As soon as I mentally accessed my screens I was assaulted by a multitude of notifications.

You’ve been rewarded due to your achievement on slaying a monster twenty levels above yours as your first monster.

· 800 Essence (normal reward) – x5 (achievement reward) = 4000 Essence

· (Title) – The Weak Prevails

· (Skills) – New options Available

· (Class) – New options Available

Opening the titles tab, I noticed I was granted another 10 points, which could make the difference on life and death next time, still unsure how to proceed about points I left them unassigned for now, I was pleased though, remembering that putting 5 points in Strength had actually made me quite stronger.

Titles

Bonuses

Tutorial – Extreme

+10 Status Points

The Weak Prevails

+10 Status Points

Opening my status, it was clear to me I had quite a bit of Essence to spare.

Name:

Nathan Brunet

Level:

1

Next Level:

0/100 Essence

Path:

None

Aspect

None

Class:

None

Essence

4550

I was still unsure how many Status points I would get by levelling up, so I committed 100 Essence to level myself up to level 2.

Name:

Nathan Brunet

Level:

2

Next Level:

100/200 Essence

Path:

None

Aspect

None

Class:

None

Essence

4450

After levelling up, I checked my status points and I was surprised it only gave me 2 points, my titles so far had given me 20, meaning I was pretty much a level 10 already, I just had to make sure to use the status points in a wise manner, my mind was still unsure of how to proceed. I would have to get back to the Safe Zone and explore what other Skills, Classes and build I should go for, there was also the Arcana which intrigued me, but I didn’t want to commit to the wrong idea just yet…

Sleeping that night didn’t come easy, one because have you ever tried to sleep on top of a tree branch on a sleeping bag? I thought so too. Although I was tired, my mind as most nights back on Earth refused to be turned off, I kept thinking about Brandon, an unknown man until then, who died in front of me while I could do nothing about it, I thought about Earth, family and friends, which until this point I hadn’t had the opportunity to ponder about, how would my mom be? Even though we lived in different countries if I got back, I would like to go looking for her… my friends that I lived with, would have they gone to the tutorial or stayed? I had recently been left by someone but still cared about her, how would she adapt to the changes? Surely, she had always been very smart and cunning, she would be fine.

How would it be going back to Earth? With all the changes it was going through. Would people abuse each other, or would they collaborate? I knew throughout my relationships that people thought and behaved in different ways; would those who gained power abuse it? Surely some would, but some would try to stick by the rules… I knew after today that I needed to get stronger, I need to learn how to survive here and thrive, it was one of those nights you are wide awake and you just want to clean and reorganise your room, so the next day you will wake up to something different. However, it wasn’t my room but my life and Status. The moment I had jumped down on that Boar, I had felt alive, as alive as I ever felt my whole life, I instinctively KNEW I could do it and improve, I would just have to change my mindset, become something else. Easier said than done obviously…

As my mind thought about these and other things, my eyes started getting heavy and I drifted into sleep.

…

A couple hours later, or what I assumed to be a couple hours later, I was woken up by my skill ‘Detect Danger’, it was buzzing in my mind, what I started to call it, as buzzing described well the feeling it had on my brain. I subconsciously activated ‘Hide Presence’ and very, very slowly started coming out of my sleeping bag, one of the largest branches was quite high above the ground, around 4 meters and it hid the whole of me if you looked it from underneath. As I came out of it, I noticed there were about three dwarf-sized creatures coming this way, I reckon they had about 1.5 meters, with elongated ears, big dark eyes and a greenish, bluish skin colour, even though it was night time I could guess they would blend well with the terrain as the majority of trees had either green or bluish leaves. They also wore basic tribal clothing, covering only their genitals even though it was quite cold at night-time, two of them had simple spears and the other one seemed to have some sort of crude mace.

As soon as they approached a bit more I could use ‘Analyse’ on one of them.

Monster: Forest Goblin [Level: 12]

It seemed like I wouldn’t be able to sleep that night….