Weapons of Mass Destruction

“I want to change handlers,” I tell her and wait for a pop-up message.

“That doesn’t work here,” she sighs and points at the storage cubes I brought with me. “White sand was made by a powerful Absolute long ago. It was his way of dealing with annoying mana users and he modified it to trap Champion Caius and others. You surely must know how dangerous it could be if someone were to release it on the Entrance floor.”

“There are people with damaged arcane weapons and surely there are others with full arcane weapons. Plenty of people would be capable of wiping out the entrance floor on their own without any need for a weapon or item.”

“Even arcane items need to be used with intent, while there is not a single attendee capable of controlling the white sand. Do you think you’re the first one to bring white sand here, to Beyond? What do you think would happen if you were to release it here in the highly mana-saturated entrance floor?”

“What happened last time?”

“Someone brought it here, it got out of the container, became charged by the abundance of ambient mana and the mana radiating from the people here. It wiped out one of the entrance outposts—and any attendees and locals that were there. A single pile that was probably smaller than two of your boxes combined.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, oh. So let’s do it like this: I will take these boxes, I will also take the weapons you made out of it. There are a few handlers with permission to play around with things like white sand, so I will sell it to them and give you a portion of the shards later. And if you try to bring more, I’ll just take it from you.”

“And you’ll take a cut?”

I can’t help but feel disappointed. Part of me expected this, but I was hoping for a different outcome. At least I’ll get some shards out of it. If I don’t get enough to make it worth it, I’ll be angry.

“Can’t these handlers just ask Rulers to get them white sand or find some themselves?” I ask.

“I know what you’re doing you know, but I’ll play along this time and give you this for free. It’s impossible to enter the tutorial twice. No one can enter the tutorial other than the attendees from the First Generation.”

“Not even the Rulers?”

The look she gives me makes it clear that’s all I’m gonna get.

After a while, she smiles from behind her table. “Weren’t you going to change handlers last time?”

“I forgot.”

“Did you?”

“Well, a lot of things happened. I might be thinking about it now though, so you better have some good information for me.”

“Nope.”

“I’m asking for a new handler the second I get out. What with your attitude last time, and now this situation with the white sand—I've put in a lot of effort, you know.”

“Sure, do it.”

Her smile widens even more as she watches me, resting her chin in the palm of her hand, “But I’m in a good mood, so if you ask the right question, I might answer. You only have a few more seconds before you get transported to the entrance floor, so be quick.”

“Who was the ruler on the first floor?” I ask.

She chuckles and leans back in her chair with a relaxed ease. A playful light flickers in her eyes, and she waits a bit, stretching the seconds until I feel myself getting pulled away.

As if that were the signal she’d been waiting for, she asks, “Do you remember that deer you skinned?”

Then I disappear, without even a chance to respond.

And there I stand, shocked to my core, surrounded by the dozens of Beyonders walking all around me, going about their business here on the entrance floor.

There is no fucking way.

An hour later, I’m 99% sure that old hag, asshole of a handler, was just messing with me.

I catch myself wondering why I haven’t already asked for a new handler. It would be so simple—just say the words out loud and go through the options. But to my frustration, I still haven’t done it. All because I believe her when she tells me she’s one of the few handlers who can provide the kind of information she gave me last time.

Damn it.

I still have a few hours until I have to go to the meeting I advertised on the board, so I take a moment to walk around.

This time I have my crown over my head, and after a few weeks on the 6th floor, it’s nicely filled. It seems to be a running trend with me: filling my crown only for things to go to shit. So I’m expecting something to go wrong fairly soon.

And just like that, there goes my act as melee fighter Noname. I’m sure there can’t be many people who could see how much mana I have stored without me noticing. The crown is something I’m deeply connected to. It would also be rude, so it’s pretty rare for anyone to try to scan the people around us, mostly rookies.

As for my crown, I have to wonder just how many people would recognize it as a [Mana Crown] in the first place.

To mess with them a bit, I move a bit of my thermal energy, creating yellow flames that flicker around the crown, trying to disguise it as a [Fire Crown]. And for the most part, I try to make it as close as possible to the one I saw before.

From what I’ve heard so far, the fire-based crown would get less attention. Lastly, I finish off my camouflage with a simple mask made of mana to cover my face and hide my Flamebearer under a wrap made of cloth.

It’s so silly it nearly makes me want to forget the whole thing, but still, I continue.

Duncan told me a lot of things the last time I saw him. Sometimes people disappear, their bodies are never found, likely taken apart for their traits. In other cases, people with rare skills are kept for testing.

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In the near future, I fully intend to reveal some of these skills to purposefully get myself kidnapped. The kidnappers can then serve as a valuable source of information and loot.

Your body changes and adapts to your powerful skills as they level up. Either because it needs to or as a side effect of a skills influence on the body. Even that little is enough for some people to risk it on the small chance it gives them hints to acquire a powerful skill.

Attribute crowns are some of the most sought after, especially [Dexterity Crown]. as are Strength and Constitution while Mana is mostly considered just a variation of a mana battery. An amazing one at that, the skill likely being equal or better than even the greatest mana batteries, but [Dexterity Crown] seems to be on a different level.

I still don’t fully know how one would even go about filling that crown, but I can clearly imagine its strength. Just imagine a person storing Dexterity over months, over years.

It’s so crazy. How do you fight someone who moves so quickly you can’t see them? Someone who moves faster than you can teleport, to the point that even if you do teleport, they’re already there waiting for you?

Give them a powerful weapon, and they’re one of the most terrifying opponents you could ever face. Just the crown, a method of enduring the strain of motion, and a blade sharp enough to pierce through armor and barriers—and that’s it for you.

I stop mid-stride and take a few steps back.

Off to my side, I spot Duncan, hurrying off somewhere with his signature big bag strapped to his back and a smile on his face. He quickly greets a group of feylith and rushes off between the houses.

It almost makes me feel ashamed for slacking around like this, so even though it’s a bit early, I head over to the spot I arranged for my meeting.

The closer I am to it, the more I start focusing again and pushing these constant thoughts away. Now they all get replaced by curiosity.

All 10 rounds of Earth’s tutorial should be synchronized now, meaning I have every chance of meeting Beyonders from any given round of the tutorial. And as I get closer, I find that that’s exactly what’s happened.

A tall, bald man sits there, raking his fingers through his beard. He’s wearing a tank top, and either one of his arms must be thicker than my leg for sure. Hell, his leg alone probably weighs as much as I do.

It’s the winner of the 1st round’s 1st tournament. The one we saw during the Chronicle of the Past.

Next to him sits a boy, no older than 12, with a slim build and wavy brown hair matching the color of his eyes which constantly flick from place to place, full of curiosity.

Opposite of them is a woman with short black hair, kind-looking eyes, and a golden retriever sitting next to her with his head in her lap while she scratches him behind the ears.

Extrovert class, both of them for sure. The woman is smiling and nodding, while the big, tall, muscular man laughs loudly and happily, ignoring the looks he gets because of that. The boy seems to be used to that, and I can see him rolling his eyes. The way he sits close to the bald man tells me they are most likely used to each other, likely from the same round.

As I approach, the boy finally detects me and pokes the bald man. He doesn’t let it show and continues to act normal, yet the feeling of danger increases to an overwhelming degree.

As if I had walked into a den of beasts the sense of hostility continues to ramp up as I continue my approach, and despite the man’s relaxed appearance as he continues laughing in time with the conversation, the current atmosphere just doesn’t fit that picture.

I let my heartbeat, kinetic energy flowing through my body, permeating my muscles, to counter his pressure. I match the tension in the air as I proceed, each of my steps reverberating through the floor around us, my heart beating just outside the range of normal hearing.

My hand closes into a fist and opens.

Winner of the tournament? Let’s see.

“Noname?” Asks a voice, seemingly out of nowhere.

The moment feels frozen in time, and the bald man, in the process of standing up muscles bulging, stops mid-movement. He glances at me, then at the woman with the retriever, the one who interrupted us and sits down.

With that, the feeling of danger is gone.

Disappointingly.

“Hello,” I greet.

“Hello,” the woman smiles, turning to me. “Luna noticed your approach,” she says as she pets her dog, who wags her tail in response. “She said you smell like a human from Earth, so I thought you might be the one who left the post.”

“Luna’s pretty smart.”

“She is, right?” The black-haired woman smiles happily. “My name is Leticia, and this is my Luna as I’ve already said,” she states, introducing the golden retriever as if she were the most important member of their party.

Luna turns to me, the same gentle brown eyes retrievers usually have. But there’s an uncanny intelligence behind those eyes. I don’t feel any indication of a scan, but I’m sure the retriever is checking me out and appraising the danger I present.

“It’s fine, Luna, we’re all from Earth here,” Leticia says, smiling and petting her once again, prompting Luna to quietly turn away from me.

Leticia then gestures at the young boy. “This is Spacewolf. He’s really sweet, so please don’t mind the name! The mountain pretending to be a human next to him is CarrotCake.”

The bald man, who sits almost two heads taller than me and twice as wide, smiles brightly, his teeth gleaming in the light.

“My name in the community is Noname,” I introduce myself.

“Hello, Noname. I hope we’ll learn to drop these nicknames sometime in the near future. My handler told me that you can even change your Community name, but only once, and only to your real name. So please think about it.”

Spacewolf snorts while CarrotCake stands up and stops in front of me. Obscuring most of my view with his beard as I look up at him.

“Round?” he asks.

“Fifth, you?” I return, curious if he will try to lie.

“First round, winner of the 1st tournament. You?”

“I won our first tournament as well.”

The feeling of danger rises again and it’s immediate this time. Even stronger than before and the man’s smile becomes even brighter.

Then the two presences I felt coming closer reach us, Luna the retriever reacting exactly the way she did when I showed up.

“That makes three of us,” says a man a few years older than me, bringing himself to the muscular man’s attention, which he ignores. “I’m Derick, and this is Noelle, 8th round.”

Derick has long red hair tied into a ponytail. He’s slim and dressed in a pair of black pants and a long sleeved shirt. And to top it all off he’s unarmed.

Noelle is shorter, with brown hair, and wears a long bow strapped to her back, seemingly made out of metal with no string.

They, like the others, seem accustomed to each other’s presence.

“Isn’t that great! What a beautiful day this is shaping up to be!” The bald man, who I refuse to call CarrotCake, shouts as he stomps, leaving a crack in the cobblestones lining the street below him. It’s just a simple movement, playful, devoid of mana, yet it perfectly illustrates the power of his body.

I smell another single-attribute enthusiast. It's just a shame he chose Strength.

Leticia rushes to calm the bald man down, and I have a strong suspicion he wouldn’t mind starting a fight right here and now. He certainly seems like the type.

Derick and Noelle stand quietly off to the side, talking to each other. The winner of the 8th round's tournament, it makes me curious about what kind of abilities he could be hiding. Unlike the musclehead over there, it's not quite so obvious.

I check the countdown, the time for the meeting nearly up.

Exactly on the second, the last person enters the area, a young man with green eyes and long black hair tied back in a ponytail. He has a beauty mark under the corner of his left eye. That guy...

So we have three winners from the 1st round of tournaments.

An archer with a weird ass bow.

A woman who snuck her dog into the tutorial.

Spacewolf.

And lastly, the cowardly Savant.