Chapter 7: First Instance of an Instance

“Alright, although I can’t explain why I’m locked out, you can’t even view those system features. We need to move on and figure them out later. There is much more you must learn, and for now, you need to adjust to the changes in your body and get to know how we can work together.” Pneuma summarized.

Trint stood up and started to stretch and immediately noticed some changes. He felt more agile and springy, like he was a coiled spring ready to shoot. He also was aware of his mana and the desire to hold a sword.

“Head out of town, and we will find some instances. You have access to some of the storage in your ring. More will become available in time. For now, tell the ring what you want, and if it is in there, you will see the available items from your request in your mind’s eye or a system window. Try thinking of the word, ‘armor’ or ‘clothes,’” Trint moved to the table across from the food he laid out.

After eating, while looking through his new family ring, Trint selected some basic clothes, a pair of nice-looking boots, and a couple of pieces of light armor. They seemed like improvements on the starter gear, but subtle runes were etched into each article on the insides and parts hidden from outside view. After staring at them for a bit, Pneuma explained they were simple runes to mend and repair moderate damage.

‘Don’t stare at them too closely,’ Pneuma warned. ‘They will just give you a headache at your level.’ The armor and gear, otherwise, appeared to be nothing extraordinary that might draw unwanted attention. They were just leather-made pieces of armor with some metal placed between layers covering his chest.

Trint had walked past the edge of the town area. He had gotten system warnings and dismissed them as they popped up in his mental view. There was an invisible boundary that monsters couldn’t pass through. Trint knew a little from his earlier study of the Starter Guide, and Pneuma explained that there were Instances for additional challenges. Roaming monsters were good to fight, but the more significant rewards and experience points were found in the dungeon-like Instances.

Trint now stood in front of his first Instance. They are called Instances since any party who entered would be sent to a separate but nearly identical area to fight similar monsters or other creatures for EXP to increase levels. Trint was hungry to improve his stats and level. Not completely understanding what changes had happened since meeting Jack, he was eager to fight some monsters and find out.

The guide explained instances could be repeated nearly indefinitely but were only helpful or efficient to repeat for leveling if the instance was at or above your level. Also, rewards for completion were better the higher the instance level compared to your level.

“Ok, here I go,” Trint spoke to the shimmering distortion that was the instance entrance. His starter vending machine [Sword - Basic i11] in hand, he stepped into the distorted space, his balance was thrown off, and he stumbled to the ground. He nearly sliced himself in the leg with his sword.

“Wow, Pneuma. A warning would have been nice.” Trint said, ‘Pneuma, I’m just going to call you “P” if I say something out loud to you. That, ok?’ Trint thought to Pneuma.

‘Not really to my liking, but I recognize my presence's convenience and potential obscuring. But when not out loud, please use my name. Names are important, and I will teach you how to use True names eventually.’ Pneuma acquiesced for the sake of convenience. ‘Now I need you to take that sharp stick and put the pointy end into the monster things.’ Pneuma ended with a laugh.

‘Right, and you forgot, don’t die.’ Trint thought to Pneuma with a bit of sarcasm.

Looking around, there wasn’t much in the immediate view. First, he went from early morning i11 to somewhere else in the middle of the night. At least it was dark out, and he thought he was in a forest. Trint was standing in a low spot between hills with trees. It seemed peaceful seeing a few stars between the branches of the trees. If not for the creepy silence, it reminded him of camping as a kid. Trint took another step, and ‘Crack.’ The sound of a stick he stepped on rang like a gunshot in the creepy silence.

Standing still for ten seconds, Trint thought he was in the clear for now. Until there was a rustle in the trees above, looking up and around him, he felt he could see small bears in the trees, like a koala bear.

‘Are you kidding me? Koala bears? Is this now Australia?’ Trint was about to laugh until one of the ‘furry bears’ fell onto his head and bit him.

Damage: Minus 2 Health Points/ Health 48 Health points remaining.

Minimizing the combat play-by-play, Trint used his left hand to strip the bear from his head and held it out in front of him. It was soft but not like a koala, more like his childhood teddy bear. He did not hesitate to use the short sword and made a shish kabob. His blade was now coated in a wet liquid that glistened even in the forest's dark. More bears were jumping out of the trees, and a small, slow-moving herd started to circle Trint. The pain was minimal despite taking a teddy bear bite to the head and some claw marks on the sides of his face. Trint was ready to unleash some frustration. It was time to destroy the two-foot-tall teddy bears. He considered if this had any bearing on his childhood trauma of nightmares and the comfort his teddy bear brought him when he was four. How would 4-year-old Trint do if he saw Trint now killing Teddy Bears?

Laughing aloud, Trint began crouching and stomping toward the nearest bear, running the sword through the chest or any part of the bear he could. After three bears were skewered, the sword was heavy and unwieldy, so he went with his primary pre-system skill and swung for the fences. Teddy bears flew off the sword and freed his blade from the bears. They must have weighed 10 pounds each and so not just filled with stuffing as Trint was now covered in splatter from their blood. Four down and ready for more. Trint began his teddy bear massacre.

About 20 minutes later and a 100 or so teddy bears down, Trint found himself about half a mile away from his starting point. He felt a pull in the direction he was headed and decided to follow whatever instinct was pulling him. He also hadn’t heard Pneuma say much during this not-so-epic destruction of bears.

‘Pneuma, you still there? You’ve been pretty quiet this whole time.’ Trint was sure Pneuma was waiting for the fighting to stop and didn’t want to distract Trint from his first real fight.

‘Honestly, Pneuma, does this count as an instance? I wouldn’t call this a challenge, even if I only had my starter hunting knife. It would have taken longer with a knife. I already had to bend down to swing at them.

Pneuma didn’t respond, but through their connection, Trint heard a low growl and rustling like the wind, but more like an exhale from a dragon or some giant beast. No words, just the impression of a bored giant. Trint knew it was Pneuma, but not what he was trying to communicate.

‘I’m just glad to be finally battling monsters out in the big wide world.’ Trint mentally shared with his silent partner. ’Cute and nearly cuddly monsters. It’s not what I imagined for my first instance and fighting,’ Trint stopped his thoughts as he was way off-topic and hadn’t been paying attention to his surroundings.

Walking over the crest of another wooded hill, the pull toward this area increased. Now in view was a clearing and a fuzzy brown bush about the size of a car. He paused and looked closer. The ‘bush’ was deflating a bit, then inflating.No sound, just movement. Still, Trint had read plenty of fantasy books, and this was probably a boss fight.

Going with his gut instinct, Trint Shoved his sword, hilt deep into what he assumed was the sleeping boss bear.

As it stood up to its full height. This was a Teddy Bear bigger than even a bear from Earth, standing about 9 feet tall. Trint held onto his sword and was momentarily lifted with the bear. His weight pulled his Sword out of the back of the bear, and he fell right behind the feet of this monster teddy bear.

Stunned a little, Trint began to scramble back from the bear. The bear took a few seconds to turn, but then a big lumbering step was all it took, and it was immediately in front of Trint. Rolling to his right side, Trint almost let go of his sword as he moved over it in his right hand. Fortunately, he didn’t cut himself. The bear was big but unable to turn quickly after it stomped down where Trint had been.

Trint got to his feet and swung at the bear’s left leg as he circled further behind it. His swing carried deep into the leg, stopping at a large leg bone. The bear roared, more like a real bear than Trint liked. It turned and swung with its big left paw. Trint instinctually blocked with his sword and ended up cutting through the back of its foot. Barely hanging from the rest of the arm, the bear became enraged. It was trying as it may circle; its now damaged paw, useless for hitting. Trint continued hacking away and staying behind the bear as it bled and was continually hacked at. Trint got more confident and a smile formed on his face.

‘This is fun.’ Trint thought.

After another few minutes of slicing, the boss's health was whittled down, and it began to lose balance and tipped over, falling like a tree toward Trint. But Trint was aware enough to keep circling and avoided the big bear.

System Message: Congratulations! Level 1 Tutorial Instance Complete. Please Access Instance Rewards by Touching Globe on the Dais.

Trint looked toward the invisible pull he felt. It went in the direction behind where the bear started. There was a light coming from a stand. It was like a podium with a sculpture displayed on it; instead, there was a glowing globe hovering just above the top of the stand. The glow was a dark green color that shined through the globe and cast its light on everything around the dais.

Trint walked up to the basketball-sized globe and reached out to touch it.

Instance Rewards: $1,000 Q11, Belt Knife level 1, Cloth Cap Level 1, and additional EXP.

Accepting the rewards, they instantly transferred to Trint’s larger storage ring. He had the original from the Starter kit and the one Jack gave him, but everything went towards his family ring.

Trint looked up the hill beyond the podium and reward and saw a large gateway. Not an actual gate but a large square, 10 feet by 10 feet, that shimmered like the opening to the instance.

‘Must be the exit.’ Trint decided. Walking through, Trint found himself outside the instance entrance, facing away from the shimmering door. He was tempted to murder some more teddy bears but honestly wanted to see more of what the instances had to offer.

“I know this is a tutorial iteration level, but that was so weird to see the bears. If they were Koalas, that would have been more of a challenge. Teddy bears were a soft transition from Earth and his old 9-5 office job. If it were something else, I might not have been ok when I saw the blood. I kind of expected goblins or kobolds.” Trint laughed to himself.

Exploring a little further around, he found entrances to several other instances. He decided it was essential to keep getting EXP and become familiar with fighting.

Instance number two was more difficult. The enemy turned out to be rats the size of little dogs.20-pound rats full of nasty fur and claws. Trint was happy to dispatch them but reverted to default swings of his sword.

Finally catching a break between mini swarms of rats, Trint pulled up his mental list of skills.

Movement Skill (Passive): [Increased Movement Speed], [Dodge]

Defensive Skill (Passive): [Increased Health Regeneration]

Magic Projection Skills: [Mana Bolt]

Sword Skills: [Strike], [Block]

‘Wow! So, I have only been using passive skills. After a few minutes of practicing the [Mana Bolt] and his sword skills [Strike], [Block], [Dodge] a little trial and error, he proceeded deeper through the cave system toward the pull of the exit of the instance.

What Trint found was that the use of Mana was effortless. Like walking, once he figured out the first step, his body realized the rest. Or, if his mind realized he could do it, he didn’t have to struggle to continue actively concentrating on it. The cost was minimal, but after ten mana blasts in a row, Trint ran out of mana. It felt like his hands went numb, and he had a brain freeze from eating ice cream too fast. But honestly, he was expecting worse.

He continued through the cave system and used his sword skills.

Before the system, Trint was a decent baseball player. And swinging his sword an hour ago against teddy bears was fun. But while fighting with his active sword skills, Trint felt like he was in a martial art movie. He was the Karate Kid or a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. ‘Donatello had the swords, right?’ Trint tried to remember.

It was unreal to feel the Stamina drain and turn into making his movements smooth and his blade track exactly where he intended. He felt like he could kill a rat with a clean slice now. As opposed to his baseball stance from before, his feet moved smoothly across the ground and set him up for each swing. But after using the skills for the sword and trying to use them continually, his resources ran out. It’s not that he couldn’t fight once they ran out. He could still swing his sword. It just wasn’t as powerful and controlled. It also wasn’t as fun, and he was much more efficient with any of his skills up and running.

Trint tried to limit the number of resources that went towards each skill. After a while, he realized that his Agility and Memory could throttle up or down the use of his resources for skills.

So based on his experimenting, he could run his movement skills at a low level almost continually. This boosted his speed to a little faster than expected and occasionally activated the sword style to kill an occasional rat. The rest got his unskilled slices. And it often took more than one swing when not empowered. These were giant rats.

He was approaching the boss fight. Trint rested and restored his resource pools. Walking into the cave, he saw a refrigerator-sized rat. Alternating his skills helped with his already diminished reserves of Stamina and Mana. [Mana Bolt] proved helpful in keeping the Rat at a distance. Trint decided to keep as far away as possible and continued shooting the boss rat while running around it.

The rat boss tried to catch him, but Trint could keep his distance in the large room. Each shot from his [Mana Bolt] magically burnt the fur and flesh. His occasional cut created deep slices into its muscle, and a couple of hits to its ribs sank deeper. Eventually, Trint saw his Mana run low enough that he stopped shooting it and decided he needed to finish it before his Stamina use forced him to resort to unskilled fighting. He stopped and waited for the rat to lunge. He used [Dodge] and drove his sword deep into the rat’s neck as he jumped to its side, hoping to hit an artery and end the fight. The rat’s cry of pain also revealed it had weakened. As Trint pulled his sword free, blood sprayed over his face and chest. He rushed away after the attack and kept his distance. Clearing the blood from his face, he ran blindly, trying to get his vision clear. Expecting an attack, he opened his eyes to the sight of a bloody rat lying on the floor. It was still breathing, but Trint thought it was almost dead. Trint took a risk, jumped onto the rat’s back, and stabbed the sword into the neck. There was resistance before the spine cut through, and the rat died. Trint jumped down from the dead rat.

System Message: Congratulations! Level 1 Tutorial Instance Complete. Please Access Instance Rewards by Touching Globe on the Dais.

Quickly the body began to dissolve into mist. Only Trint remained, who blended in well with the blood-covered room.

Trint grabbed the rewards and exited the instance.

‘Well, that was a good run, and I feel good about those skills. Time to get some rest and come back for more training tomorrow. Any objections, Pneuma?’ Trint asked.

‘That is up to you. Your performance today showed improvement and adaptation to your situation. I would say you deserve a chance to rest and consider your progress,’ Pneuma stated.

Trint agreed with the assessment and made it home without issues. After cleaning the blood and gunk from rats off his sword and gear, he showered, finding more blood in his hair and some fur from the bears that had been stuck to him. Cleaned and refreshed, he ate some food, then went to get what he thought was a well-earned night of sleep.