All of them stood outside of the large stone doors leading into the spiral mines' dungeon, each holding their earned mana cores as they all closed their eyes, selling their dungeon loot to the system shop before returning to the area where they had left the others.
But unlike the others, Lewis's mana core was only slightly smaller than his palm and came from a creature twice his level, so he was expecting a lot more shards than what he got for a broken mana core like before. Unfortunately, the large spiders' spell stone was completely obliterated during the explosion, not even fragments being left behind for him to sell, so he would have to hope the core was valuable enough.
Entering the system shop once again, he discovered he didn't need to summon the system guide just to sell the mana core, as a window asking him if he wanted to sell popped up immediately, which he promptly accepted.
F-rank mana core sold: 100 TP
Available TP: 250
Really? Is that it? Only a hundred points for the mana core when I already earned 150 for initially killing it. I hoped for more, especially considering the price of the spell stone I got last time.
Mentally shrugging, he exited the shop a second after entering and looked around at the others.
"Hardly a doubling of my TP, but another 20 points is nice to have," Matt muttered to himself. The others seemed to have gained even fewer points than himself from the lower-level mana cores.
"Come on, let's get back." Patch declared, all of them making their way back out of the now cleared goblin den and into the wild.
The sun had definitely begun moving towards the horizon, but it appeared larger and moved more slowly than Earth's, so they likely still had a few hours before dark.
Traversing through the woods again, it took a while to retrace their steps, a bundle of obsidian daggers wrapped up in thick animal hides looted from the goblins strapped to Jonny's back as Lue took center stage once again, his tracking skills pointing them in the right direction, a sense of newfound confidence emanating from the group after having grown stronger from their ordeal, the woods still echoing with strange sounds, but the soldiers no longer seemed as tense, a calm confidence and certanty that they would be able to handle the local creatures even without the advantage of modern weaponry.
During their trip back, they encountered a few creatures, two monkey-like creatures that threw rocks at them, but they were only level 2, and their attacks failed to do any damage to the augmented humans, even when they landed. The group didn't even bother fighting them, lacking any ranged options other than Matt's fireball, but Patch stopped him from retaliating, not wanting to start a forest fire. The creatures only had a handful of small rocks before they ran out of ammunition anyway, needing to source more from the ground, unlike the granite minions, so they just moved on and exited the monkeys' territory.
After that, a large badger had scurried towards them, the creature snarling viciously as it lashed out with dangerous claws, its maw snapping at them, but Lewis used [Spiritual alignment] before the others could attack, feeling an even greater surge of power than before as he moved faster than the sprinting badger, and using his high precision, managed to snap its neck in an instant, his augmented strength allowing him to unleash enough force to crush rocks with his bare hand, the level 4 creature never having stood a chance.
The kill barely gave him any EXP, the lower-level creature barely moving up the experience needed for his next level by a single %, while not even giving him any TP at all. It seemed even the system agreed that he was way too overpowered for these mob creatures anymore.
Perhaps I'll need to go back to the dungeon to level up further, or else find a place where the local monsters are at least close to level 10.
But even without Lewis using his boosting spell, the group were all stronger than any of the monsters they encountered on their way back. Patch and Jonny had reached level 5 in the dungeon, while Matt was level 6 and Lue lagged behind at level 4. Meanwhile, the highest-level creatures around had been those goblins, and even then, they didn't appear to have any skills or spells, so not even their higher levels had saved them from being exterminated.
The first sign that they were getting close was a stray arrow embedded in a tree. Lue was the first to spot it, along with the body of a brown-furred fox twice the size of its earthen counterpart, five arrows piercing its body.
"Looks like Peter has been busy." Jonny joked as they passed the dead fox, following the tracks back towards the general area where they had agreed to meet back up.
More signs of battle appeared along the way: the bodies of similar monkeys with slash wounds across their bodies, even three grey wolves that seemed to have put up quite the fight, and blood covering the entire area, with the slain creatures sporting all kinds of wounds and arrows before they had been put down. Unfortunately, since the wolves were already dead, Lewis had no way of confirming their level, but they appeared like quite a threat, likely being some of the strongest creatures around with the goblins gone.
"I see something up ahead!" Patch called, pointing through a space in the trees at what appeared to be some sort of building in the distance. After spending so long walking through the woods, seeing a building was quite the shock and made it seem entirely out of place. This wasn't Earth anymore, where you could randomly stumble upon any number of buildings even in the wilderness, so seeing one here felt a little surreal.
"That must be them," Lue said, nodding to himself as he scanned the ground and trees.
"What? How the heck did they find a shelter? Or did they build it?" Matt asked, incredulously.
"Hm, could they have bought it from the system?" Patch asked.
Lewis wanted to deny such a claim as ridiculous, but when he thought about it for a moment, he realized that it may very well be exactly what had happened. None of them had spent any of their points other than himself, nor had they really perused what was available for purchase at all.
"Come on, let's go find out what's happening," Patch added, walking briskily over in the direction of the wooden shelter.
As they got closer, they found that it was a simple wooden house surrounded by a picket fence that didn't appear likely to offer any sort of protection against the local monsters. The shelter itself was fairly large, bigger than your average cabin in the woods, but nothing more impressive than that. What was more interesting was the people standing around outside it, one of whom was clearly Peter, the archer, but the other was someone none of them had seen before.
With haste, he made it to the shelter and was immediately spotted by the archer, who smiled and waved at them to approach.
"Guys, you're back. Good to see you all made it out alive." Peter said, giving them a mock salute and a wide smile.
"Yeah, we saw your arrows back there, too. You guys took down a pack of wolves?" Matt interjected excitedly, rushing to the front.
The archer grimaced at that but nodded anyway.
"Yeah, but we weren't expecting them. They snuck up on us and got David real good. Hell, all of us got close to dying a few times since you guys left. It's only thanks to Lee that we're all still kicking. Speaking of which." He gestured to the unknown man standing quietly to the side, his posture hunched and his features nervous, as if he expected to be attacked at any moment. "This is Albert. His own group had been attacked, and some had been killed shortly after entering the tutorial. Four more are being treated by Lee inside." He explained, hucking a finger towards the wooden building.
"I'm sorry to hear that, lets head inside and fill everyone in on what's happened." Patch said, naturally taking the lead once again as they entered the shelter.
Just as Peter had said, they found Lee tending to four heavily injured people inside, David, the third warrior, by her side as they turned at the sound of the door opening, their faces brightening upon noticing Lewis and his team enter.
"Oh, thank god, I thought you guys would never return. We have a serious problem." Lee said, getting up from beside one of the injured men, three deep gashes running across his entire chest as if he had been attacked by a bear. The others didn't look any better, with one woman even missing an arm.
"Christ, what attacked them?" Jonny asked, looking away from the injured group. It was the unknown man who had been speaking to Peter who responded.
"It was some kind of werewolf. I don't even dare believe it myself, but they looked fairly human at first, just with their entire body covered in fur and ears on the top of their head like a cosplayer. But as soon as the thing noticed us, it transformed like some kind of werewolf, growing twice as big before it attacked us. The thing was insanely fast and killed two of the people we arrived with before we could even fight back. Even using all our skills, we barely managed to injure it enough to get it to back off." The man recounted, his voice weak and quivering as he relived the memory.
Lewis's brows had shot up when he heard the man's tale. He hadn't expected anything strong to be lurking around these parts; he hadn't even spotted anything stronger than level 5. Yet for something to be powerful enough to threaten their entire group, it must have been incredibly strong.
"Did you identify it?" Lue asked, his face not revealing anything.
The man nodded slowly before answering, "Lycan."
"It must be another tutorial attendee." Patch suddenly said, a glint crossing his eyes before he closed them and went completely motionless.
Lewis had no idea why he had seemingly gone into the system shop now of all times, but he was too shocked by the revelation that some werewolf race from another world was lurking nearby, and clearly wasn't the only one.
"I've been keeping an eye out, but so far I haven't found a single trace of this creature," Peter added, the shaken man turning from them as he looked at his companions.For the first time, Lewis noticed the red lines across the man's back, a sign that despite not being grievously injured, he hadn't escaped unscathed.
"But more importantly, how is the situation with those speedy green shits?" David asked, walking over with Lee in tow.
"Oh, we totally kicked their asses, wiped out their base, and everything. This area is officially goblin free." Matt added, while also not able to stop himself from flaunting his new staff.
"Well, that's good to hear. We also cleared out most of the dangerous creatures in our immediate vicinity, but we haven't ventured too far away from camp either." The warrior answered.
Just then, Patch's eyes suddenly opened, and a surprising weariness seemed to overcome the man as he rubbed his face with one hand, his other holding what looked to be a rolled-up scroll.
"Looks like we're in more trouble than I realized." The former commander moaned, waving the scroll around.
"Just asked our friend the system guide about what other worlds and races are sharing our tutorial, and surprisingly, he gave me a list. Unfortunately, it seems we humans are at the very bottom." Patch said, unraveling the list and handing it over to Jonny, whose eyes widened almost comically.
"What the hell is this? Is this real?" He breathed, his face draining of color.
When Lewis grabbed the scroll, he found it only contained a few words, but each made his mind spine with doubts and questions.
List of races present within the elite survival tutorial: Elves, Orcs, Vampires, Lycan, and Humans.
Well, this is bad. If these races are what I think they are, then humans really are the weakest of them all. It's no wonder this other group had been torn to shreds. Surviving the next three months seems far more difficult now.