Chương 23: Crashing Out

I failed to convince Older Sister that cake is, in fact, extremely healthy and should be a permanent staple of my diet once I exit the Tutorial. Tragic. I will try again tomorrow. After all, I am nothing if not persistent. And no being in the universe can withstand my puppy-dog eyes more than once. … Not that I would ever resort to such a humiliating tactic just to secure a guilt-free supply of cherry cheesecake. I have standards. … Anyway.

In the minutes following the so-called "dangerous undead horde," monster levels tick up to sixteen across the region. Good for them. I also finally take the time to inspect my new sword skills—having absolutely not forgotten to do so for nearly two hours. I take zero responsibility for this. Their effectiveness multipliers have increased to twenty-five percent, with the only other change being a minor wording rework. As expected. My tail gives a small, absent flick.

What emotion that signifies this time, I honestly couldn't tell you. Probably somewhere between mild exasperation and deeply unsurprised confirmation. My emotional introspection is very rudely interrupted by an entirely new, gold system window slamming into my vision like a particularly chunky golden retriever that just heard the food container open. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Night Three Survived! Remaining Users: 7283 Average Point Total: 576 Highest Point Total: 6528 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ …

Nearly three thousand dead. I ignore it. Average point total nearly five thousand below my own. I ignore that too. Instead, my attention locks onto a single, treacherous line. Highest Point Total. Someone has more points than I do. My brain stalls. Not metaphorically— literally. There's a distinct, uncomfortable pause where several thought processes trip over each other and collapse in a heap. My eyes narrow. My ears go perfectly still, flattened tight against my head. … How?

I haven't seen anyone pushing ahead of me. No cleared paths. No suspiciously empty zones. No signs of another hyper-competent gremlin on a parallel murder spree. Did they get lucky with a dungeon? Did they spawn halfway across the forest and immediately fall down a staircase made of elite mobs and treasure chests? Did the System simply decide to play favorites? I don't understand.

It's only about a thousand more points than me—and yes, I did spend some early time training swordplay instead of grinding like a responsible psychopath—but I genuinely did not believe that would matter. Apparently, I was wrong. Unacceptable. I straighten, irritation sharpening into resolve. Fine. If someone wants to be ahead of me— —I suppose I'll just have to fix that. Immediately, I dump every last stocked point into Dexterity. Nearly two hundred. Good. Time for math.

The first zone was roughly a hundred kilometers. Give or take. The second was about double that. This zone—I've crossed a bit more than half of it in roughly three hours, assuming it caps at level twenty. At my current speed? That makes this zone roughly double the second. Which means— A pattern. I nod once. So I wasn't wrong. The Tutorial isn't big. It's country-sized. Possibly continent-adjacent, depending on width. Charming. No time to test that theory.

With the stars screaming their approval above me—murderously, enthusiastically—I explode forward at my absolute top speed. No holding back. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. Not anymore. Gravity loosens. Dash burns on instinct, chained whenever momentum even thinks about dipping. My blade has been unsheathed for a while now, the scabbard discarded somewhere behind me. I'll make another later. It was slowing me down. And so—I kill. And kill.

And kill some more. The forest blurs into motion and impact. Monsters don't get openings. They don't get skills. They barely get awareness. If something moves, it dies. If it twitches, it dies faster. Points climb. Levels tick upward. New monsters appear—stronger ones, smarter ones— —but I'm done playing for fun. This isn't practice. This is optimization. Twenty minutes after I fully commit to becoming a fox-shaped missile fueled by pride and spite, I level up. An hour later—another. Another hour—another.

And then— The forest opens. The pressure changes. The stars hush, just slightly. I've reached the Area Boss. I slow at the edge of the fog wall, finally allowing myself to stop without skidding through three trees and a small ecosystem. Before stepping forward, I pause. Skill selection. Right. I tap the notification. Once. Then again. … Then a few more times, just to be sure. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Skill Selection activated.

Please choose a Skill [Starline Thrust (Uncommon)] {New Skill} A precise forward strike guided by a thread of starlight. (Active) Enhances a single stabbing attack, increasing speed and pierce at the cost of Stamina. Adds a slight accuracy correction. Scales with Perception. [Astral Rhythm (Uncommon)] {New Skill} Attune your movements to the rhythm of the astral flow. (Passive) Consecutive successful hits grant stacking bonuses to attack speed. Stacks are lost upon missing an attack or taking damage.

[Starlit Tempo (Uncommon)] {New Skill} Astral energy sharpens the timing between motion and impact. (Passive) Successfully chaining attacks slightly reduces the stamina cost of subsequent attacks and improves attack speed. Effects intensify while Astral Rhythm stacks are active. [Phase-Laced Strike (Uncommon)] {New Skill} A precise attack threaded partially through astral space. (Active) Enhance a single attack to partially ignore physical obstruction, slightly increasing effective reach and hit reliability.

Scales with Perception. [Astral Overstep (Uncommon)] {New Skill} (Active) Push beyond normal astral alignment, briefly increasing movement and attack speed. Taking damage during the effect causes minor backlash. Scales with Dexterity. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ My tail gives a sharp lash of irritation at the repeating skills before I settle on Starline Thrust. More damage is never a mistake. Satisfied, I step up to the fog wall.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Challenge Prompt Would you like to engage the Zone 3 Area Boss? Recommended Level: 20 Options: Yes / No ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ I poke Yes. … Twice. The fog surges in its usual transition animation, swallowing my vision whole. For a few seconds, I am left blind—long enough to contemplate life, the nature of reality, and whether this will be an actually interesting boss…

or just another normal forest animal I've already killed, but renamed Greater™ and given a slightly more aggressive posture. My expectations remain responsibly low. Because if this Tutorial has taught me anything, it's that optimism is a trap. Finally, the fog recedes. The arena reveals itself. I nod slowly. Yes. This is the same forest. Again. But—with more leaves. And more trees. Incredible. Which immediately fills me with a very bad feeling about what, exactly, I am about to fight.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ You have challenged an area boss: The Canopy Reaper ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Yeah. No doubt about it. I know exactly what this is. My gravity sense screams a warning an instant before something tries to extract my spine from my body like it's fruit by the foot. I sigh.

"Is that your favorite target or something?" Even as I speak, I spin aside, dodging the ambush with minimal effort. My assailant— naturally —leaps away immediately, landing halfway up a tree roughly ten meters away. And there it is. Finally revealed. In all its suspenseful glory. An encounter absolutely nobody could have ever predicted. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Greater Canopy Stalker (Level 20 | Tier 1) [Area Boss] Species: Deepwood Flora Aspect: Tempo A more developed variant of the Deepwood Canopy Stalker.

Exhibits increased speed and stealth, allowing for more aggressive ambush tactics from the canopy. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Wow. It even has the Greater tag. I stare at it for a long, silent moment, as if daring the universe to explain itself. Who. Could. Possibly. Have guessed. And just like that, the last fragile splinter of hope I had been nursing for this Tutorial finally withers, curls up, and dies somewhere deep inside my chest. I give up. Creativity? Non-existent. Originality? Presumably extinct.

The copy-paste key? Clearly worn smooth from overuse. Asteria had better be worth it. Because I have made a decision. A solemn one. A dramatic one. This forest will be burned to the ground before the Tutorial ends. No exceptions. No remnants. Not a single blade of grass will be left alive to remember what poor design choices led to this moment. Only the users themselves will walk away from it. And if— if —Asteria turns out to be just as lazily constructed? Then it, too, will burn. My exasperation meter has capped.

My patience has bottomed out. Any lingering instinct for restraint, elegance, or subtlety has fled my soul alongside my optimism. I am done being reasonable. The Canopy Stalker slowly drags its segmented tail along the trunk of its perch, carving a deep, deliberate gash into the bark. It thinks this is threatening. It thinks this is intimidating. Adorable. Truly.

Unfortunately for it, I am no longer holding myself back with arbitrary challenges, self-imposed restrictions, or the faint hope that the Tutorial might surprise me. This fox is still actively leaking bloodlust from every pore after my recent spree, and I am in no mood to negotiate. I bare my fangs at my prey. Gravity loosens its grip. My muscles coil. One step—earth dents under my heel— And I take the most optimal path to carnage.

Which is to say— —I launch myself straight at it like I've been fired from a cannon, powered entirely by an overwhelming desire to make this monster regret ever existing. The distance between us stops being a concept. One blink I'm airborne— —the next, I'm there. The Canopy Reaper reacts on instinct alone, limbs tensing, claws digging into bark as it prepares to spring away— Too slow. My hilt snaps to my left shoulder. My body doesn't think. It doesn't hesitate. It doesn't admire the angle or savor the moment.

It simply remembers. And then I use my new skill. The blade punches forward in a straight, merciless line, starfire roaring to life along its edge with a sound like the night itself being torn open. There is no flourish. No exchange. No fight. No skill name spoken aloud. The point of my sword drives cleanly through the Reaper's chest, rupturing bark, sinew, and whatever mockery of a heart it keeps hidden beneath that polished wood.

The force carries us both off the trunk—its body jerking once, violently, before going limp as my momentum rips us free of the tree entirely. We fall. I land lightly. It does not. The Canopy Reaper hits the forest floor with a hollow, splintering crash, limbs spasming once before going utterly still, starfire eating outward from the wound in bright auroral veins. Dead. Executed. I don't even bother looking down at it. Instead, I straighten, roll my shoulders, and exhale slowly through my nose.

"…Huh," I murmur.

"That was cathartic." Notifications roll immediately. I ignore them. Points. Achievements. A treasure chest. The usual stuff. Then— The stars panic. A sudden scramble of overlapping voices erupts into my skull, constellations flickering erratically overhead as if someone just kicked the universe's ant farm. Older Sister cuts through them all, her voice tight in a way I've never heard before.

"…Darling?" I tilt my head, flicking embers off my blade with a neat little twist of my wrist.

"Yes?" There's a pause. A long one.

"Are you… ok?" I look at the smoking corpse. At the shattered tree behind it. At the long, perfectly straight furrow carved through the undergrowth by my landing. Then I smile.

"Yeah," I say easily.

"I just needed to blow off some steam. Seeing someone with more points than me messed me up more than I thought, I guess." She hums, the sound warm and thoughtful—accepting, if not entirely convinced. A gentle reassurance. Something in my chest loosens at it. My smile softens. Just a little. Then something else stirs. Quietly. So faint I almost miss it. A tiny seed, planted somewhere deep inside me. A feeling that should be alarming. Should be questioned. Should be examined, dissected and possibly mocked.

But it isn't. It feels… right.