A Gamer's Guide To Beating The Tutorial

It was fair to say that everything was going to shit. It had been for a while, but this was definitely the shit-cherry on top of the shit-cake.

“Where is he going? What the fuck is happening?” Jarne said, far from surprised to notice that literally no one was paying attention to him. Well, alright, that wasn’t exactly the case. The mayor’s six kids were all looking up at him, no doubt wondering what he just said. Trying to recall how to translate ‘fuck’ into goblinese, Jarne barely even noticed Plus making a dash for the hallway. “Hey, hey, whoa!” He ran in front of him, blocking his exit with his body. “Don’t you dare!”

Plus scowled down at him. “Out of my way—we have to follow him!”

“No we don’t!” Jarne shot back. “I don’t know if you’ve gone deaf, but by the sounds of things, we are absolutely under siege or something. This is exactly what it sounded like back in Fursten when the duke sent his entire army to attack us. But at least then Mole wasn’t stupid enough to go running off in the middle of things!”

The expression on Plus’ face twisted in bitter memory, no doubt recalling their flight from over a year past. “What do you suggest we do, then? Leave him to die?”

“No! No, we have to… we need to…” Jarne pulled an absolute blank. How was he supposed to know what to do? Last time, same as all other times, Mole had been the one in charge. Because—duh. But now Mole had gone running off. Completely unlike last time, when he… When he’d tried to… Jarne gulped thickly. “We need to stick together. And…” he turned around. The mayor’s wife and her children were huddled together now, still by the fireplace. “And we have to get them out of here.”

Jazz’ terrified face approached them. “B—but what about Mole?”

“Screw him!” Jarne spat, which was apparently the wrong choice of words and tone, because now both Plus and Jazz were looking at him with an expression usually saved for the resident child-eater. Jarne held up his hands, capitulating. “That is, I mean…”

“He ran off himself,” Plus said, clearly pained. “We can’t pick up his slack. Not here. Not like this.”

“Exactly. We need to watch our own backs. And those of the people depending on us.”

Plus looked over his shoulder, noticing the kids. He nodded resolutely. “Yeah. We have to—”

“Duck!!” Jarne screamed, pushing all five hundred pounds of Plus to the floor just as a sword swooped by, right where Plus’ neck had been mere moments ago. Jumping off Plus’ chest, Jarne tackled the attacker to the ground, out into the darkness of the hallway. He pulled his knife from his inventory, raising it, ready to dispatch the attacker, only to hesitate at the critical moment.

It was a kid. Just a kid. Clad in tatters, eyes wide, terrified.

“What in the—”

The kid scrambled out from beneath him, and only now did Jarne remember that the kid was armed. The sword… it looked like the same kind that the city guards carried. How the heck had a child gotten hold of it? What was even—

The windows of the hallway crashed open and more goblins—all peasants, most of them armed—clambered inside. Jarne’s eyes darted up and down the hallway. More were arriving from down to the right, the opposite of where Mole had headed. But he didn’t have time to consider that now.

With an agile jump backwards, he pulled the doors to the dining hall shut just in time to hear pounding and slashing as the mob of attackers tried to open it. “Help me, Plus!” Jarne barked, an order Plus thankfully followed, pressing his girth against the door.

Plus turned to Jazz. “Bolt the other doors!”

She nodded, regaining enough determination to overcome her fear. Pulling a small wand from her inventory, she magicked the doors shut, using some spell or another to pile the chairs and a bunch of books against them. Within moments of her doing so, the pounding that was previously focused on the door Jarne and Plus were holding shut began to spread from one door to the next, until all three exits sounded like a jazz drum competition, angry audience shouts included. Panting, Jazz turned to the last unbarred door. She pointed her wand to the large dining table, flipping it over, porcelain and glass and metal crashing to the floor, only to then be ground into a fine dust as the dining table began to drag itself atop them, creaking loudly. “Move… away… from… the… door…!”

Jarne almost did just that. Almost. But in the end, he stood still. Something was wrong. Something… was out there.

Silently, he pressed his ear against the hardwood door.

He’d heard something. A change out there—some switch in the formula. A voice, a shouting, screaming voice alongside their accompanying banging, suddenly snuffed out. Gone. And the howl of the other attackers… The pitch changed. It was no longer shouts of anger and indignation, but rather screams of horror. Sheer terror. Grown men screaming like children. Jarne felt his blood run cold. They stopped banging at the door. He heard footsteps; rushing. Running. A frantic scramble to escape. But it was no use. One after another, the screams went silent. Frantic footsteps turned into a single, final thump as their bodies fell.

After only a few minutes, each one feeling as though they were a mere second, it was quiet out there. No one was banging at the exits. No one was shouting. There was no one out there.

Or, no, that wasn’t quite right.

Someone was out there. Or maybe something.

Silently, Jarne turned to Plus. In a whisper, he said, “Do you have time to get armored?”

Plus pulled his two-handed longsword from his inventory. “No.”

Jarne glanced down at Jazz, still standing in the middle of the room. “If something happens,” he said, “bar the door and escape through the kitchen.”

She nodded back at them, raising her wand; ready.

Jarne and Plus shared a look. On three. One, two…three!

They pushed open the door as one. Or, at least, they tried. There was something out there, lying in the way, blocking the doors. They pushed harder. Scrape, scrape, scrape. The door was soon open enough to see what was blocking it.

Bodies. Mauled, bloodied corpses, all piled in a tangle of limbs and organs. Some of them were very young. Children, almost. Not all of them were armed. One body could hardly be told apart from another. The gore and viscera was joined together.

Repressing everything such a sight would ordinarily make him feel, Jarne dragged his attention away from the floor and up to their enemy, its bony, knotted form silhouetted by the broken window behind it. It was eating something. Crunch, crunch, munch, munch. It turned to them, glowing yellow eyes like that of a cat, brighter than the moons outside. Then it spoke—in perfect, fluent Flemish, “Oh, hey, there you are.”

Jarne’s teeth stopped chattering. “...Kitty?”

The silhouette faded and Kitty stepped into the light. His shirt and vest had been shredded to pieces, his pants meeting a similar fate, indecency avoided by the groin portion miraculously being mostly intact. Not that his body was in a better state. Deep gashes had been slashed across his body, one of his legs was twisted the wrong way, he was missing half of his ear and most of his nose, and it looked as though he’d shoved both arms and legs into a meat grinder. But as he ate what Jarne now recognized as a head, the flesh was slowly knitting itself together, threads of muscle overlapping, weaving itself into fibers that could be used to repeat the massacre around them.

Kitty swallowed down a mouthful of flesh. “Yeah, it’s me, don’t worry, ummm…”

Jarne gritted his teeth. Ignoring the bodies and the wet, squishy sensation under his feet, he stomped out of the dining room, all the way up to Kitty. “Where is Mole?”

Kitty blinked at them. “Oh! Oh, yeah, he’s…” The thin little man scampered away, over to a corner of the hall where a body had been leaned against the wall. He took it into his arms, and gingerly, lovingly, he carried it over to where Jarne stood, Plus having joined him. They watched Kitty in mute horror as he held up what was left of Mole. “He got stabbed, but not through the heart, so he should be okay… But then a few goblins slashed at him, but I’m sure he’ll be okay. Jazz is a good healer, right? She can heal him, can’t she?”

Jarne looked down at Mole, and then at Plus. They shared a singular look that exchanged two words, and only two words.

‘He’s dead.’

Deep inside Jarne, a little roulette wheel spun, containing five slots. What should he feel? Denial? Anger? Bargaining? Depression? Acceptance? Jarne dropped in the ball. Clacka-clacka-clacka-clacka… Chck.

…Anger it is!

“YOU MOTHERFUCKING—” Jarne snatched a hold of the scraps left of Kitty’s collar. “HOW COULD YOU LET HIM DIE YOU FUCKING—”

“Wait!” someone shouted, and before Jarne could express himself by pummeling Kitty into a fine mush, Jazz had appeared by them, panting gently. Jarne glared at her. “Please—please, wait, Rat. I think…” Her hand fell on Mole’s forehead, and then she pressed two fingers against his neck. No one said anything. They stared in shared hope and despair, holding their collective breaths. Her lips twisted into a trembling smile. “He’s alive,” she said. “He’s still alive.”

Unsaid words spread like an infectious disease between them as they all shared a single thought.

‘He can still be saved.’

Jarne let go of Kitty’s collar.

Kitty, face lit with triumphant desperation, inched closer to her. “So you can save him, right? I was thinking of using my own heart, but if you can save him, that’ll be great. Then we can keep hanging out.”

Her expression fell. “I… I don’t—”

Fresh footsteps echoed down the hall. Everyone turned to look down at it.

Jarne clicked his tongue. “We’ll discuss it later. Let’s get back inside!”

A resolute nod was shared, and they went back inside the dining hall, barring the door after them.