So Many Ways to Suffer in a Tutorial (Part II)

No enemies. No traps. Just a massive circular door at the end of the corridor, made of interlocking stone rings. Six of them, each etched with shifting images.

Mazes.
Slimes.
Wolves.
Goblins.
Traps.
Undead.

Nathan approached slowly.

Kieran stood beside him. “A lock?”

“A test,” Nathan murmured.

The symbols on the rings shifted in dizzying sequences.

He recognized them. His brain shouldn’t—it shouldn’t be able to string the last days together in order—but it did.

“This is the tutorial,” he said. “Every floor. Every mechanic. It wants the order.”

Kieran leaned closer, brow tightening. “Draegor… what are you doing?”

Nathan didn’t look up. “Just—trying something.”

“Based on what?”

“Patterns,” Nathan said quickly. “Just… patterns.”

He twisted the first ring—slime corridors.
Second—wolves with too many joints.
Third—goblin pairs armed with oil and sparks.
Fourth—maze traps and dart rhythms.
Fifth—undead orchestras.
Sixth—the hybrid floors that tried to mash everything together.

The door shuddered.

Unlocked.

A blast of cold air surged out, smelling of stone and old magic.

CHIME
Memory Gate Unlocked
Proceed with caution, trainee.

Nathan’s breath caught.

Kieran watched him with a look that felt like a knife being slowly, carefully turned.

“You recalled the sequence,” Kieran said quietly.

Nathan shook his head.
“No. I… felt it.”

Kieran didn’t answer.

But he looked at Nathan like he was seeing something new. Something he didn’t understand. Something impossible.

They stepped through the Memory Gate.

The corridor beyond was dark. Cold. Wind moved through it—unnatural, deliberate, like the dungeon was breathing down their necks.

Nathan’s stomach twisted.

“Sir,” he whispered, “this feels different.”

Kieran nodded once. “We’ve reached the threshold.”

The world flickered around them.

The air went still.

And then—

Light swallowed them.

***

Nathan staggered once before catching himself. Stone underfoot. Dark, cold air. A tunnel stretching forward into a cavernous gloom that didn’t look like any corridor they’d seen so far.

A slow exhale left him.

“Oh. No. Absolutely not.”

Beside him, Kieran straightened into that predatory stillness he carried like breath. A hand slid to the hilt of his blade.

“This is not the same design pattern,” he said quietly.

He was right.

The earlier floors had a tempo, a rhythm—sometimes cruel, sometimes ridiculous—but they were predictable. A structured insanity. A steady escalation.

This felt like someone had leaned close and whispered, Let’s see what you really do under pressure.

The corridor was massive—three times the width of the earlier ones. The ceiling arched so high that the light from the entry pedestal didn’t reach it. Moss glowed faintly on the stones. The walls were layered wrong, arranged like they’d been melted and reshaped.

“Sir…” Nathan said softly, “I think this one’s going to suck.”

Kieran gave a sharp, humorless noise. “Stay sharp.”

He moved first, stepping into the corridor with a deliberate, quiet stride.

Nathan followed.

The sound hit them before the monsters did.

A low, rolling thud.
Then another.

Heavy. Slow. Like something enormous dragging its weight across stone.

Red flickered at the edge of Nathan’s vision.

Threat Level: RED

“Oh come on,” Nathan muttered. “Can we not have one floor where my heart rate stays under ‘impending stroke’?”

A shape lumbered into view.
Then another.

Cyclops.

Not the myth kind—worse, probably.
Their bodies were thick and swollen with hardened, dungeon-grown hide, like layers of scar tissue fused into armor. A single glowing core burned where an eye should be. Their arms hung too long, ending in slablike fists heavy enough to crater stone. Each step made the ground shudder.

“Oh,” Nathan whispered. “Okay. That’s… not ideal.”

Kieran’s voice went flat. “Aim for the joints. The core is protected.”

One cyclops bent low, scanning the corridor with its glowing “eye.” It fixed on Nathan instantly.

Threat Level: RED

“I know already!” Nathan said. “They like me.”

“They sense movement,” Kieran said. “Steady. Do not—”

The cyclops charged.

It moved horrifyingly fast for something so massive. Nathan dove left as a fist slammed into the floor where he’d been standing, stone exploding. The shockwave shoved him backward even from the edge.

CHIME
Hint: Avoid taking direct hits!

Nathan gasped. “Oh my god, thank you. Amazing advice.”

Another cyclops barreled through behind the first, arms swinging in a gut-leveling arc.

“Draegor!” Kieran barked.

“I’m aware! I’m very aware!”

Kieran met the charge with a two-handed strike, bracing, blade angled for leverage. The force still sent him skidding several feet backward, boots grinding sparks on stone.

Nathan scrambled to his feet just in time to see thin slits open along the corridor walls.

“Oh, that’s bad—”

Tchk. Tchk. Tchk.

Darts launched from both sides in a sudden storm. Nathan twisted and ducked, barely dodging three of them. Another grazed his sleeve and left the fabric smoking.

Status-afflicted darts.

Of course. Because the dungeon had never met a simple mechanic it didn’t immediately weaponize.

“Sir!” Nathan shouted. “Darts!”

Kieran didn’t look. He shifted, weaving between the projectiles with frightening precision, blade cutting down a stone fist aimed at his ribs.

Nathan pressed his back briefly to the wall, eyes scanning the slits. They were arranged in repeating sets—two low, two high, two angled.

“Sir!” he yelled. “Darts fire in a six-point cycle! Left-high-right, left-low-right—”

A dart thunked into his shoulder.

Nathan gasped as his entire left arm went numb.

Great. Numb-darts. Because why wouldn’t the dungeon invent those.

CHIME
Hint: Arm mobility temporarily reduced. Please adjust strategy accordingly!

“—oh my god I hate this place.”

“Do not get hit,” Kieran snapped.

“Great tip, thank you! Thank you everyone.”

He stumbled sideways as sensation fled halfway down his torso. He needed to move—he needed to not get flattened—

Instinct surged.

Something in him screamed jump.

His body lurched sideways, more of a desperate heave than an actual jump, but it worked.

He obeyed before thinking.

A massive stone fist swept through the air where his spine had just been.

Nathan hit the floor in an awkward, one-armed roll and came up half-kneeling, breath punching out of him. “Okay,” he wheezed. “So that’s a thing now.”

Kieran, still fighting two cyclops, shouted, “Center line! Draw it to the center!”

Nathan bolted toward the middle of the corridor, dragging his half-dead arm. The nearest cyclops followed, steps shaking dust from the ceiling. Kieran used the moment to pivot, stepping into the exposed back of the second cyclops and slicing through the vulnerable joint behind its knee.

It dropped with a thunderous crash.

The other cyclops lunged at Nathan.

He swung with his still-working arm and slammed his sword into the glowing core. It bounced off hard stone, jarring his wrist.

“Are you kidding me?!”

“Draegor!” Kieran snapped.

“Working on it!”

Another spray of darts shot past. One hit the cyclops in the neck. The giant creature paused, movements stuttering.

Oh. The numb-darts work on them too. Good to know.

Nathan’s eyes widened.

“…are the darts for them?”

Kieran didn’t waste the opening. He crossed the space in three long strides and drove his blade straight into the exposed joint Nathan had struck earlier.

The cyclops collapsed like a felled tree.

Silence rolled back over the corridor in a slow wave.

A faint ringing settled in his ears—either from the fight or the hint spam. Hard to tell.

Nathan leaned against the wall, breathing hard. “I am… going to file a complaint.”

Kieran wiped his blade clean on the beast’s ruined plating. “Your shoulder?”

“I can’t feel my arm,” Nathan said. “Everything else is… fine?”

“It will pass.” Kieran stepped closer, eyes sweeping his form. “You moved well. Better than expected.”

Nathan blinked.
“Oh god. Is this praise? Are you dying?”

“Tch.”

“Okay, so dying.”

His arm tingled like it was waking up from pins and needles.

CHIME
Hint: Numbness decreasing. Motor function returning.

He flexed his fingers. “Okay. Movement’s back.”

Kieran nodded once. “We continue.”

They followed the corridor as it sloped upward.

The stone changed from smooth to fractured.
Roots curled across the walls, glowing faint green.

Nathan frowned. “Sir… something’s wrong.”

“Agreed,” Kieran said darkly.

The corridor opened.

Nathan’s breath caught.

A massive stone ziggurat rose in the chamber—a stepped, towering pyramid—hundreds of steps carved upward in staggered, uneven tiers.

Runes lined each step: Line, O, X, Blank. The symbols glowed faintly.

Vines wrapped the structure, pulsing with life, shifting across the stone like they were breathing.

Dozens of vine-sentinels hung dormant along the walls—humanoid plant forms with elongated limbs and thorned tendrils coiling around their bodies.

“Oh,” Nathan whispered. “Cool. Great. Perfect. Love that for us.”

Kieran’s jaw clenched. “The dungeon wishes us to climb.”

“And not die,” Nathan said. “That part feels optional.”

A dart whizzed past his ear.

He yelped and dropped into a crouch.

The vine-sentinels twitched. One raised an arm again—long, vine-like fingers pulling taut like a bowstring.

Right.
The darts didn’t stop here.

And now the whole trial was vertical.

Nathan exhaled slowly. “Okay. I see what this is.”

Kieran stared at the ziggurat. “Explain.”

“A dexterity puzzle disguised as a stamina trial,” Nathan murmured. “Step on the wrong tile, vines whip us. Move too slow, dart to the face. Move too fast, we step wrong anyway.”

Kieran’s gaze sharpened. “You have seen something like this.”

“No,” Nathan said honestly. “But my brain apparently has.”

He placed one foot on the first tier.

The stone under his boot hummed faintly, like it was waking up.

The vines shivered.

Behind him, Kieran shifted closer, close enough that Nathan could feel his presence at his back like a solid wall.

“If we fail,” Kieran said quietly, “we fall.”

“Yeah,” Nathan said. “But if we stay here, more cyclops show up.”

Kieran’s eye twitched. “…Proceed. I will cover.”

Nathan nodded.

He set his weight fully onto the first glowing step.

The ziggurat thrummed like a beating heart.

The next row lit up in a cold, crystalline shimmer.

Nathan stared at the tiles, heart pounding in his throat.

Six symbols.
All glowing faintly, eager.

“I don’t like this,” he whispered.

“You never do,” Kieran said. “Continue.”

Nathan stepped onto Line.

Silence.

He stepped onto O.

A low hum vibrated through the stairs.

He stepped onto X—

—and the world exploded.

Not literally.
But the vines struck with such violent force that it felt like the entire ziggurat came alive.

“Draegor!”

A lash of green slammed across his back, sending him flying forward. The air left his lungs in one brutal hit. His palms scraped stone as he skidded, vision going white.

Darts hissed.
Vines writhed.
The entire structure shook.

Nathan gasped, “Wrong tile—wrong tile—sir, don’t!”

Kieran didn’t charge for Nathan’s sake—he charged to reach the correct tile before the pattern fully collapsed.

He sprinted straight into the barrage.

A dart clipped his shoulder.
Another grazed his ribs.
A vine wrapped around his forearm and yanked.

Kieran drew his sword in a blur and severed the vine in one swing, teeth bared in a snarl.

“DRAEGOR—MOVE!”

“I CAN’T—!”

Nathan tried to stand but his leg buckled—the status effect still lingering from the earlier hit. His vision wavered.

A vine snapped toward his throat—

—and Kieran slammed between them, taking the hit across his back.

Nathan heard the sound.

A wet, sickening crack.

“Sir!”

Kieran staggered. A dark stain spread across his cloak where a thorned vine had ripped a deep line across his shoulder blade.

The vines did not relent.

Two more lashed from the right.
A third from above.
A volley of darts shot downward like rain.

“We need—” Nathan choked, “we need to get OFF—!”

“We do not leave the pattern,” Kieran said through clenched teeth.

“I can’t remember the pattern!”

Kieran’s breaths were shaky now.
Long.
Controlled.
The kind of control born of pain.

“We retreat,” he said finally. “Brace yourself.”

Nathan barely had time to gasp before Kieran grabbed the front of his cloak and threw him down the stairs.

He tumbled, not gracefully—just enough to slide out of range.

Kieran wasn’t so lucky.

Three vines hit him simultaneously.
One wrapped his wrist.
Another slashed open his thigh.
Another whipped his ribs.

He went down on one knee.

“Sir!”

A dart buried itself in Kieran’s calf.

His leg buckled, completely numb.

This wasn’t like the arm—this numbness hit deeper, heavier.

He fell.

The tutorial reacted instantly.

CHIME

WARNING: Trainee vital signs unstable.
Initiating safety reset…

White light detonated around them—blinding, absolute.

Nathan felt the world stutter, like a skipped frame in a video.

And then—

They were back at the base of the ziggurat.
Same air.
Same dust.
Same cold stone under his palms.

Reset to fully healed condition, but his body still remembered the pain.
No wounds, no blood, no broken ribs.
The dungeon hadn’t moved them.

It had rewound them.

CHIME

Reset Complete. Companions returned to safe position.

Hint: The staircase follows a repeating pattern.
Observe each full row before advancing to the next.

Nathan squinted at the panel. “Wow, thank you, incredibly vague tutorial note. Tell me something I don’t know!”

The hint dissolved.

He collapsed to his knees, breath ragged. “I hate that. I hate that so much.”

Kieran stood beside him, breathing hard through his nose, shoulders tense in a way that said he still felt every injury even if his body didn’t show them.

“The vines aim to maim,” he said quietly. “Not to kill.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“No.”

The silence stretched.

Then Kieran said quietly:

“You were right.”

Nathan’s brain simply refused to process that sentence.

“About… dying horribly?”

“About the puzzle.”

Nathan stared.

Kieran looked away, shoulders tense. “It is a sequence. And it grows. You recognized it before I did.”

“Is that… praise?”

Kieran’s expression shuttered.

“It is a fact,” Kieran corrected sharply. “Do not let it make you reckless.”

Nathan’s face heated. “I’m not—I’m trying my best here.”

“For once,” Kieran said dryly.

Nathan shoved his shoulder. “Hey!”

A faint twitch of Kieran’s mouth. “We will conquer this floor.”

Nathan nodded. “We will.”

He believed it.
He hated that he believed it.

Kieran stood and offered his hand.

Nathan stared at it.

“You—uh—want me to…?”

“Stand,” Kieran said.

Nathan took the hand.
Kieran pulled him up in one clean motion.

Under the unseen tutorial light, Kieran looked… different.

Focused.
Resolute.
Something else Nathan couldn’t name.

Something that scared him more than the vines.

“Let’s try again,” Kieran said.

The world blinked.

They were at the bottom of the ziggurat again.

Everything reset:
Fresh symbols.
Fresh vines.
Fresh dart slits.

Oh, goody.

One difference:

The dungeon had adapted.

All the vines now tracked their movements.

Like snakes waiting to strike.

Nathan whispered, “It’s learning us…”

Perfect. Amazing. Love that the murder-maze now studies my habits.

“Yes,” Kieran said. “Do not give it any more opportunities.”

They climbed.

Row by row.

Nathan spoke each symbol under his breath.

“Line. O. O. Line. X. Blank. O. Line.”

Kieran memorized with terrifying speed.

They reached row eight.

Nathan hesitated only once, and Kieran’s hand shot out—steadying, grounding, commanding.

“You know the next tile,” he said quietly.

Nathan swallowed.
“…X.”

He stepped.

Silence.

They climbed higher.

Ten rows now.
Twelve.
Fifteen.

Nathan’s heart hammered so loud he thought the vines could hear it.

Each tile felt like defusing a bomb with his foot.

His mouth was dry.
His palms slick.
His shirt sticking to his back.

They reached the row where they had died last time.

The six-symbol combo.

Line.
X.
O.
O.
Blank.
Line.

This time, Nathan didn’t overthink.

He breathed.

The pattern unraveled in his head like a melody.

He stepped.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four—

A dart flew straight at his ear.

Kieran’s hand snapped up.
He blocked it with the flat of his blade.
The deflected dart spun into the air and clattered down the stairs.

Nathan stared.

“Sir—”

“Do not stop.”

Right.
Right.

He stepped onto the fifth tile.
Correct.

Then the sixth.

Correct.

The vines recoiled.

Nathan sagged in relief. “I think we’re—”

The entire ziggurat trembled.

Nathan’s stomach dropped. “Oh COME ON—”

Kieran’s voice was a low snarl. “Of course.”

The stairs shifted again.

A full rearrangement.

The sequence stayed the same—but now the tiles were scattered across a jagged, diagonal layout.

The dungeon wanted precision jumps.

Nathan whispered, “I’m going to throw up.”

“No,” Kieran said. “You are not.”

Cool. Great. Vomit denial. That fixes everything.

Nathan pointed weakly at the layout. “Sir. This is—this is parkour on literal death tiles.”

“Then do not fall.”

Nathan groaned. “I want to go home.”

“You cannot,” Kieran said. “Move.”

He did.

They advanced by inches.

Nathan pointed each tile.
Kieran guarded every angle.
The vines snapped whenever Nathan took too long to think.

Three rows from the top, a dart grazed Nathan’s arm.

His fingers went numb first.

“I can’t grip—”
“My hand’s dead—legs still work, I think—”

Kieran grabbed his wrist. “Stay behind me. You have to touch the object.”

“No—if you lead, we’ll lose the pattern rhythm!”

“Then keep moving.”

Nathan tried.
He really did.

But halfway up the next jump, his foot slipped off the edge.

He gasped—

Kieran caught the back of his cloak just in time, hauling him upright.

Nathan’s heart pounded out of sequence. “Sir—sir—I can’t feel my hand—”

“You have your legs,” Kieran said. “Use them.”

Nathan’s breath trembled.

But he nodded.

He switched to climbing on reflex and instinct rather than grip strength.
Kieran stayed close—too close—practically shadowing him.

A vine lashed—Kieran cut it.
A dart screamed past—Kieran parried.

Nathan reached the second-to-last row.

Final sequence:

Blank.
Line.
Line.
O.
X.

He stepped on Blank.

Correct.

He stepped on Line.

Correct.

He stepped on Line—

A dart hit Kieran clean in the ribs.

He staggered—

—and fell to one knee, breath driven out of him.

“Sir!”

Kieran rasped, “Finish it.”

Nathan looked up.

The pedestal floated there.

Less than ten feet away.

Mocking.
Inviting.

So close he could taste victory.

“Go,” Kieran ground out. “NOW.”

Nathan moved.

Not perfectly.
Not gracefully.
But with purpose.

He scrambled up the cracked stone, sliding on dust, skin scraping raw.

His calves burned.
His foot slipped twice.
His hand went numb again.

All fresh pain. The reset hadn’t made him immune to stupid choices.

He almost dropped.

Kieran growled below him, “DRAEGOR—NOW!”

Nathan lunged.

His fingertips brushed the pedestal.

The world held its breath.

***

CHIME

**Level 74 Cleared**

Tutorial Progress: 92%
Overall Progress: 0.05%

Whoa. That jumped up.

CHIME

Rewards Granted:
All active skills increased in effectiveness.

Skills:
Basic Footwork II
Basic Balance II
Evasive Recognition II
Peripheral Awareness II
Sturdy Knees II
Improved Grip II
Logic Recognition III
Dodging II
Digger II

Well that’s cool. What about my mana? Do I get to use my mana yet?

Nathan’s heart stuttered.
He pulled up the screen to check the mana line—

Still locked.
Still grayed-out.
Still inaccessible.

“I’ve come this far without it,” he muttered. “I don’t need—”

He froze.

For the first time in this tutorial dungeon…
there was sky.

Not unusual by itself—he’d seen dungeons fake horizons before—but the timing hit like a gut punch.
They were here.
This was clearly the last floor.
The final arena.

Blue.
Open.
Vast.
Sunlight blazing down like the dungeon had suddenly decided to get dramatic about things.

Wind brushed his face—warm and real, carrying the faint scent of grass and dust.
Of course.
Of course the dungeon would choose now to get theatrical.

They stood in the center of a massive coliseum.

Nathan slowly turned in place.
“This… isn’t a corridor,” he said, mostly to confirm he wasn’t hallucinating from exhaustion.

Kieran didn’t answer. He stood perfectly still, staring up at the impossible sky with the expression of a man about to swear loyalty or wage war—no in-between.

If this entire place was a constructed tutorial…
If every floor was mechanical, coded, controlled…

Then this open arena could only mean one thing:

They were right at the end.

“So this is level seventy-five?” Nathan said.

“Yes,” Kieran answered. “It must be.”

Nathan exhaled, tension coiling. “Then where’s the—”

CHIME
Time Limit Reached.
You will now be transported back to the village. Rest well, trainee! You’ll need it.

Nathan’s head snapped up. “What? No—wait—why?! We just got here!”

Kieran’s eyes sharpened. “What is happening?”

“But why show us this?” Nathan demanded, throwing an arm out at the arena. “Why bring us to the final floor and then kick us out?!”

FLASH

The arena vanished.
The warmth vanished.
The wind died.

Blue collapsed into white.

And then—

They were back.
The square.
The lampposts.
The NPCs.
Everything pretending nothing had changed.

Nathan pressed his palms into his eyes.

They were right there.
One floor left.
And the system had punted them out like misbehaving housecats.

The last tutorial level.
Finally.
Fantastic.

A pit of dread settled in his stomach.