0…

Good luck, challenger!

Ronan was excited to see what was going to be the next challenge of the nightmare tutorial. So excited that he barely cared about the shifting void around him as he was transported to said stage.

Rather than falling out feet-first, as was often the case, he found himself waking up on a cold floor. His back was drenched and his hands lay in a pool of something that was simultaneously gelatinous and wet. He opened his eyes, then immediately shut them as they were assaulted by a bright fluorescent tube light from above.

After he blinked a few times, Ronan was able to see normally. Glancing down, he realised that the source of the strange wetness was a large pool of blood. That he was lying in. Strange, but the system was odd at the best of times.

He was about to sit up when he heard voices nearby. He had learned the value of patience and information gathering over the last few iterations and so he decided to exercise that better judgment.

"This is messy. I thought you were better than this. That's why I gave you this one. What happened?" A high-pitched speaker hissed.

"Blame the bloody rodents in this place. One of them literally jumped on his chest before I was going to stab him and woke him up. I had to wrestle the bastard to stop him from waking anyone else. Look at my bloody arm. An arm shouldn't bend this way!" The reply made Ronan's current predicament rather clear.

Well, this is new. I suppose beggars can't be choosers. At least it's an exciting scenario. Ronan couldn't be certain, but he suspected that this was another shapeshifter situation. They had killed whoever he was meant to be replacing in order to assume their identity. He wondered if he looked like that person, or if the system just did some fuckery to get around that contextual problem.

"Well, at least you did it quietly. The blood can be cleaned. Assume his identity and get ready to go to your new job. Everything we've been working towards for the past sixty years is about to come to fruition. Soon the humans will be eradicated by the nuclear winter and we can begin to seed another world. Long live Gorz'Arak!"

"Long live Gorz'Arak."

Yup, definitely gorzerk. Nuclear winter? Fucking psychopaths. Then again, it's a novel experience. I guess this stage will be about stopping them carrying out their plan. Ronan heard steps after the two exchanged the weird salutation. One set heading away and the other towards him.

He closed his eyes, but subtly hid one hand behind his hip and conjured a baton. He had considered a dagger, but he wanted to see just how effective his new mastery was.

When the gorzerk sounded as though he was standing right above Ronan, he opened his eyes. "Wha—" The monster barely got out a word before he shot up and whipped the baton at its leg.

It connected with a crack. A bone pierced through its skin and a river of blood began to flow, but Ronan had already started his second strike. The baton cracked against the monster's temple as it began to revert to its original form. The transformation was too slow. When his baton hit its head the gorzerk seemed to freeze.

Before the stun ended his third blow smashed into the same spot on its temple. It dropped to the ground. "What are you making all that noise for, you fucking id—" Ronan looked up and met the gaze of the other gorzerk who'd just left the room. Oops.

He felt a strange warmth stirring in his chest as he was noticed. He raced across the room towards the second gorzerk, raising his conjured baton as he did. Halfway to his foe, Ronan conjured a knife and tossed it at the monster.

The gorzerk threw itself to the side to avoid the knife and ducked, before slashing at his chest. Ronan was ready for the attack and smashed his baton against the shapeshifter's arm. It cracked, just as the first monster's leg had. He conjured another baton in his other hand as the first dissipated, before smashing it into the gorzerk's head. It blew up in a red mist as the weapon struck it, leaving Ronan shocked. He started to laugh as he watched the body falling to the ground and reverting to its original grey-skinned state. Since when did I pack that much of a punch without strength investment? The answer became obvious when he read the kill notifications.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

You have killed [Lesser Gorzerk Lv.22] and [Elite Gorzerk Lv.29]!

Enemy killed with a critical hit, 1.5x experience gained!

+671 Copper Credits

+Worn Leather Journal (Common)

+Lesser Gorzerk Hide (Uncommon)

+Gorzerk Lymph Node (Rare)

+Elite Shard Lv.29 (Body)

+6 [Stealth] Mastery

+3 [Throwing Knife] Mastery

+8 [Mana VI] Mastery

+4 [Stamina VI] Mastery

+13 [Blunt Weapons VI] Mastery

+1 [Blunt Weapons VII] Mastery

+12 [Critical II] Mastery

You have leveled up to Lv.15!

…

You have leveled up to Lv.28!

+210 Vitality

+210 Endurance

+28 Wisdom

+28 Intelligence

+42 Acuity

+280 Charisma

+11270 Luck

+4634 Free Stat Points

You have reached the mastery cap for [Blunt Weapons]!

Blunt Weapons VI has evolved to Blunt Weapons VII!

Deal more damage when striking with a blunt weapon. Gain mastery over blunt weapons faster. Weight penalties when wielding blunt weapons are reduced. Deal 2x damage when striking with a blunt weapon. When landing a successful blow with a blunt weapon, gain a 31% chance to apply a cascading bleeding effect for 15% of the strike's damage. When landing a successful blow to a vital area with a blunt weapon, gain a 55% chance to apply a concussion or stunning effect for [Strength^0.125] seconds.

Ronan poked his head out of the door that the second gorzerk—the elite, apparently—had left out of. He found himself looking up and down a sterile corridor, but there was no one else around. Confident he wouldn't be disturbed in the immediate future, he shut the door and took a seat on a strangely shaped chair.

He dumped all his free stat points into luck. He stared at the ridiculous number for a few seconds. Over twenty-thousand points of luck. Shame I won't get any consumables from this stage… Maybe one of these shapeshifting pricks will drop some crazy loot.

The fact that he had obliterated the elite in barely two strikes was surprising. Clearly his increased luck had some sort of impact on critical hit chance, not just loot drops. That was really beneficial considering he couldn't put points in any of his physical or magical stats.

Another tier in blunt weapons mastery was a surprise, but a welcome one. It must have been close to the cap after the merge and the half a thousand points I earned from the grimoire. I'll never complain about extra buffs. The biggest windfall of his two kills wasn't any of the stats or mastery gains, however, but the lowest rarity item drop.

The worn leather journal.

At first he had only taken it out of his inventory to see what it was. Finding such an 'analogue' item in this weird futuristic scenario was strange to Ronan. He had been curious, and so he opened the journal to see what was written inside.

For a second he had been baffled by the weird script, but then his translation skill kicked in. Rather than turning the script into English, it seemed to give him the ability to understand the meaning of each symbol scratched on the pages.

The gorzerk language was odd, lacking descriptive words and mostly consisting of tangled sentences that ran on for pages on end. A lot of it was useless, but there was a goldmine of information contained in that common journal. A goldmine that was going to be the foundation for his success in stage 3 of the nightmare tutorial.

He spent another hour just sitting in that room reading the journal. He was surprised no one had come to check what the noise was, but the closest doors in the corridor were about fifty metres down. Perhaps they'd slept through it.

From what he managed to glean in the notebook, there were two major parts to the gorzerk's plan to unleash hell on this place. The first was to kill and take the place of important humans in the security and technological maintenance sectors. Once they had control over the tunnel sealing systems and the settlement security, they would unseal the tunnel system and let the nuclear winter on Earth's surface bring icy death to those who resided in the safety of the bunkers below.

A cruel, yet intelligent plan. Ronan had to admit it was thorough planning and so far, excellent execution, on the gorzerks' part. From the last entry in the journal he had learned that whoever he had taken the place of was the final member of the sealing system maintenance unit that they needed to replace before they could begin their plan.

The plan, as he had learned from the original conversation between the two dead shapeshifters, was supposed to be enacted later that day. Which gave him a very limited timeframe in which to root out and kill the rest of the gorzerks. Unfortunately for the shapeshifting monsters, the idiot elite had kept a list of the people they'd replaced, which meant they would be easy pickings for Ronan.

All he needed to do was figure out how to find them.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.