Author's Note: Retcon notice!
So, it has come to my attention that, once again, I cannot be trusted with numbers.
In Chapter One, I had this rule in the tutorial explanation:
"Death Rule: If a User dies to anything other than another User, their Points will be redistributed equally among all surviving Users in that Block upon completion of the Tutorial."
I did not, in fact, realize just how many points this would actually result in by the end of the tutorial. After running the numbers, the payout would have been far, far larger than originally intended.
As such, I have adjusted the rule to redistribute 10% of those Points rather than the full 100%.
Math truly is my greatest weakness...
✦⋆✦⋆✦
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Evaluation Complete.
Displaying Performance Metrics.
Combat Metrics:
• Monster Kills: EX
• Kill Efficiency: EX
• Overkill Ratio: EX
Exploration Metrics:
• Dungeon Clear Rate: EX
• Dungeon Completion Speed: S+
• Map Completion: EX
Skill Metrics:
• Skill Utilization: S
• Adaptation Rate: EX
• Skill Variety Index: S+
Survival Metrics:
• Near-Lethal Incidents: B
• Damage Ratio: S
• Surviving Users: F
Overall Rating: EX
You have gained the title: [Outlier]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Yes.
Excellent.
That looks properly excessive.
I nod in solemn appreciation, taking in the overwhelming amount of EX rankings with the quiet satisfaction of someone whose performance has been accurately represented.
My tail, however, disagrees.
It flicks sharply in irritation, clearly focused on the single, glaring blemish marring an otherwise flawless display.
“Surviving Users.”
I narrow my eyes slightly.
Very unfair.
I fail to see why I am being penalized for the collective inability of everyone else to keep up with what I would describe as a perfectly reasonable pace of progression.
If anything, they should be losing points for not surviving me.
A clear oversight in the scoring system.
In their defense—briefly—it was probably inevitable regardless. The difficulty curve was aggressively enthusiastic, and a certain dragon contributed significantly to the overall lack of survivability.
Said dragon is currently decomposing somewhere beneath what used to be a city.
…Mostly.
The walls and palace remain.
A tragic reminder of my current limitations.
I dismiss the thought.
At least I received a new title.
I will inspect that shortly.
Because I have the distinct feeling that the System is about to—
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Kill Records Processed.
Total Kills: 41,732
• Monster Kills: 41,727
• User Kills: 5
View Detailed Kill Log?
Yes / No
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
—cut me off mid-thought.
…Rude.
I consider the option for approximately half a second.
Then select No.
The numbers alone are more than sufficient.
A detailed log would simply confirm what I already know—that my performance was, objectively, exceptional.
Therefore—
Next.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Hidden Conditions Processed.
Total Conditions Met: 27
Hidden Achievements Unlocked.
Added to Achievement Log.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
I do not even get the chance to properly react before another window immediately replaces it, the System clearly operating under the assumption that I enjoy being rapidly overwhelmed by increasingly excessive amounts of information.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Achievements Processed.
Total Achievements: 139
Achievement Breakdown:
Common: 60
→ +3,000 Tutorial Points
Uncommon: 34
→ +5,100 Tutorial Points
Rare: 20
→ +10,000 Tutorial Points
Epic: 10
→ +20,000 Tutorial Points
Legendary: 6
→ +48,000 Tutorial Points
[Rarity Undiscovered]: 4
→ +100,000 Tutorial Points
[Rarity Undiscovered]: 2
→ +150,000 Tutorial Points
[Rarity Undiscovered]: 2
→ +500,000 Tutorial Points
[Rarity Undiscovered]: 1
→ +1,000,000 Tutorial Points
Achievement Menu Activated.
All Achievements have been recorded.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Wow.
That is a lot of achie—
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Title Reaction Detected: [Dragonslayer]
High-Tier Achievement Detected.
Evolution Condition Fulfilled.
[Pride] has taken notice.
[Dragonslayer] has merged with [Outlier].
Fusion Complete.
New Title Acquired: [Apex Predator]
You are no longer something meant to be hunted.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
…?
I blink.
Then I blink again, just in case the System would like to clarify literally any part of that.
“...Huh?”
Alright.
That was a lot.
A deeply efficient amount of information, delivered all at once with absolutely no regard for pacing, readability, or my continued emotional stability.
I take a moment to process.
So.
One of my achievements—almost certainly the one that awarded me a completely reasonable one million points—triggered some kind of evolution condition. That, in turn, caused my Dragonslayer title to merge with the new one I hadn’t even been allowed to read yet.
The result—
Apex Predator.
I nod once.
Accurate.
My tail flicks with smug satisfaction, fully aligned with this conclusion.
That said.
There is… another line.
One that stands out.
Pride has taken notice.
I stare at it for a moment.
…That is mildly concerning.
I consider several possibilities.
Then discard all of them.
I am the literal embodiment of Pride.
Therefore, Pride “taking notice” of anything I do is redundant at best and deeply unnecessary at worst. The idea that the trait itself possesses some form of independent awareness is clearly incorrect.
There is absolutely no scenario in which I am wrong about this.
Conclusion:
Flavor text.
I nod sagely.
A perfectly reasonable explanation.
Which brings me to the final line.
“You are no longer something meant to be hunted.”
I pause.
Then narrow my eyes slightly.
As if I was ever something meant to be hunted in the first place.
An audacious claim.
Deeply inaccurate.
Nine out of ten.
Points deducted for implying I was ever prey.
Another system window overlays itself onto my vision.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Final Evaluation Complete.
Surviving Users: 1
Recovered User Point Pool: 506,323
Reward Distribution in Progress.
Tutorial Points Awarded: 506,323
Tutorial Shop Menu Activated.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Ah.
Right.
I did, in fact, forget that all of the deceased users’ points are redistributed at the end.
A mildly concerning mechanic, now that I think about it.
Still.
Points are points.
I give the number a quick once-over.
Not particularly impressive, especially compared to my current total, but certainly not something I am going to complain about. Free resources acquired through highly efficient ecosystem collapse is, after all, a perfectly reasonable outcome.
I wait for a few seconds, just in case the System feels like interrupting me again with something dramatic.
It does not.
My ears perk slightly.
Oh?
So we’re done.
No more interruptions.
No more sudden existential commentary.
Just me, my rewards, and a rapidly expanding list of things to inspect.
Excellent.
Now then.
Time for the fun part.
I pull up my full status window.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Lyn
Health: 2400 / 2400
Stamina: 12000 / 12000
Race: Starborne Foxkin (Level 50) [Tier 2]
Class: Starlit Blade Dancer (Level 50) [Tier 2]
Aspect: Star
Traits: [Starborn] [Atrocity] [Pride] [Living Calamity]
Titles: [Apex Predator]
Stats
Vitality: 240 [+40]
Strength: 455 [+76]
Dexterity: 1200 [+200]
Perception: 870 (+5) [+144]
Charisma: 132 [+22]
Free Points: 75
Class Skills (8/8):
[Horizon Slash (Rare)]
[Stellar Finesse (Uncommon)]
[Twin Arc (Epic)]
[Astral Veilstep (Rare)]
[Starfall Sequence (Legendary)]
[Celestial Momentum (Epic)]
[Severing Arc (Rare)]
[Starfire Resonance (Epic)]
General Skills (7/8):
[Inspect (Common)]
[Running (Epic)]
[Evasive Footwork (Uncommon)]
[Astral Manipulation (Epic)]
[Volatile Rune Crafting (Rare)]
[Blazing Star Dance (Epic)]
[Guiding Star Dance (Rare)]
Racial Skills:
Cosmic Perception
Silent Star
Astral Reflex
Special Skills:
[Arcana: Garden of Eternal Midnight]
[Universal Translation]
[Slipstream]
[Peripheral Continuity]
Tutorial Points: 3955464
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Excellent.
My stat modifiers have increased to twenty percent.
Very obvious what caused that.
I will, of course, be inspecting it last.
Proper dramatic timing is essential to my continued existence.
My Tutorial Points have also gone completely feral.
Good.
Very good.
I take a moment to appreciate the number, then shift my attention to the rest of the interface.
There are two new icons sitting neatly alongside the skill menu. One appears to be a medal—clearly the achievements menu—and the other is a classic storefront symbol representing the Tutorial Shop.
Also…
It has a diagonal banner stretched across it, flashing “Limited!” in a way that feels unnecessarily enthusiastic.
I stare at it for a second.
For something that communicates almost exclusively in emotionless blue boxes, the System has a remarkable talent for letting bits of personality leak through at deeply questionable moments.
Whether that’s the System itself or some nebulous, highly suspicious entity behind it—
Unclear.
Concerning.
But also mildly entertaining.
I nod once.
Then immediately ignore it.
Achievements first.
Obviously.
The shop can wait.
I open the achievement menu.
I am immediately greeted by a series of tables, each sorted by rarity and arranged with all the elegance of a hastily assembled spreadsheet.
There are… a lot of them.
An aggressively excessive number, even.
I skim.
Commons are exactly what you would expect—first monster kill, first dungeon clear, basic milestones that feel less like achievements and more like polite acknowledgments that I have, in fact, been participating.
Uncommons are slightly better.
Rares begin to show effort.
But things only start getting interesting around Legendary.
That’s where the names improve.
Dramatically.
Crownbreaker.
A solid title. Clean. Impactful. Descriptive. Awarded for delivering the final blow to Aurelion.
I approve.
Above that, there’s an undiscovered rarity tier—one I am going to assume is Mythical, because the System seems fond of following standard RPG conventions when it feels like it.
The names there are… excellent.
Trial Champion—highest point total in the tutorial.
A Crown Unchallenged—similar to Crownbreaker, but for doing it solo and taking no damage.
Very satisfying.
Truly.
However—
Those are not what I am here for.
I scroll past the majority of them without hesitation.
Pedestrian achievements.
Respectable, but ultimately unworthy of immediate attention.
I am interested in the top five.
A conveniently selected group spanning my highest three rarities.
…Not that I actually know what those rarities are yet.
A minor detail.
I settle in slightly, preparing for what is undoubtedly going to be a highly educational experience.
First up.
Naturally—
We begin with the lowest of the five.
Tradition matters.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Achievement: [No Sanctuary Remained (Rarity Locked)]
Every refuge was found. Every depth was entered. Every boundary failed.
There was nowhere left to hide.
Condition: Fully clear all available dungeons.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Expected.
The addition of flavor text is a nice touch.
It does a very effective job of separating these from the rest—actually making them feel like achievements rather than politely formatted participation trophies.
…Or the System simply didn’t feel like writing descriptions for anything below this rarity.
Highly suspicious.
Unfortunately, there is no immediate way to test that theory, so it is filed neatly into the mental folder labeled test later, where it will remain indefinitely until I either remember or accidentally confirm it through unrelated experimentation.
Which is the more likely outcome.
Next.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Achievement: [Only One Ending (Rarity Locked)]
At no point did the outcome diverge.
There was only ever one ending.
Condition: Remain undefeated for the duration of the Tutorial.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Another obvious one.
I nod once, approving.
Defeat is not a concept I engage with.
Not seriously, at least.
After all, I am the most perfect, beautiful prodigy in the world. Losing to anything less than a massively overwhelming force—preferably something deeply unreasonable, like an army numbering in the six digits or an opponent two full tiers above me—is simply not a practical outcome.
My tail flicks with smug satisfaction.
Again.
I am beginning to notice a pattern of biological betrayal.
One that will likely continue into the near future.
Concerning.
But acceptable.
I move on.
We are now stepping into my second-highest rarity.
Which means these should be excellent.
I can already tell.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Achievement: [One Above All (Rarity Locked)]
All records were consulted.
All benchmarks were compared.
None remained above you.
This result has been entered into history.
Condition: Attain the highest point total in recorded history.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Ah.
Yes, that checks out.
I was already aware that I would, naturally, achieve the highest result ever recorded, so this is less of a revelation and more of a formal confirmation of what was already obvious.
Still.
My tail flicks in approval anyway.
Ten out of ten for the name.
Clean. Dramatic. Accurate.
Next.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Achievement: [Rivers of Blood (Rarity Locked)]
The surface ran red until nothing remained to bleed.
When the last fell, the world grew quiet.
Condition: Exterminate all monsters present on the Tutorial surface.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Another entirely reasonable inclusion.
I nod slowly as I read through it.
This one actually required effort.
A notable amount, even.
Clearing the entire surface was less “casual stroll” and more “prolonged campaign of extremely justified ecological restructuring.” The forest alone was a logistical nightmare—dense, obstructive, and aggressively opposed to efficient movement.
Traversal before my landscaping improvements was, frankly, unacceptable.
Honestly, without my speed investment and subsequent decision to convert the environment into something more cooperative, I’m not entirely convinced fifty days would have been enough.
Perhaps in a more open environment—a grassland, for example—this would have been trivial.
But here?
A nuisance.
A large one.
…
Fortunately, there is no longer a forest.
Problem solved.
Which brings me to the final achievement.
As if there was ever any doubt what its condition would be.
Still.
Reading the name—and the inevitably dramatic description—is mandatory.
Standards must be maintained.
Therefore—
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Achievement: [And Then There Was Nothing (Rarity Locked)]
Where there was once life, only ash remains.
Not a blade of grass survives.Not a root clings to the earth.Not a single breath endures.
The wild has been emptied.
The soil remembers what once grew, but nothing answers.
It did not fade.
It did not resist.
It ended.
And then there was nothing.
Condition: Eradicate all living biomass within the Tutorial.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Yes.
This is it.
My ears perk fully, locking forward with complete focus, while my tail gives a slow, dignified sway of approval.
The formatting has changed again.
It’s no longer a short, efficient blurb. Instead, it has expanded into what can only be described as a full poem—an entire dramatic dedication to my completely reasonable forest extinction event.
Very fitting.
Very dramatic.
Ten out of ten.
No notes.
Still—
I can’t get too excited yet.
After all, there is one more thing to inspect before I move on to the Tutorial Shop.
The important one.
It’s finally time.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Apex Predator]
May you never warrant her attention.
Lest your tale conclude unfinished.
• Increases all base stats by 20%
• Grants Life Suppression, an evolved field of predatory dominance that suppresses all nearby life.
• Completely negates external presence-based suppression.
• Grants Predator’s Claim, allowing the user to designate a target as prey, massively increasing damage dealt and tracking accuracy.
• Grants Hierarchy Override, causing all predator-type mechanics to default in the user’s favor.
You cannot be classified as prey.
Intimidation effects can be toggled.
This Title is publicly visible upon inspection.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
My tail sways once.
Then again.
My ears achieve enlightenment.
Twelve out of ten.
Objectively.
The abilities are completely unreasonable in the best possible way. My stats are higher, the intimidation effect has evolved into something significantly more dramatic, and the description—
Perfect. Simple. Clean.
Threatening.
A masterpiece.
I take a moment to appreciate it properly, then send a quick, entirely reasonable prayer to the stars that this exact message appears when someone inspects me.
Because the System itself politely informing someone that interacting with me is a mistake is, frankly, the best possible deterrent.
Social interactions may become… complicated.
There is a non-zero chance that introducing myself to normal people will now come with an implicit warning label.
Unfortunate.
But manageable.
Actually…
I tilt my head slightly.
There is almost certainly an item in the Tutorial Shop designed to deal with that exact issue.
It is both an obvious problem and an extremely common narrative trope, which means the probability of a convenient solution existing is statistically overwhelming.
After all, hiding one’s power until the most dramatically appropriate moment is a time-honored tradition.
And everyone knows that the strongest force in the universe is narrative convenience.
I close the window and select the Tutorial Shop icon with the solemn intensity of a roomba discovering stairs for the first time.
Time to see what the fantasy equivalent of Amazon has in store for me.