Chapter 6: Tutorials are always about combat, right?
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Tutorial Dungeon, Dungeon Space
2021-10-18 06:45 am Eastern Standard
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James wondered what he had gotten himself into. Actual death from a video game. What was he in, Sword Art Online?
Nebula noticed his distress. 'Death is currently not enabled in the system. The World Rebuild Initiative is currently paying the costs of resurrecting low level players, so it won't be an immediate death, but you can get killed in the game, and it is possible it may kill you in normal space.
James, who was rather pale from the revelation, closed the ARUI and looked for a place to sit. There were not immediately obvious chairs. He found himself in rectangular room, roughly nine feet long, nine feet wide and nine feet high. There were doors on either end of the room, and James somehow recognized it as an airlock. The floor was canted, and covered with enough dirt and debris so that you could barely see the floor. The floor, walls, and ceiling were all made of metal, and there were lights and what looked to have been, at one point, a camera or some thing like that, on the ceiling. As he looked around, there was signage in multiple character sets that James had never seen before, yet after seeing them he recognized the languages and what the signs meant.
"I can read these!" he exclaimed.
'Yes, according to your character sheet, you can understand both Common and Draconic, the two languages that are used here.'
"Right, I forgot that. Well, This door says it leads into the ship, so... we should go that way. James read the instructions, then followed the procedures to open the airlock. The door screeched as it opened. Through the door was James' first view of the interior of the ship , which mostly consisted of jumbled shipping containers, strewn about as if someone was playing a game of pick up sticks. One of them had smashed through the ships hull to his left, blocking a passage of some kind. On the remains of the wall in front of him, he saw a sign hanging askew.
<-- Bridge
<-- Forward cargo hold
--> Aft cargo hold
The way to the bridge was blocked. To James' right, in the direction that the sign said the aft cargo hold would be, there was another door. He proceeded to open that door cautiously, but all of what greeted him was another jumbled mess of cargo containers and sand. He looked over to his right and saw a ladder that went down. That appeared to be the most viable way to continue, so he climbed carefully down the stairs. He turned on the lights integrated into his helmet, as the room at the bottom of the ladder was dark. His armor lights barely provided him any illumination, but he was able to identify a wide door in front of him, which seemed like the best place to go next. To his right, jumbled stacks of crates both metal and wood blocked his path.
As he was looking around, he noticed some sort of trip rope in between him and the exit if this room. He tried to avoid the trip rope, but accidentally hit the rope with his foot. Crude devices made sounds, alerting the ship of his approach, but nothing bad happened. He decided to take a look in some of the crates blocking his passage way to his left. James looked in one of the crates, and it was empty. The next one was full of what looked like trash, so James gave up on searching them all. As he proceeded towards the door that he had identified, he noticed another trip rope. He attempted to disarm this new trap, and he reached into the backpack, hoping that he had a knife.
'What are you looking for?' Nebula asked James.
"Do I have any tools in here, like a knife or bolt cutters or something?"
'Your custom rig does come with a holographic tool generator, and it is able to generate a copy of any toolkit that you obtain. As part of the standard custom rig, you get packages containing the most common toolkits across the Galactic Mutuality. You do have a knife available for use as a tool. Please note that these tools cannot be used to harm other beings, only used to perform Engineering or Computer tasks.'
"Ok, well, gimme them tools." he said. His Custom Rig generated a holographic set of bolt cutters, which he used to try and disarm the trap. *Snip* went the rope, but James accidentally set off the trap. A very heavy rope net fell from the ceiling, and James attempted to dodge, but failed. He ended up caught in the net, As James attempted to escape the heavily weighted rope net, the door opened, and a pair of small, bipedal reptilian humanoids emerged. They had large heads and jaws, and noticeable claws on their hands. Their tails were swishing back and forth, and they both wore leather armor and were armed with crude spears shaped from wood. Due to the poor lighting, James could not tell what color they were, but he did recognize them. "Kobolds" he said to himself. "primitive ones."
The pair moved menacingly towards him, brandishing their spears. They spoke in hushed tones as they approached, and he understood their words without having heard the language before.
The one on the left spoke first, in a tongue he recognized as draconic. "Lihra, we must make the elders proud by by slaying this intruder. Our honor demands it."
Lihra, the kobold on the right, replied "It is not that our honor demands it, really, it is that these monsters attack us for no reason, Brink. They refuse to talk, and we cannot risk the tribe over their selfish behavior."
Brink replied. "This one is covered in a net, and should be easy pray. I will stab him first."
The kobolds approached melee range, spears ready to stab James, who was still tangled in the heavy net.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone