AuthorPalt

Tutorial Rewrite 67

Two things. One, this is hail, not rain. Two, can this really be called a marsh? It’s nothing but mud!

It’s pretty dark, but I can see plain as day that from the north side to Kentucky, there ain’t nothing but mud. Mudmudmudmudmudmudmudmud. Oh, and the hail beating down on it.

So this is what it feels like to get flogged? How novel!

I raise my nose into the air....

Tutorial Rewrite 66

—Dy. Well, well, well. Here we are again.

<To repay your debt,

your inventory has been sold

for 32 points.>

That’s—that’s actually really sad. My entire collection of several thousand bats was only worth that little? 30 measly points? And now that I check my inventory properly, everything I took from the minotaur is gone, too. I guess Want, in her eternal g...

Tutorial Rewrite 65

Even though my body hurts in just about every way you can imagine, a single realisation brings me back to the here and now. I didn’t get the boss defeat message.

My arms are broken but I still pull myself up. Below me, the minotaur lies broken and dying, but still alive. Although faint, it is still breathing, and although muted, I can still clearly hear its heart beating.

Tutorial Rewrite 64

<Top—Status—Community>

<01:30:21

Day 118>

<The fifth attempt will begin in

2:23:29:39>

I open my eyes. I’m lying with my back against the ground. The ground below me is soft, even though it should be rocky.

Slowly, I sit up. I rub my head. It kinda aches, but it doesn’t hurt. I feel funny.

<Tutorial stage,

Hell Difficu...

Tutorial Rewrite 63

Giving a silent prayer to whoever will listen, I heave myself over the ledge and begin my descent. The very second I placed my exposed, supple flesh and skin in front of the bat inferno, the lot of them decided that just flying in circles was apparently not good enough for them, and they decided to have a bat mitzvah on my legs, and my back, and my arms, and even my face. Trying to bat them awa...

Tutorial Rewrite 62

Now that I think about it, I haven’t been to the forums in a while. I don’t feel like posting anything, but there might be some new information or whatever. Can’t hurt to check, right?

<Status—Community—Top>

<Asia Server>

<Easy Lobby: 859/1 121

Normal Lobby: 170/265

Hard Lobby: 24/42

Hell Lobby: 2/2>

Ah, I forgot to check if�...

Tutorial Rewrite 61

The floor shifts beneath my feet and I’m back in the horrible WHITE lobby, but my eyes are staring at the screen in front of me.

<To repay your debt,

your inventory has been sold

for 1 899 points.>

<Current debt:

11 774 points.>

My debt is even worse now. So, in other words, beating this floor awarded me exactly nothing, huh? I just went deeper ...

Art for tutorial rewrite (contains spoilers for stuff I haven't even written yet lol)

I just want to quickly say sorry for the way patreon writing is organized. In the story there are a lot of passages enhanced by having the writing do wack stuff (like status boxes in the middle and insanity parts all over the place) but apparently patreon isn't organized like that, so any such stuff just gets stuck on the left. Please accept my apology. Oh and also please tell me what you think...

Tutorial Rewrite 60

Finally, I turn to the poet king. I don’t think there’s a single inch of me not covered in blood, and the floor of this throne room is no different. Slowly, I step down from atop the guard’s mangled body.

This would be the perfect moment to say a speech or make a cool pose, but I don’t really have anything like that to give. Really, it’s the poet king’s fault. If he’d sent b...

Tutorial Rewrite 59

“No,” I say, barely a whisper. “No, I will not… I won’t…”

But it’s not easy to deny the words of someone when they look so deeply, deeply compassionate. I didn’t even know my face could make such an expression. I look wise beyond my few years. I can feel my voice tremble as I say, “I—I have to…”

“There is nothing you have to do, my friend. No one...

Tutorial Rewrite 58

H-, hang on, this is completely new! I mean, sure, I could understand what Simel was saying and everything the people in the conference were saying as though it was all my own language, but this is different!

…It feels like I’m not supposed to have access to this kind of information. Isn’t this, I dunno, secret?

Well, apparently not, because I can read it just fine. A...

Tutorial Rewrite 57

That’s a pretty nice sight. A sight for sore eyes, one might say. My only question is, does this mean that the shades will now also be level 19? Because, frankly, I would rather that not be the case, thankyouverymuch.

<Top—Status—Community>

<PrissyKittyPrincess

Human Level 19

Strength: 41

Agility: 65

Stamina: 61

Magic Power: 28&g...

Tutorial Rewrite 56

Haah, haah, haah, haah…

Th… That was a shade? But it was—he was… That was me, wasn’t it?

B-, but, then again, this might just be like a doppelganger thing, and once you beat it, it returns to its original form. Yeah. That’s gotta be it, right? I can’t see it, but right now, I must be sitting on top of, like, some sort of faceless worm creature or what...

Tutorial Rewrite 55

When I open my eyes again, I’m back in the lobby.

<Top—Status—Community>

<00:00:02

Day 91>

<The fifth attempt will begin in

29:23:59:58>

<The fourth floor will open in

23:59:58>

And so, the fourth attempt has begun. Before I do anything else, I pull up the server list to check how many new challengers we have. Though,...

Tutorial Rewrite 54

After talking a little more to Moleman, I accidentally notice that over half of the conference has already passed on by, so after saying a hasty goodbye, I leave to try to find that girl. Her name was Virgil-something. I don’t really remember her name, but I can recall her face well enough, and that’s all I really need.

Let’s see, Virgil, Virgil… Sniff sniff sniff. Yup, I can smel...

Tutorial Rewrite 53

“You’ve got your answer, then.” He leans back in his chair. To that, I can give no response. I feel mute. It’s like he isn’t even speaking real words. “I said it to Bach, and I’ll say it again, but whatever happened before the tutorial… it isn’t important, you know? It’s alright.”

Something bubbles up within me and without acting on any rational thought, without spea...

Tutorial Rewrite 52

She looks weirdly dismayed but I’ve still gotta ask. “Hey, you got any more of those, it’s kind of nice, my poison protection finally rose!”

She frowns at me. “You mean your poison resistance?”

I blink at her. She blinks at me.

She makes one of those difficult faces again that I hate before standing up and going over to her little band of rebels. They talk in hushe...

Tutorial Rewrite 51

Alright. That makes sense, I think. I’m not sure what these executives are supposed to have done, but it’s not like I can tell them not to or anything.

Hm. Executives…

…Hang on. “When you say, uh, executives, does that happen to include me?...”

“You are an executive, aren’t you?”

“Well, heh, yeah, technically, but, ...

Tutorial Rewrite 50

The darkness fades and the light stabs me through the eyes so I startle awake.

“—Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, only a few of those who are wanted by our great Guild were captured. The few that we now have in our grasp will act as the final dying breath of the old generation, of the chaos that came before, of the world that once was. In this great moment, we can finally say ...

Tutorial Rewrite 49

In other words, I don’t even have to press a button to go there. Sweet.

Patiently, I wait until the timer goes down, and then the world shifts around me.

I stumble a little as my feet leave the familiar half-dried floor of the lobby and instead touch down on harsh, sandy rock. When I look up, I find myself inside what seems to be a room in a castle. Not any room from the castle I ...

Tutorial Rewrite 48

The floor shifts out from under me and all of a sudden he isn’t in my arms anymore, I’m in the lobby, and everything is WHITE, but for some reason, it doesn’t feel as bad as it did the last time. All things considered, I feel weirdly energetic. Rejuvenated, you might say. Invigorated. Like I could run a short marathon. On that note, my feet are back! Hooray!

That floor went pretty w...

Tutorial Rewrite Cover + sketch

Tutorial Rewrite 47

“Derecho—”

The king starts saying something, but that pause is all I need and more, and in the single second that he took to say it, I’ve already bound across the hall and stabbed my entire hand into the supple throat of the level fifteen, and without a single pause in movement, I swirl around to aim for the level sixteen, but they have a moment to react, though not enough to fore...

Tutorial Rewrite 46

Going by how these things have worked so far, in only a single day, I will be forcefully summoned to the grand conference. I won’t have a choice. I can’t afford to assume I’ll be able to choose not to attend, so I need to stick to this until the null hypothesis is proven.

I was careless. The city is still riddled with goblins. I had hoped that I wouldn’t need to get to this point,...

Tutorial Rewrite 45

I wake up. I’m back in the darkness of the dungeon.

The clock screen hangs in front of me. Like it’s always been there.

<Top—Status—Community>

<02:20:12

Day 85>

<The fourth attempt will begin in

5:21:39:48>

I don’t know how long I’ve been on this floor, or how long I’ve been in the capture of these creatures, or how long ...

Tutorial Rewrite 44

After an eternity and one second, the light returns. It blinds me with its grace, and I cry in its presence.

“Con de ur derecho? Ay, ay, ay,” a voice says in a weird accent. I’ve heard enough goblins to be able to tell that this is a weird accent, even for them.

“...Ik.” I’ve already heard enough of them to recognize this one. My eyes slowly roll to look at Simel. He won...

Tutorial Rewrite 43

And apparently, that was the final part of the ceremony, because after that, the cage starts moving again. Specifically, we’re moving towards the castle. And it really is worthy of being called a castle. It’s huge, and it’s surrounded by a moat with a drawbridge, so what more could you ask for? The whole city is situated next to the sea, but the city itself is kind of raised, meaning that...

Tutorial Rewrite 42

And the next day, around lunchtime, I finally get a glimpse of it.

The Shore City of Acheron.

It is, by all means, massive. From a distance, you can only really see it as a mass of houses. It’s obviously not as large as normal cities, but it’s certainly big. It could probably contain up to a hundred thousand people if the surface area was covered with modern housing, but as it i...

Tutorial Rewrite 41

The next day, early in the morning, the army sets out again. This is only after breakfast, which I spent eating with the priest.

I didn’t sleep all night, but in a sense, I did nothing but sleep. My brain feels weird inside. I don’t think I had a single thought all night, but I also did nothing but think. About nothing. About everything. Inside the cage, I couldn’t see the stars, bu...

Tutorial Rewrite 40

<You have learned:

Oxygen Deficiency Resistance Lv.5>

<You have learned:

Regeneration Meditation Lv.7>

<You have learned:

Auto-Regeneration Lv.6>

And then, after some time…

<You have learned:

Salamander Healing Lv.1>

Is this what I think it is?

I open my eyes wide and stare at my stumps. There is no change fro...