fate getting drawn into a losing fight. That player is toast and we’re wasting time talking when we don’t have the time. Now follow my lead!” growled Kronos.

Kronos whirled around climbing the stairs as fast as he could with Jacob trailing behind at his heels. Both players burst through the door at the top of the stairwell. They were greeted to the sight of three screaming guards with drawn swords.

Jacob instinctively stepped back from the sharp blades while Kronos barreled into the first guard without hesitation. Kronos managed to knock back the leading guard into the one on Jacob’s right. The third guard redirected his charge at Jacob to Kronos’ open flank slicing into the demon.

Kronos jerked back in pain from the sword and threw out his massive clawed hand at the third guard who managed to step back avoiding the blow. Kronos spared Jacob a glare and shouted, “Help already!”

Jacob shook himself from his shock and flicked his wrists summoning two Hellfire Balls as the other two guards were recovering from the knockback. Without further hesitation, both balls were flung at the two guards. One hit center mass engulfing the two guards while the second ball splashed the floor between Kronos and them.

Pained shrieks escaped the mouths of the two guards. Both attempted to douse the flames by rolling away from the affected area. Jacob’s head swiveled back to Kronos just in time to see a streak of five red lines sever the third guard’s head leaving behind a spray of blood. Kronos spun around with a battle lust grin on his face.

He glanced at the two remaining guards. “Nice CC and damage. Don’t throw any off that fire while I’m engaging these two.”

Both guards finished standing as the last of the hellfire died away. They raised their swords and charged with a roar. “Die fiends!”

Kronos laughed in glee as he sidestepped the first guard and grabbed his wrist. With a powerful tug, Kronos used the first guard as a meat shield absorbing the second guards charge. He chunked the first guard onto the second causing the man to crumple to the ground. Kronos wasted little time slicing the throat of the temporarily disabled guard causing another spray of blood to splatter the floors and walls.

“Wow, these guards are awarding more experience than normal. Maybe we should have gone to the other player.” Replied Kronos. He reached down picking up the first guard’s sword while kicking him over and pulling out the second guards sword. His grin widened as he said, “Early dual wield should make the boss fight easier. Now grab the last blade so you have something else to fight with when your mana runs dry. We need to clear the storage room quickly, so we can get the free heal and the rest of our abilities.”

Jacob blinked in shock as he realized he had been standing still the rest of the fight. He bent down awkwardly in an attempt to cover his shock only to fumble with the third guard’s sword. He examined the sword noting its low quality. “I’m not really specialized to use a sword at all…” murmured Jacob.

Kronos let out a sigh of exasperation, “That doesn’t matter. 5 bonus damage is extra damage. We need to take what we can get now that we’re down a third party member. Now follow along. In our next fight, I want you to throw out three of those spells at the back ranks of the guards. I’ll take care of the rest by knocking them into the flames and cutting down the ones that attempt to escape. Do you have enough mana for that?”

Jacob checked his mana pool. “Yeah, I’ll be able to get three off and then a fourth after another minute.”

Kronos nodded in satisfaction. “The fight won’t last that long, not unless you screw up.”

Jacob’s nose wrinkled at Kronos attitude. This guy is a real elitist, but I can’t really blame him as he knows all about this scenario. Jacob calmed himself throwing on a smile. Let’s take this as a learning opportunity. He’s cocky for a reason, so learn from his success and mistakes.

Jacob jogged up falling into pace behind Kronos. Kronos carried himself with both blades at the ready through two more corridors. He stopped suddenly raising his left arm to bar the way. He peaked slowly around the corner before bringing his head back. He turned to Jacob and whispered, “I see four guarding the door to the supply room. I’ll engage and draw them into this corridor. As soon as they are packed into the corridor, fire those spells. Got it?”

Jacob grinned in acknowledgement. “I’m just glad I won’t be able to smell the results of this plan.”

Kronos laughed as he adjusted his grip on his twin blades. “Here I go…”

With a loud roar Kronos charged into the room catching the guard by surprise. He sliced one guard with both blades and kicked off him in retreat. All four responded with a war charge chasing after him.

Kronos skidded to a halt as he rounded the corner setting up position by Jacob. The first guard to follow was impaled by Kronos’ blades as he shouted, “Start firing the spells now!”

Jacob was prepared this time and summoned one Hellfire Ball after another. The first was thrown once the other three guards rounded the corner engulfing two of them while the third guard remained unscathed. A second Hellfire Ball slammed into the third guard with a satisfying thump.

Kronos yanked his blades free of the first guard and lowered his shoulder tackling the recently engulfed third guard into the other two burning guards. As the flames began to die down, Jacob flicked his wrist summoning a third Hellfire Ball. This last one was thrown center mass of the knocked down guards. Again, the corridor was filled with shrieks from the burning guards.

Kronos stepped forward and crossed his blades at the neck of a rising guard. A swift jerk of the blades resulted in the execution of one guard after the other. Soon the only sound that remained in the corridor was the crackling of flames. Kronos turned back to Jacob and said, “I was really worried that you would be a useless scrub. But now I have to say that your spell made easy work of these guards thanks to my knockdowns. Together that CC gave me more than enough time to perform my execution moves.” He pointed the guard of the sword to Jacob giving him a thumb up.

“Now let’s go unlock the rest of our abilities!”

Kronos stomped through the remains of the guards trailing ash and blood in his wake as he made his way to the supply room. Jacob followed by gingerly stepping between the gore and charred remains. Just as Jacob cleared the mess of their fight, Kronos kicked the supply door room open.

A subtle and low rumbling vibration came from Jacob’s haptic feedback suit in the direction of the now open supply room. “Can you feel that? The little vibration from one side of your suit?” Asked Kronos in the doorway of the supply room. “Remember that feeling as the game will always use that for key quest items related to your class. Follow me in and use one outstretched hand to guide you to your gear. The vibrations act like a hot and cold game. The more intense the vibrations, the closer you are. Give it a try!”

Jacob followed Kronos into the supply room feeling the vibrations pick up in intensity. He raised his hand and slowly guided it over the various wooden crates. He passed his hand back in a slow waving pattern to feel out the intensity of the vibrations. Guided by the intensity of the vibrations, he stepped to a crate in the back corner.

A loud crash came from behind as Kronos found his supplies. Jacob meanwhile used his sword to pry open the top of the crate. A pop followed by the clattering of metal resulted from Jacob’s efforts. He pulled off the top of the crate to reveal a simple set of brown cotton clothing designed to be loose on Veralic. Set aside to the clothing was a medium sized leather pouch filled with parchment, ink, and eight different colored gems each no bigger than a small coin.

Jacob picked up the leather pouch and received a notification informing him that his Dealmaker ability was now available. He smiled as he changed into the new clothing and tied the pouch to his waist with a brown sash included from the clothes. He attempted to activate his Dealmaker ability only to be notified that he had no current contract templates available and that he would need to create a new contract before the ability could be used.

Kronos walked up beside Jacob and exclaimed, “Is that all you have? No other starting weapons?”

“Yeah, my support ability cost a lot of my points at creation.” Replied Jacob. “I know you said we need to hurry, but if you give me a moment I can try and get my support ability up to buff you for the upcoming fight. Do you think we can spare a few minutes?”

Kronos frowned as he checked the area outside of the supply room. After he scanned the room, he called back, “You have five minutes. After that we need to go, otherwise the AI Director will send more guards to swarm us. Now work quickly.”

Jacob cleared a space on top of the crates as he placed the pouch on top. He pulled out a piece of parchment that had a hex grid and the eight gems. After examining them, he determined each one represented a specific stat. Review of the Dealmaker ability indicated that contracts operated off an input and output sequence of instructions. There were a series of commands one would need to write out for each sequence to be carried out.

Jacob smiled as he began to see the design of this contract mini-game. If I want more than a one to one trade, then I will need to cycle the desired stat to create an unbroken chain. Once I have the desired point count for the stat, then I can use a logic gate to let the chain pass through to the output.

“Two minutes!” called out Kronos.

Jacob’s smile vanished as he focused on his first contract. No, time for something elegant. Something simple and straightforward. Just need two cycles and a timer to determine the duration of the contract.

Jacob scribbled furiously as he attempted to write out the desired contract. His hands moved deftly about the parchment as he placed two gems on the grid. He drew several command glyphs and connected them with lines to and from the gems.

“Time!” shouted Kronos. “We’ve got to go!”

“I’m almost done! I need just a bit longer to check the logic before I can use this support magic.” Pleaded Jacob.

“Check it while we walk or stay here alone, because I am moving on!” said Kronos as he left the room leaving Jacob to gather his belongings.

Jacob packed up everything but his current contract into the pouch. After tying the pouch back to his waist, he scampered after Kronos while trying to check his hastily written contract.