Chapter 24: Nearing tutorial’s End
Sam was lucky that there was a navigation function of sorts from the system which took the form of a translucent blue arrow showing up in his field of vision, presumably one that was pointing him in the direction of the fight against the final boss of the tutorial. Considering the battle was already under way, he made haste by walking with maximum effort in the direction the arrow pointed him to.
The boss is a giant turtle about the size of a modest house, the kind that you’d find in any major city’s suburban neighborhoods.. The other tutorial attendees are struggling against it because it periodically launches elemental magic attacks at them and they haven’t found any way to get past its defenses. Their only saving grace is the fact that the turtle doesn’t seem to move much and its physical attacks are rather slow. Because the elemental magic attacks are indiscriminate, it at least gives the participants the chance to evade or defend. When Sam reached what essentially amounted to a siege against a living fortress, the battle had already been raging for a few days. Teams of mages on the human side rotated amongst each other to put up barriers against most of the magical barrage while mages and tanks specialized in crowd control abilities focused on keeping the turtle as slow as possible so that they only had to deal with the magical attacks instead of both magical and physical offenses.
While it wasn’t quite the fight with a kaiju that he would think about when he was younger, it did scratch a similar itch toward fulfilling that fantasy. As he approached from a distance, Sam slowed down his pace a bit and started preparing requiem arrows primed for healing. Pushing some qi into his soul sight to enhance it, he surveyed the battlefield and looked for any of the souls on the human’s side of the battle which showed the greatest instability or deterioration as those were the most likely ones to be in need of healing.
After a few tense moments of making sure no one would die right in front of him again when he had the ability to do something about it, Sam finally turned his sights on the giant turtle. The thing looked custom built for defense and battles of attrition. Luckily his requiem arrows had no need to physically hit things as long as it could touch the soul of his target. As he prepared a requiem arrow with an intense focus on its aspect of soul corrosion and pain removal he gave pause for a moment as he thought about how his intervention with damaging the boss would affect the rewards of the other people participating in the fight. So far, Sam was already quite pleased with what he’d gotten out of the tutorial and from his perspective he was quite equipped to deal with whatever madness was ongoing planetside. However, if he shot that turtle with a requiem arrow and he ended being the only participant to damage the thing there was a chance that the other people would barely benefit from the whole ordeal. This thought was enough to change his mind for the moment. He decided that he could simply focus on supporting them for now by healing them with his magic and only stepping in when it really looked like there would be no progress toward taking down the boss.
By the time that he had made up his mind about focusing on supporting the group for the moment, the others had begun to realize his intervention. Because they were so focused on engaging the boss and maintaining their defenses, little attention was given to the rear of the group except for the bare minimum of what could serve as a watch in case of a sudden attack from the rear. There were a good few seconds of panic as some of the healers and the injured themselves realized that there was intervention of some kind going on and had not yet determined if it was the detrimental type. Very quickly the effects of his signature skill took hold and he could see the tense atmosphere ease up a little. One thing he hadn’t appreciated about soulsight until now was the amount of insight it gave into the emotional state of individuals. Because he had been so preoccupied on the other planet with saving as many from the battlefield as he could and previous to that he had mostly been alone, he had little chance to notice visible changes in a soul as affected by the emotions of whoever’s soul that was.
Hoping to prevent misunderstandings, Sam called out to the group of people as he got closer to their rearguard.
“Yo, hope I’m not too late to join the fight.”
He figured announcing his arrival to them would be safer than just showing up in their midst using his legendary skill. And while calling out to them probably was still better than what it would look like as him simply materializing in the middle of their formation, he still didn’t get the friendly welcome he half expected. This not so friendly welcome took the form of a number of fireballs to the face as soon as he raised his voice. To be fair Sam just assumed that the people were on edge on account of them fighting a building sized turtle and he could see how a sudden, unexpected, and unrecognizable voice might make some who were scared half to death a bit trigger happy with their magic. All told he wasn’t exactly mad at their reaction but the fireballs to his face did end up forcing him to do what he was avoiding which was approaching using his prized walking skill. He sort of needed to use it to dodge as he didn’t ready himself to step sideways not having expected quite the warm magical welcome. All things said and done, he essentially materialized in their midst with his walking skill as a byproduct of not wanting to get his face burned off. Well, he showed up right in front of the person in the rear guard that launched some spells at him, he didn’t actually show up in the center of formation. As he watched the frightened face of the man with the blazing wand, realization that he got much closer much faster than he intended struck Sam. He immediately raised his arms shouting:
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“I come in peace, I come in peace! Please don’t burn my hair off, balding already runs in my family and I want to keep whatever hair I have now for at least a little bit longer!”
While he kept his hands in the air, he saw a woman with fiery red hair and a Jackson Pollock painting’s worth of freckles near the front of the group bark some orders to the vanguard and subsequently turn around to face Sam. She told the people keeping their wands blazing to stand down. Sam muttered a word of thanks as he tentatively put down his arms.
“I’ve healed some of your people while I was walking over here,” Sam said, hoping that it would help improve how this first impression was going.
“Who are you, are you really human, and if you are, why are you only showing up now?” She asked Sam. Before he could respond she continued speaking “Everyone in our tutorial should’ve already been accounted for, when the final required mini boss was slain all participants in our tutorial instance were grouped together by the System. There was literally an announcement saying [All living participants present in this tutorial instance have been brought together to prepare for the fight against the final boss. You have 3 days before the boss will be available for summoning. An information packet containing basic information on the nature of the final boss has been given to all of you in order to aid your preparations. You may view this information only during the 3 day period that has been allotted to you all. Good luck and may you all keep growing]”
“Huh, I guess that means I’ve been gone for at least three days. Seems I was right to think there was a chance that time passed differently over there.” Sam thought out loud to himself as he basically almost forgot where he was standing when was able to read the system message that the other tutorial attendees had received when the last required mini boss was killed. The woman with the red hair snapped her fingers twice in front of Sam’s face.
“Hello… Earth to whoever you are. I asked you some questions, at the very least answer one of them. If you weren’t there when the system brought all the participants together then what exactly are you? You should mind your words by the way, the only reason I stopped the others from continuing their barrage of magic was because someone reported to me that a few of our people had been fixed up before the healers could get to them. Based on what you just said when I turned to face you, I’m assuming you had something to do with that.”
“I uhh… oh wait let me just try to show you my system message like you showed me yours about the final boss being available for summoning. Actually how are you even supposed to do that? My name is Samson by the way.” Sam said as he reached out his hand for a handshake.
The woman just blankly looked at his hand before turning her attention back to his face and said: “Just think about actively wanting to show the message and the system should help with the rest.”
As Sam tried what she told him, he ran into a bit of a predicament. She was right in saying that the system would help but he didn’t anticipate the message he received in response.
[You are unable to reveal the specific messages as received involving the opportunity that was given to you by the two sages. Restrictions should lessen as the new universe protection protocols change in nature in the time following the completion of all tutorial instances. Time will be normalized across all instances so that when participants are brought back to their worlds it will happen all at once regardless of how long each instance of the tutorial actually took. The protection protocols lessen in stages until they are eventually dropped completely once they are deemed unnecessary for the protection of the newly integrated universe.]
“Uhhhh you’re not going to like what I’m about to say.” Sam said as he attempted to explain the situation he was in. Before he could finish what he was saying, another wave of magical artillery from the giant turtle bombarded the barrier set up by the mages.
