CH (2): Entering the tutorial

--Page 1 of Diary of #####, found on the 32nd floor rest area

She had to start moving. Unlike hidden items in rest areas, the hidden items in trials could only be found by one person per trial. She had to get it quickly while the challengers were still adjusting. She remembered that the hidden item in this trial was in the hut. She quickly dashed to the hut. Upon closer inspection, the hut was aged and poorly made. Inside the hut, impaled in the cobbled floor,  was a single, slightly worn sword.

<old, well-made longsword>

Dur: 264/320

+7 Attack damage

Ariza slid the weapon into her inventory. Nice. The only weapons challengers could use in the tutorial was whatever weapons they were summoned with, and makeshift weapons like sticks. If they had neither, they would have to beat the tutorial's goblins to death. I wonder who was lucky enough to get this the first time. She scratched around at the cobbled floor to make sure she didn't miss anything. Under a stone, there was a single notebook bound with leather. She opened the book. Only the first page had any text. light... madness... forge... cryptic. A hint for the hidden objective maybe?

Ariza quickly looked at the clock. 10:23. she had 10 minutes to finish her preparation. She rushed over to the forest. Ariza's goal was to make a mask. There were 2 ways of identifying someone in the Tower. The first was by their face, and the second was identify. She had to be able to hide both of them by the end of the tutorial. Most Groups in the tower weren't afraid to forcefully recruit talents by making them signing magically binding contracts. Her plan required her to do well in the tutorial, extremely well in fact, so she need to prepare for this. She infused mana into the longsword and chopped a tree.  Ariza thinly Sliced a log, and cut 2 slits in it. cutting a sleave off her under shirt, she created a strap and secured it with 2 wood spikes on each side of the mask.

<average, makeshift, wood mask>

Dur:5/5 (makeshift -15 max Dur)

+1 def

*guaranteed to give you splinters after more than an hour of use

not bad. Sure, It looked like something that came out of an amateur craftsman's trashcan, only gave 1 defense, and guaranteed her splinters by the end of trial, but she couldn't really complain about something made in 8 minutes. It would fulfill Ariza's objective of hiding her face until she could get a better mask on the 1st floor. Ariza covered her missing sleave, and pulled up the hoodie of her jacket. The intermission time was running out.

[10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2...1...now spawning 500 goblins]

All of the challenger's got teleported to the center of the field. From one side of the field, 500 goblins came crashing in. Ignoring the different reactions in the crowd of challengers, Ariza immediately sprinted at the goblin horde, using her Agility even superior to Olympic sprinters to reach the horde in less than 20 seconds. Having stats over 3 times that of a goblin and combat proficiency built over decades, she easily slaughtered them in a quick massacre. Dumfounded by the appearance of monsters and a person that could kill them as if livestock going to the slaughter, the remaining challengers stood still. As the Goblins' aggros were all drawn to Ariza, they never attacked the challengers.

<level has increased by 1. You have gained 10 free stat points>

Ariza distributed her new stat points.

<Agi 19->25, Agi has reached 25, +1 stat point to Agi ratio, efficacy of Agi has vastly increased.>

<Str 16->20>

Ariza continued to kill Goblins, at almost double the speed.

<level has increased by 1. You have gained 10 free stat points>

<Str 20->25, Str has reached 25, +1 stat point to Str ratio, efficacy of Str has vastly increased.>

<Int 24->27, Int has reached 25, +1 stat point to Int ratio, +1 Int to mana ratio, efficacy of Int has vastly increased.>

<Kill streak! you have kill 10 creatures with a less than 10 second time between kills. +25% experience bonus for all kills in your streak.>

.

.

.

By the time the other challengers snapped out of their surprised state, ran over to the fight, and started killing Goblins, Ariza had already killed over 300 of the Goblins. As she pulled her sword out of the cooling heart of a goblin, she realized there were no more goblins left to kill. 

<Kill streak ended. Total killed: 371. Total experience bonus:+125%>

<Level has increased by 18. You have gained 180 free stat points.>

<you have gained the titles <Kill Streaker(5)> and <Monster Slayer(1)>

Ariza distributed her stats, she checked her status.

[All goblins have died. In 30 minutes, the next wave will start. In the next wave, there will be 100 more goblins, and all goblins will have a 25% increase in all stats.]

Ariza goal during the 30 minute intermission was to figure out the earlier clue. light, madness, forge. Either I need to find 3 thing with these elements, or choose 3 out of a number of other things. What could it be? In terms of classes, the first is an light archetype, the second a dark archetype but more specialized, and the third a subclass in the craftsman archetype. Oh, it could be referring to gods. Isteal is the lesser god of light, Zenarcith the lesser god of madness, and Codzack is the lesser god of the forge. The only hiding area for a church or shrine would be the forest, and since the forest is rather large, it could take a while of searching--

"Hello sir...miss can I have a bit of your time?"

"what."

Approaching Ariza was a man in a slightly dirty black suit with gel slicked hair. He was sporting a slightly unsettling smile. He had a sleazy atmosphere, but seemed slightly more likeable than your average conman. Seems like he's a conman with the <speaker> sub class. Did he already go through class selection?  <Speaker> was a subclass who's skills focused around making a person slightly more likeable while increasing the weight of their words in listeners' minds. It was a subclass of almost every guild leader in the tower because it improved negotiations and public relations. It also just generally decreased the chance of someone killing you. It seems like his skill levels are low, because its not covering up his natural conman aura.

"may I ask you to protect my client? I'll pay you generously."

"how will you pay me?"

"$25,000 dollars, sent to your bank account as soon as this trial is finished."

He doesn't seem stupid enough to believe that old money still works here. He smart and I look young, so he probably pandering to denial of the current circumstances. By asking me to protect someone, he's indebting them to him, and also reducing my own kill count in other rounds.

"No."

The man seemed taken aback. His creepy smile somewhat flinched. what. Was he expecting his subclass to automatically convince me or something? If it could, everyone would have it. The man recovered his smile.

"why not?"

"I'm not going to lose perfectly good prey for money I can't use from a contract I can't trust."

The man, realizing Ariza was smarter than she appeared, muttered under his breath a swear before angrily walking away.

Ariza walked into the forest, using the empty pages of the notebook to map the forest. She couldn't find anything in 30 minutes

[10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2...1...now spawning 600 goblins]

Teleported back to the field, Ariza once again started slaying goblins. Killing 398 Goblins, she gained 7 levels. The other challengers were annoyed. They were unjustly underestimating the goblins because the horde's aggro was focused on Ariza.

/    /    /

*POV sleazy man

The sleazy man that attempted to hire Ariza was named Alexander, which he usually shortened to Alex. Ariza was correct about her assumptions of him. He had chosen who gained a great class from the class selection but looked like a naïve scaredy cat, to indebt. Nobody else was strong enough to guarantee his safety, so that plan was a bust. I thought I was a good judge of character... she was way mature than she looked. Alex had pinned Ariza at between 12-20 years old. Was she older than I thought? Her combat skills seemed to imply that she was obsessed with the sword. Maybe she's just a genius? A combat genius who smart, not naïve, and has a bad impression of me is no matter how I look at it, not good. She's also taking all the kills. Is there any way I could slow her down?

Cracks were appearing in between members of the tutorial.

WritterIDKwhatImDoing

Thanks for reading! I wanted to ask for suggestions. Basically everything in this series are temporary, from the title, to the tags/genre listed, to the plot. If you have any suggestions about these, please tell me.