As soon as Brandon chose the Extreme difficulty tutorial, he was teleported to the Safe Zone, arriving wearing the System Clothes, without his wife and in an alien forest hit him hard. He knew he would have to push through all his obstacles if he wanted to achieve his goal. After a few minutes he became more and more aware of his new reality, he took his time studying his surroundings, he went through all his screens, most of his early hours in the tutorial he spent skimming through the Market Tab. Having never had to fight for life he wasn’t completely sure how to proceed or exactly what to expect from the forest, he was seemingly happy for having chosen the Extreme Difficulty and being awarded with what seemed like a lot of benefits for it.

He opened his Status Screen and decided to go for a strength, dexterity and vitality build.

Name:

Brandon Nolles

Level:

1

Next Level:

0/100 Essence

Path:

None

Aspect

None

Class:

None

Essence

1200

Attributes

Points

Bonus

Strength

18

Dexterity

14

Vitality

10

Endurance

9

Arcana

0

Perception

8

All in all, this build was the one that seemed to give him the most chances of survival if it came down to fighting, as soon as he distributed the points he felt the changes take effect in his body, not so much as physically, his body didn’t get any bigger or more defined, he just could synthetically feel him getting stronger and more rapid, as if when he had just downed a couple of expresso coffees.

Brandon’s main goal was to survive and become stronger enough to make a difference when he got back to Earth and for that he wanted to find other people and band together, he knew that for a better chance of survival he would have to fight in a group, like humans did millions of years ago. As a well experienced hiker, he had done a lot of camping on his own when younger, so he bought all his necessities for easy transport: A big backpack, a sleeping bag, food rations, a couple waterskins, etc... With his newfound strength after his status distributions, he decided on buying a heavy armour with layers of metal protecting his chest and abdomen, very sturdy leather pants also with metal protectors, leather boots, leather gauntlets with protection up to his elbow, everything would have been cumbersome to wear and walk around before his status allocation.

He also decided to buy a longsword, a straight double-edged blade of around 200 cm and weighing approximately 3 kg. At first wielding it seemed a bit strange, but he was content with how he looked and how he felt.

Looking through the Classes provided a disappointment as none of the classes given seemed like a useful option, and he wasn’t sure if he would be able to upgrade or change them later, in the end he decided to buy one skill with his leftover essence that he was sure would greatly increase his chances of survival if he had to fight.

Skills

Rarity

Type

Essence Price

Swordsmanship

(Common)

Passive

250

Instantly after purchasing ‘Swordsmanship’, Brandon was assaulted with knowledge on basic sword posture, instances and available movements, he wasn’t nearly as comfortable as he would like to be for a fight, the knowledge he had acquired was basic, he knew some of it already just by watching documentaries on his spare time, having the knowledge of the skill imprinted to his brain made it easier for him to spot his mistakes in posture though.

Still not feeling confident, he decided to spend 400 Essence out of his 470 Essence remaining and upgrade the ‘Swordsmanship’ skill to level 4. After doing it, he was granted extra knowledge in how to wield the giant monstrosity and felt a lot more confident, maybe a bit too much as he practiced some instances for a little while. Brandon instinctively knew he was far away from becoming a master swordsman; however, he had an unexplainable love for the sword and wouldn’t give up just yet on his dream of one day being a master.

After refreshing himself for a bit and filling his water skins on a nearby stream, Brandon set off to start his journey through the forest. He walked slowly for a while paying attention to his surroundings, then an hour into his hiking he realised there was nothing around to be worried about, he got distracted and it was then when he came across his first monster.

Monster: Territorial Wild Boar [Level: 22]

The boar was massive, it was around 2.2m tall, covered in a very coarse coat with thick short hairs of brownish colour, with a long, blunt snout and four tusks, two facing upwards and two facing downwards, the tusks were long, about 30 centimetres the ones facing upwards and 20 or so the ones facing downwards. The strangest thing about it were its eyes, they were quite big of a blue colour but with no pupils. As Brandon and the boar stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity but couldn’t have been more than two seconds, it became clear to Brandon he had no chance of winning against the monster on a fair fight, He would have to win against it with my wits. Unfortunately, he hadn’t much time to think as the Boar started giving chase, Brandon ran opposite to it but it was approaching quickly and as soon as Brandon felt it was about to reach him he rolled to the right and the Boar ran a centimetre past his body, getting back on his feet as fast as he could, he realised the boar was having a hard time turning around, and that’s when Brandon ran opposite to it terrorized and thinking what he could do to kill the monster, or at least make it lose track of him for now.