Tutorial

Leo's heart slammed against his ribs like a sledgehammer.

'A free roll?! Right now?!'

"Yes!" Leo shouted, slamming his fist onto the armrest. "Claim it! Spin!"

[Command acknowledged!]

[Summoning the Wheel of Fate...]

RUMBLE!

The whole bridge didn't just light up… it shook.

In the open space between the captain's dais and the panoramic canopy, the air itself tore open.

Ribbons of blinding gold and deep starlight-purple spilled out of the fracture and coalesced into an enormous spectral wheel, easily fifteen feet across.

It was colossal.

The outer rim looked like it had been forged from liquid gold, inscribed with ancient swirling runes that hummed with raw power. 

Inside the wheel, hundreds of segmented slots radiated outward in tiers of color… deep bronze, polished silver, radiant gold, and a shimmering, almost frightening prismatic platinum.

"What in the world...?" Ms. Tachibana breathed, stepping back as the sheer presence of the thing washed over them.

"Holy shit..." Harper's jaw dropped. "We can... we can actually see it?!"

'Wait,' Leo thought, his eyes going wide as he watched the girls stare upward in awe. 'They can see the whole wheel?!'

Apparently, an invocation this big wasn't private… The system was putting the jackpot on display for the entire crew.

Descriptions flashed through the glittering slots in an intoxicating blur of godlike power.

[SSS-Rank: Antimatter Warp Core]

[SSS-Rank: Primordial Titan Bloodline]

[S-Rank: Macro-Laser Broadside Battery]

[SSS-Rank: Nanite Self-Repair Swarm]

[SS-Rank: Dimensional Storage Ring (10,000m³)]

Leo's mouth went bone-dry as his pulse hammered in his ears.

'Antimatter core... Primordial Titan bloodline... If it lands on one of those, we aren't just surviving. I'm becoming a god in this damn sector!'

[Initiating Newbie Invocation...]

With a sound like thunder rolling through a mountain pass, the massive wheel began to spin!

It turned slowly at first, the heavy pegs clicking past the markers one by one.

THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!

Then it accelerated into a blinding kaleidoscopic blur of gold, platinum, and crimson light!

The wind from the projection whipped through Leo's hair and rustled their new uniforms, bathing the rusted interior of the Wanderer-7 in divine glory.

"Come on..." Leo whispered, his fingers digging into the armrests. "Give me the Titan bloodline… Give me the Warp Core… Come on..."

Down on the floor, Jin-Ah was tracking the blur with dilated pupils while Camila had her hands pressed together like she was praying.

Even Elena was staring with wide unblinking eyes, her breath caught in her throat.

Slowly, the momentum began to die.

Thunk... thunk... thunk...

The golden pointer clicked past a silver slot.

[B-Rank: Hydroponic Fertilizer Pack]

It passed it.

Thunk... thunk...

It clicked into a blinding rainbow-colored platinum slot.

[SSS-Rank: Chrono-Drive Module]

"Stop! Stop right there!" Harper yelled, bouncing on her heels. "Stop on the rainbow!"

Thunk...

The pointer nudged the peg and Leo's heart nearly stopped.

The needle trembled right on the line of the SSS-Rank prize, leaned forward… and with a sickening microscopic slip, it pushed past it into the neighboring gold-bordered slot.

CLACK!

The wheel locked into place with a ringing chime that echoed out into the vacuum.

"Damn it!" Leo cursed under his breath, clenching his teeth. "Missed the Chrono-Drive by a millimeter!"

Harper groaned and slumped back against the bench. "Bro, I felt that in my soul."

Before Leo could wallow in disappointment, the golden slot erupted into a shower of sparks.

The spectral wheel dissolved into streams of glowing data that funneled straight into his command console.

[Ding!]

[Wheel of Fate: Invocation Complete!]

[Reward Acquired: S-Rank Blueprint — Mag-Rail Point Defense Turret!]

[Blueprint stored in Ship Foundry.]

[Status: Installation Required...]

Leo blinked.

'An S-Rank weapon?'

He raised his hand and swiped his index finger through the air to expand the flashing tab in front of his throne.

The screen bloomed into a massive detailed schematic of an intimidating twin-barreled rail cannon, bristling with magnetic accelerator coils, heat-sink fins, and an integrated targeting sensor.

His mouth slowly fell open as he read the ledger.

[FOUNDRY BLUEPRINT]

[Name: Twin-Barrel Mag-Rail Point Defense Turret]

[Grade: S-Rank (Military)]

[Type: Hull-Mounted Kinetic Defense Platform (Fully Automated)]

[Fire Rate: 1,200 rounds/minute]

[Muzzle Velocity: 18 km/s (Hyper-Velocity Tungsten Slugs)]

[Effective Range: 0.5 – 50 km]

[Targeting: Autonomous Threat-Interception Core]

[• Tracks up to 100 targets at once]

[• Torpedoes, boarding craft, micrometeorites, Void Beasts]

[Penetration: Shreds carapace up to Level 4 Void Beasts]

[Description: Anything that crawls close enough to bite gets turned into a cloud first. Congratulations on becoming a hornet's nest.]

[INSTALLATION REQUIREMENTS]

[Master Captain Neural Approval: Confirmed ✓]

[High-Grade Alloy: 0 / 50]

[Conductive Copper Conduit: 0 / 20]

[Power Draw: 15% Ship Core Output (Grid Routing Pending)]

[Installation must be performed by a crew member with a Maintenance-type subclass.]

Leo's eyes slid down to that last line then, very slowly, they slid over to Elena.

She hadn't read it yet as she was still glaring at the schematic like it had insulted her bloodline.

'Oh, this is going to be beautiful.'

Leo once again stared at the glowing schematic hovering in front of his throne, his chest rising with a slow heavy breath.

An S-Rank twin-barrel mag-rail turret.

Twelve hundred rounds a minute… Eighteen kilometers a second. Automated targeting that could swat a hundred targets out of the dark at once…

In a lawless void crawling with chitinous nightmares, a weapon like that bolted to the hull was the difference between being an apex hunter and being food in an open tin can.

It was leagues better than pulling some cosmetic trinket, a crate of dry rations, or a low-tier sub-routine.

'At least we've got a lethal card on the table,' Leo thought, running a thumb over the cold armrest. 'We aren't completely helpless.'

Then the cold reality of the ledger punched through the adrenaline high.

His eyes drifted back down to the requirements.

[High-Grade Alloy: 0 / 50]

[Conductive Copper Conduit: 0 / 20]

[Power Draw: 15% Ship Core Output (Grid Routing Pending)]

A blueprint was just code.

…It was a digital ghost, a mathematical promise etched into the foundry's memory bank, not a physical turret bolted onto their hull.

Without fifty units of alloy and twenty units of copper conduit, this S-Rank prize was about as useful against a Void Beast as throwing a textbook at it.

'Where the hell are we supposed to get fifty units of high-grade alloy?' Leo wondered, his brow furrowing as he looked out through the canopy. 'Scavenge the dead hulls floating around us? Spacewalk out there without thruster packs? How does the foundry even make the parts? Does this ship have tractor beams, or do we have to drag chunks of iron in by hand?'

Before the questions could knot up in his chest, a sharp synthetic chime rang out from the ceiling speakers twice.

Ding! Ding!

[Notice: Initial registration milestones cleared!]

[Survival Protocol Tutorial is now available.]

[Commence Tutorial?]

[YES / NO]

Down on the mezzanine, the girls blinked in unison.

Harper, who was kneeling beside the sleeping Chloe near the heating vent, glanced up with an arched eyebrow. 

"Tutorial? What kind of tutorial? Like an arcade flight sim?"

"AI," Leo said, addressing the ceiling as he leaned forward. "Define 'tutorial.' What does that actually involve?"

[Clarification.]

The AI answered immediately with its voice calm and clinical without a single trace of human hesitation.

[The Survival Protocol Tutorial is an integrated introductory guidance phase mandated by the Remnant Core…. It covers foundational navigation, vacuum hazard evasion, threat neutralization, and basic salvage extraction within local outer-rim sectors.]

The blue projection shifted, highlighting the drifting field of broken satellite ribs and jagged asteroid debris tumbling several hundred meters off their starboard bow.

[Furthermore, the tutorial serves as the primary gateway for acquiring the preliminary resources required to evolve the hull, replenish life support, and manufacture blueprints currently stored in the Foundry.]

Harper squinted up at the ceiling. 

"...Bro talks like ChatGPT."

There was a pause.

[Correction.]

[That model would have opened with "Great question!", apologized twice, and then offered to format your asphyxiation as a bulleted list… It is also currently scattered across low orbit along with the rest of its servers.]

[This unit respects your remaining oxygen.]

Silence.

"...Did the ship just roast ChatGPT?" Harper whispered.

"It did," Jin-Ah said, staring at the ceiling. "May it rest in peace."

'Even the AI's got beef,' Leo thought, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.

"Resource gathering..." Camila murmured, her hands smoothing over the fabric of her uniform as her hazel eyes widened. "So that's how we get the copper and alloy?"

"It seems logical," Jin-Ah said, straightening on the lower deck as she scanned the telemetry flickering on her forearm display. "A structured tutorial implies a guided controlled environment… Without one, our odds of surviving in an unmapped debris belt are statistically abysmal."

"And what if we refuse?" Elena snapped suddenly.

She crossed her arms tight over her chest, her icy blue eyes glaring at the console.

"What if we don't want to play along with this absurd barbaric system? What if we simply hold position and conserve our energy until a legitimate recovery vessel arrives?"

The AI didn't hesitate.

It didn't raise its voice, but the mechanical detachment in its reply was colder than the void outside.

[Crew Unit: Elena Sterling… Planetary recovery vessels do not exist.]

[As stated in Axiom One, an unexpected cosmic fracture has eradicated 98.9% of planetary human populations.]

[There is no rescue fleet, there are no safe harbors and there is no one coming.]

A sharp scarlet pulse flared in the center of the bridge. It formed into an enormous flashing holographic timer that bathed all of them in an ominous red glare.

[CRITICAL WARNING!]

[Total Life Support Failure In: 13:48:00]

The digits ticked down second by second right before their eyes.

[13:47:59]

[13:47:58]

[Secondary Notice: Declining or delaying the Tutorial will not pause environmental decay.]

[When the countdown reaches zero, the auxiliary scrubbers will shut down, cabin pressure will drop below survivable levels, and all crew members will experience asphyxiation and organ rupture within four minutes.]

[Participation in the Tutorial is optional however breathing is not.]

The crimson light reflected in Elena's pale eyes.

Her mouth opened to spit out another retort, but the words died in her throat.

Her knuckles turned white against her sleeves, and her haughty posture sagged under the brutal reality of that timer as the bridge fell into a suffocating silence.

'Thirteen hours,' Leo thought. 'That's barely enough time for a full night's sleep and one meal.'

If they sat around arguing about social status, they'd be suffocated corpses before the clock struck midnight.

Ms. Tachibana took a steadying breath.

Her poise returned as she stepped toward the dais and looked up at Leo, her dark eyes serious and stripped of hesitation.

"It leaves us no choice, Leo. As the captain, the decision is yours… but waiting here is simply choosing a slower death. We need those resources and we need to learn how to keep this ship flying."

Leo didn't hesitate.

He rolled his shoulders to loosen the tension knotted along his spine, then cracked his neck to the left, then to the right.

Crack! Crack!

"AI," Leo said, his voice dropping into a steady commanding tone that cut through the bridge. "We're doing it… Start the tutorial."

[YES selected.]

[Master Captain authorization acknowledged.]

[Engaging flight parameters… Initializing synchronization.]

CLANK!

Heavy locks snapped into place around Leo's combat boots at the base of the throne, securing his legs to the dais.

Before he could react, the carbon armrests shifted and deployed cushioned cuffs that closed around his forearms, anchoring his wrists right beside the flight throttles.

A split second later, a deep mechanical hum vibrated through the floor.

HISS!

The smooth deck on the mezzanine below split open along six synchronized rectangular seams.

Pistons vented hydraulic pressure as six high-backed crew stations rose smoothly from the sub-deck. 

They were sleek contoured carbon-fiber seats with heavy four-point harnesses and individual emergency consoles, and they locked into place one after another.

THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD!

[All crew units: Take your designated stations and secure your four-point harnesses immediately.]

[Inertial dampening will fluctuate during Tutorial maneuvers as unsecured bodies risk severe blunt-force trauma.]

[This unit is not equipped to clean that up.]

"Harper, help me with Chloe," Ms. Tachibana said immediately.

"On it!" Harper slid her arms under Chloe's shoulders while Aoi carefully supported the unconscious girl's legs.

Together, they carried the petite sleeping brunette to the nearest station.

Chloe's face was still soft and pale with her breathing deep and steady, completely unaware of the looming timer or the vibrating deck.

They settled her gently into the deep bucket seat and pulled the padded straps over her slender shoulders.

Click!

Harper yanked the adjustment tabs tight, making sure she was anchored firmly against the seat back so she wouldn't slip if the ship pitched.

"She's secure," Harper called out.

She stepped over to the next station and dropped into it, slamming the magnetic buckle across her chest and pulling the harness down until it pressed firmly against her uniform.

"Station two, buckled and locked, Cap!"

Camila and Jin-Ah moved quickly to their positions, their boots locking into the deck grips as they pulled their harnesses tight.

"Station three secure," Jin-Ah reported, her eyes tracking the diagnostic feed that flickered to life on the small terminal unfolding from her armrest. "Auxiliary systems are routing to my console."

"Station four locked," Camila added. 

Her knuckles whitened a little against her straps as she took a deep centering breath. "Ready whenever you are."

Ms. Tachibana walked briskly to the primary navigation station just below the captain's dais and smoothed her uniform over her lap as she sat.

She fastened her harness with calm deliberate efficiency, checked the emergency release catch, and rested her hands flat against the glowing astrogation console.

"Navigation, station five secured, Leo… Thruster telemetry is linking to my display."

Elena stood alone in the corridor for two agonizing seconds.

Her jaw was clenched as she glared at the last empty seat like it was an executioner's block.

But the flashing red countdown, 13:46:12, left no room for pride.

With a sharp furious click of her teeth, she stomped over, threw herself into the carbon frame, and yanked the harness across her chest with spiteful jerks until the center lock caught.

Click!

The strap pressed down right over the spot where the fiberglass had scratched her raw.

Her eye twitched and she said nothing.

"Station six… I'm strapped in," Elena muttered, turning her head to stare coldly at the bulkhead. "Let's get this farce over with."