The Reincarnator's Tavern

Chapter 8 The Tutorial's Trap

Although Rayleigh had been unceremoniously kicked out of the stone house, he had more than enough time to memorize the map and the hole in the middle he was supposed to be scouting. The path in front of the house would lead directly there if he walked at a normal pace for a few hours. This pocket dimension was massive, and the map in the house didn't seem to show everything, just what was close by.

Except for the sky, the area looked like a standard forest one would find in the Northern Hemisphere, with a single well-trodden path leading through a gap between the trees.

Before moving forward, Rayleigh got his Mandalorian Melee Shield out of his inventory and equipped it on his wrist. It required a button to be pressed, and it would activate for 200 seconds. Rayleigh then got out his lightsaber.

At the moment, Rayleigh's lightsaber did not look like it originally did when he first obtained it from his inventory. This was due to the Lightsaber Customization Kit and HK-47's help. HK-47 had watched numerous Jedi and Sith assemble, disassemble, repair, modify, customize, and optimize their lightsabers into almost every conceivable configuration. When Rayleigh asked how to make a Lightsaber pistol, HK-47 easily walked him through the steps to complete the modification.

Although a Lightsaber Pistol had a much shorter range than a standard Blaster, it was still a ranged weapon. For Rayleigh, who had not learned Telekinesis in his first two years of training, this was a great advantage.

Of course, a Lightsaber Pistol was not a Blaster Pistol. The energy was basically converted into an electrical bolt which dispersed into the air after a few meters, and even if it struck something, it would only stun them with its current, not kill or greatly harm them. Against strong or well-armored combatants, this was useless, but Rayleigh doubted the Goblins would be heavily armored or immune to being stunned.

He reached the halfway point a little over an hour after starting, but not long after he began to feel uncomfortable. A stifling pressure could be felt as if the air had an irritating scent to it. His right hand stayed over the activation button on his left arm's wrist-mounted Melee Shield in case of anything unexpected, but the quiet atmosphere was getting to him.

The Forest was empty. No birds, small animals, or insects. There was wind for some reason, so the only sound other than his footsteps was the rustling of the leaves that surrounded him in all directions.

On instinct, Rayleigh hit the button on his Melee Shield, and an instant later, he was covered in a humming field of energy.

A strong force struck the back of his shoulder, throwing him off balance as a high-pitched shriek sounded around him.

Rayleigh turned quickly to find the source of the sound but noticed too late that it was from directly above him as a midnight-black creature fell from the tree while holding a spear pointed at his chest.

Rayleigh froze. Though the inky black-skinned needle-toothed figure would not be considered large to an adult, Rayleigh was here as a child. Even if he had the mind of an adult, in the eyes of a child, everything is larger and scarier than it would be to an adult. A child's brain chemistry allowed their imagination to expand, and though Rayleigh thought he had been mentally prepared, he underestimated the influence being a child would have on him.

Even back in Tython, he had never been attacked by any creatures. He had not been allowed to go near anything that could endanger his life, and though the sparring sessions with Master Dyanameez taught him how to react when he was injured, he never experienced fear during those sessions.

It was something the Jedi Master had never counted on. All children fear pain. If something inflicts pain on them, they will instinctively fear it. She intended to use those sessions to get Rayleigh to experience fear and overcome it. But Rayleigh never feared her. She assumed it was because he had a good mindset, but it was simply because most adults are somewhat used to pain. In his past life, due to some medical issues, Rayleigh and pain were well acquainted, and since he was cheap, he had endured rather than pay for painkillers. So Rayleigh never feared pain, it was just another facet of life.

What Rayleigh faced now, though, wasn't pain, it was the promise of death. This was not something he had truly experienced in this life, and through the mind of a child, this experience was magnified manifold compared to anything he expected it to be. The hideous creature swelled in size to gargantuan proportions in his mind, though it was just getting closer as it fell.

Unsurprisingly, the black Goblin landed on Rayleigh, forcing all its weight into the sharpened wooden spear it held. Rayleigh was harshly slammed to the ground, but the wooden stick slid off the humming Mandalorian Melee Shield just as the arrow that struck his shoulder had done before. Neither was close enough to deplete the Melee Shield that could hold against three or four blows from the sharpest Echani Blade.

Though he froze up, the impact from being smacked to the ground and his rapidly beating heart woke him up, and he instinctively ignited his Lightsaber and swiped it past the creature, easily bisecting it.

Rayleigh then rolled to get out from under the dismembered body parts and five more Goblins ambushed him. Two jumped down from the trees while two more that had hidden behind other trees ran at him from ground level. The last was still up in the trees as Rayleigh spotted it readying an arrow on a makeshift bow.

Going from a roll into an upright stance was something he'd practiced more than once from all the times Dyanameez had knocked him down in their daily sparring sessions, and the moment two of the ugly buggers that came from behind the trees were close, a sweeping of his blade had dispatched them, leaving only the pair that had just landed from their tree jumps at his level.

Rayleigh was moving on instinct and muscle memory at this point, not allowing himself to process exactly what was happening.

The pair of Goblins jumped at Rayleigh as if completely unaware of the fates of their fallen comrades, and another sweep of his sword felled them as well.

Rayleigh felt something in the Force and was met by a strong blow to the head. The bow-using Goblin timed Rayleigh's slaughter of the remaining Goblins to align a perfect headshot at where he knew Rayleigh would be. Or it would have been had Rayleigh's Melee Shield not still been active. Once again, the sharpened wooden arrow only imparted its force through the shield without penetration before glancing off to the side as if it had struck a solid steel helmet.

Rayleigh regained his stance after the blow and pointed the pistol opening of his lightsaber's handle at the elevated Goblin before pulling the secondary trigger that fired a stun bolt. The Goblin's position in the tree was high, but not that high, so it wasn't difficult to shoot when it wasn't expecting to be hit.

The blue bolt struck the Goblin, causing it to yelp a bit before freezing up and falling out of the tree. It landed with a thud but was still alive. A swing of his ignited blade quickly changed that.

Rayleigh looked around several times, up and down, to confirm there was nothing left. That pressure he'd been feeling from the Force was also gone, giving him a sign that the danger had passed.

It was only at this moment that Rayleigh realized something was odd. He was smiling. He had been grinning from the moment he got up after freezing until now. Once he realized this, he could only remark, "Fuck."

It's easy to look down on certain stereotypes when reading. One type that was usually looked down on was the battle junkie. The character who went out of his way to fight people strong enough to kill him. Why did those idiots do so? Because they were the types who got stronger through battle.

Rayleigh easily understood that no amount of practice was the same as the real thing, but greatly underestimated how much improvement he could feel from experiencing a real battle. The rush of adrenaline combined with the feeling of getting stronger? It was addicting.

After thinking about it for a moment, Rayleigh just accepted it. There are some aspects of yourself you can't know without certain experiences. In his previous life, Rayleigh had never been in a fight outside of the martial sparring of some of the martial arts and weapons classes he'd enrolled in every few years to avoid growing into a potato. He had dynamic vision, which helped, but he never experienced a life-and-death fight he couldn't run away from, so the feeling of using his talents, the rush of walking the line between life and death, and the feeling of growing stronger after such a match was completely foreign to him. Until now, that is.

Once his Melee Shield timed out, Rayleigh touched the ground of the path he had been walking along and used Psychometry. He honestly felt like an idiot for not doing this earlier. Psychometry is one of the best skills for tracking.

From the ground, Rayleigh saw the memories of the path. He saw ambush after ambush.

Only now did Rayleigh understand the problem. This was not an Instance Dungeon. This was not a game. This was the same area where all the other Players had their Tutorials and the Goblins were not NPCs.

Every time a Player died or finished the Tutorial Mission, this world froze. That meant, from the perspective of the Goblins, there was a continuous stream of Players who arrived, one after another, on the exact same path. What could be easier to ambush?

The Mission was to map out an area about ten times larger than a football field. A big area, but not that big. The mission was also to collect twenty Star-leaf Herbs in that area and kill five Goblins. The problem was that it was almost implied that the Goblins were only in the area to be mapped as well, which caused Rayleigh and the others to assume there would be no encounters until they arrived. That was obviously not the case.

There were too many presumptions that worked against them. Goblins ambushing from the trees? Goblins using Bows and Arrows? Some lucky or observant Players may have spotted them and attacked correctly, but most would not even think to look up there. In literature, Goblins usually lived in caves, and Rayleigh couldn't think of a single book with Goblins where they jumped down from trees. What was worse was that he should have expected it! If he was a Goblin here, he'd do the exact same thing!

Rayleigh wasn't used to using the Force to feel danger. In Form I, a youngling was introduced to using the Force to feel the flow of combat, when to press and yield to efficiently use your energy when attacking and defending. A Master of Form I could sense danger through the flow of the Force, but he was far from a Master, and younglings were usually directly taught such things in Forms II and III.

At this thought, Rayleigh smiled once more and had an idea. He did not know Forms II and III and was not a Master of Form I. But he did have a copy of Master Dyanameez's Form I. It existed in his head as an image of waves crashing on the beach, but the flow and pattern contained Master Dyanameez's complete understanding of Form I.

Rayleigh was not a droid. Though he had the image in his head, he could not simply apply it to himself through meditation. Installing it required something more. The best way to do so was to practice Form I while holding the image in his head, but now he had a better idea. There was nothing better than live combat for learning, so he would Install it while fighting Goblins. The shock of fear he'd experienced before had already turned into anticipation. It was time to hunt.

As a rule, Jedi do not kill. The Force exists within all living beings and to kill the living is to weaken the Force. The Jedi serve the Force, so killing is avoided if possible. But did these Goblins count?

Rayleigh took a closer look at the deformed creatures that lay dead at his feet. They did not look like any form of Goblin he had seen before and understood why their original name was Ugly Outer Dimensional Horror. Their limbs were thin but had bulbous tumor-like growths. The growths were in different locations for each creature, with some having far more than others.

After a little bit of internal debate, Rayleigh touched one of the corpses and used Psychometry once more.

Though not immune to killing intent and the fear of death, Rayleigh was completely desensitized to violence, so the horrors he saw in the memories of the flesh of the Goblin weren't worse than an episode of Happy Tree Friends or Simpson's Treehouse of Horror.

The scenes and information he gained were highly unpleasant, but they answered his questions. These creatures were living and, for some reason, had enough Midichlorians for him to feel before they died, but he did not consider them alive in the same way most animals were. Not after what he saw.

The Goblins were not born from a momma Goblin. They arose from the ground like plant sprouts and broke through the soil in some areas, fully grown. They did not value life either, neither their own nor each other. That's why they could suicidally attack him when they clearly saw their comrades die.

The Goblin corpses would be absorbed by the ground and directed elsewhere. Sometime later, new Goblins would emerge. They would not inherit memory or anything, but these Goblins were aware of this, so their deaths didn't matter. The number of Goblins wouldn't change over a long period of time without destroying the bodies thoroughly.

Rayleigh easily justified that this was a loophole in the Jedi dogma, meaning he could slaughter to his addiction's content and fully digest Master Dyanamaeez's Form I before he finished the Mission. This was a good opportunity for it since other Missions had a time limit, but it seemed the Tutorial Mission did not.

His Melee Shield still had four more charges and he would have to save one, so that meant he could have three more fights and he needed to make them count. Rayleigh broke off from the only path through the forest and started looking for Goblin paths. He wasn't a tracker, but he could touch the ground every few meters and use Psychometry to check for Goblins. Eventually, he found a path the Goblins themselves seemed to use and traced it back to its source. He wasn't interested in a small group of four or five Goblins. He wanted a bigger prize.

Even without any tracking experience, Rayleigh's abuse of the broken ability that was Psychometry led him to a Goblin camp that had ten Goblins. The camp did not have tents or houses, but piles of coarse stones used to sharpen pieces of wood. Thankfully, they were not the types of rocks that got pointy when you broke them, which explains the lack of stone points on the arrows and spears and the lack of stone knives.

Though he tried to be quiet, the inky-skinned creatures noticed him almost immediately and started screeching, alerting the others. Rayleigh hit the activation button on his Shield and ignited his lightsaber.

Rather than charge the Goblins, he took a step back to hide behind a tree, exiting the line of sight of the remaining Goblins and inviting them to come to him. Form I did not have a lot of footwork, so he needed to set himself up in an advantageous position before the fight began. The tree he was next to was one of the larger, thicker ones and didn't have too many low-hanging branches for the Goblins to quickly climb up to.

Once the first pair of Goblins rounded the tree, sharpened sticks in hand, Rayleigh fully immersed himself into the image of Dyanameez's Form I and began swinging.

Eight of the Goblins had chosen to come around to his side of the tree while the remaining pair ran to his back. None of them thought to climb the tree, and none of them grabbed a bow or arrows.

Form I was not created for one-on-one duels, but for battlefields. Being surrounded by enemies was the exact environment it was designed for.

Without looking, Rayleigh felt the pressure of a nudge in the Force for when to jump forward at the moment the Goblins behind him tried to stab him in the back. He moved forward when he slashed and backward to dodge or vice versa against the attacks coming from behind. Some sharpened spears still managed to strike him, but they glanced off to the side thanks to his Shield.

The Goblins rarely aimed for the head or heart, they just struck whatever was closest and easiest to hit. Repeat strikes or an unlucky blow would disable the victim, leaving them helpless against the group. If you were surrounded and lacked experience, a large group of Goblins could kill an unarmored professional.

Rayleigh found it strange that, although not the brightest fighters, they didn't fight like morons either. They never swung their sharpened sticks, only lunged, stabbed, and jump-stabbed. The sticks weren't freshly broken and flexible either, they were hard and their sharpened tips were more than enough to break the skin and inflict debilitating wounds.

Ironically, these completely straightforward attacks were perfect to 'install' Form I against.

Besides the two behind him, which he would dodge by stepping forward at the right times, the other eight were easily dispatched from the front. The only unexpected thing they'd do on occasion was jump over the corpses of their fallen comrades, but Rayleigh was getting the hang of feeling the tide of the fight enough to position himself advantageously before their jumps and cleave them into pieces before their spears could reach him.

The remaining pair that Rayleigh left for last but did not kill, at least right away. His Shield lasted two hundred seconds, and it had only been about thirty. He wasn't going to waste time by killing his sparring partners when he had a good chance to use them.

Rayleigh kept his back to the tree as the last two lumpy Goblins jumped around and tried over and over to stab him. One stabbed into the tree so hard the stick shattered, but a shattered stick was just as pointed as a sharpened one, so it only reduced the Goblin's range a bit.

After about a minute of playing around, Rayleigh felt he wouldn't be able to make any more progress with just two Goblins, so he took off their heads and checked the area for reinforcements.

One downside of the Shield was that it was not quiet. It hummed louder than an average talking voice and made it difficult to hear anything around him while it was active. It would also prevent him from sneaking while using it, so he had to time its activation wisely.

Once Rayleigh confirmed there were no more Goblins in the area, he moved on. Despite the fact that the location was in the woods, the area he was told to map out was more of a valley based on the topography of the map he saw. As long as he was going downhill, he knew it was in the correct direction.

Rayleigh found another Goblin campsite, this time with eight Goblins. Rather than approach, Rayleigh backed away and looked for a good confrontation area.

He also wanted to try bringing out a distraction from his inventory.

[Query. Have you finally departed from those annoying Jedi?]

"No, I want to see how useful you can be as a head."

[Declaration. I do not believe I am going to like this.]

"Just count to thirty and start yelling really loudly."

[Commentary. I once believed I had reached the lowest point in my existence. I was wrong.]

Rayleigh chuckled and left the droid head at a spot behind a tree from the line of sight of the camp and slowly made his way over to the camp's other side. The plan was to draw them over to HK-47's head, then attack from behind.

A minute later, the forest remained silent.

Rayleigh tried to return back to the location of the head but was noticed by one of the Goblins who again shrieked as loudly as it could, signaling the start of the combat.

The Melee Shield was activated once more, but things became trickier when two of the Goblins picked up a pair of bows. Rayleigh kept both the archer wannabes in sight while the remaining six charged at him together. As long as he didn't dodge or side-step, they would not bother spreading out or trying to surround him. Rayleigh couldn't get them to stab each other, but besides that tiny bit of awareness, each one fought without any sense of tactics or teamwork.

Rayleigh prolonged the fight for two minutes before killing most of them. Before the end, he was finally able to figure out the trick to positioning his lightsaber to block the incoming arrows. He had to be careful though, as arrows bent back and forth repeatedly in flight, so if he aligned the block wrong, the arrow could literally flex past the glowing blade. He learned that lesson the hard way.

Before the Shield's timer ran out, Rayleigh charged the bow using Goblins and finished them off.

With the last of the Goblins slain, Rayleigh confirmed there wasn't any pressure on him, which meant there wasn't any danger close by. He walked back over to HK-47's head, and before reaching it, the head started talking. Loudly.

[Recitation. SURRENDER YOURSELF MEATBAGS! THROW YOURSELVES ON THE MERCY OF MY MASTER AND YOUR DEATHS WILL BE SWIFT AND PAINLESS.]

Rayleigh had approached from behind, so he wasn't seen. "Yeah. That was five minutes ago."

[Clarification. My internal timer shows an elapsed time of thirty seconds since the command was given.]

Rayleigh considered this and ordered, "Count aloud, keep counting until I tell you to stop."

[Statement. Ah, as if demanding an assassin droid to draw attention was not demeaning enough, now I am reduced to a timer. 1. 2. 3. 4...]

Rayleigh started walking away, but after getting a few meters from the droid, the counting stopped. He tested this by walking closer and the counting resumed from where it left off. Rayleigh circled the head and confirmed that the head basically turned off when he was three meters from it. It didn't take long to figure out why. It was a Nerf.

HK-47's head didn't require a power source or recharge, but if it worked at any distance, he could use it for reconnaissance or remote detonation. He could mail it to a target, then turn off the projection, turn it back on, and have it return to him with all the info it learned. He could hide it at a location and have it act as a security camera. This restriction nerfed those, but he felt he might be able to get around them if he gave the murder-happy robot a body and an external power source. Something to consider.

Rayleigh turned on his Lightsaber and set it on the ground to perform the same test. The Lightsaber did not turn off, but in the forest, he could not walk more than twenty meters without losing line of sight from it, so he couldn't guarantee if there was a limit that was further out.

Most of the image of Form I had been digested, and he only needed one more fight to finish. He would not be able to use it perfectly as Master Dyanameez could, at least not right away, but the remainder of the assimilation would just require practice, and that was something he didn't need to kill things to do.

Rayleigh didn't feel like carrying HK's head, so he turned off the projection and continued downhill. Not too far from the campsite was something of a clearing where the trees became more sparse and the ground leveled out, showing it was the valley Rayleigh was tasked with exploring.

There were plenty of those Star-leaf herbs spread throughout the grass, but Rayleigh felt the pressure of danger and kept quiet. He tried just remaining motionless while looking around, but he couldn't tell where the danger was or if it was close by.

Rayleigh decided there was no need to be subtle. He turned on his Lightsaber and stabbed into a tree, slowly burning through it until the whole three started to creak. Rayleigh ran back up the hill, and moments later, the tree crashed into the grassy glade. Several hidden Goblins stood up and ran over to check it out. Once Rayleigh could see them, he shouted, "Hey! Up here!"

Unsurprisingly, the Goblin shrieked and charged. He didn't know where the Goblin Archers were hidden, but he knew there were none behind him, so he'd rather the Goblins come to him than have him walk over to them.

Rayleigh did not turn on the Shield. Only under the threat of death could he force himself to fully immerse himself in that mental image.

Rayleigh had distanced himself a bit from that death trap, but he could already see more than a dozen Goblins running at him from the grass. Were they just lying there? Some of the grass was much thicker than other spots, making it easy for the short Goblins to hide.

A movement in the air caught his eye, and he saw a Goblin with a bow on its back jump from one tree to another. But it wasn't like a monkey; it was sloppy, loud, and almost fell. A moment later, another Goblin did in fact fall while trying to jump from tree to tree and hit the ground with a crunch.

Rayleigh kept the archers in the corner of his eye as the group of Goblins raised their sharpened sticks and besieged him.

This time he wasn't going to draw it out. A step forward to throw off the timing of a Goblin's thrust, a slash, a step back to move out of the way from a Goblin running at him from the side, a step back to dodge the follow-up Goblin with a slash to behead it, causing its body to fall into the spear of another Goblin. Take a step forward, raise the lightsaber to block an incoming arrow, and follow through with a downward slice and back step to kill another Goblin.

Rayleigh tilted his body on instinct and bent to the side as an arrow flew past his shoulder, shot from behind. He hadn't even noticed that Goblin. Three Goblins charged from three different directions. A quick slash destroyed the spear on his side, giving him room to lean in that direction and avoid the spears from the other side, giving him an opening to slash that pair. The Goblin he was about to collide with opened its mouth and lunged for Rayleigh's shoulder with its needle-like teeth, but Rayleigh grabbed its arm with his other hand and threw it overhead into the ground. Training with wrist weights gave him more than a little arm strength.

The key to mastering Form I was to customize it to suit your needs during a fight. It was the oldest Lightsaber Form and had the deepest history, but was often neglected for the later forms specifically created to be used with a lightsaber.

Rayleigh's attacks sped up as the Goblins rushed him, but each was brought down in a single swing. When the final Goblin fell, Rayleigh aimed for the archer in the tree and fired. And missed. And fired again, this time accurately. He knew he'd have to take more time to practice his aim one of these days. The stunned Goblin hit the ground and was finished off before the pressure of danger completely vanished.

Rayleigh used Psychometry on a dozen different areas to basically guess what happened. It was bad luck.

Every time a Player failed the Tutorial, the Goblins who killed him would be on high alert. There had been at least nine or ten failures in a row before he showed up, causing every Goblin in the area to enter this zone. Having killed everything, Rayleigh effectively reset the difficulty, so as long as the next Players didn't screw up, everything would probably be okay for them.

Once he walked the entire field, Rayleigh picked up twenty of the Star-leaf herbs that were scattered everywhere, and a moment later, found himself back in the Tavern with his hand on the Mission Sheet.

[First Mission Completed!

No points awarded.]

Rayleigh was somewhat disappointed that he didn't get any mission points, but he gained plenty from the Tutorial so he wasn't going to complain. Too much.

Without any fanfare, Rayleigh walked back down to the first floor of the Tavern. You could only do a single Mission a week, so Rayleigh would not see any of the available Missions as anything but black pages for the next seven days.

The idea of keeping the information from the Tutorial to himself was considered. It was what everyone else had done. But he had no reason to. He doubted he'd get strong enough for that Final Mission if he didn't have any strong competition.

Rayleigh returned to his seat and stated aloud, "Alright everyone, here's what happened."

A number of Players seated further away got up, and Rayleigh's table was quickly surrounded. Rayleigh then explained the Tutorial. The details such as the Data Mining, the Final Mission, and the fact that this entire thing was basically a scheme to get around afterlife laws were skipped. Rayleigh didn't mind warning others, but the details of the Tavern's setup were far too much of a hassle to explain.

Rayleigh told everyone they did the Mission at their Character's age and explained the dangers of the Goblins, the ambushes, and the fact that multiple consecutive failures caused the Mission to get more difficult, and gave a brief explanation of the types of Missions. He added that the Tutorial Mission did not award Points, so passing or failing didn't mean much as it was just experience.

With that, a number of Players ran to the wall to take the Mission. Since Rayleigh reset the difficulty, it would be easiest for the first person to get it. Some Players got in the way of others on the stairs and claimed they should be first since if someone failed, they would make it harder for others. No one listened, and someone wearing Ninja clothes was able to run past the mob and get the Mission. A moment later, he lifted his hand from the poster and gave the room a very awkward look. The Tavern was then filled with the sound of cursing.

Rayleigh shrugged. If someone without any skill thought they could pass the Mission on easy mode, that was on them if they failed. Rayleigh did his part.

Two more Players that looked reasonably confident tried the Mission. This time they both succeeded. They confirmed what Rayleigh shared was accurate and even gave their advice for avoiding Goblins and killing them one at a time if you didn't have a weapon.

From that point onward, Rayleigh would not be a nameless figure in the Tavern and he'd even earned a bit of goodwill from the other Players. Some glared at him, the ones who had passed the Tutorial and knew the secret but kept it to themselves. Rayleigh didn't consider them his opponents in the future. Only those brave enough to welcome a challenge would be worth fighting. One's mental state had a far greater impact than a lot of the Players acknowledged. This wasn't a game after all.