Tutorial.23

While I was relaxing, I couldn't help but reflect on how strange the resistance was. I wasn't tired in the traditional sense; I didn't feel the urge to take a nap, and my muscles didn't hurt or anything. During the fight itself, I didn't feel even a second of exhaustion, but as soon as the battle was over, a deep tiredness overcame me.

Now that I think about it, maybe it was mental exhaustion, not physical. Not that there was a statistic for that. Or maybe willpower helped resist it? I wasn't sure. I could only try to guess, but considering I didn't feel mentally less overwhelmed, even with all the stat increases, it didn't seem to be the case.

It made sense that it would be exhausting to have to constantly focus on interpreting the feelings from my Perception Sphere while also being under constant pressure. It was still active, making me vaguely aware of everything within an 8-meter radius, but I wasn't actually using it directly. It was hard to put into words, but maybe someone would say it had an "active" mode and a "passive" one.

Not that I knew how it worked. I only knew what was inside it. It wasn't as if I "saw" anything, I just knew the shapes and sizes of everything around me. It would take a lot of experimentation to figure out if it was really possible to control it differently, but something told me I wouldn't get answers just by sitting there. So, I decided to go through the system notifications and check my level gains. And man, there were a lot of notifications.

["You killed [Human (G) - level 3 / Warrior (Light) - level 6] – Bonus experience gained for killing an enemy above your level. 365 XP gained."]

["You killed [Human (G) - lvl 2 / fatal shot - lvl 5] – Experience gained. 243 XP gained."]

["You killed [Human (G) - level 3 / Warrior (Light) - level 7] – Bonus experience gained for killing an enemy above your level. 471 XP gained."]

["'DING!' Class: [fatal shot] reached level 6 - Stat points allocated, +1 free point"]

["'DING!' Race: [Human (G)] reached level 3 - Stat points allocated, +1 free point"]

["You killed [Human (G) - level 3 / Warrior (Light) - level 6] – Experience gained. 394 XP gained."]

["You killed [Human (G) - level 3 / fatal shot - level 7] – A small amount of bonus experience gained for killing an enemy with a class above your class level. 654 XP gained."]

["You killed [Human (G) - level 4 / fatal shot - level 9] – Bonus experience gained for killing an enemy above your level. 1167 XP gained."]

["'DING!' Class: [fatal shot] reached level 7 - Stat points allocated, +1 free point"]

The gains were good, and I was especially surprised to see that Prity was level 9, with lots of tutorial points too, indicating he had really killed a lot of beasts. He was strong, after all. This made me question whether Charles had lied when he said he was level 9, but honestly, it didn't matter much for now.

He only had one free point left from the last level-up, since during the fight, he spent all his points on perception. Perception was, without a doubt, his favorite stat, and he felt it had great synergy with his lineage skill. Based on that, he decided to just throw his single free point into perception as he opened his newly updated status menu.

Here are the lines with the information inside brackets:

["Status"]

["Name: Alexander Wood"]

["Race: [Human (0) – lvl 3]"]

["Class: [fatal shot – lvl 7]"]

["Profession: N/A"]

["Health Points (HP): 257/340"]

["Mana Points (MP): 88/140"]

["Stamina: 151/210"]

["Stats"]

["Strength: 21"]

["Agility: 22"]

["Stamina: 21"]

["Vitality: 34"]

["Resistance: 13"]

["Wisdom: 14"]

["Intelligence: 14"]

["Perception: 37"]

["Willpower: 12"]

["Free Points: 0"]

Once again, he confirmed the strangeness of the resistance stat. Due to level increases, his maximum stamina had risen by 40, which also raised his current stamina by 40. Ultimately, this led to more stamina than when he started the fight. He also decided to check the tutorial panel now that he was messing with the menus.

["Tutorial"]

["Duration: 2 months 30 days and 2:27:39"]

["Total survivors remaining: 987/1200"]

["XP collected: 4629"]

So many people had died, and the first day hadn't even passed, I thought. 213 people dead. More than a sixth of everyone who entered the tutorial. Not that I had helped this statistic in any way, being personally responsible for nine of those deaths.

I had no idea if my XP was a lot or not, but according to the rules, I got half of the XP from the people I killed, so I assumed it must have been a lot. If Prity gave me 1167, I'd have double that in 2334, which was still just a little more than half of what I had right now. Not that I knew what the hell those points could be used for yet.

My XP amount was quite respectable, however, since Prity was level 9 and I was only level 7. But in a way, it made sense, since I took the accumulated points from people who had killed a lot of enemies to reach their levels. I also had no idea how much XP each enemy gave. I had gotten over 300 from the level 10 boar, and that had been a shared kill.

For the badgers, I got 4 points from the level 3 ones and 8 from the level 4 ones. The sample size was too small, but maybe the points just doubled for each level? Though this seemed insane. It kind of matched with the level 10 boar, which gave a total of 512, and I got over 300 of that from a shared kill.

But that would mean a level 11 beast would give 1024, a level 12 would give 2048, then 4096, and so on. It seemed too extreme for it to work like that. A level 20 beast would give an insane 524,288 points, which was absolutely crazy if it were true. Right, I had no idea how strong a level 20 beast would be, but I doubted they would justify such a huge point increase.

Once again, I shook my head to dismiss those useless thoughts. It was a waste of time to think about it, and I would just have to hunt beasts to find out how many points each level gave easily.

I closed all my menus and stood up, feeling revitalized both mentally and physically, despite having relaxed for only ten minutes. I walked to where I had fought Prity, going to the body of the dead man. I could still see the reluctance on his face, but nothing could be done about that. We fought, and I came out victorious.

I had already decided to give the man a respectful farewell, but soon found the obstacle of not having anything to dig with. I refused to leave his body for a pack of badgers or grown deer to eat, so simply leaving it out in the open wasn't an option. Logically, this seemed like a waste of time, but well, sometimes you can't be logical.

Instead, I decided to make a small fire. It was easy to start a fire by creating sparks with two daggers, one of which I had taken from one of the dead fatal shots. It wasn't by any means a glorious pyre, but it got the job done. I solemnly watched as the corpse burned, waving at what had once been a powerful enemy as the flames consumed it.

Despite being in the same spot for a few hours, preparing and burning the body, no one showed up. I guess Charles had decided not to send any more potential assassins after me for now.

With that finished, I went to a nearby river and washed myself and my cloak. I took a bath with my full clothes on, still wearing my shirt and pants. The only things I took off were my shoes and socks, as wetting them somehow seemed like an overkill.

After cleaning up and having my cloak returned to being more brown than red, I decided to head out once again and finally begin my solo hunt. Excited to finally get started, I smiled and ran deeper into the forest once again, like a child entering an amusement park.

Charles had sent Prity and the other fighters with the stealth skill away nearly an hour ago. They knew they should return to the original camp once the job was done, and he almost expected to find them there. It took a good 40 minutes to walk with the newbies to the camp, arriving with little difficulty along the way.

The situation was a bit odd as they walked, but Charles had spoken with the young man named Lucas and found him quite competent. He was good at reading people, and his group of survivors clearly listened to and respected him. He was protective of them, but Charles only saw that as a bonus. Despite interacting with the young man for just over half an hour, he already had a minimum amount of respect for him.

The only thing that bothered him was the lack of information he had gotten about the fatal shot he had sent Prity to chase.

Lucas claimed he had been a colleague of theirs before the initiation, and that was it. He seemed to barely know the guy. The only thing he knew was that he was good with a bow and liked to stay alone. It was annoying, but in the end, it didn't matter much, since the fatal shot was probably already dead by the time the matter was discussed.

...

1600 Words