Hell Difficulty Tutorial - When Hell Freezes

We pack some gauze into Daniel's wound, which is the best we can really do at the moment, and we're able to get him onto Mateo's back. I clean the blood off my hands as best I can in the grass and while I do, Landon picks up the two goblin spears on the ground and gives one to Sheila, who can still barely see, but it's better than her blindly firing a gun.

Nobody talks on the way back because of how scared and on edge we are. Oh so scared of the possibility of more goblins or wolves jumping out of every bush we pass. Daniel woke up at one point when the path got rough, letting out weak sobs before passing out again. We have to swap carriers once because Landon couldn't go any further, but we're making pretty good time.

The edge of the clearing is finally visible ahead of us and once we make it to that, I can see that a small crowd has gathered by the cars at the edge, and they're pointing and waving at us. Some of them move forward to meet us halfway, not willing to go any closer to the trees. The bodies of the dead people got dragged further into the clearing, towards us actually, we'll have to pass them to get to the cars.

As we pass I look down at the blue shirt guy, maybe it's better he went out now rather than… the hell? I look forward and keep walking, but I'm deep in thought. Is that a gunshot wound on his shoulder? It's a small bloody hole above his left clavicle that I could have written off as being from the wolf, but it's on his un-mauled shoulder. 

The placement doesn't make sense though, if it was a gunshot he would have had to have been shot from above or… from in front while he was lying on the ground, being attacked by a wolf. Was it an accident? I don't know, I don't know if I'll ever know. I mean, I can't just ask the potential murderer if he murdered someone.

We reach the small group of people waiting for us, and some of them gasp and murmur when they see Daniel, but they help carry him to the bus with the other injured people. Mason is still standing on top of one of the cars by the median, watching our group approach. 

"Did you find water?"

"What happened to…"

"...knew this was a bad…"

"Is he going to be ok?"

"Was it the wolves?"

More people are out of their cars now, and we're assaulted by a hailstorm of questions as we make our way back to the meeting area. Sheila climbs up onto a car and starts explaining what happened, but I blank it out for the most part as I walk back to my car. It hadn't really sunk in until now but I probably came pretty close to dying there. We outnumbered those goblins two to one but they still managed to critically injure one of us to the point that he might die. 

I open my car door and fall into the seat. I feel distant, cold, and it's not the temperature. No, the temperature hasn't changed at all ever since we got here, but we have. I've already killed three things with my own hands since we got here, what, a few hours ago?

I lean back in my seat and close my eyes, trying to clear my mind so that I can relax for a moment, which hardly works. There's way too much to think about. Why did I end up in Hard difficulty? How are we supposed to survive this when it's so difficult? What do my skills even do?

 I have [Suppress Presence] and that seems to be pretty simple, it hides my presence somehow. Clearly it's not perfect but it probably helped me kill that first wolf seeing as It didn't seem to see me when I was standing frozen in the crowd after it killed that guy. And then, even though it smelled me, it didn't see me for a second when it turned around. I've tried to sneak up on dogs before and usually they hear or smell me before I can get close, unless they're sleeping. The only problem is that I don't actually know how to actually use the skill. It's just kind of passively done its thing so far.

I can assume [Water Manipulation] has something to do with, well, manipulating water, somehow. I've still got a bit of water in my bottle so I can try to do a bit of experimentation with the skill. I've seen the last airbender so I have some inspiration, maybe I can unlock [Blood Manipulation], that sounds like it would be pretty cool. I should get Mateo and maybe Alex or Sheila together to test our skills and figure out how they work. 

Oh, and it's time to check my Status.

[Name: Benjamin Rowe]

Difficulty: Hard

Floor: 1

Time left until forced return: 4y 364d 22h 31m 09s

Lvl 1

Strength: 5

Dexterity: 7

Constitution: 3

Mana: 1

[Primary Class: Unavailable]

[Sub-class: Unavailable]

Skills:

Water Manipulation - lvl 1

Suppress Presence - lvl 3

[Skill Points: 0]

[Stat Points: 3]

It's only been an hour and a half since we got here!? That's insane to me, it feels like half a day has gone by already. My Strength also went up by one point since I last checked, can we level stats up naturally? I'll need to test that as well.

Now here comes the fun part, what to invest my stat points into. I really should have done this earlier, as soon as I leveled up probably, but it's fine, I survived. 

The issue comes with what kind of build I want to go with. I usually like to go into games blind and figure it out for myself for a bit before looking up tutorials or wiki pages, but this isn't like a game where I can afford to mess around and restart, I only have one shot. Hmm.

I started off with Dexterity as my highest stat and a stealth skill, so maybe I go with a rogue build? They were always fun to play. I find myself getting bored of warrior builds pretty quickly, and I was never much of a barbarian player, so I don't think I'll invest too much into Strength. Is it smart to have a dump stat in real life? I don't know. 

A tank would probably be the equivalent build for Constitution, assuming it does actually do something to make us tougher. To be honest, I haven't even tried to play a tank before, they just sound boring. But since this is real, maybe boring is good? Being able to take a lot of damage and survive is always nice after all, but I could easily imagine it being pretty horrifying too.

For example, imagine you get horribly mangled but are kept alive and conscious through the pain because of your high Constitution… That's nightmare material right there. I'm still gonna invest points into it though, it's probably the best thing for my immediate survival. I wonder if the goblins' tough skin was a racial thing or if it's from their stats. 

Mana would be what I would prioritize if I wanted to go for a wizard build, which honestly sounds like a lot of fun. I mean come on, magic in real life? Who wouldn't want to immediately jump on that? I know I do. The problem though is that wizards, while having powerful, flashy, and fun spells, are usually pretty squishy and weak. They need to rely on other people. That and I don't really have any skills I could call a spell, other than [Water Manipulation] maybe. 

Rogue build it is. I'm going to test out naturally leveling Strength and Dexterity soon so I'll do a split between Constitution and Mana to start. My skills probably use mana to fuel them, which is why I'm investing into the stat, stealth skills usually drain mana pretty quickly. Now how do I do this?

"Apply one Stat Point to Constitution." I say out loud, which works. Nice. Then I try to focus on the stat on the Status window and think about raising it. I don't notice anything happening at first until I feel a weird sensation in my mind, like someone asking for confirmation? I 'agree' and instantly another point gets applied to Constitution. I try to tap on the Status window but nothing happens when I do, so I mentally apply the last point.

[Name: Benjamin Rowe]

Difficulty: Hard

Floor: 1

Time left until forced return: 4y 364d 22h 30m 22s

Lvl 1

Strength: 5

Dexterity: 7

Constitution: 5

Mana: 2

[Primary Class: Unavailable]

[Sub-class: Unavailable]

Skills:

Water Manipulation - lvl 1

Suppress Presence - lvl 3

[Skill Points: 0]

[Stat Points: 0]

Two points to Constitution and one to Mana feels like a good start, I'll start putting more points into Dexterity later. I close the Status and try to lay back and actually relax this time. Once I get up, it'll be time to experiment with my skills and figure out what they can do. We still need water, so we're going to have to go back into the forest again. I need to be ready this time.