Tutorial (3): I Caught It

The gallery post I made after successfully subjugating the anomaly went up right away.

The reactions were completely different from what I’d expected. I thought people would say stuff like “All that noise just to catch one of these?” or “This is only the beginning, you poor bastard~” but instead…

“What the hell are they talking about?” At first I thought it was nonsense, but after reading the replies that followed, it seemed the anomalies the gallery users knew looked completely different from the one I’d caught.

Now that they mentioned it, I remembered seeing a difficulty listed in the detailed stats window. Let me check… ah, here it is.

After that, about half the comment section kept teasing me, calling my difficulty a “delusion.” Of course, not everyone was against me.

I figured that since I’d cleared the first stage of the tutorial, I was now allowed to post my detailed stats. So I uploaded it immediately.

…What?

I got the hardest difficulty? It was already unfair enough getting dropped into some game I knew nothing about, but why did the difficulty have to be the absolute worst? They even said one wrong move and I’d die!

“Holy shit.”

I’d thought it was no big deal, but hearing it explained like this sent a chill down my spine.

Yeah, at this point I’d basically already cleared the tutorial. A veteran advisor from the gallery had just volunteered to help me. My heart felt a lot steadier.

After my difficulty was revealed, the entire gallery’s atmosphere grew heavy. At first I was “the lucky bastard who found the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠gallery right at the start,” but after they saw the photo of the anomaly I’d taken down and my difficulty, the consensus became “poor guy.”

Maybe that was why. One by one, the gallery users started encouraging me and putting their heads together to help.

These useless pieces of advice and encouragement weren’t all that helpful, but—

The high-ranking user RuleFollower who’d offered to help me seemed reliable. After analyzing my stats, he told me I didn’t have an awakening ability yet and that I needed to get an Awakening Capsule from my senior.

Awakening Capsule. “Yeah, let’s start by eating that.”

They said one wrong move could kill me, so having any ability was better than having none. I turned my head, looking for my senior.

Inside the now-empty room where the bathroom mimic had been, my senior was wearing a gas mask and carefully examining a toy with gloved hands. Soon they opened the door of a cage, gently placed it inside, and closed it.

I was blankly watching the whole process when my senior, having finished the task and stood up, met my eyes. They smiled brightly and walked over to me carrying the cage.

My senior smiled sweetly and patted my head. Even though they were shorter than me, the way they stretched their arm up to reach my head was so cute that I unconsciously bent down a little to let them pat me. It had been a long time since I’d been praised, so it felt nice.

It seemed the previous owner of this body had refused for some reason. ‘Should I consider that lucky?’ Either way, refusing the capsule had left me with a well-trained body. Regardless, I had no intention of refusing it now.

My senior took out a medicine bottle and a small water bottle from their inner pocket and handed them to me. Inside the medicine bottle was a single yellow capsule. It was bigger than a normal cold pill and gave off a somehow ominous vibe, but there was no option to refuse. If I wanted to survive, I had to eat it.

I squeezed my eyes shut and swallowed the pill in time with my senior’s count. And then, a moment later—

An unbelievable wave of agony surged up from my stomach.