The next morning felt easier.
Sleeping on things was apparently still good for something, even in another world. It did not fix anything, but it dulled the panic, smoothed out the edges a little, let me wake up feeling more like myself and less like a loose bundle of nerves in human form.
When I went downstairs, it was a relief to see Sheral already sitting with a few of the others.
They had rearranged a bunch of the tables in the inn so they faced each other, like some strange mix between a support group and a breakfast meeting.
"Good morning, everyone," I say, giving an awkward little wave.
Thankfully, I am pretty sure my awkwardness is more obvious to me than anyone else.
"Good morning to you too," Sheral says. "We were waiting."
Her tone is just sarcastic enough that I know she is in a decent mood.
"I'm sure. Did anyone find anything interesting?"
"Well," she says, "food made with the Cooking skill restores mana pretty quickly. Sleep does too."
"Oh. That's great."
"Yeah," she says. "It means I picked right and you picked wrong."
"Alright now, let's be nice. Don't you have a pie to bake, old lady?"
She punches my arm hard enough to prove I deserved it.
"You better be careful with me," she says with a smile. "But no. Most of us just woke up. The people who skipped the quest yesterday are warming up to the idea, and if you take the same quest again, it changes."
"It does?" I ask. "To what?"
The lie comes out easily enough, but for some reason it still sits wrong in my chest.
I usually do not care much about harmless lies. This one bothers me anyway.
"Well, now it's kill ten zombies, and it gives ten XP."
"Ah. Got it." I reach over, grab a loaf of bread from the table, and tear off a piece. It tastes aggressively bland. "So, should we get going?"
"Yep. There are sixteen of us this time, so it should be easier."
"Oh. Great."
I say it a little too flatly, then start toward the door.
"I'll meet you out there."
"Just be careful, idiot!" Sheral calls after me.
I smile despite myself and keep walking.
Once I reach the gate, I grab the quest from the guard again and head back into the woods.
After my first few kills, I start hearing the others in the distance.
I hate to admit it, but I deliberately move away from where they are.
They are good people, for the most part.
I just do not have it in me to be around them right now.
My social battery is already dead, and it is not even noon.
This round goes a lot like the last one, only smoother. Better, even. With my higher Intelligence, things feel clearer somehow. My timing is better. My movements feel a little more deliberate.
The only real difference is the experience. At my current level, the zombies only give one XP for every other kill. If that pattern keeps scaling, then level three will be slower than level two, and level four slower still.
Good to know. Bad to think about too much.
Other than stopping a few times to check in with Sheral, I kill more or less nonstop.
And because of how all of this is set up, it does not really feel like killing a person.
There is no blood spray. No frantic struggle. No desperate survival panic in their eyes.
They just fall.
Like moving sacks of rubber more than bodies.
By the time I am ready to head back, I have killed forty zombies over the course of a few hours.
A personal best.
Assuming anyone in history has ever bothered to keep records for speed-killing tutorial zombies.
Turning the quest in is the same as before, right down to the guard's hollow-eyed cheerfulness.
The reward pushes me to level three, and I do exactly what I already planned to do with the stat points.
Two more into Intelligence.
Of course.
This time I barely pay attention to the bonus roll, right up until it stops on ninety-three.
That gets my attention.
Instead of useless nothing, I get another starter item selection, the same set as before.
This time I pick the wand without hesitation.
It is probably overkill for weak zombies, but I can already imagine how useful it would be against something stronger.
Assuming stronger things exist here.
Which, realistically, they obviously do.
Once everyone else is finished, we end up celebrating by doing absolutely nothing of value at the inn.
The innkeeper says the rooms are free again if you completed the village quest, which is generous of her in a deeply mechanical sort of way. The people who picked profession quests had to spend a few hours cooking meals or doing basic labor in exchange. Apparently the inn provides the ingredients, so it is less difficult than it sounds.
After a while, I think Sheral notices my mood.
She does not say anything about it, though.
Maybe she is being polite.
Maybe she just does not want to deal with me.
Once the little gathering loses momentum, I excuse myself and head upstairs.
Then I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling again.
A few minutes later, there is a knock at the door.
"Hey, Tero. Did I do this right? Open up if you can hear me."
Sheral's voice comes through the wood loud enough that subtlety clearly died before breakfast.
I get up slowly and open the door just a crack.
"Hey. What's up?"
"No," she says, "what's up with you?"
That gets me to open the door a little wider.
"You're acting weird, and you're the one who seems to know the most about what's going on. We kind of need you to be one of the better ones here."
"I'm fine," I say automatically, then sigh. "Just... things are weighing on me. There's a lot to deal with, and I feel kind of powerless. So I'm just going to sleep it off for now, okay?"
"Yeah, okay. I get it." She gives me a small side hug. "But you need to adapt. Eat or be eaten."
Then she heads back downstairs.
I close the door and wait.
Later that night, I slip out of the inn and head back into the woods.
The grind is getting repetitive.
At this point, I need forty XP to level, and if the pattern holds, that means a lot of zombie kills. More than I really want to think about all at once.
The idea of spending half the night farming tutorial monsters is bad enough already.
Then the system makes it worse.
A new screen flashes across my vision.
[100 Level 1 Zombies killed. You will no longer gain XP for killing Level 1 Zombies.]
I stop walking.
So that is it.
Twelve out of forty XP, and the best source of easy progress is gone.
The helplessness hits harder than I expect.
I could go deeper into the forest.
Test my luck.
Test myself.
Test what I can actually do.
And if I do not, then what am I even doing here?
Isn't this the one thing this world offers that Earth never really did?
The chance to get stronger.
The chance to become more than whatever I was before.
If I turn back now, then what separates me from the people who stayed in the field and let the world decide for them?
So I keep walking.
I trust that the compass can lead me back if I need it, and for now that has to be enough.
Thankfully, it does not take long before I find something new.
[Level 5 Zombie]
If the rules are still mostly the same, then it should still be slow, still be killable, still be manageable.
All I have to do is start with the wand.
Hit it a few times, weaken it, then finish it with the spear.
Simple.
Probably.
I grip the spear in my right hand and the wand in my left, then creep forward through the trees.
I line up the shot, flick my wrist, and feel the wand pull something out of me.
Mana, obviously.
Still, feeling it leave is strange in a way I do not have time to think about.
The bolt hits the zombie in the ribs.
There is a satisfying crunch, but nowhere near the kind of damage a hit like that would do to a level one.
The thing barely reacts.
Then it starts running at me.
My stomach drops.
I fire again. Then again. Then once more.
I have to admit, my aim is noticeably worse than Sheral's.
The second, third, and fourth shots all slam into its chest too. The hits slow it a little, but not enough. Its upper body twists oddly as it runs, chest half-collapsing while its head jerks every direction.
Which makes lining up a spear strike a lot harder than I would like.
At that point all I can really do is lower the spear and pray.
I would love to say I met it with skill.
That I used my newly improved Intelligence to calculate the angle perfectly and drive the spear through its skull with practiced precision.
I did not.
Blind luck won that fight for me.
The zombie more or less impaled itself on my spear.
[Killed 1x Level 5 Zombie: 9 XP]
[XP: 21/40]
I stare at the message for a second, breathing hard.
This is not safe.
Not even close.
But maybe it is the best way forward.
Even two or three of these a night would put me ahead of most people.
Deep down, I know I should turn around.
Instead, all I can think is that getting stronger sounds really, really nice.
Like a guilty pleasure I should be ashamed of, but am not.
Not nearly enough.