Chapter 20: Tutorials and Trials

  Even though he was being bombarded by a sea of messages from the system, Sam made sure to pick up his loot first. It was times like these that he wished he had more slots in his personal inventory or had access to some kind of spatial storage magic item. Having secured the equipment, he turned his attention back to the system messages.

  [The Tutorial Trial Goblin Road Gauntlet has been completed]

  [A tutorial mini-boss the Hobgoblin Berserker has been defeated]

  [There are 8/10 mini bosses remaining in this tutorial instance. A minimum of 5 must be defeated in order to receive the details of the final tutorial quest]

  [You have completed a trial meant for parties rather than individuals]

  [You have once again been awarded Special experience that will be held for you until such time comes that receiving it wouldn’t cause your immediate dissolution of being.]

  [Having completed this trial, you will now receive all skill gains that have been limited during its duration]

  [Your Sagacious Being title has been upgraded]

  [Lvl.3 Heal (Basic)] → [Lvl.10 Heal (Basic)]

  [Lvl.2 Improvement (Common)] → [Lvl.15 Improvement (Common)]

  [Lvl.4 Prayer/Meditation (Common)] → [Lvl.6 Prayer/Meditation (Common)]

  [Lvl.1 Passive Regeneration (Uncommon)] → [Lvl.10 Passive Regeneration (Uncommon)]

  [Inexorable Stride (Legendary)] → [Lvl.3 Inexorable Stride (Legendary)]

  [Level Up! X 5] [You have met all but one requirement to upgrade your class. Increase your tier to continue with class evolution.]

  The system was as cryptic as ever. At least now he knew the path towards the end of the tutorial. He needed to find more enemies like that hobgoblin Berserker. He wasn’t done with the system interactions just yet. After all, he had three pieces of equipment waiting to be inspected. Focusing first on the greatshield, he saw a familiar sight.

  [Holy and Light affinity detected] [Because of your affinity you may initiate the creation of the spell matrix from the skill contained within this piece of equipment. Choosing to do so has a 50% chance of destroying the equipment in the process.]

  [Yes] or [No?]

  Since he had no plans on using the shield, especially since he no longer had a spear, he immediately assented to imprinting the spell matrix. He repeated the process for the other two pieces of equipment. And at the end of it this is what he gained:

  [The spell [Shield of Protection] has been imprinted]

  [The spell [Calm Mind] has been imprinted]

  [The spell [Glow of Restoration] has been imprinted]

  He was unlucky with the chances of breaking the equipment since both the headband and the staff had a twenty five percent chance instead of fifty yet both still ended up breaking. Still he was quite happy with his rewards. As usual the imprinted spells were accompanied by a certain level of instinctive knowledge of their effects and based on what he’s seen so far, they would all be quite useful for him. He was satisfied with his singular damaging spell for now, the rest of his spells had the exact kind of utility that he wanted. Although, a cleaning spell and a repair spell would also be pretty neat to learn. He wasn’t so sure about using his limited soul surface to imprint regular quality of life magic.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

  Now that he was done with the chores, he turned his attention to find the perfect tree for the night. After only a few minutes of searching, he found one off the path that had a Verdilunis moss Stone Boar grazing at its base. Taking this as a good omen, Sam picked that very tree. In order to get to the branch he was eyeing he used his walking skill in a way that he hadn’t yet tried. He took a step forward envisioning the branch as his destination; this was well within the distance the skill allowed but he simply never tried moving vertically with the skill in any way. To his pleasant surprise his food landed on the branch as he finished taking his step forward. Luckily the lack of momentum meant that he didn’t make any noise so the boar remained at the base of the tree, unaware of its now much closer observer. Sam was glad to finally have a break from goblins. All he had seen recently were goblins upon goblins, so much so that he had even started dreaming about them. Settling down on his branch as quietly as he could, Sam activated his thermos and drank from his favorite gourd– don't mind the fact that it was his only gourd.

  After eating dinner, Sam leaned back and took in the peaceful atmosphere of nature. The tutorial was quite a beautiful place if it weren’t for the goblins out for blood or the mysterious roars in the woods. He did his routine of meditation and cultivation before saying his prayers and heading off to the wonderful embrace of sleep.

  The following morning, Sam was quickly back on the road. He was off to search for more mini-bosses and he wanted to see if this time he could find an actual cave instead of some mystical cavern behind cherry blossoms and pink doors. If he was fortunate he would find both a cave and a mini-boss inside it. Sure he was looking for another mini-boss to fight but he needed to remind himself that things wouldn’t always be so easy; the fight with the berserker was easy. However, Sam did have the distinct feeling that his encounter with the hobgoblin Berserker was far easier than might have been intended by whoever designed this tutorial. Now that he knew what the headband did, he figured that the Berserker would have been quite the dangerous fight given the buffs he assumed being a berserker came with while reducing the classic debuff accompanying that using the Calm Mind effect of the golden headband. He figured that the hobgoblin Berserker chose not to go berserk because there must’ve been a health drain effect accompanying the loss of mental faculties when going berserk. That was the only reason that Sam could think of for the mini-boss not to have used its main ability. The combination made perfect sense especially since one of its companions was a magic casting hobgoblin that had access to healing magic. The effects of the headband and the support mage put together would normally have been enough to counteract the downsides of mini-boss’ abilities and with the shield using hobgoblin there to tank for it and protect the healer, it would have had free reign wreck havoc on whatever group it might’ve ran into. Unfortunately for the trio, Sam had the option to basically side step all of their would be advantages and he had the ability to stay safe thanks to Inexorable Stride.

  Having a general plan in mind to keep his search for a nice cave, Sam started using his walking skill to its utmost, using his standard practice of using as much mana as he got back in the same timeframe. The upgrade to the Sagacious Being title helped increase his overall walking speed in this regard since he could feel his resource regeneration rate being distinctly higher than before. He wasn’t sure how much at the moment but he could always check that out later. As he walked, he made sure to make the most of his travel time by continually practicing with his bow and attempting to improve his energy control. Unlike when he wasn’t using his walking skill, he was having some real difficulty in maintaining focus on everything while moving with the skill so he just switched between archery practice and energy control every now and then. There was no point in trying to practice everything at once if it just made him sloppy in his efforts. That would just mean he wouldn’t improve and would have ended up wasting time in the process. Still he felt like he should choose one over the other to really focus on so that the progress that he made became more tangible. He couldn’t yet make up his mind on choosing between the archery practice and the energy control so he just continued with switching between the two until he could come to a proper decision. There was tons of room for improvement in either option anyway so the time spent at the moment wouldn’t be too wasteful.

  While he practiced, he thought about his few friends, his father, and his sister. There were also some aunts and uncles that occupied his mind a little but he didn’t know them as well as he could’ve. His father had no siblings so those aunts and uncles were actually lifelong friends instead, he even had a few “cousins” as they might be called because of those relationships. They, his aunts and uncles included, were always there for him especially when dad died but he mostly pushed them away because seeing them just reminded him of the loss he experienced. He regretted that now though; he didn’t even know if he would see them ever again. Then there was also the subject of his sister; at times he felt guilty because he knew he could’ve tried harder to find a way to reach out and find her but his denial of his father’s death got in the way of that and if he was being honest with himself he had a hard time forming an emotional attachment to someone who simply was never there, by no fault of their own. The magic accompanying the arrival of the system was really nice and it definitely put an end to the dissatisfaction with mundane life that he had but one area it certainly did not help in was with the uncertainty. Uncertainty for the future was a deeply uncomfortable feeling for Sam; spells and qi and goblins and mana definitely wasn’t a contributing factor to regaining stability. He really did wish his father was around to experience this new reality. There was an ache in his chest that he constantly pretended wasn’t there and he didn’t know if it was ever going to go away.