Chương 43: Ecosystem Destruction: Forest Fire Edition (Part 1)

Approximately forty-seven years have passed. A less perceptive individual might claim it has been closer to thirteen minutes. I reject that interpretation on principle. In retrospect, dramatically seating myself atop the palace with ample time remaining was a strategic miscalculation. There is nothing to do up here. No dancing. No violence. No parkour. And certainly no dramatic explosions. I cannot even descend temporarily to occupy myself. That would undermine the integrity of the pose.

Sitting atop a palace roof and waiting for midnight is a commitment. If I abandon it, my celestial family will absolutely accuse me of impatience. Slander. Everyone knows I am the embodiment of calm. A monument to stillness. A stone untouched by the tides of time. … … Ten seconds remain. Thank the stars. Midnight arrives. My ears twitch at the sudden sound of boots scraping against— Roof tiles? No. Surely not.

I turn my head slowly, deliberately, bracing myself for whatever nonsense the Tutorial has decided to produce. In hindsight, I was insufficiently braced. Because occupying the adjacent palace roof—packed shoulder-to-shoulder like a particularly grim military parade—is an entire platoon of undead. Zombie knights in rusted plate. Skeleton spearmen, newly upgraded and somehow more ambitious than before. And—most concerning of all—what appear to be zombie mages. The issue?

The palace roofs are both slanted and not especially spacious. Which means— The result is immediate. A cascading avalanche of undead pours off the roof in a waterfall of flailing limbs, clattering armor, and deeply confused expressions. Ah. So the horde quite literally spawns. No dramatic emergence from the soil. No ominous fog curtain. They simply manifest in close proximity to the nearest user, like seagulls responding to the opening of a pristine bag of chips. Tragic.

The lucky ones plummet directly to the courtyard below. They land with wet thuds and brittle cracks—skeletons bursting apart on impact, zombies splattering with enough force to make structural reconsiderations necessary. None of them move afterward. At least it was quick. The less fortunate ones fare worse. Some bounce off angled roofs, ricocheting downward in a grotesque pinball simulation. Others strike ledges and corners, shedding limbs with alarming enthusiasm before continuing their descent.

One particularly ambitious zombie mage manages to impale itself cleanly through the abdomen on a gilded rooftop spire several meters down. It flails weakly, suspended and deeply reconsidering its life choices. I attempt to suppress a giggle. I fail. Spectacularly. The stars are no better. Uncontrolled laughter floods my mind, overlapping and chaotic. Mine is, unfortunately, the loudest. I cannot even fault the System for this design choice. That was objectively hilarious.

A handful of undead remain on the roof, clinging precariously to angled tiles. They do not share my appreciation. A skeleton spearman attempts to throw its spear. Its feet slip. It tumbles backward without succeeding. A zombie knight, fueled entirely by spite and catastrophic confidence, charges toward me from several dozen meters away. It takes three steps. Then gravity asserts itself. It disappears over the edge. I giggle harder.

The remaining undead, having witnessed the catastrophic failure of their peers, deliberate for exactly zero seconds before making the same decision. Forward. They take perhaps three steps collectively. Then gravity collects its due. A few more meaty thuds. A scattering of bone fragments. The faint metallic clang of armor meeting courtyard stone. And just like that, the entirety of the nightly horde has perished without me lifting a single finger. It takes me an embarrassing number of seconds to properly calm down.

I wipe a tear from the corner of my eye. Now that is comedy. Well played, Tutorial. Ten out of ten. No points. No experience. Frankly? Irrelevant. I fully intend to convert every remaining hostile entity in this poorly disguised hallway into numbers on my status screen. A few thousand lost here will not meaningfully alter the final tally. An acceptable sacrifice. I rise, stretch languidly, and begin descending from the palace roof. Time to work.

Specifically—accelerating the conversion of Zone Five into a scenic ashen wasteland devoid of un-life. I do not make it out of the city before a golden window interrupts my trajectory. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Night Five Survived! Remaining Users: 1 Average Point Total: 169296 Highest Point Total: 169296 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ I stop. … Ah. Yeah, that tracks.

Four thousand and change users eliminated in a single night. I suppose I should not be surprised. The platoon that met its end due to architectural design flaws was a dramatic step up from last night's lesser undead and one spectacularly unprepared knight. Even for me, that engagement might have been mildly interesting. Those mages, in particular. … Speaking of. I did not personally finish off the one that impaled itself. I consider this for several seconds. Then I shrug. I am sure he will figure it out.

In any case, plausible deniability and magnanimous restraint have been conveniently resolved by the System. No more users. No more need to pace myself. My tail sways, slow and deliberate. Anticipatory. Let's reduce this entire Tutorial to ash. I have twenty-five days until the so-called final boss spawns, which is more than enough time to thoroughly redecorate zones five and four. Probably. Zone Five is trivial. Dead biomass. Withered trees. Zero meaningful moisture content.

Even though the dragon's forest fire politely ceased existing with his death for reasons I do not understand, mine continues its righteous crusade. Far ahead of me, flames consume the distant treeline with enthusiastic dedication as I sprint toward it.

Notifications stack relentlessly in my periphery—undead caught in the blaze, generously converting themselves into experience and points—but I relegate them to background noise, much like a speedrunner ignoring any sidequest containing more than three seconds of unskippable dialogue. The real issue is Zone Four. Healthy forest. Wet forest. Offensively hydrated forest. No dead leaves. No fallen timber. No suspiciously brittle undergrowth. Just dense, living greenery pressed together in a smug wall of chlorophyll.

In other words: Very difficult to ignite. Tragic. Zone Four will be the true obstacle to my entirely reasonable and well-balanced plan of erasing all biomass from the Tutorial. A crusade motivated purely by architectural dissatisfaction. And tutorial points. … Mostly tutorial points. It takes me a little over an hour of full-speed sprinting through ash and drifting cinders to reach the advancing wall of flame. Then—naturally—I activate my starfire shell and dive straight into it.

The world becomes orange and screaming heat for half a heartbeat. I emerge on the other side without slowing. And continue running. Obviously. Even at my current speed, the combination of dry forest and concentrated starfire is more than sufficient. Shrubs ignite as I pass. Bark blackens. Resin pops and hisses. Within seconds, my trail blossoms into a growing inferno that eagerly consumes everything around it. My recent Stamina gains have pushed my regeneration into absurd territory.

The thirty percent gravity reduction is effectively free, and even sustained starfire output barely dents my reserves. Which means— I run. And run. Anything unfortunate enough to exist in my path is cleanly bisected by the replacement blade I forged earlier. Roots, trunks, undead remnants—everything parts neatly before me. Another hour passes before I reach the fog wall marking the boundary where I first entered Zone Five.

Behind me stretches a straight line of fire cutting clean through the forest like a surgical incision. I nod in approval. Then I pivot and begin again. This time, I run perpendicular lines. Then diagonals. Then offset parallels. A grid forms across the zone—intersecting corridors of flame that ensure no pocket of biomass escapes eventual incineration. It takes time. When the stars fade with the coming dawn, I relocate to an already-burned section of forest and find a suitably large rock.

I refuse to repeat my earlier mistake of sleeping on solid stone. A futon of starlight forms beneath me—layered, structured, aggressively comfortable. Nearly two thousand Stamina vanishes in the process. Worth it. I curl up atop my immaculate construct and close my eyes. Behind me, the forest continues to burn. When I open my eyes, the sun is high overhead. Mid-afternoon, roughly. I stare at it. I blink once.

Then I stretch—slow, deliberate, and deeply feline—before settling back down onto my aggressively comfortable starlight futon. And immediately going back to sleep. There is, after all, nothing left to do but wait for Zone Five to finish immolating itself. Productivity through delegation. … My eyes snap open at the faint sound of something approaching. Wet. Sucking. Rhythmic. I sit up slowly and glance toward the noise. A large fleshy slime is oozing its way toward me with deeply unearned determination. I nod.

That tracks. Amorphous biomass would be significantly more resistant to fire than dry forest. Unfortunate. I glance up at the sky. The sun is lowering. Nearly night again. Good. Plenty of time. While the slime continues its lethargic pilgrimage, I pull up my status window.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Lyn Health: 2200 / 2200 Stamina: 9590 / 9590 Race: Starborne Foxkin (Level 50) [Tier 1] Class: Astral Duelist (Level 50) [Tier 1] Aspect: Star Traits: [Starborn] [Atrocity] Titles: [Dragonslayer] Stats Vitality: 220 [+20] Strength: 386 [+35] Dexterity: 959 [+87] Perception: 798 (+5) [+72] Charisma: 121 [+11] Free Points: 156 Class Skills (7/8): [Horizon Slash (Rare)] [Stellar Finesse (Uncommon)] [Improved Dash (Uncommon)] [Astral Step (Uncommon)] [Starline Thrust (Uncommon)] [Celestial Momentum (Epic)] [Severing Arc (Rare)] General Skills (7/8): [Inspect (Common)] [Running (Rare)] [Evasive Footwork (Uncommon)] [Astral Manipulation (Epic)] [Volatile Rune Crafting (Rare)] [Blazing Star Dance (Epic)] [Guiding Star Dance (Rare)] Racial Skills: Cosmic Perception Silent Star Special Skills: [Arcana: Garden of Eternal Midnight] [Universal Translation] [Slipstream] [Peripheral Continuity] Tutorial Points: 246302 Tutorial Countdown: 44 days, 20 hours, 13 minutes Skill Selection Available (x2) Evolution Available Class Advancement Available ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ …

Wow. Forest fires are extremely efficient. It appears that during my strategic notification ignorance and subsequent double nap, I have cleanly capped out Tier One and accumulated nearly eighty thousand additional tutorial points. No wonder the dragon's numbers were so inflated. That pre-fight forest fire of his must have carried him outrageously. Environmental genocide truly is the meta. Also— Two skill selections. Beautiful. Naturally, I poke it immediately. I will exercise restraint and save one for Tier Two.

Something that will happen after I dramatically stab the final boss to death. I already don't have a whole lot of faith that the battle will be at all difficult, so there's no real reason to make it even easier. However. The temptation to spend one of my selections immediately is overwhelming. Self-control is important. But so is progress. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Skill Selection activated. Please choose a Skill. [Skybreaker Descent (Legendary)] {New Skill} Dragons ruled the sky. You ended one.

(Active) Perform a high-velocity descent strike that heavily increases impact force and cutting power. Significantly staggers large enemies on impact. Scales with Strength [Starfire Resonance (Epic)] {New Skill} Repeated strikes awaken latent burn potential. (Passive) Consecutive successful hits gradually increase starfire intensity applied to the target. Effect resets if pressure is lost. [Solar Crosscut (Epic)] {New Skill} (Active) Execute a high-speed crossing slash that leaves intersecting starfire trails.

Targets struck at the intersection suffer increased cutting and burn damage. Scales with Dexterity [Gravity Well Step (Epic)] {New Skill} Your landings reshape footing. (Passive) Controlled landings create minor gravitational anchoring at the impact point, slightly reducing enemy movement speed in the immediate area. [Stellar Rush (Rare)] {Skill Upgrade} An advanced astral dash skill emphasizing acceleration and control.

(Active) Rapidly surge forward in a compressed burst of motion, increasing speed, distance, and directional stability during the dash. Minor collision resistance is applied while in motion, reducing interruption from light impacts. Scales with Dexterity. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Ah. Now this is more like it. We will evaluate in reverse order, because that feels appropriately contrarian. First up: an upgrade to Improved Dash, a skill that has helped me escape more dangerous situations than I care to count.

Extremely useful. Extremely reliable. Also Rare. Into the mental garbage chute it goes. I am not spending a precious selection on something that fails the color check. Next: Gravity Well Step. Mildly interesting, potentially clever, but undeniably situational. And if it struggles against larger targets, which seems likely, it becomes dramatically less appealing. I am not in the business of collecting "mild inconveniences" as passives. Discarded. Solar Crosscut. Active skill. Rejected immediately.

I already possess enough active techniques, and I am not interested in bloating my kit with flashy additions that do not fundamentally elevate my combat ceiling. Now— Starfire Resonance. This one, however, is elegant. Repeated hits increase burn intensity. Pressure-based scaling. Resets only if I lose momentum. Celestial Momentum increases my attack speed and control. This increases my starfire amplification the longer I maintain that pressure. The synergy is almost embarrassingly obvious. Very strong.

Very efficient. And finally, the last. A Legendary skill. I will admit, I was dangerously close to selecting it the moment I saw the orange text. Color theory is powerful. Fortunately, I possess restraint. Because upon actually reading it? Underwhelming. Not weak. Not useless. Simply… incorrect. It's an active skill, for one thing.

And given that I am the most intelligent, most beautiful prodigy in the world, any descent from the sky that I personally engineer will likely be just as devastating, if not significantly more so. My tail flicks with dignified superiority. On top of that, it scales with Strength instead of Dexterity—a stat I invest in out of obligation, not devotion. I did not carefully sculpt my build around speed, precision, and overwhelming technical dominance just to pivot into brute-force impact theatrics.

A skill that prioritizes raw physical power over elegance is, frankly, a little insulting. Therefore— ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Skill Selection confirmed. You have gained the Class Skill [Starfire Resonance (Epic)]. Skill has been automatically placed into an open slot. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Obviously. All eight class skill slots are now filled. Complete. I rise from my futon and stretch once more. The slime is nearly upon me now.

It is not slow by normal standards, but my Dexterity and Perception are high enough that I can conduct a full skill evaluation, reject a Legendary, and experience mild philosophical irritation before it crosses the remaining distance. Convenient. My ears perk slightly. Let's see how well resonance stacks on something made entirely of fleshy gelatin.