DING.
[ TUTORIAL UPDATE ]
[ The period of the tutorial has been increased by 10 days. ]
[ Special events may occur during the next few days. ]
[ All alive participants should stay prepared. Good luck to everyone. ]
"What now?" Dustin muttered. He looked at the newly popped up screen in front of him.
This so-called tutorial was already a deadly nightmare. It was supposed to be fifteen days long, and now they were increasing its duration. Not only that, but a special event was going to occur. All of this made Dustin sigh internally. The system really did not want to make things easy for anyone.
He pushed the screen away and decided to stick to his efficient energy management philosophy. After eating his food, Dustin took a quick nap. It was highly recommended by his own lazy logic to rest whenever possible. He laid down on the hard stone, but he kept his perception bubble active.
Because he had just leveled up after killing that Level 16 Sweating Dog, his stats had jumped massively. His perception bubble now covered an area of forty-five meters in radius instead of twenty-eight. That was a huge upgrade. But he was still paranoid. The dog had completely bypassed his perception bubble earlier and sneaked up on him while he was resting. Because of that memory, Dustin was not actually fully asleep. He stayed half awake and kept his guard up the entire time.
Several hours passed quickly in the quiet dark of the cave.
'Guess the only thing I can do now is just go deeper and find some other way out of here before this new special event starts,' Dustin thought while stretching his stiff body. 'Otherwise I might die a miserable death in a stupid cave.'
He picked up his daggers and started walking deeper into the tunnel. As he walked, his mind started to wander.
'Why the hell am I even doing this?' Dustin thought. 'I have always been lazy. I never wanted to do any work that required intense physical labor since I was a kid.'
He kicked a small stone and watched it bounce away in the dark.
'Is it because this is more interesting than the things in the real world?' he asked himself. 'Back there, you study very hard and then compete with thousands of similar people for a single job. Then you get one and do it every single day for your whole youth, and then you just get retired. All of that just seemed way too boring to me. Anyway, even if this survival thing is slightly interesting, who in the world would want to die by some monster or die without achieving anything in his life?'
He shook his head and quickly threw those thoughts to the back of his mind. He continued walking down the winding tunnel for another two hours. The walls slowly started to widen, and the ground became more level.
DING.
A large, glowing blue screen appeared directly in his path. It illuminated the rocky walls around him.
[ You have found a Beginner Dungeon ]
[ Minimum level required to enter: Level 8 ]
[ Max people can enter: 5 ]
[ Rewards: 1000 points, Experience based on performance ]
[ Enter: Y / N ]
"A thousand points? That much?" Dustin said in excitement. "I can actually buy that cool Dagger with this many coins. And maybe I can also get some fast level ups."
He reached out toward the 'Y', but his hand stopped halfway. He was a practical guy, and his gamer instincts kicked in.
"But this is a dungeon," he said to the empty cave. "If I use the logic from the games I used to play, a dungeon must contain way more than one monster. And if it has some boss level monsters at the end, then I am surely dead meat."
He looked back over his shoulder. The darkness of the tunnel stretched endlessly behind him. He knew he could not go back the way he came. The corpse of the Sweating Dog was blocking the only exit, and its highly corrosive acid was probably still eating away at the floor. His only way out was forward.
"This is just a beginner dungeon," Dustin said to himself after assessing his situation. "The minimum level required is eight, and I am level ten. There is a solid chance of survival."
He pressed 'Y' on the screen.
DING.
The moment his finger touched the glowing letter, a heavy stone gate dropped from the ceiling behind him.
Boom.
The sound shook the ground beneath his boots. Dust fell from the ceiling as the exit sealed completely shut. A new red screen flashed in front of his face.
[ You have successfully entered the dungeon. ]
[ You cannot leave until you complete the clearing requirements. ]
[ Requirement: Kill 15 species of minimum Level 7. ]
"What? I can't leave?" Dustin shouted at the screen. "This was not mentioned earlier!"
He cursed the system for trapping him. He turned away from the sealed gate and looked ahead. The cave he was walking in earlier had been pitch black, but this dungeon was actually illuminated. It was not like being in bright daylight, but a strange glow was coming from the dungeon walls. After walking in darkness for several hours, it was enough light for Dustin to see everything very clearly.
The environment was completely different from a normal cave. The dungeon contained many different types of small plant species. Some were very weird looking. There were wide leaves that pulsed like breathing lungs, and thin vines that twitched and curled like living worms. A cluster of glowing mushrooms sat near a puddle, giving off a faint green light.
Dustin moved slowly ahead while looking at the bizarre environment around him. He grabbed both of his steel daggers tightly in his hands.
He walked for another few minutes through the strange flora.
Rustle. Hiss.
Suddenly, he was attacked. A group of long, scaled shapes launched themselves out of the glowing brush.
Dustin dodged them quickly. He had his perception bubble on, and he could easily sense them the second they charged at him. He stepped back and scanned the threats. They were snakes, but they were nearly as thick as his arm.
He quickly checked their levels. One of the snakes was Level 8, but the rest of them were Level 5 and lower.
"Just one above level seven," Dustin said to the snakes. He let out a frustrated breath. "I really hate doing useless labor."
He took a proper fighting stance. He had once joined a martial arts class in his teenage years. He stopped going after a few years because it felt like too much effort, and that was a long time ago. Even though he had been super lazy for years, his new Agility stat made his body feel incredibly light. He remembered a few of the basic things they taught him during those classes, and his muscles seemed to execute the footwork perfectly.
Swish.
The first Level 5 snake lunged at his legs. Dustin sidestepped smoothly and swung his right dagger down.
Squelch.
He sliced the snake clean in half. The body dropped to the glowing floor. He did not stop moving. He spun around and kicked another low-level snake away before driving his left dagger into the head of a third one.
It did not take him long to kill the weaker snakes. He sliced each of them into pieces with rapid, precise strikes. However, the Level 8 snake was a different story. It was faster and its scales were much harder.
Clang.
Dustin's dagger hit the side of the Level 8 snake, but the blade bounced off the thick scales. The snake hissed aggressively and snapped its jaws at Dustin's face. Dustin leaned back just in time. He felt the wind from the bite brush against his cheek.
He gripped his dagger tighter and waited for the snake to lunge again. When it did, he did not aim for the scales. He slid to the left and drove the blade directly into its open mouth, pushing it straight up into its brain. The snake thrashed wildly for a few seconds, spraying hot blood all over Dustin's clothes, before it finally went limp.
Dustin pulled his dagger out and took a step back. He was completely soaked in blood.
"Man, what the hell," Dustin sighed as he looked at himself. He was covered in filth and dark red stains. "At least it is good that these snakes do not have venom in their blood, or I would have been in great trouble right now. I do not even have enough points to buy that antidote from the shop."
He wiped his face with the back of his hand.
"Not to mention I almost got bit by that big snake," he said. "I have not fought anyone in years. I definitely should not have left that martial arts class."
DING.
[ Requirements: 1 / 15 ]
'At least one is done. Fourteen more remaining,' Dustin whispered as he moved ahead through the glowing plants. 'And I also reached Level 11 just now.'
On a planet somewhere far away in the multiverse.
A massive room stretched out endlessly. It was incredibly big. The space was large enough that ten commercial cinema halls could easily be put into it, and even after that, some space would still be left over.
In the middle of this vast room, placed right beside a towering wall, there was a huge bed. A figure was laying on it. The figure was at least ten meters tall. His exact appearance could not be seen clearly because the lighting in the room was kept deliberately dark.
In front of this giant figure were many different floating blue screens. Different tutorial live scenes were playing across all of them. Some of the screens showed tutorials taking place in thick forests. Some were in blazing deserts, some were in deep oceans, and some were in ruined modern cities. A few even showed participants fighting in medieval eras and other strange landscapes.
Hovering near the foot of the massive bed was a bizarre creature. It was a slime-like thing with a long, sweeping tail and a single eye which was dark red in color.
"I just increased the time period of the tutorial for the group you asked for," the slime-like thing spoke. Its voice was strange and fluid as it looked up at the giant man in front of it.
The ten-meter-tall figure shifted on the huge bed. He looked lazily at the hundreds of screens glowing in the dark room.
"These new participants are really boring," the giant figure replied to the slime-like thing. His voice was deep and rumbled through the massive room. "There is nothing good to watch here at all. I think I should just take a nap."
The single red eye of the creature blinked.
"You were not very much better than these people when you had first arrived," the slime-like thing laughed.