He locked eyes with the lion as the barrier shattered. Time slowed to a crawl as Static Bolt formed. He imbued his legs with as much spiritual energy as he could. He knew he was no match for the lion’s power, so he gambled it all on speed. He reached the lion less than half a second before its claws would’ve ripped apart. He slammed an imbued fist into its nose and then unleashed his skill. The electricity blasted into the lion’s face, and this time it drew blood. He leaped backwards to avoid an attack from the lion and unleashed another Static Bolt. The lion reacted in time to avoid the impact, but the attack still blinded it for a moment. Maximilian landed a right hook that would’ve made a professional boxer jealous. The bones in his wrist screamed in pain.
He leaped backwards to avoid another swipe of the lion’s claws. The lion became a blur of golden fur as it chased after him. The lion forced him into a high stake game of cat and mouse. After thirty minutes, the pair had exchanged several attacks. The lion pushed his robe’s array to its limits, and his body was a latticework of slashes. He avoided yet another attack from the lion and stopped twenty feet away from the lion. Despite how he looked, he felt wonderful. He wasn’t sure how, but spiritual energy empowered the lion’s body. Energy that the lion had to burn just as fast as he had. From what he could tell, the lion had more energy than he did, but it couldn’t use it. The beast lacked skill. Still, the lion was smarter than he had given it credit.
“I am not sure you can understand me, and I am not sure if it would matter.” Maximilian began. He wasn’t sure why he felt compelled to speak, nor did he know why the Lion didn’t attack. “You are the strongest thing I’ve fought so far. Thank you.” He pushed energy into his skill. There were only enough for three more shots, which meant they would finish soon. Either he would win or he would die. The realization was calming for a reason he couldn’t put his finger on. He wasn’t afraid anymore. Static Bolt and bluish-white electricity crackled. The lion growled as they stood there. The forest faded into nothing as he took a breath.
They shattered that serenity as they both launched into a blur of movement. Maximilian ducked as a claw the size of a dinner plate tried to remove his head. Electricity slammed into the Lion’s mouth less than a second later. He activated Prismatic Barrier just in time to avoid the lion’s retaliation. Prismatic Barrier broke as he delivered two straights to its jaw with enough force to shatter concrete. For the first time, it was the lion’s bones that gave way. Static Bolt activated for the second time as the lion tried to escape. This time he caught the beast in its left eye. Fresh blood dripped down its face as it unleashed another roar. Maximilian took a step back as the wall of sound slammed into him. He dodged the lion’s next attack and countered with an uppercut. The lion struggled to hold itself up as they separated.
Maximilian bounced on the balls of his feet as he pushed the last of his energy into the sigil for Static Bolt. A wave of nausea as his reserve hit zero washed over him. He wiped blood from his mouth and charged the lion. The lion’s knifelike fangs felt like an abyssal maw as it threatened to rip him apart. A voice in the back of his head screamed at him that what he was doing was insane. That he should run away. That he could escape the lion. He wasn’t sure if it was the rational part of his mind or the fear or some mix of the two, and he didn’t care. He crushed the voice and grabbed both halves of the lion’s mouth. It felt like the weight of the world was pressing down on him. That if he relented for even a moment, it would crush him into nothing. He roared in manic defiance and launched Static Bolt down the lion’s gullet.
He released the lion and backpedaled as fast as his legs would carry him. The world seemed to freeze as if waiting to see what would happen next. An eternal moment that strained Maximilian’s nerves to the limit. When energy flooded his dantian, he collapsed like a marionette who had its strings cut. The energy was almost enough for a new level, but that was the last thing on his mind. He had won. He flopped backwards onto the soft grass and wanted nothing more than to sleep. He resisted the urge. The quest mentioned the lion, but there was no guarantee that it was the only thing. It would be insane if he did all that work only to be killed by a scavenger. Excitement replaced his nerves when he received a new notification.
Burgeoning Warrior: Solo kill an enemy 10 levels or more above you. All Attributes +2
Well, that answered what level the lion was. He wasn’t sure if the lion had titles, but if it didn’t, then it should have had around 39 attribute points. He assumed they got three points per level like he did. That didn’t explain why it had been so tough. If anything, he should’ve beaten faster. He had almost four hundred points spread across the whole set. The only thing that explained it was the difference between a lion and a human. Which made him concerned. He had assumed that everyone in the tutorial started from the same spot. At least on average, but what if that wasn’t the case? Humans were powerful thanks to tools and weapons. Not their natural gifts. Rather, it was our ability to outlast the rest of the animals. That and our ability to make tools. Could we compete against lizard people? Or people who could fly? When they got back, humanity might be at the bottom of the food chain. He flexed his hands as he glanced at the lion’s corpse. It was hard to know for sure, but he was confident that his strength was in the realm of legends, but was he stronger than guns? Tanks? Bombs? Could he take a bullet to the chest? It was impossible to know which meant he had to assume he was weak. He had to assume that whatever waited for him would be strong enough to kill him. He had to stay hungry.
As if to answer his thought, a pillar of white light engulfed him, and was teleported away from the forest. He was in the boundless white for a few moments before he received the familiar notifications.
Quest 4 Complete. Quest Grade: A. Reward Distribution has begun. Tutorial Title has been improved.
Tutorial 4th Quest: Complete the Fourth Quest of the Tutorial. Reward: All Attributes +10, Intelligence, Agility, Wisdom +5%
He tried to pull up his status screen to check how his points had changed, but it failed. He wasn’t sure if it was the room or something else, but he decided not to worry about it. Something that was made much easier when healing energy poured into his body. He couldn’t tell how long he had been there before the healing finished. When the white room faded, he flexed his fingers and checked his robes. He hadn’t been sure they would repair after that much damage, but they had. He tested out the array for a moment before he turned his attention to the table and his reward. The bag was archaic and not at all what he expected. From what he could tell, the bag was made of a black silk-like material that was tied at the top by a white rope. The bag was unadorned except for the handful of symbols that spread across the mouth.
If he hadn’t known better, he would’ve assumed it was a make-up or jewelry bag. Either way, it was beautiful in a subdued way. The bag was twice the size of his hand, which should make it easy to carry or even hide. He picked up the information slip and sent a bit of spiritual energy through it. It took him a second to process the information, and it was what he expected. The bag was called “Spatial Bag” and it was middle quality, which wasn’t as bad as it sounded. The bag should be large enough to hold everything he had and then much more. The bad had a rather annoying flaw. It had to be bound with blood. At first, he thought it was because of a design flaw, but that wasn’t it. According to the slip, it was a common practice for these items. You needed to bind them through blood. That would let you access the bag and its extra space. It also meant stealing one was difficult. The slip didn’t go into detail, but the most common method was to kill the person who owned that way their blood wouldn’t bind it anymore.
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He placed a finger into the bag along with a bit of spiritual energy. A second later, there was a sharp prick, and then his mind exploded with information. It was the inside of the bag that was not empty. There was a grey pill bottle occupying one of sixty-four slots. He reached into the bag and willed the bottle to appear. It took him a few seconds to figure out how to do it right. When he did, he removed the pills and nodded. They were healing pills. Five of them, to be exact, which should come in handy if that last battle was any indication of what to expect. He experimented with placing and removing things from the bottle for a few minutes before he had enough. He slipped the end of the rope into a loop on his robes and spun around. He wasn’t sure how strong the rope was, but he didn’t think it would break. He could tell that it had spiritual energy in it. Which should make it stronger than regular rope, but would it stand up against that lion’s claws? It would be stupid to lose his reward during a fight, but there wasn’t much he could do. With that taken care of, he took a bath.
The next day, he and the rest of the tutorial participants sat in the meeting hall as usual. The mood seemed lighter than usual as he looked around. He wouldn’t describe every as being happy, per se, but more positive. As if they had gotten used to the situation. He was sure that part of that was because of recent quest changes. It turned out most people got a storage item. They were all bags of some kind, though they weren’t all equal, from the conversations he could overhear. Most people’s bags had between sixteen and twenty item slots. The bags were different as well. Most people got shoulder bags, while some treants had fanny packs. Before he could reflect on that any further, a white pillar of light engulfed him and everyone else on the platform.
The teleportation lasted a moment before he found himself in a large chamber. It was an old Greek amphitheater. Only the central platform held the dwarven trio and a large globe-like object. The sphere was the size of a building and made him think of a giant snow globe or one of those electric spheres you could find at the science center. This sphere was dormant from what he could tell. It took a few more moments for the rest of the tutorial group to arrive. They were still segregated by ancestry, which didn’t make him feel better. He couldn’t tell if the Network had done that for safety or convenience.
“Fledgling!” Thrawn’s voice boomed throughout the room. “Now that you’ve shown you have the power to walk the road of the practitioner, it’s time to determine your affinities.” Thrawn paused for a moment. His gaze traveled over the crowd as if in search of a specific reaction. “This device behind me will read your soul and tell us with which Dao you have high affinities for. You may remember from your earlier lesson that cultivation is the act of pulling energy from the heavens into your body. That explanation is correct but also woefully inefficient. All cultivators have some connection to the heavens. That’s what lets you cultivate. Before you ask, no, we don’t know why some have that connection and others don’t. If you survive long enough, you might find the answer in the stars. Before you get yourselves tied in a not. Affinity is a scale. You can have more or less of it, but everyone has enough. Or else you wouldn’t be here. Now we are going to start on this half of the room.” He gestured to the side of the stands that held the Treants. “And go all the way around. Before we get started.” He said before pill bottles appeared in front of everyone. Maximilian didn’t need to read the bottle to know what they did and put it into the bag.
There were a few questions, but the process began without issue. The treants moved into single file lines as they approached the device. They were all too far away for Maximilian to pick up what Thrawn said to each person. Each person walked up-to the base of the globe and placed a branch against it. The orb then filled with various phenomena. For the treants, the most common ones were related to nature. The orb displayed plants of all kinds along with other natural phenomena. Most of the apparitions were just hollow images, but every once in a while something more real would appear. Sometimes it was the scent of freshly tilled earth or the smell of flowers. One person had something that felt like plants and poison, though he wasn’t sure if it was two different things or one specific thing. The treants weren’t the only ones that followed a theme. The merpeople were all themed around water and aquatic creatures. With one summoning the image of a shark. Everyone once in a while, it would add ice into the mix, but that was it.
By the time the lizard people began Maximilian had formed the beginnings of a hypothesis. Ancestries must have common affinities. water species held high affinities for the water daos, plants for plants and so on. Which made him curious about humanity. Either humanity would have no natural affinity, at which point they would have a sort of freedom the others didn’t, or Earth would learn of some ancient ancestor. He wasn’t sure which one would be better. He tried to read the dwarves’ reactions, but they gave nothing away. It was the lizardfolk that tested his theory the most. They had a theme of nature and poison, but there were others he didn’t understand. The most dominant impression was faith or maybe devotion. The symbols that would show up didn’t look like anything. At least not to him, but the lizardfolk seemed impressed by it. Each time it appeared, they would erupt into a hiss that made Maximilian’s skin crawl.
The harpies were about what he expected. Air was their most recurring theme, though a few would get other things like darkness or shadow. The strange thing about them was their lack of interest. They either didn’t care what the test said or didn’t understand it. The thing that drew a reaction was specific individuals. Some of them had more ornate plumages that either denoted them as leaders or some other VIP. Maximilian made a mental note to find out. If a chance presented itself. The process continued for several hours before humanity had its turn. The first person to go was a young red-headed woman with a scar over her right eye. When she placed her hand on the orb, a new form appeared. It was an ethereal fist that gave a feeling of war and violence. The apparition lasted about a second before it disappeared. The woman nodded at whatever Thrawn told her and then headed back into the stands.
The pattern repeated with each person. The elements were still the most common, but so were weapons. Sword and spear were the most common in that category. The apparitions were weaker than the others. As if they were less real than what the other ancestries could produce. Maximilian updated his assumptions. It seemed like humanities diversity would mean weaker affinities overall? If that were the case, they would probably be weaker. That wasn’t the case for everyone, though. Several people had impressive displays, including someone who summoned an odd star. It reminded him of something he would’ve found in a fantasy novel. The process had become mundane by the time Maximilian joined the line. Despite the few stand outs most people were unimpressive. From what he could tell, it wasn’t that their affinities were low. It was that everyone was average.
Before long it was Maximilian’s turn. He stepped onto the platform as his hands trembled. It felt like all eyes in the room were on him, and they probably were. He took a moment to relax, and then he walked up to Thrawn and the other dwarves. Thrawn signaled for him to wait a moment as the tester reset after the last display. When it was ready, he placed his palm on the device and shivered as an odd feeling passed through him. It was warm, as if someone had passed a candle flame across his insides. The feeling lasted for a few seconds before the orb released a soft hum. The sound calmed his worries as the orb withdrew a small bit of spiritual energy. When it finished, he withdrew his hand and waited. Thankfully, the orb hadn’t made him wait long.
