Chapter 6

Rob rushed towards the shore, clutching his spear.

The slugs looked deeply non-threatening; they probably didn’t give much experience in normal circumstances, but with the Pre-Tutorial Bonus, these slugs might just be a big lucky find.

He approached the first slug and thrust his spear. The metal blade punctured through the slug’s flesh with ease and out the other side. The slug’s body went limp.

Rob rushed the next slug and stabbed it with ease.

He grinned as the same message as before popped in his vision.

He stayed focused with his task, killing the five remaining slugs.

He grinned at all the messages stacked on top of one another in his retina.

Rob continued to slay more and more Drift Slugs—the messages filling up his screen to the point that he lost count.

By the time he was done and there were no more to slay, he saw the messages he was hoping for.

Rob’s heart was racing from the rushed frenzy of trying to slay the slugs before the Pre-Tutorial bonus disappeared.

He looked around the beach for more things to slay, but he couldn’t see anything.

It was just as well, because a new message popped up.

Rob immediately paused what he was doing.

He let out a deep breath.

Here we go.

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Interesting, Rob thought.

The main objective was simpler than he had been expecting: survival.

The other key piece of information was the number of participants. According to the system prompt, eleven people had already died during the pre-Tutorial. Whether or not that was by monsters or other humans was unknown.

Nevertheless, nearly two thousand other people were trapped on this island with him. Rob could only imagine the panic, fear, and chaos unfolding across all the scattered groups. He planned to keep a close eye on the participant tracker. A pressure-cooker environment like this was exactly the kind of situation that dragged out the worst in people.

The fact that there was a participant counter made him really nervous. Humans were gonna human and people were definitely going to die. The only way this could be worse was if the remaining 1989 out of the 2000 participants were Japanese high schoolchildren—then Rob would be truly fucked.

He was feeling grateful for arriving on a desolate beach.

More than that–despite the deaths, the chaos, the sheer otherworldliness of this whole thing–Rob was feeling excited.