Insomniac Player

The battlefield gradually settled into an uneasy rhythm.

At first, it was complete chaos. Almost all the players screamed, and the goblins responded by screaming louder.

Wolves howled, and John laughed. Everything else was a blur.

Now, nearly an hour into the tutorial, everyone had begun adapting.

Fear was yet still there; it simply had less time to speak.

Damien ducked beneath a goblin’s clumsy swing.

The creature stumbled. Damien reflexively stepped backwards.

The goblin missed its footing, tumbled over a tree root, and accidentally impaled itself on the First Blood Dagger.

"..."

The goblin gasped.

Damien blinked as he watched the goblin collapse.

Damien sighed. "I’m beginning to think they have something against living."

Beep.

➤[Goblin Eliminated.]

➤[Experience Gained.]

The notification appeared so casually that Damien almost felt insulted. "I didn’t eliminate him."

He pointed at the corpse. "He eliminated himself."

The System offered no room for legal arguments.

Nearby, John’s mace came crashing down.

*BOOM*

Three goblins disappeared beneath one swing.

A Night Blood Wolf attempted to pounce.

John reacted by introducing its skull to the ground at an alarming speed.

CRACK!

"...That sounded horrific," Damien muttered.

Another alert sounded beside John.

Beep.

The giant man paused mid-swing. "Mhm!"

His eyes brightened. "I think I levelled again!"

"What do you mean you think?" Damien retorted

"I was busy," John answered, honestly and mentally opened his profile.

Damien glanced over. The giant’s level had become three.

"Haha!" John laughed proudly. "I finally caught up to my shoe size."

Damien looked down. "You wear size three?"

John looked down, too. "...Never mind."

Another wolf charged; it thought it could kill John.

John solved the misunderstanding with his mace.

Damien, meanwhile, had become strangely familiar with running in circles.

Whenever a goblin approached, he’d panic.

Whenever he panicked, something ridiculous happened.

One goblin slipped on another goblin; another got tackled by a wolf.

One somehow ran straight into a tree. Maybe the forest itself appeared to help Damien survive. Perhaps it pitied him.

Hours went by.

The twenty Players slowly formed an implicit formation.

Those with strength fought at the front, those with agility flanked and those with ranged weapons supported from behind.

Meanwhile, Damien merely existed. It wasn’t glamorous, yet it was honest work.

Eventually, the last wolf of the wave fell beneath John’s mace.

Silence returned, and heavy breathing resounded through the clearing.

Everyone looked exhausted.

Several participants had collapsed onto the ground.

One man lay flat on his back. "I miss taxes."

Nobody disagreed.

A notification appeared before every player.

➤[Wave One Cleared.]

The message remained for several seconds before fading.

Damien finally had enough time to inspect his own progress.

He focused on his level, and a small line appeared beneath it.

Level 1

Experience: 14 / 100

Damien frowned. "...Fourteen?"

That couldn’t be right; he counted backwards.

One goblin, two, three, seven.

His eyes widened. "So that’s how it works."

John looked over. "What?"

Damien licked his dried lips and continued. "I think experience is point-based."

John raised an eyebrow. "Explain."

Damien assessed the battlefield: seven goblin corpses lay nearby, indicating the number he had personally encountered, along with four slain wolves. Altogether, fifty-two goblins had been defeated across the entire group.

This calculation formed the basis for estimating each creature’s contribution to the overall experience point distribution within the game system.

His brain immediately arranged everything. "Goblins are worth two experience points."

John blinked in confusion.

Damien didn’t stop. "Wolves are worth... twenty-two."

"Huh?" John has yet to understand

Damien clicked his tongue. "You killed fifty-two goblins."

John nodded.

"And four wolves."

John nodded again.

"So..." Damien began speaking almost absentmindedly. "Fifty-two goblins equals one hundred and four experience points.

Four wolves equal eighty-eight. Total..."

He paused for less than a second. "One hundred ninety-two."

John scratched his head."...Okay?"

"Level One requires one hundred experience." Damien continued. "You reached Level Two."

John nodded.

"The remaining ninety-two carried over."

John nodded again.

"Then the requirement increased."

A new smile appeared on Damien’s face. "It makes sense."

John looked completely lost. "It does?"

Damien pointed toward the profile. "Look."

John reopened it as if he didn’t have any other choice.

Level 3

Experience: 92 / 200

John’s eyes widened. "Oh...Ohh...OHHHH!."

The giant man looked at Damien as though seeing him for the first time. "You figured that out from a glance?"

Damien shrugged. "I told you I count things."

John sighed. "I keep forgetting that’s your superpower."

"It isn’t."

"It should be."

The nearby Players overheard the conversation.

One woman walked over. "Excuse me."

Damien looked up.

"Can you tell me my experience too?"

He glanced toward the battlefield.

She had used a spear, killing mostly goblins and one wolf.

"You should have sixty-four," Damien said.

She opened her profile, and her mouth slowly fell open. "...Exactly sixty-four."

Word spread frighteningly fast.

Within minutes, half the tutorial group surrounded Damien.

"How much do I have?"

"What about me?"

"I killed five wolves!"

"I think I stole one kill!"

Damien spent several minutes doing mental arithmetic while monsters continued lying politely on the ground.

John folded his arms. "You know..."

"What?"

"If the apocalypse thing doesn’t work out, you could become an accountant."

Damien looked horrified. "I’d rather fight wolves."

The surrounding Players laughed.

Even Damien smiled; it was the first genuine laugh he’d had since the world fell apart.

Then curiosity struck him; he looked back at his own experience.

Fourteen. No... That wasn’t right anymore.

He recalled everything and all the goblins that threatened him.

There were seven goblins, two points each, fourteen in total.

He stared blankly. Seven goblins, entirely by accident.

One had tripped.

One had run into his dagger.

Another had been kicked by a wolf.

One had bled out after John launched it into a tree.

Damien rubbed his forehead. "I don’t think I’m actually good at this."

John slapped him on the shoulder. "You’ll learn."

"I haven’t intentionally killed a single monster." Said Damien as he shook his head.

"You still killed seven." John winked.

"They mostly committed suicide."

"They committed suicide with your weapon."

"That’s not encouraging."

John burst into laughter again, and his enormous ginger moustache danced happily.

The older man wasn’t wrong. Whether by luck or accident, Damien had survived.

That alone placed him ahead of billions of people back on Earth who had never entered the tutorial.

He opened his status profile once more.

Player: Damien

Alias: N/A

Level: 1

Experience: 14 / 100

Class: N/A

Titles: N/A

Strength: 10

Endurance: 10

Intelligence: 20

Stamina: 8

Agility: 10

Speed: 10

Dexterity: 10

Mana: 10

No available stat points, no level-up and no flashy rewards.

Out of the twenty Players in the group, nearly everyone had reached Level Two.

John alone had climbed to Level Three.

And Damien... Damien remained the only Level One.

He fixed his eyes on the screen for several long seconds.

Then nodded to himself. "Well..."

John looked over. "What?"

"I finally found something I’m worse at than sleeping."

The System remained silent.

Perhaps, for once... Even the system felt a little bad for him.