As he jumped off the brunch with spear in hands, Nathan didn’t think about anything, his mind was clear and calm. Feeling the most alive he had ever felt before in his whole life, Nathan aimed for the only soft part visible to him, the creature’s eyes, as it was stuck again it became slightly easier to aim even though he was airborne, as the tip of the spear connected to the Boar’s eye it met no resistance until it went deeper into the creature skull on what Nathan expected to be its brain, his skill ‘Detect Danger’, went quiet on his brain after that. As the Monster lost its life energy Nathan was assaulted with pings inside his mind, alerting him that he had notifications. However, that was inconsequential right now. The Boar, fell to the ground causing a mini earth-quake and on his fall, its body got close to impaling Brandon again.

Nathan fell with the creature as he lost balance, tumbling don on the ground, as soon as he got up to his feet he ran towards where Brandon had been. Finding the other man sat with his back to the tree was a shock.

‘You always think you’ll manage seeing someone bleeding to death in theory, until you see it in person’, Nathan thought to himself as he realised Brandon had blood coming out of his mouth and nose, his leg had a hole in it on what seemed to be all the way through, and his abdomen was also pierced.

Coughing, and spurting a mouthful of blood, Brandon said: ‘It doesn’t seem like I’ll be able to make it lad, at least hopefully you’ll after killing that fucking pig’. Nathan could spot some sadness into the man’s voice, looking now closer he was older, around 40 years old-ish.

‘Let me help you remove your armor, we can try to bandage your belly and burn your leg wound so it will stop bleeding’, Nathan said after thinking through how to help the man, he knew it was to no avail, Brandon was pale, there was so much blood around, he could smell the sense of iron in the air.

‘Nonsense, it’s fine kid, you did your best and I hope you survive through it, I can’t imagine it getting easier’. Brandon said, and had to stop coughing a little more, and then continued, ‘All I ask you is to bury me please; I wouldn’t want my body to be chewed and shat in this damn forest’. Nathan agreed with his head, he didn’t really know how to proceed, there was a human being dying just in front of him, on top of it all, he felt he was the one to blame for it, he could have intervened before, he could have done more to help the man, if only he had enough strength before he knew he would have been able to pull him up before the boar reached them.

Brandon, seeing the look on Nathan’s face commented, ‘It wasn’t your fault boy, we knew what we had ourselves into by choosing this difficulty, don’t blame yourself on my account’, he said sincerely, ‘If you survive this, and you manage to come across my wife, tell her I lov…’.

The man’s eyes went glassy and Nathan found himself staring at a dead man’s body, the forest seemed awkwardly silence as he just stood there, blood in his hands as he was trying to help Brandon remove his armour.

‘Please don’t die, don’t die on me’, Nathan kept saying.

‘Don’t die dude, don’t die, your wife will need you’.

Sitting down, Nathan started crying, he replayed everything that had happened thus far in his mind, his choices, his status and skills, his hiking here… He felt overwhelmed and lost, because of him, someone had died, because he didn’t act quickly enough, because he wasn’t stronger enough and because he was arrogant thinking he could handle the Tutorial. If that Boar had chased him, he knew he wouldn’t had survived, so it would have been him dead there and not Brandon. He felt his anxiety spiking, but he pushed it down there was no space for it right now. He took a few minutes recovering, he had never seen anyone dead, there was a dead body there, someone had died, SOMEONE HAD DIED. There was blood all over. He started panicking again and passed out.

…

Some time passed as he groggily woke up of his fainting, as he woke up he realised everything was still the same way it was before he passed out, the only difference was that some of the blood had coagulated and it was nearly night time, there was the faintest light of the sun coming through the woods. Unsure of what to do, he went through Brandon’s backpack and found some useful things. H knew he wouldn’t be able to bury the man during the night-time and would have to wait until morning, so he laid the body down and closed his eyes, he found a towel inside his backpack and covered him in it. Next, he got his sleeping bag and brought it up to one of the largest branches of the tree and got his spear out of the Boar’s eye, cleaned it using some water and a rag he had found in Brandon’s backpack. He realised Brandon was a lot better prepared to go through the forest than he was, and again he noticed how silly he had been and lucky.

As he had gathered everything he needed to sleep and all his belongs up on the tree, he opened his screens.