Chapter 477 (2/2)

He appeared to misinterpret her look, and shrugged in an embarrassed fashion. “I don’t want you to think I wasted your time, making you use first aid when I could heal them all. But it would be a waste of Mana, and this way, you can Level your First Aid Skill. You’ve gotten it, correct?”

Recognizing the name from the notifications, Tanya nodded, extremely numb.

“Is this… all just a game?” She whispered.

Dinesh smiled bitterly. “Welcome to the System.”

With Dinesh vouching for her, Tanya was allowed to stay on in Donnyton, instead of being sent to Franksburg, which was a larger city but was apparently inferior in some way. Tanya didn’t really ask any questions. She was struggling already with understanding what the System meant for her.

The old world was dead, Dinesh told her. Monsters roamed the countryside. People had Stats and could gain Levels. Some people gained Classes, and grew even more powerful. Dinesh was one of those people, Tanya quickly realized, although he never explicitly said it.

In addition, it became clear rather quickly that Dinesh wasn’t just someone with a Class, he was the captain of a Squad. And that Squad was relatively well respected, even by the Squads with lower numbers, which Tanya gathered were a higher rank. She was able to discern this while watching most of the other people in her area were shipped off down to Franksburg.

Not that it really mattered to Tanya. She wasn’t close with any of those people.

She wasn’t close with much of anyone, anymore.

Almost as if he forgot, Dinesh looked up at Tanya, a blank look on his face. “Oh, what did you do before?”

“Before what? Today’s weirdness?” Tanya said, shivering.

To her surprise, Dinesh smiled sadly. “Ah, yes, I had forgotten. To you, it has been but a day. Let me tell you… I’ve lived with this for a little over a year and a half.”

As her brain tried to make sense of that, Tanya considered herself. She was a veterinary school drop out, who had started cutting hair to pay her way through school. When the stress became too much, she stopped attending classes, but not stopped cutting hair to pay for them.

To her surprise, Dinesh seemed much more interested in the hair cutting than she would believe.

“Although it seems stupid, no one who was here really cut hair before the System came,” Dinesh said. “And most of the people who did are in Franksburg. I think we can get you set up pretty easily.”

And so he did. It just all happened so quickly.

Day 1: A green-skinned man tried to eat her.

Day 2: She was moved around like a refugee

Day 3: She told Dinesh she can cut hair.

Day 4: He showed her to her new sop, if she wants it

Day 5: She spent the entire day cutting hair.

And holy fuck, she was exhausted.

After the middle aged man finished belting on his sword and left the shop, Tanya looked around. There was a pile of money and assorted gifts she had gotten from people on the table, which she went to. One of them was a bottle of liquor given to her by a local brewer, or something, which she numbly cracked open on the wooden table. She took a long swig.

Two sweet for a beer, too smooth and oddly light for actual liquor. It seemed to be strawberry wine, but it was light and fresh and tasted like spring. The sweetness was reserved, too, something that tasted natural, rather than artificial corn syrup or something.

She took another long sip, smiling. She looked around at her strange new temporary home. This wasn’t so bad, was it?

It was only after the door opened and the bell rung softly that Tanya realized she hadn’t put up the closed sign.