The Tutorial

It seemed to take a few moments for the attitude in the arena to shift from bemusement to terror. What happened next was pandemonium. I got knocked over in the commotion, and suddenly I found my most imminent fear was of being trampled to death in the stampede. Without my hands I was helpless until I felt someone grab me roughly by the shirt and haul me to my feet.

“You weigh a ton, you know that?” said a young guy. He had blond hair almost in a bowl cut. I don’t know how but it really suited him. “Must be those barrels. Have you thought about putting them down?”

I think I sobbed some kind of thanks, but I doubt if it was intelligible.

“The name’s Harold, by the way,” he said.

His composure must have rubbed off on me because I straightened up. “Sebastian,” I said.

“Everyone come here!” someone was shouting now. He wasn’t the only one, but his voice seemed to be coming from on high, and many of us turned instinctively. He was standing on the table, trying to get the people’s attention. It certainly wasn’t everyone, but a dozen or so of us circled around him, happy to follow this self-appointed leader.

“We need to figure out what abilities we have at our disposal and work together on a plan. First, let's go over there into the garden to get away from the crowd.”

“Don’t we need to know the rest of their abilities?” asked a woman next to me.

“Ideally, but for now we need to get organized. We’ll work them in when they calm down. Alright, follow me.”

We crossed the courtyard to a kind of flower garden with benches and fountains. Our new leader resumed his place above us by standing up on the edge of the fountain.

“First I want you all to go to the about section of your menus and read everything it says. Read it. Don’t skim. We need to understand what we are working with.”

I tried in vain to open my right hand once again, but still I found my fingers immovably fixed to the belly of that ridiculous barrel. I considered asking for help, but decided the best course of action was to hold my tongue and not hinder anyone else.

“Alright,” said the man after a few minutes. “Let’s go around the circle and introduce ourselves. I’ll go first and show you what I mean. I’m Leo. My class is Thrower. My level 1 skill is throw, and I have a throwing knife in inventory. The rest of my summary describes my class as a hit and run specialist.”

One at a time they introduced themselves: A warrior, an arcanist, a mage, a dark elf, and another warrior, then they came to me.

“My name is Sebastian,” I muttered, feeling like an idiot.

“So what are you?” asked Leo.

“I don’t know. I can’t seem to let go of these barrels, so I haven’t been able to see my summary.”

“Perhaps he’s a drunkard,” suggested one of the girls.

“Possible, but he could also be our ticket out of here,” said Leo.

“Oh, you think they’re explosives!” said the arcanist.

“Possibly, tell me again what the cooldown on your identify ability is.”

“It’s 300 seconds.”

“Five minutes. Alright. I want you to use your identify on Sebastian here and read out everything it says.”

“Ok,” said the arcanist. It took him a few seconds to sort out how to use his ability, then suddenly a white magic circle appeared around both him and me.

“It says here that he’s a Goblin Petard. He can blow himself up for big damage. Boom! HP: 250, Attack: 500 explosive damage. That’s all it says.”

“That’s all it says?” I shouted. “Blows himself up for big damage. BOOM!!!!!????”

“Does it say anything about armor?” asked Leo.

“All zeroes, no melee armor, no ranged armor, no magic armor, no explosive armor.”

“Hmm, not ideal,” said Leo.

I thought “not ideal ” was putting it mildly.

At that moment we were interrupted by the arrival of several others.

“You’re the ones who haven’t lost their heads, I take it,” said the newcomer.

“That’s right. We’re devising a plan to get everyone out of here,” said Leo.

“I’m guessing your plan involves Mr. Black Powder over here,” he said, gesturing to me.

“We are still assessing all of our options,” said Leo, “but we don’t have time to waste chatting. Kindly tell us your abilities or leave us alone.”

There was an awkwardness in the way the two boys looked at each other, but the newcomer broke the tension with a smile.

“Of course–My class is called Ghost. My ability is called permeate. I can enter a permeable state for five seconds. After that I can’t use the ability again for seven minutes. Obviously I wondered if I can simply slip through the gate, and the answer is–I can! I’ll assist you if it’s within my power, but obviously I’m leaving here with or without you when the big bad guy shows up.”

“That seems very useful. Let’s hear from everyone else who hasn’t spoken yet.”

“Hey, Mr. Black Powder, how are you holding up?”

I looked up to see the newcomer–the Ghost-guy. He was staring at me with a sort of curious wonder, like I was a tiger in the zoo.

“Alright,” I said. It was a lie–an obvious lie. I couldn’t move my hands for God’s sake.

He laughed. “I’m sorry,” he said, wiping a tear from his eye. “It’s just too outrageous. I can’t believe it.”

“Can’t believe what?”

“If you haven’t figured it out. I don’t think I have the heart to tell you old chap,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. I think he knew his hand made me uncomfortable and also that I couldn’t really shake it off, so he left it there. “But I’m sure they’ll let you know what your job is.” He clapped my shoulder again, then walked back to the people he’d come over with.

I made my way over to the arcanist and Leo–who I was surprised to see, now on level ground, was a little shorter than average height.

“Go over to the gate. I want you to use identify on the gate as soon as it comes off cooldown.”

“Right,” said the other.

As he moved away, Leo and I made eye-contact, but he broke it a moment later, looking embarrassed.

I think I knew already what the Ghost was hinting at–the role I would be called upon to play, but with everything that was going on it was easy to delude myself. I felt like I wasn’t really there–like I was only a spectator. It would be the others, and not me, who would help find the path to our escape.

I kept trying to remember where I had been before waking up in this strange place–what the last thing I had been doing was. It’s harder than you’d think. What did you do last Saturday? What about the Saturday before? It’s especially hard when you don’t even know what day it is that you’re trying to remember. There’s no bookmark in your mind to tell you–that’s the day your life changed. You were on your way to–

Someone was tapping me on the shoulder. “I don’t believe you.”

It was a small boy who seemed to have a stuffy nose, but I don’t think there were colds in Eutopia, so that must have just been how he talked.

“Sorry?” I said, not sure what else to say.

“Have you tried moving your arm in other ways? Like look, I can access the menu like this. But also like this.” He was moving his hand around in the air, and truth be told I was starting to get annoyed when I decided to try what he was suggesting just to get him off of my back. I tried to copy him and it didn’t work.

“Not like that, like this,” he said, showing me the same thing I hadn’t been able to do before.

“I’ve tried that, I’ve tried this, I’ve tried that, I’ve tried this,” I said jiggling my arm exaggeratedly when suddenly the menu popped up.

He saw my surprise and burst out, “Did you get it? You got it. You’re welcome. Xavier is the greatest.” And mercifully, Xavier, his point proved, left me alone.

I worked out that while most of my arm was locked I could clench my right peck to select the menu or to scroll up and I could tighten my left peck to scroll down.

“Hey Ghost-guy, how much longer on your ability?” called Leo.

“It’s about to be up. Why?”

“I have an idea. Walk with me.”

The rest of us sauntered after them and arrived at the gate just as the arcanist was finishing his examination.

“HP is at 4997/5000.”

“Why isn’t it at full?”

“That’s all huh?” said a young man who had been standing around the gate when we got there. He had spiky hair, pulled back from his forehead by a headband. “We were attacking it earlier to see if we could break it down, but it didn’t seem to be working.”

“It has a mountain of resistances. Melee, ranged, magic. All except explosive. Its explosive resistance is seriously negative.”

“By the way,” said the young man. “Is that green guy an NPC?”

“We’re not sure,” said the blonde girl.

“Of course I’m not!” I stammered. “Wait, I’m green? I am green. Why’m I the only one who changed colors?”

“They gave you a wicked schnozz too!” someone added, helpfully. 

I turned around looking for something reflective and ran nose first into a girl, who fell down with a scream.

“You guys need to quit messing around. This is serious,” said Leo.

“Relax, we’re still in the tutorial. I’m sure we’re not in any real danger here,” a stranger replied.

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” said the so-called ‘Ghost-guy’ with a wry smile. “This world has its harsh realities just like our world. Only one of us will ultimately leave this place alive. It would be pretty strange to threaten us with danger if it wasn’t real.”

“When you’re ready here is what I want you to do: I want you to permeate through the wall of the gatehouse. Once you’re inside you should be able to locate a mechanism to open the gate–like a sort of crank thing. Do you understand?”

“Should be simple enough. Go in, raise the gate. Then, when I get my power back, permeate out.”

“Exactly.”

“Alright. I guess I’ll see you on the other side.”

As he passed through the wall we all held our breath, listening. Leo pressed his ear against the wall as we all craned to hear his muffled voice from through the stone wall. But just a few seconds later out came our Ghost, as if flung back out of the building. He crashed into Leo and the two of them went tumbling down in a heap at my feet.

“What happened?” we gasped.

“I don’t know. It’s like there was no inside. All I could see was darkness, and then, after a few seconds, it’s like I was hurled back out of there.”

“It must be solid all the way through,” said Leo, getting up with a cough. “But why? What kind of stupid game is this that the buildings don’t have insides.”

“No idea. It is the tutorial though. Maybe they didn’t want us to get out that way? Or maybe they just didn’t think of it?” suggested the Ghost.

“We’re running out of time!” said one of the warriors. “There’s an obvious answer that we’ve just been refusing to talk about!”

I felt my stomach drop even before he said the words.

“He has to blow up the gate.”

“But I don’t do near enough damage!” I protested. “You heard him. It has 5000 HP!”

“Actually if I’m understanding how negative armor is calculated you should deal ten times damage to that structure, meaning you have just enough damage to take it out.” The arcanist didn’t look at me as he spoke, and I could see on his face that he also thought it was the only way. I looked around, but everywhere faces were avoiding my eyes.

“It isn’t time to give up yet. I still believe we can get out of here without our comrade having to sacrifice his life!” It was Leo. I felt like I could kiss him at that moment. “How much time do we have left?” he demanded.

“Nine and a half minutes,” said a girl with long hair and bangs. She must have been among those already at the gate because I was fairly sure I hadn’t seen her before. She had a sort of intensity about her, and she was also very pretty.

“How do you know exactly?” asked Leo.

“I have an ability with a one minute cooldown which I’ve been using to keep time. Since he told us that we had thirty minutes I’ve used it nineteen times. Considering I didn’t start implementing this strategy until about one minute later, and the fact that it was thirty seconds off cool–”

“Alright, alright, I get it,” said Leo.

The girl held up her hand and an orb of ice appeared. “Nine minutes left,” she said.

“Does anyone have a rope or something like that?”

“I do,” said a young girl, stepping forward.

“What is your class?”

“I think it was bankrobber.”

“She’s a thief,” said the man with the headband.

“Do you have any scaling abilities?”

“Scaling?” said the girl.

“He means climbing,” I said.

Seeing me the girl shrieked.

“Better let someone else talk to her,” said the other girl, leading me away.

“You’re an ice elemental?” I asked.

“That’s right,” said the girl. “I’m sorry, what are you, exactly?”

“I’m a goblin petard.”

“Oh, is that why you haven’t put the barrels down?”

“I can’t,” I said, trying not to cry with self-pity.

“Interesting…” said the girl, leaving me and rejoining the others.

“Don’t be sad,” said a voice from behind me.

I turned around to see a cutesy girl with short hair who exuded bubbliness.

“I don’t think anyone likes me,” I admitted. There was something about her that made me put my guard down.

“I like you. I’ll be your friend.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I really need a friend right now.”

“No climbing ability unlocked…” I heard Leo musing. “Give me the rope.”

“What are you going to do?” asked the girl with bangs.

“I’m thinking that if I tie the rope to my throwing knife I may be able to use my ability to lodge it in the wall. Then we could climb the rope to escape.”

“You think we have time for a hundred and fifty people to climb the wall?” asked the warrior, impatiently.

“Eight minutes,” said the girl.

“Maybe if we have some abilities that can delay the troll. But first we need to see if this idea can work. Honestly I’m afraid I’m only going to have one shot at this. If I throw it too low we won’t be able to reach the top of the wall even after we climb up. And if I throw it too high it will go over.”

“Then you’d better not miss,” I said.

He tied the knot carefully and everyone stood back while he lined up his throw.

“Here we go!” he said, launching the knife into the air with the force of an MLB pitcher. The rope trailing through the air after it. Then chink! The knife embedded in the stonework just below the top of the wall. A cry went up from the crowd, but it ended with a sigh. The rope end had sailed clean over the wall.

“I…failed,” said Leo. He slumped down onto the ground.

For the first time I could see Leo had truly given up. “No, come on Leo, think. You must have another plan!” I was begging him.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Looks like it’s your time to shine,” said the Ghost.

I turned around to find that everyone was looking at me with the same emotionless expression.

“It looks like we have no choice. There are only five minutes left,” said the ice elemental girl.

“Do it!” someone cried. Soon it was a chant. “Do it! Do it!”

I looked to Leo, but he was staring motionless at the ground. I turned to the cutesy girl and saw she had joined the chant. “Do it friend! Do it!” she yelled.

“This isn’t real,” I thought to myself. “None of this is real. It’s just a bad dream. I’m going to wake up in my own bed.”

It was obvious wasn’t it? It was the only option. If I didn’t do it many people would likely die. How could I be so selfish as to value my life above the lives of countless others? My body seemed to be moving on its own. I turned and looked at the wall. Everyone was standing back. They had formed a semicircle around the gate, and I was in the middle, alone. I started to run at the gate. It would all be over soon, I thought. I’ll wake up in my bed.

“Stop!”

Just as I was about to reach the gate I saw a girl standing in front of me. Her back was to the gate and her arms were outstretched.

“Don’t do it!” she cried.

I stopped just in front of her. I had seen her before. She was the girl who had trouble with her menu. She had long red hair, tinged with pink and bright grey-green eyes which were looking so imploringly into mine.

“Please, don’t throw your life away!”

“Move! Get her out of there!” shouted the crowd.

“He was going to do it, you idiot!”

I felt someone muscle past me–a big guy, tall and strong. Two others were behind him, and together they dragged the girl away, all the while she was crying and begging me not to go through with the plan.

Soon the chants had resumed. “Do it! Do it!”

I looked around for the girl. She was gone. Dragged out of earshot.

I looked at the gate and trembled.

“Save us!” I heard them cry.

“I should listen,” I thought. “Now’s my chance. I ought to do it. I was going to do it.” I didn’t move. My self-preservation had returned, and the idea of blowing myself up was completely unthinkable. I turned and ran back from the wall, recoiling in terror from the act which I had contemplated. Before I reached the circle’s edge, out stepped the big guy to meet me. He grabbed me by the collar and punched me in the face. I tried to defend myself with my hands, forgetting they could not help me, and I took another blow straight on.

“Get back out there and finish the job,” he barked. He threw me back away from the circle. I stood up and looked around, not knowing what to do.

“We could put him over there and then kill him. He might blow up when he dies.”

“Only if you’re willing to sacrifice yourself too,” said the Ghost. “Don’t you remember what he told us: Murder someone and–lcck!” He drew his thumb across his throat.

The girl with bangs stepped forward. “We can’t force him to do it if he doesn’t want to. Hey you, are you going to do it or not?”

I looked at her. She had cold blue eyes. She was beautiful, but she cared nothing for me.

“I need an answer. We only have two minutes left. Will you blow up the gate at the cost of your life or will you refuse?”

“No… I’m sorry. I can’t. I don’t want to die.”

“She really screwed up your nerves, huh? Silly girl. Alright, at this point I only see one way out of here.”

“What’s that?” asked the big guy.

“There,” said the girl, turning and pointing, not at the near gate, but at the one across the courtyard.

“Are you crazy? That’s where the troll is coming from!”

“Exactly,” said the girl. “He comes in, then we go out.”

“How are we all going to sneak past him?”

“We probably aren’t, but I’m guessing some of us will. All we can do is try to get as many people out of here as we can.”

“I’m surprised to hear you care about everyone else. You seem like a self-interested person,” I mused aloud.

“Honestly, you are the last person that should be talking right now,” she said, glaring at me.

“I didn’t realize I said that out loud,” I gasped, as the big guy started punching me again.

“Ghost-man, I have a plan for how we can get out of here as safely as possible,” said the ice girl.

“I’m all ears, darling, but you had better make it quick.”

“When the troll breaks through I want you to get its attention and lure it to the other side of the courtyard while we escape out the way it came in. Once we’re out, you can slip through the gate on the other side.”

“What makes you think he won’t just batter down the gate on the other side? To be honest I’m not really very keen on any plan that brings so much danger my way.”

“Fine. As soon as you go through the gate. I’ll take over as bait.”

“Everyone listen up!”

The arena fell silent as we turned to see Leo, standing on a bench once more. “We are running a diversion. For this to work we need you all to hide as close to the other gate as possible! Some of you should hide behind the table. Some of you can hide there at the last row of hedges in the garden. Some of you can come with me and the thief girl. Earth elemental, I need a barrier wall over there. There’s only one minute left, everyone move!”

What followed was a mad scramble, but somehow the crowd got organized in the several areas which were out of view of the gate. I think Pasqual must have given us a little more time than was promised.

At last, just as our furious panting was subsiding into slow steady breaths the troll came into view behind the gate, only visible because we knew to look for him. It was enormous, as tall, at least, as the gate itself. He touched it and it rattled and creaked, not like heavy wrought iron, but like the kennel of a small dog. It drew back. Silence. Then with a splintering noise which left my uncovered ears ringing the gate fell sundered and in slumped the horrible troll. Its skin was sickly and greyish, and it dragged behind it a crude club ten or twelve feet long.

Somehow the thief girl managed to get her smokescreen up just at the right time, as we all ducked our heads below cover. What came next was more nerve wracking than anything I had ever experienced. To be so near such a monster was terrible, but to have one’s head down, praying it would not come your way was a terror all its own.

“Oy, big guy over here!” came a voice at last. “Is that as fast as you can walk? Oh, you can go faster. I don’t like that at all!”

“Wait for the signal,” muttered Leo through gritted teeth.

“Alright everyone, I’ll see you on the other side!” yelled the Ghost.

“Now!” Leo shouted.

As soon as the signal was given I dashed for the open gate, pausing only when I reached the portal to glance back at how others were fairing. It seemed most people were right behind me, if not ahead, but there were a few people still visible at the far end. Notably the blue-eyed girl was endeavoring to evade the troll’s attacks, and as the smokescreen cleared I saw that Leo hadn’t moved an inch.

From what I could tell, the girl didn’t seem to be fairing too well.

“Leave her alone!” yelled Leo, dashing to the long tables. He leapt onto one and began furiously flinging anything he found on it at the troll with astonishing accuracy.

Somehow this proved just enough of a distraction for the girl to get past the troll. Everyone else had hurried around the exterior wall as the remaining pair came sprinting out of the courtyard, the troll hot on their trail, but as soon as they crossed the threshold it seemed to forget all about them, despite being almost upon us.

“I guess it’s…locked to that area…now,” heaved Leo. “Lucky…I didn’t have any more…running left in me.” He smiled at me. “What are you still doing here?”

“I was just watching to see that–”

“Save it. Let’s go rejoin the others,” said the blue-eyed girl, fixing a strand of hair which had wandered out of place and looking otherwise as if nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred.

“Right,” said Leo. “By the way, I’m not sure I caught your name.”

“Lilian,” said the girl.

“Nice to meet you, Lily!”

“You can call me Lilian,” she answered coldly.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” said Leo with a nervous laugh.