Literature / Hell Difficulty Tutorial

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Nathaniel Gwyn is totally normal young man from Earth, pulled into the fifth round of Earth's tutorial along with the other passengers on the same bus as him. Worse than just leaving Earth behind, Nathaniel ends up on the hardest difficulty of tutorial, Hell Difficulty.

Nathaniel sees Hell Difficulty as a chance to grow and improve and immediately becomes obsessed with Mana, dumping practically every point he gets into it, despite the risk of death. He is determined to survive and advance through the floors of the tutorial, and he does not care what he has to do to survive.

Tropes found in this series:

• Action Girl: The entire female cast including the 10-year old Isabella.
• All-Accessible Magic: Downplayed. Anyone within the system can learn to use magic, through either the manipulation of mana or through using skills. However, not every world is part of the system, and some people are just better than others at mana manipulation.
• All-Powerful Bystander: The Rulers, initially. The Rulers take an interest in the man who started in Beyond (which should be impossible) and watch him, very rarely interacting with Earth's other Tutorial attendees.
• An Arm and a Leg: Played for Drama initially as losing his arm almost cripples Nathaniel if not for his ridiculous mana control. The first time he loses his left arm, it is because he has so much Mana and not enough Constitution that he accidently blows his arm up and he ends up creating a mana-based prosthetic until Lily heals him. Played for Laughs after that as Nathaniel frequently destroys or loses his left arm.
• Anyone Can Die: It is Hell Difficulty after all. Many people died on the first floor, most shocking being Kevin who was killed by Lily accidently. Hadwin died on the fourth floor.
• Artificial Human: All the non-attendee people in the tutorials are clones.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: One of Nathaniel's traits, Mana Wavelength Iris, lets him see mana and analyse it instantly, however, this trait is so strong it can overload his brain.
• Dark and Troubled Past: A requirement to be pulled into Hell Difficulty.
  • Nathaniel had an abusive father, who he nearly beat to death but couldn't bring himself to do it, so his sister (who is in another round of the tutorial for Earth) killed their father and was taken to prison for this. People would then harass Nathaniel because his sister was a murderer.
  • Lily, at the age of eight, was frequently left completely alone in her house, which rarely had water or food, had no heat and electricity, with only her pet cat. Lily was living in poverty and because it was so unsafe outside she rarely left the house. She was eventually taken by the social services and placed with a new family but the family would frequently question her because she didn't behave as they wanted her to.
  • Kim was so depressed on Earth because of his parents that he tried to kill himself and he is actually happier to be in the tutorial. He could not take the pressure because his family would always compare him to his older, successful, siblings and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't keep up with them.
  • Hadwin's wife and son were murdered by a young man.
  • Biscuit was often starved and left outside so that the owner's granddaughter could make content but when the videos never went viral, the corgi was given to the grandparents.
  • Aaron and Dennis were from an incredibly wealthy family. Their parents died and they lived with their grandfather for a few years. Eventually they ended up with their aunt who hated them. The aunt would beat them, leaving scars, and stole most of their inheritance.
  • Tess was frequently bullied and hurt at school when she was young and her mother dismissed the injuries, whilst yelling and insulting her. Her mother refused to believe she was bullied and locked her in her room. She also never had a single friend and just watched people who were friends from her room.
• Difficulty Spike: Happens on the second floor because of Lissandra. Even though it was already Hell Difficulty, it got worse once Lissandra figured out the world was fake. Her [Singularity] raised the difficulty to be close to that of Beyond Difficulty.
• Divine Intervention: The Rulers can twist the Tutorial to better suit their whims but it requires effort from multiple of them acting together, however it is easier for them to push the System whilst in Beyond. However, they have some rules that requires three out of five votes to allow for adjustments to be made. Several of them interfere on Nathaniel's behalf when he makes a challenge with Whitey's lurker, notably, Greed, Kindness and Envy. However, Envy only agrees to intervene in hope that it screws Nathaniel over.
• Expendable Alternate Universe: How the tutorials work. The tutorial copies a planet and then creates the copy and dumps one set of attendees on each copied planet. However, sometimes it goes far beyond one planet per group, with some floors being one planet per person, with at least tens of thousands of attendees at a single time. Once the attendees are done with a floor, they move to the next and the previous floor is wiped away.
• Expendable Clone: Excluding those who were pulled into the tutorials, every person in the tutorial is a clone that will be erased when the floor is completed and the recreated countless times for the thousands of simultaneous tutorial attendees.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: All of the Rulers are only every referred to by their title, even when speaking to each other, so the Ruler of Envy is only ever called Envy, the Ruler of Kindness is only ever called Kindness, etc. Later downplayed as we discover the identities of some of the Rulers: Greed, whose true identity is: Ruby, and Envy who is Tyven.
• Our Demons Are Different: Demons have nothing to do with hell or making deals to steal souls. Instead they are just a race of people with some slight variation depending on which planet they originate from. Demons have "special" hearts which gives them a bonus trait by default. Demons are all a bit crazy and are obsessed by the strength of their hearts. They have red eyes and horns.
• Personality Powers: The system gives people their first two skills which match who they are. The choice of subclass is another use of this trope, because each person gets given three options from the fourteen Blights (Seven Heavenly Virtues) and Radiances (Seven Deadly Sins) based on how they have acted previously.
• Seven Deadly Sins: Seven of the fourteen subclass options are named after the seven deadly sins. Interestingly, these are called Radiances.
• Seven Heavenly Virtues: The other seven subclass options are named after the seven heavenly virtues. These are called Blights.
• Training from Hell: The whole purpose of the Tutorial. Especially the Hell and Beyond difficulties. The Tutorial is set up to make the attendees strong so that when they return to their home planet they can fight off the invading planet from the pairing and train up the people from their home world.