Entry Fifteen

  Worst. Tutorial. Ever.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I huffed.

  “The Melnia Span is half a league ahead. Make it there, and I can help you,” the cat said. The foliage on her side of the ravine had thinned, and I caught longer glimpses of her racing through the forest. Her head was low, her muscles rippling as they propelled her sleek frame effortlessly, gracefully forward.

  “Span?” I asked. “As in, bridge?”

  She nodded, glancing over at me. Her eyes had gone from the soft, beautiful raspberry red I’d seen earlier to an intense “I’m about to eat someone very messily” shade of flame red.

  “But you are slowing. The hordlings will be upon you soon. If you cannot run, then you must weave. I cannot help you from over here, weaver.”

  I stumbled, planted a hand on the ground, and pushed myself onward once again. I wasn’t only slowing; I was stopping, and soon. My legs felt rubbery, like I’d borrowed them from a Stretch Armstrong action figure. I started yet again to lament my total lack of prep by the game devs when I had a revelation. I never got a spellcasting tutorial, but this oversized cat knew all about this weave stuff. Maybe this was my tutorial!

  “Tell me how,” I prompted. “Tell me how to weave.” There was a small meadow next to the ravine on my left. I staggered into the clearing and stopped, my tortured legs nearly dumping me to the ground right then and there. Stamina. I really, really needed to level that up.

  “Weavers have but one ability, one that reflects their true self. Simply be true to yourself. Gather the weave. Do this not with your mind but with your inner soul. Then, do what comes naturally to you.” Catzilla instructed. “Simple.”

  “Uh-huh. Simple.” I turned back toward where I’d come from. I could see the pseudo-goblins—hordlings, she’d called them—crashing through the forest. They saw me too and were charging directly at me. I had maybe fifteen seconds. “Simple, except for one tiny problem. I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “Truly?” she asked, sounding surprised. “You received no training?”

  I gave her a heart-whispered growl. I think.

  The hordlings saw that I had stopped running and redoubled their growling and bark-shouts. They slowed and fanned out to my right and left. A crooked wooden spear came sailing out of the tree line, hit the ground a few feet away from me, and snapped in half. If the stupid Shornberry bush’s thorns hurt as badly as a bee sting, I could only imagine what a jagged wooden spear to the gut would feel like in this game.

  I backed toward the ravine as the first of the hordlings, a charming fellow with two different-sized eyes, mangy tufts of disease-ridden orangish hair, and a short, hooked sword, pushed through the underbrush.

  Then, the cat whispered some more helpful advice. “Fight. Die a proud Ilerian.”

  “It is important to have goals, but how?” I’d almost reached the cliff. I glanced down, thinking about making a desperate dive for the river, and quickly realized that the water was both too far and too shallow. The only thing I’d accomplish would be to break both of my ankles before the uber-climber hordlings pounced on me. After they stopped laughing at me.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “Do what comes naturally, weaver,” Catzilla reiterated.

  Another spear sailed toward me and missed wide to go flying into the ravine. These guys were rolling ones and twos for their ranged attacks, at least.

  “What is that, the Ilerian equivalent of ‘you do you?’” I asked.

  I got a super-helpful mental shrug from the damned cat. Worst. Tutorial. Ever.

  More hordling pseudo-goblin things were breaking from the woods. I’d seriously underestimated their numbers. There had to be at least twenty of the revolting things. And I could smell them already. God. Awful. They were advancing toward me slowly, cautiously. They were no doubt accustomed to fighting Ilerians who, oh, I don’t know, were at least armed or had at least gotten a non-useless freakin’ tutorial.

  The hordling with the hooked sword (I’ve named him Bob for easy reference) pointed his weapon at me and started making guttural, spitting sounds as he advanced. If pseudo-goblins could smile, that was Bob. He was clearly relishing the thought of eviscerating an isolated, exhausted, unarmed newbie like me. He strode forward almost casually, swinging his sword back and forth, warming up, I supposed. Good thing too. I’d hate for Bob to tear a rotator cuff while slashing me to death.

  This was it. Death number one. Would it hurt as badly as I suspected? Where the heck would I respawn? I stepped back, and my heel went off the edge of the cliff, sending rocks scuttling noisily down the cliff face. Symmetry. Gotta love it.

  Locking eyes with Bob, my soon-to-be murderer, I raised my hands in front of me. Partially out of habit and partially because I was about to die and respawn anyway, I started performing the motions for a Frost Barrier, as I’d done hundreds of times in Ancient Tomes Online. Why not? Maybe the hordling would buy my bluff and flee in terror from my weave-y awesomeness.

  I lifted my left hand, passed it over my right, then extended my arm straight out, palm outward in a perfectly executed Frost Barrier invocation. Bob hopped back, raising his weapon between us, as a vertical disk of dazzling, glacier-white ice coalesced into existence right in front of me.

  I sucked in a shocked breath for two reasons. One, wrong game. Two, as I began my casting, I’d felt a strange… something strange. Descriptive, I know. Ever walked face-first into a spider web? It wasn’t like that. Well, it was, and it wasn’t. It was more like I walked face-first into an old, threadbare blanket, and I could feel but not see each and every strand of it. For only an instant, hundreds of invisible strings seemed to brush up against me. Then, as if that wasn’t Creepy Factor Ten already, the non-existent strings shifted and moved along with my somatic hand motions. Either they were controlling my hands or vice versa, and I kind of couldn’t tell which.

  For a long moment, Bob and I stared at the magical shield floating in front of me. It was about two feet wide, and it was shot through with beautiful, softly pulsating, aquamarine mana lines. Unlike in ATO, a fog-like vapor, reminiscent of the stuff that roiled off liquid nitrogen, emanated from the floating shield. Bob looked from the shield to me. His mismatched eyes had gone wide in fear. I smiled. Smugly.

  “Never have I seen such a thing,” Catzilla whisper-whispered, sounding awed.

  “Really?” I replied aloud, still reveling in my pleasantly surprised, I-guess-I-won’t-die-after-all smuggery. Bob must have thought I was talking to him because he ticked his head to the side.

  I met his gaze as I pulled my left hand back, drawing the floating disk closer. It felt like I’d reeled in some invisible cable connected to the disk. In ATO, I had the choice of leaving a barrier in place to use it as cover or to weaponize it by transforming it into a projectile. I thrust my left hand forward, hard, palm outward, and the Frost Barrier rocketed forward as if I were some kind of Avatar-ian ice bender. Bob didn’t have time to dodge. Or scream. The disk slammed into him and carried him a good forty feet before both he and the barrier disk impacted the trunk of a large tree with a very satisfying splat.

  Every single pseudo-goblin stared at Bob—or rather, the paste formerly known as Bob. As one, they turned back toward me. I straightened, set my shoulders, and shouted, “Alright, who wants some?”

  It turned out they all did.