The tutorial zone was more or less what I’d expected. The hut itself was on a farm, a little ways away from the city, built from rotten wood and a thatch roof, with a bare dirt yard that pigs sifted through. On one such pig, there sat an old man, smiling through crooked teeth, wearing clothes so old and stained their material was anyone’s guess.
“Howdy,” he said, with a snort not unlike to a chainsmoker’s.
I blinked. “Hi.”
He patted his pig, coaching it forward, until the two of us were face to face, pig excluded. He jabbed a crooked cane at Asiel. “You get outta here. I ain't teaching you.”
“Yeah, I know.’ she said, giving me a thumbs up. “Grind, try not to die, alright?” She chuckled under her breath, and with a wave, wandered back to the city.
The old man puffed, grabbing a pipe of some sort out of his pocket.
Do NPC’s not have inventory?
He cleared his throat. “So, you wanna play this game, right?”
There was that feeling again. I was missing something.
I squinted, leaning closer. “Who are you?”
“I’m an NPC,” he stated, picking his nose. “What are you, stupid?”
I walked to the side.
His eyes followed.
I waved a hand. “You don’t look like an NPC.”
His pig squealed and kicked me in the crotch. A man of vulnerabilities, I crumpled onto the ground and started crying.
“Whoa, hey there, Matilda,” the old man whispered, reaching down to scratch under his pig’s ears. “There there, girl, I’m sure he meant no offense.”
The pig grunted and sat down on the ground.
He smiled warmly, scratching her between the ears. “Good piggie.”
Matilda squealed back
I myself made several similarly piggish noises, spitting what I could only hope was dirt out from my mouth.
He smiled like only an old man can, exposing more missing teeth. “Tell me, kiddo. How do you feel?”
“Well…” I gritted my teeth, pushing up off the ground. “I wouldn’t mind stuffing that pig down your chimney.”
“Oh shaddup kiddo,” he snorted. “Pain’s just letting ya know you ain't dead yet. Besides, Matilda couldn’t have done more than a couple hit points. You’ll be fine in a minute or five.”
I balled my hands into fists. “Aren’t you supposed to be teaching me something?”
He was picking his nose again. “Huh? Oh, yeah.”
The old man waved his hands, summoning a bright white and yellow notification.
{Quest: Stupid old man : Tutorial Started}
[Grace III (Buff) applied]
His pig made a wide variety of agitated grunting noises, until the old man calmed it back down again. “There, there, Matilda.”
He pushed the fold of pig fat up into a chair and reclined. “Now you just go think about health points or vitals or something like that. Game stuff.”
I thought.
Nothing happened.
I frowned. “You’re an odd man.”
“And you're awfully thick for a kid,” he grunted. “Try harder, wouldya.”
I rolled my eyes, concentrating harder, conjuring a blue screen from thin air. When I saw the numbers, I hesitated. “What exactly am I looking at?”
He scoffed. “Read!”
“Sure, but… I trailed off, checking the screen again.
{GRIND}
[7 Hp 0 Str]
“Zero strength? I groaned. “If I’m that weak, how am I even standing?”
“Oh, the body’s a funny thing,” the old man muttered. “I’m a hundred and three and I feel just fine.”
“I won’t be zero strength for long, right?”
He smiled wide.
I blinked “Old guy?”
“That’s where I’ll come in, shorty,” he cackled, tossing a shovel into my hand. “Go on. Take it. He don’t bite.”
I took one look at the shovel and regretted my current life choices.
~Legendary Item~
[ CrapShovel(er) ]
“This is a shovel that shovels crap.”
[+1 Str]
“My darling pigs need looking after,” he said, grinning. “Now get to it. A day of good shoveling oughta make you nice and strong.”
I smiled, cautiously optimistic. “I don’t suppose I’m picking rocks or hay up with this, am I?”
There was a bright twinkle in the geezer's eye.
“Yeah,” I groaned, glancing around the piles of dung scattered all over his farm. “That’s what I figured.”
While I am fabulously talented in a wide variety of areas, strength is not one of those many areas. In other words, I wore out after a minute or two shoveling dung. Whenever that happened, the old man would come over on his pig and smack me with his cane, or his pig would bite me in the rear, or he’d get one of the other pigs to start chasing me until I started working again.
After what must’ve been several hours of straight back-breaking labor, I finished.
“HA!” I laughed, throwing crapshoverler onto the ground. “HA! Ha….ha” I wheezed, collapsing onto my knees. “Wow, am I tired.”
A notification appeared beside me.
[(+1) 1 Str]
[(+30) 30/100 Exp]
“Just…one?” I groaned, collapsing against a fence.
The old guy grunted, slapping his pig on the rear, and it wobbled toward me. “You did some fine shoveling, kiddo.”
“Did I?” I glanced around the farm. Actually, without heaping piles of manure every couple feet, the place didn’t look so bad. Well the barn looked awful. It was rusty metal, covered in black stains and grease, with little bits of mold—
The old man handed me a rag.
Of course.
[(+1) 1 Str]
[(+30) 60/100 Exp]
I flexed, watching the muscles on my arms bulge. It kinda felt like I’d been working out for a month or two, maybe longer. “Am I done yet?”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
The geezer scoffed. “Hardly. You can’t fight a dragon until you’ve done an old man’s chores.
I grinned. “Dragons? We’re fighting dragone?
“It’s a common figure of speech, you dolt.” He muttered. “No, we're not fighting dragons. Besides, you’ve still got work to do.”
He clapped the pig on the rear, and it shuffled deeper into the backyard. “C’mon!”
I followed behind, carefully to keep as far from the nearby pigs as I could.
“‘Here we go,” the old man said, pulling his pig to a stop. He gestured toward a field of dense yellow-green stalks and bushes. Beside those, there was a small stack of thick burlap saks. “My potatoes need harvesting.”
“How is this manual labor supposed to be helping me do anything?”
“Pain builds character,” the old man grunted.
I sighed, rubbing my head. “I could’ve done manual labor somewhere else, you know. Then I’d be getting real rewards.”
“Try it–” He chuckled. “And you’d be dead by now. Grace III's the only thing still keeping you upright.”
What was he talking about?
In response, a glowing yellow box appeared.
[Buff: Grace III: ignore all accumulated debuffs]
Thinking back, I’d been working for hours on end and I didn’t feel super drained. Actually, I felt a lot better than before, now that I’d gotten a couple points of strength.
“Normally, a little work wouldn’t give you strength,” the old man started, “but this tutorial has special rules, so rookies like you can get some easy stats. If I’d had this hut when I was a youngster like you—well then I wouldn’t be stuck in the tutorial!” He laughed, wapping me with the butt of his cane. “Now pick me some taters!”
[(+1) 8 Hp]
[(+30) 90/100 Exp]
I sighed, tossing the last of the potatoes into a bag. “There. Are you happy yet?”
“I’m never happy, kid, ” he snorted. “But yeah, nice work kiddo.” he jabbed one of the cloth bags with his cane, nodding up to the house. “Now carry those to the cellar.”
I glanced at the bags—filled with easily a couple hundred potatoes—then at my noodly arms.
“You’re joking, right?” I asked.
He started picking his nose again, indifferent.
“Stupid old man,” I muttered, grabbing at the bag and heaving upward, until my face was beet red and my bare feet had sunk ankle deep into the soft dirt.
The old man paused, glancing back toward the field, then at me. “You missed a potato.”
“Impossible,” I snapped, staggering away from the bags. “Well, maybe impossible. It wasn’t like I was counting. I just picked whatever I saw.”
“That tater’s going to be devilishly hard to find.” He muttered. “Buried in dirt somewhere on the farm. Silently mocking us.”
The old man was not an especially stable person.
“You know what?” He belched, scratching his stomach. “I don’t really care.” The old man grabbed a potato from the bag and tossed it onto the ground. “Pick that up.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“Humor a stupid old man, will you?” he grumbled.
I grabbed the potato, and something chimed behind me.
{LEVEL UP!}
[+1 Skill point]
[+1 Inventory]
~
[(+10) 10/200 Exp]
Inventory?
The old man grinned, rubbing his hands together. “Now pick up one of those bags.”
When I touched the bag, it fizzled into a burst of bright blue light, disappearing.
My eyes widened. “Whoa.”
“Welcome to Tetratera,” The old man cackled. “Go put it in the cellar.”
I nodded, walking into his house, down the steps to the cellar, without feeling the slightest bit of weight for lugging around several hundred potatoes in a burlap sack.
Once I got into the cellar, it was all relatively intuitive. I merely willed the bag of potatoes to appear in my hand, and it did.
The moment it did however, my hand remembered that I am a scrawny little man with scrawny arms, and the bag slammed into the floor, cracking through the stairs, spilling potatoes all over the floor in a sea of brown.
“That can’t be good,” I muttered.
“Hey!” the old guy shouted, calling from outside. “Didja break something?”
I tossed a rug over the shattered wood and closed the door. “No! Nothing important!”
He snorted. “Go GRAb MOre BAgs!”
[(+1) 9 Hp]
[(+1) 10 Hp]
My skin and body felt tougher. Harder. More durable. I wasn’t stubbing my toes on the occasional pebble, or cutting my feet. Even the pigs didn’t seem so bad. Not that I’d be going anywhere near them, of course.
After carrying a truly unreasonable amount of potatoes without so much as a sweat, I felt invincible.
I glanced at my current stats, swelling with pride.
{GRIND}
[10 Hp 3 Str]
The old man nodded, scratching under his pig’s chin. “Very nice. Very nice. How do you feel?”
I smiled, casually flexing. “Pretty good.”
He grinned. “Are you about ready to finish?”
“Finish? Already?” I glanced up at the sky, shocked to find the setting sun. “Well look at that. As far as the first quest goes, that wasn’t so bad,” I muttered. “Not exactly the most thrilling thing in the world, but not so bad.”
The old man hopped off his pig with a shocking amount of grace, landing deftly in the middle of his yard. “Grab that shovel of yours.”
I picked it off the ground, grimacing. “More shoveling?”
He chuckled in a way that I’d learned to find unsettling. “Now, hit me.”
“Hit…you?” I winced. “As much as I really want to, I’m not the kind to beat up old guys.”
He snapped his fingers, and a blue plate appeared in the sky.
~Legendary foe~
{Stupid Old Man}
[Level 1,040,320]
[200 Hp 10 Str 1,000 Dur]
I rubbed my eyes, checking his board against my own.
~Silly rookie~
{GRIND}
[Level 1]
[10 Hp 3 Str]
“You won’t be doing squat to me, rookie,” the old man said, grinning wider, arms outstretched. “Now c’mon, sissy. Hit me.”
I walked over and bonked him with the flat end of a shovel.
~Legendary foe~
{Stupid Old Man}
[200 Hp 10 Str 1,000 Dur]
The old man smirked. “Durability is a flat division to damage taken, thickhead. I’m fine.”
I spent the better part of an hour, wacking him repeatedly with the blunt end of a shovel—until my strength increased again.
[(+1) 3 Str]
~Legendary foe~
{Stupid Old Man}
[199 Hp 10 Str 1,000 Dur]
He smirked, brushing dirt off his shirt. “You’re starting to get the hang of that, aren’t you?”
“I guess so,” I said, flipping the shovel around in my hand. “But don’t you have a sword or something I could use? That’d be way more practical.”
“Sure,” he cackled. There was a crackle of energy, and a great big sword appeared in his hand. “It’s all yours, kiddo. Just rip it outta my cold dead hands. NOW BLOCK!”
I braced myself, instinctively moving the shovel into the path of his swinging sword.
There was a metallic thud, and I staggered backward.
“Well?” the old man smiled, twirling a massive blade on one finger. “How do you feel?”
My hands stung and my arms throbbed, and crapshoveler must’ve taken a serious blow to its durability, but…I was still alive, wasn't I?
A bright white notification popped up beside my head.
{SKILL ACQUIRED}
[Parry I : +1 Str & +1 Dur after a successful block (1:00)]
I flexed, noticing a new metallic shimmer across my skin. “Woah.”
“You’ll unlock a lot of natural abilities,” the old man stated. “Learn to use ‘em.”
I looked up. “How do I do that?”
“Practice,” he chuckled, ripping his shirt off to reveal rather impressive musculature. Then he dropped his sword low and charged.
