Tutorial Period has Ended

  Nathan stared at the screen, still grinning. He'd survived seven days without the freaking tutorial. Meaning he'd kept his streak of skipping tutorials even in the face of death, and his gamble had paid off.

  Yeah, that's right, tutorials are for noobs.

  He briefly considered the fact that the tutorial would have been more brutal than his seven-day island stint, but he quickly discarded the thought. The tutorial had probably been nothing but a lecture on do's and don'ts. Rolling his eyes at the errant thought, he was prepared to close up the screen when a new screen popped up.

  Distributing tutorialists to incursion zones in

  5

  4

  3

  2

  1

  0

  ...

  Huh.

  Nathan couldn't even believe what he was seeing. It seemed like the system was about to start spreading those who'd attended the tutorials across the world like rice. He chuckled at the thought; he probably wouldn't have had his free day off even if he'd accepted to go to the tutorial. He'd declined, and it'd 'distributed' him like he was a packet of rice. From the looks of things, the system wasn't done dumping tutorial information on him as the words on the screen began to rearrange themselves, a new message replacing the old.

  After the conclusion of the tutorial, dominant native inhabitants of World 2737, labelled as Earth, have had their average level documented. The average level of the dominant species on Earth—humans—is level 9

  Level 9.

  That was poor by any stretch of his imagination. The panther had been three times higher in level than that. Even if they had outliers that had been pruned during the collation of the average, those that attended the tutorial probably didn't have anyone above level 15.

  A feeling of warmth enveloped Nathan at the realization. While he'd have loved to lie and say the new information didn't make a difference to him, it did. He was levels above the average level, and what this meant was that he was currently keeping pace with his dreams of becoming strong enough to be able to stay in the forest and live like a hermit without being disturbed by anything or anyone.

  A quick chuckle escaped his lips before he could stop it. He'd initially drawn the short straw, but that short straw had magically extended the harder he worked. Nathan had no plans to stop working hard. Average level or not, some people were monsters, and it wouldn't take long for determined people to start closing the distance.

  He smiled with his best resolve, turning around and watching the screen for new information. The words seemed to just hang before the screen winked out entirely.

  Well, I suppose that's that.

  Lots of shit to unpack there. Looking outside the window, Nathan almost cursed. The sky still had patches of purple, which meant that the system had woken him up earlier than he'd have liked.

  Shaking his head, he started to unpack the information the system seemed to have just dumped on him. Every advantage he could wring out from the information he would—like they said, information is power, and Nathan needed all that he could get.

  The 'distribution' sounds interesting.

  Discarding the funny thoughts, Nathan focused on trying to pick apart what this meant for him. The closest he could come to decoding it in relation to himself was that he'd probably have visitors coming to the island within the next couple of hours or days, depending on how fast it took the system to sprinkle people around like a salt and pepper shaker.

  Nathan wasn't one to be greedy, though. There was enough land on the island for anyone who wanted a place for their own. As far as they didn't attack him or his, he wouldn't bother them. At the end of the day, life really was that simple: if they don't poke the bear, he stays away. Simple.

  The rest he'd already dissected, so it didn't make sense going over average levels and whatnot. With a grumble, Nathan got off the floor, stretching his cramped-up bones with a squeezed face. The floor had done a number on him over the course of the night.

  I guess constitution doesn't handle awkward naps.

  It was early, but he could still do a couple of things before the sky would fully turn red. Like start working on an idea for a man-made trap—or Nathan-made trap, as he'd labeled it in his head.

  The thing about making traps was that he had no prior knowledge on the subject, excluding the imp pits—pits he could build to a reasonable degree. But as they said, variety was the spice of life, and Nathan certainly needed to spice up Blood Rock's defenses.

  Stronghold status.

  Blood Rock

  Lord: Nathan Orion

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Delegate: N/A

  Buildings: 0

  Traps: 0

  Population: 1

  Ra'ahal Coins: 0

  Nathan was looking for one thing in particular when he'd called up the system: his trap count. The outstanding zero beside it was disheartening, but he'd already kind of been expecting it since he'd seen the panther caught in it.

  God forbid that the system allowed him to reuse traps that could make leveling up way easier. A part of him had already started analyzing how he could be setting traps like that around the forest and checking up on whatever they had caught.

  Alas, the system had decided to burst his bubble, ushering him back into reality. If he wanted something, he'd have to work for it, and that was something he had no qualms doing.

  Traps were out. The one-use policy meant it'd be very expensive to lay that many traps around the forest. He'd just have to stick to setting a couple around his stronghold.

  Dispelling the screen with a thought, Nathan started by getting himself refreshed. A hood bath had handled that. Within a couple of moments, he was back at the fireplace, his body drying up under the warmth of the cackling fire.

  No damned TV, and I'm left looking at a fireplace like a freaking caveman.

  The thought gave Nathan pause on how his life had changed so much, but it had upsides too. With a shrug, he took out a couple of fruits from his bag of holding and began munching on them, staring at the magical flames.

  Something had started to itch at the back of his mind, and he was stylishly letting himself remember it before he ran mad trying to figure out what he'd forgotten. For some reason, his mind kept taking him back to the image of the dead panther, which was probably still outside right about now.

  Free points!

  If Nathan were a scientist, then that probably would've been his eureka moment. So many different thoughts popped up in his head, but he'd finally sifted through enough to get back to the bone of contention: his stats. He'd decided to leave it till he was clear-headed before allocating his free points.

  Status.

  Name: Nathan Orion

  Moniker: N/A

  Level: 24

  Archetype: Blood Berserker

  Class: Blood Pawn

  Imprints: Balls of Steel, Demon Slayer, Skull Crusher, Bronze Dungeoneer, Wrong Underdog

  Strength: 24

  Dexterity: 13

  Vitality: 12

  Constitution: 16

  Perception: 9

  Dao: N/A

  Ra'hal Coins: 16,790

  Free Points: 8

  His stats were as solid as could be. Strength was leading the race and rightly so. Constitution was second, and the rest were irrelevant to Nathan at the current moment.

  His close shave with death last night had made him feel like tossing all his points in strength was the best course of action, but after a good night's test, the holes in that strategy had started to show themselves.

  While strength was primarily his most effective skill in battles, it wasn't the only one that had saved his life when in a pinch. His Vitality had come up clutch once, so had perception against the shadow wolves and dexterity against the Nagas. Proving that while the apocalypse didn't need an all-rounded stat, it should at least be close to each other.

  He could have seventy-plus points in his strength stat at the expense of one point in constitution, which would mean that something like a glancing blow from the dead panther just outside his cabin would've been more than enough to kill him ten times over.

  Well, twenty-seven actually.

  Nathan sobered up at the quiet admission. He needed strength, but at the same time, he needed to reasonably balance out the rest of his stats, else he'd risk being caught off guard at the wrong time.

  So, two points to strength, two to constitution, two to vitality.

  Strength: 26

  Constitution: 18

  Vitality: 14

  Dao: N/A

  Ra'hal Coins: 16,790

  Free Points: 2

  Nathan closed the screen after confirming his allocation, stepping out shortly after. His eyes roamed the stronghold in the early morning sky glow, the combination of red and purple in the sky casting a beautiful glow on the stronghold.

  While it was no doubt beautiful, Nathan actually had another thing that had taken him outside for the day: the panther. The corpse of the monster had become a husk like he'd predicted. Most of its muscle mass had disappeared, and it seemed to be reducing in size like a leaky balloon.

  He searched for the other item that would've served him well if the system wasn't being too greedy with its materials: the trap. Even though Nathan knew from his stronghold status that the trap had been disabled, he still hoped that the system would've at least left the scraps of Sebalos' hands. It didn't. The paw which had been caught in the trap still bore the wounds, but the trap itself was gone like it hadn't ever been there.

  Probably the system disposing of it like it did with dungeons. A part of him was interested in finding out where exactly the system dropped those items and things, and the rational part of him suggested that it might be recycling the items as best as it could.

  Shaking his head, he stared at his empty stronghold, the cleared piece of land shown in its full glory under the morning light. He'd probably have to plant some trees in the place. It lacked any at the moment. Somehow, the lack of trees in his stronghold put him off a little, considering the fact that trees dominated the other parts of the forest, making this an odd patch in the rest of the forest.

  I'll figure out something.

  He'd have to if he wanted to achieve something that could change the way Blood Rock's grounds were just bare. With a sigh, Nathan headed back into the cabin, dropping to the floor as he'd been in the middle of a nap before the system alarm had woken him up.

  It took a while for him to get back to sleep as it was a wooden floor, and he'd just woken up a couple of minutes ago, but Nathan found a way. A couple of moments after finding the perfect position to sleep on the floor, he dozed off.

  The next time Nathan woke up, it was morning proper. The red sky dominated the sky, crimson light spilling into the cabin through the window in the first room and illuminating the place far better than the fireplace managed.

  A stretch and a sigh had Nathan out the cabin door and on his way out the stronghold. The reason was quite easy to deduce: if the average level of those who'd attended the tutorial was 9, then they'd struggle a lot against the monsters that'd taken residence at the island.

  Assuming they get here today, or get here at all.

  That was another matter entirely, and while both thoughts were valid, Nathan would at least try to scout for other new humans and shepherd them from the big baddies till they could stand on their own. He wasn't jockeying for a leadership position, but he'd offer as much help as he could to anyone who'd be unfortunate enough to be stuck on this island at level 9.

  Where to start?

  Shore seemed like the best place to start, but it was technically an island, so shore could be anywhere. He needed to start from a single location, and one, in particular, stood out to him.

  The Incursionist settlement.

  BOOK 1 COMPLETED ON PATREON.

  BOOK 2 POSTING HAS BEGUN.

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