Tutorial: Floor 3

"Damn it, why are there so many of them?!"

"Reinforcements! Request support from the other gates! We can't hold this on our own!"

The goblin assault was far more massive than anyone had expected. Nearly a thousand of them had come crashing against the north gate. Given that Mellid Castle's entire garrison numbered only around three hundred, the northern gate was in genuine peril.

The north had been assigned the largest share of the defenders, but even so, that amounted to a mere hundred soldiers.

Having lived through the first cycle, I already knew all of this.

If we held, reinforcements would come. The assault was concentrated almost entirely on the north gate, which meant the other walls would clear their own fighting quickly and send support our way. If we could just endure until the knights arrived, we would make it somehow. Mellid Castle, for a frontier fortress of its modest size, had an unusually large complement of ten knights.

I stood atop the section of wall assigned to our party and looked over my companions.

"We hold this position, no matter what. We endure as long as we can, just as we planned. Seo-yoon, keep a close watch and make sure no goblins slip past us. Everyone except myself and Mr. Kim Insil, take turns bringing up stones, oil, boiling water — as much as you can carry. Join the fighting as the situation demands, and while you're on the wall, prioritize the siege supplies."

Having assigned our basic roles, and following the soldiers' advice, those of us lacking in combat power would focus on keeping the wall stocked with defensive materials. The party nodded, their faces drawn tight with tension. They looked frightened — but even trembling with fear, they understood that survival meant they had to fight.

It was a shame we had no one in the party suited for ranged attacks, but there was nothing to be done about it. Ranged combat lived and died by proficiency.

A piercing, guttural shriek split the air.

At the cry of a particularly large goblin, the armed ranks began to advance. Some came with ladders. Others used tools to hook ropes over the battlements and started climbing hand over hand. The main assault was still concentrated on the gate, but those who looked like archers and shamans were already loosing attacks directly at the top of the wall.

Before long, goblins were hauling themselves up into our assigned section. My companions' faces went taut.

I had no intention of burning through oil and stones this early.

The instant a climbing goblin hooked its hands over the parapet, I brought my mace down on the back of its knuckles.

A scream of pure agony. The goblin couldn't bear it — it shrieked and vanished over the edge.

A wet crunch. A heavy thud. Another choked wail from below.

It wasn't a particularly high wall, but a fortress was still a fortress. The falling goblin smashed into another climbing up beneath it, and both of them plunged to the foot of the rampart. Perhaps because they were warriors in full armor, the ones who took the worst of the impact only twitched on the ground and did not get up again.

"Aim for the hands, like I taught you. Once a ladder is hooked on, it's hard to break, so pour oil and set it alight whenever you can. Their numbers are huge, so reinforcements should be coming. Just as I said at the start — we hold as long as we can. We only have to endure this once."

Once we reached Floor 4, we would be given a different mission. The difficulty would actually go up — but compared to this, it would be easier. By then the status window would be open, and with the stat corrections in place, we would be in far better shape than we were now.

This was the real bottleneck.

I kept my eyes on the left and dropped goblins like I was playing whack-a-mole, one after another. Matching my rhythm, Kim Insil hammered at their knuckles with his newly acquired blunt weapon. Some of them were wearing gauntlets, so it wasn't quite that easy.

Drive back the ones clawing their way up. Hold the position. Even so, my performance was bound to stand out compared to Kim Insil and the rest of the team. Our defenses simply weren't in the same league.

My allies had to dodge every incoming arrow they could. Arrows of that caliber couldn't pierce my armor, which meant I could ignore them and focus entirely on knocking the climbers back down. The goblin shamans, however, were another matter. This armor had no magical resistance to speak of, and with my status window still locked, my magic defense was effectively nonexistent. One of those flying fireballs would kill me on the spot.

As I kept performing with arrows bouncing off me, some of the archers began concentrating their fire in my direction. If I kept this up I would pull the shamans' aggro, so I started being more careful — without ever taking my eyes off the left.

The defense was going more smoothly than expected. The gate was holding firm, and the goblins' numbers were slowly thinning.

A pair of sharp, commanding shrieks cut across the field. The response was immediate. The shamans' attacks swung as one toward the gate.

Fire-spells slammed into the gate in a rolling series of detonations. One of the soldiers swallowed hard, his eyes locked on the entrance, his whole face drawn with tension. The gate did not break.

A faint blue light was wrapped around it.

"Hahaha! You stupid goblins! Did you really think we wouldn't be prepared? This is the Grand Magic Barrier!"

Someone bellowed with laughter, mocking them openly. The goblin who looked like their commander raged at the untouched gate, but the gate remained standing.

Even so, they did not abandon the assault. Goblins kept climbing the walls. Arrows kept hissing across the battlefield.

I could feel my body wearing down.

Soon. It's almost time…!

Reinforcements were nearly here. But one crisis still remained for us.

The left I had been watching. The exact same scene as the first cycle unfolded before my eyes.

A thunderous blast. A raw, tearing scream.

A goblin shaman's flame-spell struck the soldiers holding the section immediately to our left, dead on. The men along that stretch were slaughtered, or left with terrible wounds.

"Nooooo!"

A soldier's scream announced that the crisis had arrived.

The left flank had been breached.

In the first cycle, I hadn't seen it coming.

Caught off guard by the collapse on the left, and too scattered to regroup, none of us had been able to deal properly with the goblins that slipped up through the gap. Once a single point was breached, they poured through and seized the wall. Ladders went up immediately after, and the damage gutted not only our section but the entire left. More than thirty dead. Fully ten percent of the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠castle's garrison, gone in a stroke, and the fortress's defensive strength dropped off a cliff. That damage reached our party as well. In the end, one of our members had died.

The defending knights arrived late and the wall was held — but the incident left cracks in our group that only widened ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠from there.

This time was different.

I already knew this was coming, and I could give orders at once.

"Joo Ha-yeon! Take my section! Don't spare the siege supplies — dump everything you've got!"

There was no time for courtesy.

"Yes!"

Fortunately, Joo Ha-yeon reacted instantly, and I was able to cut toward the left section at a run.

Fire was spreading all around. The nearby oil had caught, leaving almost no room to fall back. The goblins were climbing up from the front — we were boxed in. At this rate, we were in serious danger.

I kicked the nearest goblin off the wall, smashed the mace down on a pair of hands that had just hooked the parapet, then set the remaining oil alight and dumped it over the edge.

A mad chorus of shrieks rose against that searing agony. I grabbed whatever defensive equipment was still left in the section and hurled it down indiscriminately.

Just a little longer. Just a little longer. Hold on—!

I wrung out what little stamina I had left and kept defending in a trance.

I had no idea how much time had passed.

"Well done."

Someone spoke behind me. I spun around to find a fully armored knight resting a hand on my shoulder.

"You have my thanks. Because of you, the casualties were fewer. I offer you my gratitude."

Before I knew it, the reinforcing knights and soldiers had sealed the wall in my place. The goblins, having failed to take the ramparts, began a slow retreat.

As the messages announcing the mission's completion appeared, white light enveloped me.

When I opened my eyes, I was not on a battlefield. I was in the room that had been assigned to me among the soldiers.

I glanced over the message windows and dismissed them at once. It said "the lord's request," but I already knew what that meant, and something far more important was waiting.

I opened my status window.

The status window had finally opened. The tutorial was still in its early stages, so the skill slots remained locked — but with physical stats unlocked, I could now receive the Tower's assistance. Those stats would climb quickly for a while, too. None of that, however, was what mattered.

Records of a previous life exist…?

What was this supposed to mean? Gaia had never said a word about it. All she had told me was that I would have the Administrator's Eye, and that she had prepared a privilege for me when I finished the tutorial and changed class. The rest, she had said, I would have to do myself.

Did that mean the Tower still had the records of my first cycle?

It was absurd. But this couldn't be a bad situation. If I could restore my body from the previous life… that would be a very welcome miscalculation.

I hit Y without hesitation.

Sudden pain.

It said it couldn't restore the complete record — only a portion. Even that was more than I had any right to ask for. I hadn't been expecting this in the first place. But the pain I hadn't seen coming dragged a thin sound out of my throat. It felt as if my whole body were being wrung out, as if ants were crawling through my veins.

I clenched my teeth and forced the sound back down. After what felt like a long time, the agony slowly receded.

I stared at the messages with unfocused eyes.

Information Level.

I snapped back to myself.

Information Level?!

I opened the status window again. The contents had changed a great deal.

This was insane. This was completely, utterly insane.

When I had entered Floor 60 in my previous life, my average stats had been in the mid-sixties. Even this much put my physical ability in the upper-mid range, more or less. In my first life I had started with a generous number of skill slots, and luck had been on my side with the combinations I rolled, so even with stats in that range I had still managed to rank among the upper tier.

Most of the other upper-tier trainees averaged in the seventies to low eighties. The genuine elite parties — the first-string ones — had stats in the high ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠eighties to low nineties. The monsters they called Rankers were said to have stats that reached 100. I'd heard that once a stat exceeded 100, it simply stopped displaying. The closer you got to 100, the more each individual point mattered — which meant Rankers whose physical stats had hit that ceiling were monsters who could wipe out a typical first-string party all by themselves, on physical ability alone.

Of course, raw physical stats weren't the whole of a person's strength. Skills, items, one's class and how well one understood it, combat sense — a trainee's true power was the sum of all these things.

But I had to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠remember that this was Floor 4 of the tutorial. At this point, skills and the rest of it didn't matter in the slightest. Stats like these meant I could take on dozens of goblin warriors by myself, and with my current gear I could probably handle them by the hundred. The lack of mana was the real shame — that was the one that mattered most — but it wasn't as if I had no way to deal with it. And then there were the training floors waiting after Floor 10…

The future stretching out ahead of me looked like a wide-open road. The thought crossed my mind that I might actually be able to drive the Giants from Earth.

I was still staring at the status window, drunk on that dizzying possibility, when a rough knocking yanked me back to my senses.

And before I could even answer, the door slammed open.