Tutorial 2 (2)
“Let’s move on to the final stage now!”
Gaon hurriedly butchered one of the last wild dogs he had caught. He hadn’t practiced skinning, so his hands were terribly rough, but in just over ten minutes, he obtained one large pelt. Though blood, fat, and bits of flesh remained here and there, it was a good enough hide.
Since he had been bare-chested until now, he roughly cut the wild dog pelt and draped it over himself.
The feeling of the improperly butchered pelt touching his body was terrible, but he had to protect his body somehow.
Of course, it was now in tatters, but the Bisa pelt, which still had some defensive power left, remained strapped to his forearms and shins.
“The dagger is almost done for, too.”
The old dagger’s blade was now patchy and worn, looking almost like a saw. Still, since he had no other weapon, he couldn’t throw it away, so he carefully sharpened the blade against a nearby stone.
The stage for the final tutorial was not a forest but a grassland environment, with short shrubs scattered about and waist-high tall grass growing thick between them.
“First, it’s a dry climate.”
The grass visible to the eye was bone-dry, and between it, shrubs with green leaves could be seen sparsely. And in the distance, he could see the giant White Tree that was his destination; it was roughly one kilometer away.
The hunting target here was the goblin.
“They’re very cunning and cruel hunters.”
Goblins, which appeared frequently in novels and other games, were monsters with short stature and puny bodies, coming up to about a human adult’s waist. They were weak in strength, but instead used threatening weapons like poison darts and were a race specialized in coordinated attacks.
They mainly used small spears with crude but sharp points, shooting poison darts coated in paralytic poison through long tubes. They rarely acted alone and always traveled in packs of three or more.
“I have to hunt these guys until the time limit.”
There was no clock, but he roughly knew the flow of time. Passing through the four stages had taken approximately three hours and forty minutes, so he had plenty of leeway.
The reason he had to hunt as many goblins as possible was because of the Magic Stones they possessed. On average, one appeared in about every five goblins; Magic Stones were used as widely as Another Mundus’s official currency and were indispensable to the mage class.
When he had first started Another Mundus, this hadn’t been known, but when he started again around summer, it became known that tutorial goblins held Magic Stones that could be extracted.
In truth, everyone either skipped the tutorial or didn’t bother hunting because they were fixated on the rewards from the official quest to arrive at the final goal, the White Tree, so they didn’t even think of extracting Magic Stones. That was why the information was revealed so late.
“In the early game, Magic Stones will be a huge foundation for growth!”
When starting the game, Another Mundus only gave you one silver, that is, one hundred copper.
Considering that a usable dagger cost one silver and even a sword made of poor-quality iron exceeded twenty silver, one could guess how important a Magic Stone was, even if it was the lowest grade and worth only ten silver.
Moreover, in Another Mundus, even if you had skill, you couldn’t go out hunting without proper armor and weapons.
So to hunt quickly, he needed money. Rather than doing trivial quests, it was better to secure funds right here in the tutorial.
And like a principle that applied to all games, if you considered the difference between having items and not having them, the growth speed was literally heaven and earth. Naturally, he had to secure as many Magic Stones as possible.
“Besides, if I acquire the poison darts and blowpipes that the goblins had soaked in paralytic poison, they’ll be a great help in the early stages of hunting.”
He didn’t know how many stats would be granted from the body scan data via the capsule and his tutorial performance, but poison was a very useful means for hunting until one reached a certain level.
The success of goblin hunting depended on discovering the opponent first. Once exposed to them first, he had to brace for a certain amount of damage.
His height, size, and even strength were far superior to the goblins, but considering the existence of the poison darts and their combat style of ganging up, even if he won, he wouldn’t be able to set the record he was aiming for.
“Good luck!”
Fortunately, it was a headwind. That is, he could smell the goblins, but the goblins couldn’t smell him. His sense of smell was essentially sealed off.
Gaon faced the wind and slowly pushed through the tall grass that exceeded the goblins’ height, concentrating on the sounds reaching his ears.
Starting from the sound of grass blowing in the wind and rubbing against each other, to the sound of a thin stream of water, to the sound of rodents cautiously emerging from their burrows and moving about.
And after some time, the sound he had been waiting for reached him.
Rustle! Rustle!
It was the sound of someone cautiously pushing through dry grass and walking. It wasn’t one, but three—no, four. Among the sounds, there were noises similar to an unintelligible language. It was evidence of goblins.
Gaon stopped in that spot and carefully cut the lower parts of the dry grass in front of him with his dagger. Then he piled the cut grass to one side.
The space he made that way was two meters wide and about five meters long.
“A space to swing the club has been created.”
Currently, one of the powerful weapons Gaon possessed was a club-shaped branch with a hard burl attached to one side. If he hadn’t cut the grass, the club could only be used to strike from above downward.
But with space secured like this, the situation was different.
Krrk!
The moment goblins pushing through the grass revealed themselves in the small clearing and spotted Gaon, letting out warning cries, Gaon—who had been kneeling on one knee—swung the club horizontally.
Crack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
The club successively crushed the goblins’ ankles.
Crack!
Crunch!
While the fallen goblins’ screams and bewildered groans burst out one after another, Gaon’s body had already risen, and he swung the retrieved club diagonally from above downward.
The top-priority target was the one wearing a necklace with a horn hanging from its neck; in one hand, it held a long tube. Despite the instantaneous nature of the situation, Gaon’s quick dynamic vision had accurately found it.
Thwack!
This time, there wasn’t even a scream. Its head was smashed in one blow.
The moment one goblin that had just barely grasped the situation tried to scream, the dagger was embedded to the hilt in its neck.
Likewise, the two that had grasped the situation tried to get up on the spot with all their might despite the pain of their broken ankles, but Gaon wasn’t about to just watch.
The head of his swung club—that is, the hard burl—smashed one goblin’s head. Of course, there was no scream. Instead, broken skull fragments, blood, and brain matter flew into the face of the goblin beside it.
Crack!
When the last goblin unconsciously raised its hand to wipe what had gotten on its face and eyes, Gaon’s knee struck its chin.
The goblin, stunned by the impact, couldn’t come to its senses even when the spear dropped from its comrade’s hand pierced its heart. It had already fainted from a shock exceeding its limits.
“Phew!”
Gaon let out a sigh of relief.
Goblin hunting was most important at the beginning. He only had a dagger whose blade had turned into a saw, and if he gave them a chance to blow their horns, he would become the one being hunted instead.
“They’re coming!”
After creating a small clearing in the grassy path where goblins passed, the moment a goblin revealed itself there, Gaon’s attack began.
As expected, the first target was the one wearing the necklace with the hanging horn. If he used the blowpipe to shoot a poison dart at its face or neck, half the battle was won. Goblin paralytic poison was fast-acting; the moment a dart hit, the body immediately went numb.
By the time the remaining goblins realized their comrade had been hit by a poison dart, another victim had already appeared.
After subduing two like that with poison darts, he used the club to break their ankles, then threw a spear obtained from a hunted goblin at one and smashed the other’s head with the club.
Finally, he finished off the paralyzed ones with the club, and the hunt was over. Even if there were five, it only took more time; the hunting method was almost identical.
“Bad luck.”
He had hunted about thirty in total, but the Magic Stones obtained were only four. Normally Magic Stones were in the heart, but because it was hard to check each one individually, he had gathered them roughly, resulting in the low number.
Roughly calculating the time, about thirty minutes seemed to have passed. It was disappointing that so few Magic Stones dropped, but it seemed he could safely hunt up to his goal of fifty.
But suddenly, the situation changed drastically.
“The wind direction changed!”
This was a big problem. Goblins had extremely developed hearing and, of course, smell. Naturally, it would take only a moment for his scent carried on the wind and the smell of blood flowing from the carcasses to reveal his tracks.
“What should I do?”
If he ran with all his strength even now, he could probably reach the White Tree safely. His sprinting speed was much faster than those with short legs, and their poison dart attacks only had an effective range of about ten meters.
But if he did that, he couldn’t achieve his goal.
“The notification saying I achieved the basic achievement hasn’t come yet!”
Thanks to the miraculous experience called a prophetic dream, he knew a lot of information about the future, about Another Mundus, so he was more advantaged than other players, but that wasn’t enough.
Thinking that his gaming talent was lacking and his capital for real-money purchases was also lacking, Gaon wanted to grow faster than anyone else by utilizing information, even if only early on, so he racked his brain to the maximum for a short time.
“Good!”
The method he had just thought of might be crazy, but at least it didn’t deviate from the category of hunting.
Gaon ran back and gathered the supplies he had packed just in case. He began unpacking them one by one—leftovers from when he had wiped out the Bisa pack.
At that moment, faint noises were heard from the front.
“Damn it!”
The goblins had already smelled his scent and the blood of those he had killed.
They would probably approach slowly in a wide encirclement, like a drive hunt.
“Then I have enough time.”
He had to stay calm, as he might make mistakes due to tension and fear.
Wasn’t this the tutorial, where there was no penalty even if he died?
Using suitable wood and tough vines he had packed just in case, Gaon made a bow drill and wooden board, then rapidly spun the bowstring.
Perhaps because he exerted maximum strength for a brief moment, black embers soon caught a spark.
Now what remained was to place the black embers holding the spark inside a clump of fine fibers found inside dry grass stems, and carefully blow into it. If he just maintained his concentration, it wasn’t difficult.
Eventually, a flame ignited.
Gaon took out all the remaining fiber clumps, lit them, and set fires in several places across the grassland. Since the grass was dry to the point where moisture was almost undetectable, the flames spread to the surroundings in an instant.
That wasn’t the end. He had to make a place to escape the flames.
Starting from about two meters behind the point where he had set the fire, Gaon cut down all the grass within a radius of about ten meters. It was quite laborious, but unavoidable.
Once the empty clearing was made, he began digging a hole in the center with a shovel-shaped wooden tool.
When a hole finally formed, one meter deep and one meter in diameter, Gaon immediately went inside and began punching deep holes in the walls here and there with his dagger. He had made a space where as much air as possible could enter, just in case.
Crackle! Crackle!
Whoosh!
Before he knew it, the flames had spread to this area; he heard the sound of dry grass burning and flames moving, and felt the heat.
Gaon covered his head and shoulders with the wild dog pelt and Bisa pelt wrapped around his body, buried his nose in the deep holes he had prepared beforehand, and breathed very slowly and shallowly while listening to the surrounding noises.
How much time had passed when the notification Gaon had been waiting for reached his ears.
—100 Kills! Perfect Clear! You have achieved an unbelievable feat!
—Congratulations! You may look forward to your achievement settlement!
This time, the content was a bit different.
“Perfect Clear? Could it be that all hundred goblins in this area died?”
He couldn’t be sure of that, but it was certain that artificially causing the fire had greatly helped in hunting the goblins.
When he came out of the hole, the outside had turned completely black. The shrubs were relatively intact, with only their stems burned and upper leaves safe in many cases, but the grass was no longer visible.
“Almost no smoke remains, either.”
The atmosphere still held heat, but since the goblin habitat wasn’t wide, it seemed to have burned up that much faster.
Gaon carefully passed through places where embers were still smoking and searched the bodies of goblins cooked by the flames. He had enough leeway to do so.
Since the bodies were thoroughly cooked, finding the Magic Stones was easy. The process was terrible to others, though.
Having collected a total of thirty-two lowest-grade Magic Stones, Gaon no longer delayed and headed toward the White Tree.
—The tutorial has ended! Moving to the Room of Beginnings!
The moment his vision turned white, he soon returned to the familiar space. Namely, the space called the Room of Beginnings, where one briefly stayed when connecting to Another Mundus.