The Tutorial sky was too clean.

  Blue, sharp, perfect. No smog, no planes, no contrails. Just empty.

  Kade Soren stood at the edge of the clearing his group had claimed and watched that impossible sky for a moment, the way other people watched sunsets back on Earth.

  Then he looked down, back at what really mattered: the dirt, the blood, and the people standing in a loose ring around the camp’s center.

  “Again,” he said.

  Two men staggered apart, chests heaving, faces slick with sweat and blood.

  They were both older than him. That amused Kade on a level he didn’t examine closely. Thirty, maybe thirty-five. Gym bodies, or ex-military, or just proud of their fitness back in the world before System windows.

  It hadn’t helped them much.

  They held scavenged weapons—a dented shield and short sword for one, a heavy club for the other. Both had cuts already. Both limped. Both had dirt pasted to their skin with sweat.

  Around them, in a wider ring, fifty or so people watched.

  Some had hard eyes, like Kade’s: evaluating, measuring. Others were just tired, or numb. A few looked away every time someone fell.

  Kade kept track of which was which.

  The shield man spat more blood than saliva, adjusted his grip. “He can’t even lift that thing anymore,” he rasped, nodding at his opponent’s shaking arms. “He’s done. You saw that, right?”

  Kade smiled, slow and almost gentle.

  “I saw you both refuse to take the offer,” he said. “You could have joined without proving anything. First day. When I was still collecting bodies and weapons. But you waited. Watched. Hid. Now you want in, you earn it.”

  The man with the club swallowed, chest heaving. His eyes, dark and rimmed in red, flicked to Kade, then to the crowd.

  To the weapons. To the food stacked near the central fire. To the fresh water, clear in its barrels.

  To the half-built shelters where people huddled when the monsters came close.

  He knew what this was.

  Everyone did, now.

  “Winner lives,” Kade said, voice carrying across the clearing. “Winner joins. Loser feeds the dogs. Simple.”

  Someone at the back flinched.

  Kade’s gaze flicked there and back, filing the reaction away.

  He lifted a hand, palm out.

  “Again,” he repeated.

  The men moved.

  The club swung first, a slow, heavy arc aimed at the shield man’s ribs. It was clumsy but would have cracked bone if it landed. The shield man stepped back, raising his shield, letting the impact glance off.

  He hissed anyway, arm jarred. His counterattack was a short, stabbing thrust toward the other man’s knee.

  The club wielder yelped and hopped back. Not far enough. The sword’s point drew a line across his thigh, shallow but hot. Blood striped his leg.

  Kade watched with the patience of someone watching a training sim, not two real people breaking each other.

  He saw the little things:

  The way the shield man’s stance was degrading—foot placement getting sloppier, weight distribution uneven. His left knee was weaker. His shield arm trembled after each block, subtle but there.

  The club man had more Power, less control. Each swing took too much out of him. Each miss cost him more than a dodge should.

  Both would probably have survived a standard monster encounter if they’d had the sense to group up.

  There was no real place in his camp for people like that.

  Not as they were now.

  “You know,” Kade said conversationally to the woman standing just behind his left shoulder, “I thought Earth would be the hardest part to survive.”

  She didn’t answer. She rarely did. She listened, though. He liked that.

  He folded his arms.

  “The rules are better here,” he said. “Clearer. System doesn’t care about feelings. You kill, you get stronger. You hesitate, you die. Simple.”

  In the ring, the shield man took a hit to his shoulder that nearly knocked his arm out of its socket. He stumbled, dropping to one knee. The shield sagged.

  The club came around again, a wild, desperate swing.

  This time it cracked him across the side of the head.

  He went down hard, shield flying from numb fingers, sword skittering across the dirt.

  The crowd flinched as one.

  The club man froze, panting, chest heaving, staring at the sprawled form at his feet.

  Blood trickled from the other man’s ear. His eyes were half open, unfocused. His chest rose, shallow and ragged.

  Alive.

  Barely.

  The club man looked up at Kade, hope and horror warring in his gaze.

  “I… I won,” he said. “Right?”

  Kade’s System chimed quietly.

  [Enemy Player defeated.]

  [Experience gained.]

  His level bar nudged forward another sliver.

  He enjoyed that.

  He walked into the ring, boots leaving clean prints in the trampled earth. The onlookers stepped back automatically, creating space.

  The victor straightened as he approached, shoulders pulling back. He tried to stand taller, hide the shake in his arms.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  He failed.

  Kade stopped a meter away.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “J-Jonah,” the man stammered. “Jonah Price.”

  “Jonah,” Kade repeated. He looked him up and down. Evaluated.

  The club man’s stance said exhaustion. His HP bar—Kade flicked to the party interface he kept hidden for these tests—was just above half. Bleeding, but manageable. Muscle tremors. A small cut above his eye. A deep bruise darkening along his ribs.

  He’d limp for a week without healing. Two days with it.

  “Weak,” someone muttered at the back.

  Kade didn’t turn. He didn’t need to know who said it. Not yet.

  Jonah clenched his jaw. “I—I can fight. You saw. Just—get me some healing, I’ll—”

  Kade tilted his head.

  “Did you hesitate?” he asked mildly.

  Jonah blinked. “What?”

  “When he went down,” Kade said, nodding toward the groaning man on the ground. “Did you hesitate? Did you think about stopping? About sparing him?”

  Jonah swallowed. He didn’t answer.

  He didn’t need to.

  Kade smiled.

  “That’s why you’re weak,” he said.

  He moved faster than Jonah’s tired eyes could track.

  One step, a smooth draw of his own blade.

  [Skill: Killing Tempo (Rank F, Uncommon)]

  — First strike after movement gains increased speed

  — Slight bonus damage vs targets below 50% HP

  The sword flashed.

  Jonah jerked, hands coming up too late.

  The blade punched through his throat, then out the back of his neck.

  His eyes went wide. He made a wet, choked sound.

  Kade stepped aside as he pulled the blade free, letting the body fall without getting blood on his boots.

  Silence slammed down in the clearing.

  The man on the ground wheezed, barely conscious, staring blankly as his would-be killer toppled beside him.

  Kade cleaned the blade on Jonah’s shirt with slow, unhurried movements.

  “Lesson,” he said, turning to face the ring of watching faces. “This is my camp. My rules. You don’t waste time. You don’t hesitate. You don’t leave enemies half-finished.”

  He gestured at the man struggling to breathe on the dirt.

  “That,” he said, “is a loose end. He’s useless. Dead weight. Every bit of food and healing we spend on someone like that is wasted. I will not have dead weight.”

  He drove his sword down once, clean and precise, into the side of the fallen man’s neck.

  The System chimed twice in quick succession.

  [Enemy Player defeated.]

  [Experience gained.]

  Two more insignificant ticks on his level bar.

  It wasn’t about the numbers. Not just.

  It was about the pattern.

  He sheathed the sword calmly.

  “If you want safety,” he said, eyes sweeping over the crowd, “earn it. If you want food, fight for it. If you want to stand behind me when the Tutorial throws something big at us, you prove you won’t be the one collapsing when it matters.”

  His gaze settled, briefly, on a young woman near the back. She hugged her arms around herself, knuckles white, flinching every time someone raised their voice.

  She’d tried to leave yesterday.

  He’d had her dragged back.

  Not everyone needed to be a frontliner. Some people he needed for other things.

  “You don’t like my rules,” he said into the quiet, “you can walk. Monsters are always hiring outside the camp.”

  No one moved.

  Of course they didn’t.

  Because outside the rough perimeter of sharpened stakes, noise traps, and half-built shelters, the forest waited. The ambient mana had been growing steadily thicker each day. Beasts roamed.

  Here, there was Kade’s camp.

  Or there was nothing.

  He turned to the woman at his shoulder.

  “Have the bodies stripped,” he said softly. “Weapons, armor, anything useful. The rest goes out past the stakes.”

  She nodded once and moved to obey, calling a few names quietly. The group stirred, reluctantly, breaking formation to begin the grim work.

  Kade walked away from the center of the clearing toward a raised area where he’d had a crude map scraped into the dirt.

  It was nothing but lines and symbols, but they meant something to him: tree clusters, rock formations, places where beasts gathered more heavily, places where other people had tried to set up camp.

  Several of those had been crossed out.

  A symbol—a rough circle with three slashes—marked his current location.

  Two smaller circles had been drawn some distance away, off to one side.

  One of them had a line through it now.

  The other was untouched.

  He nudged the crossed-out circle with his boot.

  “Those idiots were supposed to be back by now,” he murmured.

  The raiding party he’d sent in that direction should have returned hours ago. Six men, not completely useless. He’d handpicked their leader for his calm and his hands.

  And they were late.

  He knelt, resting his forearms on his thighs, and stared at the map.

  If they were dead, it meant one of three things:

  They’d run into a beast too big for six.

  They’d run into a group strong enough to wipe them and not get wiped in return.

  Or they’d run.

  If it was the last, he’d find them eventually.

  If it was the second…

  His lips curved slowly.

  “That might be interesting,” he said.

  He picked up a stick and drew a question mark beside the second circle.

  Monsters killed without malice. Without thought.

  People killed with choice.

  He found that more honest.

  His gaze slid toward the treeline, where a few of his scouts had rigged alarms similar to the ones that had already saved them from three night raids by beasts.

  He’d learned quickly.

  Listen to the System. Watch how it wanted you to act. Then twist it.

  Killing monsters gave experience.

  Killing people did too.

  Most players still flinched at the second part, eyes sliding away from System messages when a human-shaped body went down.

  He didn’t.

  They were all the same color when the light left.

  “Boss.”

  He looked up.

  A man in rough leathers, one of his early supporters, stood a few meters away. He’d taken to calling himself a “captain” like this was some game with guild ranks.

  Kade let him.

  “You’ve got people waiting,” the captain said. “New arrivals. Three from the north route. Four from the east. They heard we had protection. Food.”

  Kade smiled.

  “Send them through the ring,” he said, nodding toward the center of the clearing, where the blood in the dirt hadn’t dried yet.

  The captain hesitated, just for a heartbeat.

  “They’re… tired,” he said. “One of them barely made it here. Looks like he got chewed on.”

  “So did we,” Kade said mildly. “We’re all tired. Doesn’t make you special.”

  “Yes, but—”

  Kade turned his head slowly.

  The man stopped talking midsentence.

  Kade held his gaze.

  Very calmly, very softly, he said, “If I start making exceptions, every scared survivor who staggers in here will think they can hide behind the stronger ones. Then when something big hits us, half of them will freeze and get the other half killed. I don’t want meat shields. I want wolves.”

  The captain swallowed.

  “I… understand,” he said.

  “Good,” Kade replied. “Pick pairs. Make sure the ones who look like they’d drag everyone else down meet each other first.”

  He rose to his feet.

  “And the one who comes out on top gets a place,” he added, almost as an afterthought. “If he can stand without bleeding on my boots.”

  He left the map there, the crossed-out circles and question marks etched into the dirt, and walked toward the inner part of the camp.

  There was a perimeter within the perimeter.

  Most people slept in rough shelters made from branches, cloth, and monster hides. They were clustered together around the main fire, close enough that no one could really have privacy—not without Kade knowing.

  Inside that ring of shelters was another space.

  Fewer people moved there.

  A defensive line of sharpened stakes separated it from the rest. Only a few had the right to cross without being questioned.

  Kade stepped past them without looking; the guards stepped aside automatically.

  The inner area held better tents—actual System-issue canvas from a random quest reward, patched together from three separate drops. There was a small cooking fire here too, independent of the main one, and a barrel of cleaner water.

  He liked being able to choose who he let close.

  A few of his more competent lieutenants lounged near one of the tents, cleaning weapons, swapping quiet jokes heavy with fatigue.

  One of them, a tall man with a shaved head and a scar splitting his left eyebrow, nodded at Kade.

  “Boss,” he said. “How’d the show go?”

  “Educational,” Kade said. “We’ve trimmed some fat.”

  The man chuckled. “Gotta stay lean.”

  “Any trouble?” Kade asked.

  “Couple tried to run this morning,” the man said. “We brought them back. They’re… thinking about things.”

  “Good,” Kade said. “Fear is a teacher.”

  He didn’t stay to chat.

  He ducked into his tent.

  The air inside was warmer, thick with the smells of sweat, leather, and something sour under it all.

  The space was simple by any sane world’s standards: a pallet made of furs, a crate with a few extra weapons, a small stack of System vials in one corner—health and mana, hoarded instead of handed out.

  And in the far corner, near the back, two shapes.

  They were bound to a heavy pole hammered into the ground, arms tied behind them. Rope bit into their wrists and ankles. Bruises mapped their skin in ugly patterns—purple, yellow, fresh red. Their clothes had been torn to almost nothing, hanging in strips that barely covered them.

  They flinched when he entered, instinctive.

  They didn’t have much flinch left in them.

  One lifted her head, just enough that he saw her eyes. Flat. Exhausted. Hating.

  Good.

  Hate meant she wasn’t broken yet.

  He walked past them without a word and sat on the furs, unbuckling his armor piece by piece, laying it aside with careful, methodical movements.

  Outside, the camp continued its brutal rhythm: shouts, clangs of metal, someone crying quietly, laughter that was a little too sharp.

  Inside, the two prisoners stared at the floor, rope fibers digging deeper into raw skin, too tired to struggle, too aware of what resistance bought them.

  Kade stretched, joints cracking, then lay back, folding his hands behind his head, eyes on the tent ceiling.

  There were more than 400 people left in this Tutorial.

  He meant to walk out over their bodies or with them in chains.

  Either way, he intended to walk out stronger.

  Thank you for reading!

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