He stopped for rocks along the way.

  JJ had always been the athlete in the family. He was the one who had always had the trophies and ribbons on the shelf in his room, his team photos on the wall and in the newspaper. He was the one who had gone to college on a sports scholarship to earn his business degree. But everyone seemed to forget who'd been pressed into throwing endless balls for him to swing a bat at. Brom had a hell of an arm for an untrained guy.

  When he had too many rocks to hold, he popped a squat and set the tiny shield he'd been using to carry them at his feet. Peeling the destroyed hoodie off of him was like an animal tearing off its pelt at this point, bonded to his skin by the goblin remains and his own blood. He dropped it on the ground and froze, a wave of dysmorphia washing over him. It's one thing to be told that your physique has been enhanced, it's another to see the evidence of it. It was still his skin, slightly pale and sporting the scars gained from a childhood spent outdoors. Under it, though, was a layer of hardened muscle that he definitely didn't recognize.

  His mind dredged up an echo of that hellish pain, and now he could see some of the gains he'd gotten from it. His abs had abs.

  The clatter of his rocks shifting reminded him that now was not the time to admire himself. He could do that later when he had access to a mirror and soap. Man, TJ was going to be proud of him. The teen had been encouraging him to get fit for almost a year as part of a campaign to improve his mental health by improving his physical health. "My nephew had better be alright."

  According to statistics, 97.2% of Brom Jones who complete the tutorial find out the status of their nephew.

  Low-hanging bait didn't deserve a bite. He put the finishing touches on his makeshift sack of rocks and picked up the rebar spear. No shield, he'd sacrificed it to help the structural integrity of the hoodie. Plus, it wasn't like he couldn't find a new one where he was going. He straightened up, rolled his neck a bit even though it felt fine, and bounced on his toes a little bit. "Alright, Brom, you can do this. You just killed like a hundred goblins. What's a few skeletons?"

  By the time he returned to the parking lot, there were at least sixty of them, plus about two dozen squishy goblins. He'd planned for this, though. Rebar went into the sack, and a rock came out of it. He sighted his target, wound up, and let the rock fly. It cracked through the air like it had been fired from a cannon, vaporizing the skull of the lead skeleton. It's buddies paused, all looking at their skull-free friend as he crumpled as if to say, 'well shit'.

  The toppled skeleton didn't get up.

  +1 XP

  A wicked smile curved Brom's features. "Play ball."

  More rocks cracked as he pitched them. His aim wasn't perfect, but through his misses, he learned that as long as the skull was intact, the skeletons would keep coming. The squishy goblin meat piles? Those were easy. They just needed to be scattered into parts. By the time the bag of rocks was empty, he'd cleared the first two skeleton groups and clubbed his way through the few remaining goblinoids with the rebar. He stopped long enough to use the hoodie to tie the shield to his arm, wrapping the arms around his own to give him more coverage against knives.

  With his defensive preparations made, he marched forward. He'd have loved to use the gap between the two cars to funnel the skeletons and force them to fight him one at a time. Unfortunately for him, that wasn't going happen. With the speed at which they moved, by the time he waited for a group to get to him, two new groups would probably spawn to take their place. There was no help for it except to keep moving forward and prepare to get stabbed.

  On the bright side, he was immune to disease, so no tetanus after all!

  The skeletons proved to be far less of a challenge than the goblins had been. The goblins had been fast, frenzied, and vicious. If they hadn't been lost to their own bloodlust, they could have taken him down easily. Instead, they'd done half the work for him, fighting each other as much as they had him. The boney boys? Their attacks were as slow as their walking speed had been. He'd been worried for nothing, it seemed like. In fact, Brom actually felt bad. After yet another blow from his trusty rusty rebar had smote the skull of the last skeleton from group four, he found group five and six just... waiting? They stood there, not moving, their knives pointed toward the ground. Some had even tilted their skulls forward in some sort of weird gesture of skeleton surrender.

  "Uh, you guys give up?"

  They're only Tutorial monsters. You're almost level three.

  "That's... I suppose I didn't think of that." He hadn't actually thought that the skeletons were intelligent. Now he felt a little bit like an adult that had been bullying children in a school play. These guys were just here to do a job. They probably were only supposed to look menacing, swipe at him a little bit, and let the System guide him to an easy victory. Instead, he'd taken off running, gotten himself in actual danger, and utterly confused whatever mechanism was spawning these guys. They probably wanted to go back to wherever their home was as much as he wanted to go back to his. "I'll make this quick."

  Famous last words.

  He'd clubbed his way almost to the last of them when the sunset, or was it suns' set, finally ended and twilight began. The hairs on the nape of his neck instantly went up. Across the ground, a fog too uniform to be natural began to ripple and roll, resembling a carpet more than a weather phenomenon.

  See what happens when you waste time? Now you get the Advanced Tutorial.

  That unholy green glow he'd seen earlier kicked up before Brom had a chance to ask what that meant.

  A sulfurous wind blew, damp with the rich scent of stagnant water and boggy ground. It stirred the fog in rippling whorls, making it climb and dance in sweeping spirals, as though an invisible lady was stirring it with her skirts. Tendrils climbed his thighs, kissing his skin through the bloody rips in the denim of his jeans. Pathetic cotton blend was no protection against whatever this was. Sweat dripped down his temple as he watched the fog gain in volume and act like no fog ever should, rolling up hill. It climbed like a hungry predator, the bank of it bulging out to disgorge the source of the glow.

  It was actually a bit of a letdown.

  With an intro like that, Brom had been expecting something... more. Considering his day, he'd expected some sort of skeleton with lightning in its chest or maybe some shambling horror of electrified flesh. Maybe a construct?

  He didn't expect a middle-aged man who looked like he belonged in the accounting department of a renaissance faire. Above his head, the tag read 'Necromancer (Earl) Lv 10'. Earl was balding, his forehead too long and shiny under his puffy velvet cap. His shirt was white linen, neatly pressed, belted into a pair of plain brown breeches that were tucked into sensible low boots. A pair of horn-rimmed glasses perched on his bulbous nose, and he licked a fingertip to turn the page of the book in his hand.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Now the book looked the part. Black leather with sharp silver points around the edges that reminded Brom of goblin teeth. Red pages and a slender ribbon bookmark that helped sell the 'inside of a mouth' aesthetic. Then whatever ink had been used to write in the book, that stuff was what had the radioactive hellfire green glow. It had to be awful on the eyes to read that. No wonder Earl was wearing glasses.

  Today was, hands down, the worst day of Brom's life. The world had seemingly ended. He'd been put through unspeakable pain. He'd had to kill, the mental bill for that hadn't come due just yet, and stand in the abattoir that parking lot had become. He'd faced his fear of the dead and was coping with the fear for his nephew's life. Now he was staring down someone with class levels. A lot of class levels. A whole eight more class levels than he had.

  Was this the end for him?

  The book snapped shut, almost catching Earl's fingers in it, and the man sighed before tucking it under his arm. Weary eyes swept over Brom, a flicker of annoyance creeping in the unremarkable brown depths. Then he lifted a hand, made a finger gun, and shot a lime green ray out of the extended fingertip.

  It sizzled across the space between them, smelling faintly of ozone and the promise of pain, to slap Brom square between his newly improved pectorals. There was a short, flat, comical noise on impact before the ray simply winked out of existence. Brom blinked, raised a hand to pat his unbroken skin and unburnt chest hair, and then looked directly at the man who'd cast the spell. Judging by the look of abject horror on the portly fellow's face, that was not the effect it was supposed to have.

  Hostile Magic Negated.

  Earl tried again, this time swirling his fingers together to pull a ball of that green energy out of thin air, flicking his hands outward with a shoving motion to propel the ball forward. It was clear from the flicker of satisfaction on his face that he'd put a bit of effort into this one.

  This time, Brom didn't even bother dodging. He'd figured out what was going on here, that Heathen passive was activating. The ball acted just like the ray had, making a soft 'pop' on impact and vanishing without so much as a tickle. He rubbed at his chest, trying to feel if the skin was at least damaged or if there was some kind of residue from the stronger spell. Nothing. Well, he was feeling a little chill from the fact he was standing in the unholy breeze shirtless, but aside from that, he was pretty comfortable.

  Hostile Magic Negated.

  Clearly, Earl didn't like that at all.

  With a face furrowed in concentration, he pulled the book out from under his arm again. He fed the cover some blood to open it once more, the horrifying volume flexing open like some inked flytrap of paper and paste. It floated before Earl, green sparks popping and cracking off of it like it was a live wire and not leatherbound, pages softly rippling in sheer malice. The ground underfoot trembled a bit, worms of green energy pulling themselves from below and blending into the fog, all of which began to swirl around Earl's legs.

  Brom was pretty sure he'd seen this movie before, and it had involved the most mystical man in all Russia. That made him think of going to the movies, and suddenly he wanted some popcorn with a little bit of powdered parmesan sprinkled on it. Truthfully, that would have made this whole moment better for him, considering all he was doing was watching the silent antagonist version of a monologue. The mental exhaustion of everything he'd been through was really kicking in, and he'd gotten to the point where he just didn't care, watching the energy build with a bored curiosity.

  Earl's emerald energy seemed to reached its peak. The man himself was sweating, face twisted against the malignant forces he was attempting to command. With a final, flourishing heave of his arms, he hurled all of that power upward into a neon beam to the sky. The fog rotated upward around it, meeting the clouds that had begun to swirl downward to meet it. Green lightning fractured through the roiling heavens.

  Brom felt his hair starting to rise. Little arcs of energy began to bubble and flicker around his feet, his battered hoodie bag ruffling in the sudden spiral of wind. Then that green beam lanced downward like a precision-guided airstrike. He had just enough time to see Earl on his knees, as if in supplication, book limp in front of him and a rapturous grin on his face before the flash went off and... nothing. A click like someone had flicked a light switch. The grass at his feet rippled with the cancelled pressure, and everything smelled like it had been hit by lightning.

  Hostile Magic Negated.

  Earl's grinning face twisted into a mask of disbelief, and then he went grey with horror. Watching helplessly as Brom walked toward him, he raised his finger, a few green sparks popping uselessly off the end of it.

  Tiredly, Brom took a knee in front of the ruined man and used the rebar to nudge his book toward him. Then, with a gentle casualness that was comical in the face of the upcoming violence, he twisted his fingers in Earl's shirt collar. "This is nothing personal, my guy, but I'm fucking tired, and I want to go home." His other fist raised high and came down.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Thrice.

  Heavy Attack is activated!

  Brom closed his eyes as Earl's HP hit zero, protecting them from the hot blood splattering everywhere. Including across the book lying on the ground. Just like all his spells before him, Earl's body suddenly vanished in a pop of green fire, the book taking its due for the power it had been loaning him. With a deft flitter of its pages, it hopped up on two corners and offered Brom a salute with its bookmark. Then it spun slowly and vanished with a few lime sparkles.

  Congratulations, Player Brom Jones! You have completed the Tutorial. You've completed the Advanced Tutorial. You've reached level 6! You are the first player to reach the level 5 milestone! Rewards are being tabulated. Remember to check your notifications!

  Light, soft and grey, shimmered off to his right. A clean breeze, smelling of storm and pine, reached through the opening portal and beckoning him like a sailor's wife greeting her long-awaited husband. He got to his feet, feeling an exhaustion that was everything but physical. Stooping down, he picked up his battered hoodie and then raised one middle finger toward the sky. "I'm out."

  Till next time, Player Brom Jones!

  "I would rather wear shoes made of Lego than ever speak to you again."

  I can assure you, the feeling is mutual. But the Viewers love you.

  He paused at the mouth of the portal, glancing back over his shoulder at the world of the tutorial. A curtain of blackness was beginning to sweep across it, the same darkness he'd first found himself talking to the System in. The set was no longer needed, the actors were gone, and it was being discarded. "Fuck your viewers, leave me and mine alone. Otherwise, I might make good on that promise to come and find you." They were tough words from a tired man, but damn did they sound cool.

  He took his win where he could get it, toppling through the portal to home.