Chapter 25: Intervention
It had been a couple of days since Sam met up with the surviving group of participants. While there was some tension in the beginning, he was lucky to find out that there were some in the group that had a magical ability to detect the truth. So, even though he couldn’t actually show the others the messages from the system that took him to another planet in another universe, they were at least able to be reassured that he actually was a human and a participant of this tutorial instance and they could verify that he was telling the truth when he said that he simply wasn’t on-site at the time that the system pulled everyone together after enough mini-bosses had been defeated. A lot of the trust he was able to build also came from the fact that he could heal the others. Evidently very few had chosen to go for a class that could directly heal others, so his help was actually very much appreciated. There was a bit of a kerfuffle when he tried to show his healing abilities directly the first time in front of the group, on account of the fact that his healing involved shooting people with his bow. It was a good thing that the results of his Signature Skill spoke for themselves. Also the word of some of the ones in the group who remembered Sam from the very first mission to survive the goblin horde helped in verifying his identity.
As he’d eventually come to know during the process of trying to explain himself, the name of the pretty woman with the red hair, freckles, and green eyes was Fiona. Back on normal Earth before all this stuff happened, she had been a legal assistant in Ireland. Now though she was somewhat of the de facto leader of the surviving participants. Apparently most of the participants didn’t spread out and so there were only a handful of large groups throughout the tutorial. The largest of which, Fiona had become the leader purely because of her advice on things. Among the others in her original group, it seemed that she was the most familiar with the kind of fiction that could help inform their decisions under the system’s purview in the tutorial and thereby increasing their chances at survival. It also didn’t hurt that she was charismatic, decisive, and kind. When the system had pulled all the remaining groups together, they held somewhat of an election between the leaders of the different groups and Fiona ended up being the one voted to lead the strategy on dealing with the final boss. This was mostly because of the fact that it was her group which suffered the least casualties among those that had teamed up over the course of the tutorial. It was her group that hunted the most mini-bosses among them all, with them having taken on five of the mini-bosses and the other groups having taken on two each. Of course that tenth one that they hadn’t been able to account for when they were brought together was the one that Sam had killed himself at the end of the Goblin Road.
Over the course of the past few days, Sam had been mostly focused on supporting the group by healing those that the other healers couldn’t get to in time. He also acted as somewhat of an emergency evac whenever someone found themselves in a particularly tough spot. He would weave in and out of the battlefield using his Inexorable Stride to bring out of harm’s way the ones that he thought would not be able to handle whatever issue had come up. Even though the fight was against the final boss, waves of different creatures would attack at regular intervals. His attempts at trying to get someone out of the radius of a massive fireball from the turtle was actually how he found out that he could bring other people with him when he used his walking skill as long as he was carrying them in some way. He had scooped up a middle aged English teacher out of the way of the fireball after he noticed that she hadn’t realized that there was a gap between the mages’ barriers that would’ve funneled some of the incoming flame directly onto her face.
While he had been deciding to focus on supporting everyone, Sam was reaching the point that it might be about time for that to change. The group still wasn’t making any progress toward actually depleting the boss’ healthpool and the intermittent waves of highly aggressive wildlife was only making everyone’s resources slowly dwindle down with no reasonable change in sight. Having made up his mind, he approached Fiona to see what she would say.
“Hey Fiona, are you free to talk?”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“Oh yeah for sure, we’ve only been under siege by a giant turtle for the last four days.” She replied, rolling her eyes in the process.
“Actually that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I feel like you and I both know that whatever we’re doing right now is not sustainable. The waves of monsters are starting to get more intense and at least from my perspective you guys haven’t been able to do anything against the turtle aside from being stuck in a stalemate with it. I don’t really know how exactly experience gets calculated when leveling up in groups which is why I’ve stayed away for now. Anyway I wanted to see what you would think about letting me take care of the turtle or at least the part about bringing its health down to zero. So, what do you think?”
“Samson, what!? How are you supposed to do anything, aren’t you just a really weird healer for the most part? Also wait, you’re telling me you’ve been able to do something about the turtle this whole time and you’ve just sat back healing people? I mean don’t get me wrong, we’d probably have a way higher rate of casualties right now if it weren’t for you, especially since we weren’t prepared for the sudden increase in difficulty of the monster waves supporting the guardian turtle but also what could you possibly do that would turn this situation around?” Fiona said incredulously.
“Yeah like I said, I don’t know how experience gets shared when hunting monsters in groups since I’ve been solo during the tutorial this entire time except for, well now and right at the beginning. I don’t want to be stepping on anyone’s toes.” Sam replied, with something of a blush creeping its way up his face and into his cheeks. For some reason he was feeling quite a bit of embarrassment about the solitude that he chose for himself and even more so the ensuing lack of knowledge regarding system mechanics when it came to operating in groups that came from that exact isolationist tendency.
With a sigh and a look of exasperation, Fiona gave Sam the greenlight to do whatever it was he was trying to do. Evidently even she wasn’t completely sure how group leveling worked but figured that the effort the others had been putting in for the better part of the past week would mean something to the system… Hopefully. Either way, after letting some of the other leaders know, they all voted to have Sam do something. They all saw the current situation as a slowly losing battle if nothing changed.
Without any more fanfare, Sam readied a Requiem Arrow, using his magic and qi to pump the aspects of soul corrosion and death as much as he could currently handle. He may have been forcibly tiered up in order to survive his signature skill, but it wasn’t looking like it was enough to make pushing the skill to its limits come without any struggle or consequence. Before letting the arrow fly, he also made the decision to enhance the arrow’s ability to archive what it touched in accordance with his trait. Truth be told, Sam found the guardian turtle quite cute and would have very much preferred not to have to slay the beast but he couldn’t see any other way at the moment so he at least wanted to make sure to remember the thing properly in his archive. As his skill formed the magical arrow, he could feel it pull on his understanding of the form of reaping, in a way that felt like how it was when he pushed his walking skill and it connected to his comprehension of the form of space. He wasn’t sure if the amount of power he was pouring into the skill was overkill or not but he trusted Fiona at the very least to keep him safe if he passed out. Once he felt ready, he let the Requiem Arrow fly, marking this as the first time he’d used his signature skill with the express purpose of bringing something to death. A moment that he could feel his trait activating and subsequently recording.
The moment he confirmed the skill made contact with the soul surface of the turtle, he let out a breath that he didn’t know he was holding. He watched as his skill corroded a soul far faster than he had ever seen before, granted it was the first time the skill specifically was used for that purpose but still. He was so focused on what he was doing that he hadn’t even noticed that the whole battlefield had gone silent while staring at him with mixed looks of disbelief, awe, and fear. Before anything else happened, Sam felt the onset of that same kind of sensation that takes place when you lie down and relax for a long time then suddenly jump up, making you feel light headed because of the sudden change in blood pressure.
“I really need to stop doing that.” Sam said, before darkness once again took over his consciousness. As the final dregs of consciousness left his mind, Sam found himself really hoping that he was right about being able to trust Fiona; she seemed nice but also who knows if his brain was just being biased because of a pretty girl.
