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Tutorial Rewrite 79
🕑 Added 2023-01-25 09:46:02 +0000 UTCThey just keep on coming, huh? At least my gods are staying loyal, for once. One of these days, I’m going to have a hundred gods on my case about doing this or that or even about not doing this or that. Unreasonable, the lot of them.
<To repay your debt,
your inventory has been sold
for 2 points.>
…Are my shade innards really that worthless? You know, if that ferryman hadn’t had god-buffs and been levelless, I would totally have been able to sell his boat for a pretty penny. Not that you’d ever let me do anything to get better, of course.
<Current debt:
85 728 points.>
Okay, so, um, what you’re trying to say is, uh… When I beat the next floor, I’ll be in six-figure debt? Is that it?
…I can’t even muster a fitting amount of annoyance at the situation. If I was still on Earth, this is the moment when I would fake my death and pick up a new identity in Portugal. This simply isn’t sustainable, and I’m not just talking about me! Think of all the poor, innocent little challengers who accidentally angered a few gods because they liked to drink their coffee black, or with cream, or actually preferred tea. And just like that, they’d be a million points in debt and there would be nothing they could do. Why not have sympathy for them, huh?
No one’s gonna rebuke my perfectly sound argument, eh? Yeah, keep your silence, cowards, I know I’m ri—
<The God of Cruelty
helpfully informs you that only
Hell Challenger Lee Ho-Jae
is currently indebted to the Gods.>
…Okay now that’s just some bullshit.
No way that’s true. There’s just no way—
<The Day of Grand Conference
will begin in 0:00:00.>
<The Day of Grand Conference
has begun. You will be automatically
summoned in 00:10.>
H-, hang on, I’m not done here! This guy can’t just go around saying whatever he wants whenever he—
The floor shifts beneath me and I stumble forward and bash my head into a table.
O—ow.
“H-, hiiik?!” someone squeals.
I pull myself up from the floor. Alright, yeah, it’s the same old Hell lobby room. In that case, the only voice that that could be would be…
“K—Kitty? Is that you?” Virgil asks, her eyes trembling. Huh. I shouldn’t look all that different from the last time I was here. Weird.
“Yeah,” I say. “Of course it’s me. Who else would it be?”
She looks away. “Yeah, I guess, but, it’s just that…” She gestures at the whole of me. “It isn’t very, um, obvious?”
What isn’t very obvious? Just to follow her line of sight, I look down at myself. I’m covered top to toe in a thick layer of muddy goo. Oh. Ah. Um. “This is, uh…” I shake my head, making a few pieces of mud fly everywhere. Virgil steps back. “It’s not important.” I take a step towards her, trying to make my voice as sympathetic as I can. “Listen, I saw how it went with the, uh, lobbies, and I just want to, um, say that, well, ah, it’s… it’s not your fault, okay? You did your best, and I’m sure you’ll do great next time around, so just—”
A hand reaches out in front of me. It isn’t Virgil’s.
I look up and meet the eyes of some normal-looking dude. “Hi,” he says. “I’m Arun.” He smiles.
I don’t take his hand. Not answering him, I look over at Virgil. She gives a small smile. “I did it,” she says quietly. “I got one of them to stay.”
I look back at this… Arun character. He waggles his hand at me. After a moment’s consideration, I take it, splattering his hand with mud and probably more blood than you’d think. One shake up, one shake down. He’s got a firm grip. But mine is firmer, thanks to the wonderful doping effects of levelling up. I clench his hand until I feel his bones creak, and only after he gives the smallest, “Ow,” do I let him go.
“I’m Kitty,” I say to him with maybe a little more assertiveness than the name requires.
Arun looks down at his muddied hand and after visibly winching, he shakes it off before wiping the last bits off on his short pants. “Virgil told me you like to be referred to by your username, so… If you want, you can call me Magus.”
I’m not sure if my frown is visible through the thick layer of mud on my face. “I’m not calling you that.”
His smile turns a little strained. “...I understand that, haha. It is a pretty… flashy username, I suppose.” As I cross my arms, his eyes gain a strange gleam. “Though, I’m surprised to hear you speak Hindi so fluently.”
“I’m not speaking Hindi.”
“...Is that so?”
“Yeah.” After my firm words, a bout of silence follows. I don’t want to have to randomly exposition to this strange man, but now the silence is quickly turning awkward, and Virgil looks very curious about him being able to understand me and me being able to understand him, so even though I don’t want to, I heave a sigh and explain the effects of the Babylon skill.
Arun’s eyes gleam in that strange way again. I don’t like that look. “A language skill… Interesting. And only you have this?”
“No idea. I’m pretty sure the Gods gave it to me as a punishment, but who knows?”
“The gods…!”
Being standoffish with this man is strikingly ineffective. I don’t know why he decided to stay in the lobby, or how Virgil convinced him, or why he picked the Hell difficulty at all, but I really don’t care. I don’t like him. He’s got an ambitious glint in his eye that I feel like I recognise from somewhere.
“Hey, K—Kitty, how come you’ve been able to get so far in the tutorial? What’s your secret?” Arun asks.
He hesitated to say my name. I get it, but…
“Luck.” That’s all I have to say. The word makes his expression falter a little, but that doesn’t make me change my answer.
After a second or so, he’s able to gather his wits again. “Then, what would you say—”
I put up my hand at him. “I don’t have time to talk ‘cuz I’m gonna go have a rematch with Moleman and I’m gonna totally bust his butt and you’re kind of in the way with your dumbo questions so I’m actually going to leave now and you can’t stop me ‘cuz as you’re familiar with you’re just level zero and I’m leagues above that so yeah I’ll be going now bye.” And then, before he has time to reaffix his jaw to his face, I leave the room, despite Virgil calling out to me.
Sniff sniff sniff sniff. Moleman…!
Getting down on all fours, I initiate my fastest running possible by using haste in every single part of my body while also using dagger nails in order to be able to run on walls when the hallways are too crowded. For some reason, a lot of people scream when they see me bolting at them at Mach speeds. Even the well-armoured beef heads make sounds like startled schoolgirls. Weird. Maybe I’m being followed by some spooky ghost? Who knows.
After running for maybe a minute or two tops, I finally get to the right place. At the end of the hallway, an open door seems to enter into a massive hall filled with countless tables and even more people.
I leap at the open doorway and splatter into an invisible wall.
Slowly, I slide down from the wall before collapsing just beneath it. What in the heck is this—oh, it’s the Easy Lobby. I should have noticed the sign. How dare he be in a place where I can’t readily attack him? So inconsiderate. Once I get my hands on him, he’ll wish he really lived up to his namesake so he could go bury himself in a hole, hahah!
Not that I’ll actually kill him or anything. No, I just need to have a wonderful little rematch to prove to him that I am the superior gamer. That’s all. Hehe.
I stare into the Easy Lobby. I notice someone staring back at me. I have no idea who she is, but as she looks at where I sit crouched on the floor, she suddenly turns deathly pale—almost more so than me—and hurries off. Weird. Lots of weird stuff is happening at this conference, and we aren’t even ten minutes into it.
Since I’ve got nothing else to do, I start pacing back and forth in front of the doorway. He’s gotta come out of there someday, right? I think I can see people looking at me from within, but one harsh glare is enough to make them look away, so I’m not worried.
After a minute or so, I see that pale girl from before, except she’s walking together with some well-armoured girl who looks strangely authoritative. Not to me, though. Rules are for chumps, and rulers only have power over those that let them. The two of them are heading over here. Interesting. I keep watch on them from my peripheral vision all the way until they reach my position.
“You do know that harassment is a punishable offence under the Lawbook of the PRR?”
Comments
Diez de Groot
cmon dudes
