Chapter 160: People And Monsters

  The Mana arrow lodged in Sarah’s chest had begun to dissipate, but was able to ensure she was fine. Honestly just might have been enough on its own, but the faster an injury was healed the less time Sarah would have to spend in pain.

  Both Teresa and Sarah were pretty used to taking rough injuries like that. They might do a bit of screaming in the moment, but that was born of both pain and rage. A good yell took the edge off a bit. Sasha, however, didn’t handle it as well. Healed or not, she had her throat stabbed and choked on her own blood, and seemed to have a sense of panic surrounding her difficulties breathing.

  There wasn’t much more Teresa could really do for her. Perhaps could be used to help pump her lungs or something, but Teresa didn’t know how that would work and didn’t want to risk playing around with that. Sasha was fine, she just needed to cough and vomit a bit.

  As soon as she seemed to have her bearings, Teresa confronted her.

  “What the hell was that?” Teresa asked, upset. “You just rushed them! That could have gotten us killed!”

  “It’s my class.” Sasha panted, taking a few breaths. “I deal more damage with ranged weapons the closer I am to them. It’s my class perk, it multiplies point blank damage several times over and I don’t get that boost at a range.”

  “Doesn’t matter! You have a bow, even if you do better up close you didn’t need to rush in! They were already injured and low on resources, if not for that we would be dead.”

  “I don’t get it, normally I’m unstoppable.” Sasha continued. “I can run through hordes of monsters and just blast them apart, even if they’re several levels above me. These guys were only level 60. I thought I would be able to simply overpower them.”

  “Monsters and people are different. The reality is, killing monsters gets easy. They don’t have the same amount of skills, they aren’t sapient, and once you get the hang of it anyone can do it. We know a guy who managed to get a few levels in a wheelchair. It’s hard at first, but once you get a few skills and a decent amount of levels it becomes easy, at least for now. As soon as I learned , I got significantly stronger. As soon as I got my sword, I got significantly stronger. Monster killing was hard because we didn’t have the right tools for the job, and now that we’re able to slaughter them wholesale it’s easy to think we’re hot shit, but we’re not.

  “These guys had skills, and we already saw they knew how to fight. When you rushed them mindlessly like that, you may as well have just been a monster with an abnormal amount of skills in their eyes.”

  “Teresa-” Sarah started, and Teresa nodded back at her.

  “Yeah, I know. I get that I just met you and I’m already blowing up at you, but you can’t be doing that shit. If Jake were here, you pushing in might have actually been a good move, but we don’t have a tank with us. Believe me, I understand how useful rushing someone can be, it works great with the right circumstances. Rushing them out in the open, when they have cover and we know they have an archer, I was completely expecting you to get shot in the face the second you got in their line of sight. Just because you can bulldoze through monsters doesn’t mean you can do the same thing with people.”

  “I fucked up.” Sasha admitted. “I really thought I’d be able to just power through them. and together normally obliterates even the most durable monsters if I’m close enough to them. Then I got so I could put more power into each shot, and I’ve been able to really just blow through everything I’ve encountered. I haven’t fought people before, at least not with the System. I’m sorry, I just got here and I already almost got you both killed.”

  “Teresa, by the way.” Teresa introduced herself, extending a hand.

  “Sasha.” They shook hands before Teresa stepped away to give the sisters some space. Just in time too, as Jake and Preston finally arrived.

  “What happened here?” Preston asked, looking at the fresh blood on Teresa’s clothes.

  “Multiverse bullshit, two groups of people with level caps were fighting. Once they finished, they came after us. Only three of them, but they were good.” Teresa explained. “Way better than the last people we encountered. Their tank managed to get close and grab my arms. Kept my palms facing away from her so I couldn’t use any of my spells on her. I don’t even know how she did that, I don’t think I could do that to someone if they didn’t even fight back. I physically couldn’t bend my wrists enough, and her grip was low enough on my wrists that I couldn’t burn her hands off.”

  Teresa grabbed her own wrist and began trying to figure out how the tank did that, but couldn’t replicate it. No matter how she held her own wrist, she was still able to bend it and point her palms with only mildly restricted aim. Maybe if she scooted her grip up higher and closer to her palm, but then she’d be able to activate to get free. Teresa was at a complete loss at how the tank had been able to do that, in the middle of a real fight no less.

  “Are you all okay?” Jake asked.

  “Yeah. Sasha got stabbed in the throat, Sarah got shot in the chest and my wrists were both broken, so nothing too serious. If that tank broke my thumbs off or something I’d be pissed. On the bright side, I think she was my size, so I’m going to see if they had anything I want.” Teresa still wasn’t particularly well armored. Her torso and head were both entirely reliant on for protection, as the healer robes didn’t really do much to help there.

  Teresa had plenty of chances to loot better armor off people, but she never found something she liked. A lot of the light warrior armor sets she had seen were too large or even too small for her, and improperly sized armor would restrict her and cause problems.

  The tank had some light armor underneath her outer metal armor, which is what Teresa was interested in. She had been hesitant about wearing any metal armor as it was loud and janky. Teresa could easily win a contest of Strength against the armor and accidentally break it if she moved too aggressively while wearing it. Since it wasn’t fitted to her, it would be easy for Teresa to accidentally snap something and have the broken metal dig into her skin the same way the tank’s armor had done exactly that after Sarah shot her.

  However, she could still try taking it apart to protect key areas. She didn’t need to wear the full suit, she could just take the bracers for example. Teresa used on the dead people’s gear, and began picking through anything useful.

  

  Materials: Linen

  Enchantments: Self Repair, Minor Durability Enhancement, Anti-Chafing

  A light under armor that is thinner than standard make, meant to prevent chafing and absorb shock.

  “What the hell, I want one!” Jake said as Teresa shared details about the under armor. “Why didn’t I get to start with that? Do you have any idea how uncomfortable this used to be?”

  “How do you think it feels to carry you?” Preston asked him teasingly.

  It took some effort, but once Teresa had looted the tank’s armor she got a good look at it. The gambeson looked a bit goofy in her opinion. It would work as armor on its own, but Teresa’s clothing was all incredibly mismatched. She also took the bracers off the metal armor and began trying on different pieces.

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  The shoulder protection was uncomfortable as it didn’t fit her perfectly. If she raised her arms straight up, she could accidentally snap the metal against her collarbone. If she had normal human Strength that would never happen, but that wasn’t the case. She did take pieces that would protect her elbows and knees, as they fit pretty well.

  There were multiple bodies to loot, including from the fight they had walked in on. With a total of 16 bodies, they were able to find a gambeson that would fit Jake. The gambesons looked like plain, padded, long sleeve shirts. Despite being padded, they were still thin. Getting better armor was definitely overdue, and their new loot wouldn’t interfere with her movements.

  She still thought she looked ridiculous, but if it worked it worked. The only things that fit her perfectly were from the Tutorial, though everything else was close enough. She wore the gambeson over her healer robes, and had part of the collar and sleeves of her robes poke out a bit so she could tear them off if they needed something to protect against poisonous gas.

  Randall arrived with Benjamin and Saylee while they were looting, as he had stayed back to keep them safe.

  “Are you okay?” Randall asked, and Teresa gave him the same rundown she’d given the others.

  Thankfully, he didn’t mention anything about killing people again. He really only seemed to have a problem with it if Teresa was the one to initiate, though he had said as much.

  Everyone took the opportunity to upgrade their gear a bit. By the end, everyone looked like they had their wardrobes picked out by a blind medieval clown, but Preston and Jake seemed to dig it. This also gave Teresa’s some experience. It was a skill to prevent damaging internal components while taking things apart, and she thought it would be useful for golems like the Avatars. Ironically enough, this was the first time she had actually used the skill, as she didn’t want to tear a bunch of straps while taking apart armor piecemeal.

  Throughout this, Sarah began introducing Sasha to the rest of the party. She seemed pretty shy, though when Teresa thought back to it Sarah had been shy when they first met too and now the word shy would never come to mind when thinking of Sarah. Sasha was likely hung up on her performance in the fight, though Teresa wouldn’t bring it up again.

  “The rest of my party should be in a place called Lotdale. At least, they will be, we agreed to meet up there eventually once we all got our own business sorted. Not sure if Lotdale is still standing since we left pretty fast, but if you’re looking for more people I know where to find them.” Sasha told them as they were trying on their new gear.

  “We actually have a place to return to. We can teleport to The Mall through Stormwreck.” Sarah said.

  “So you were teleporting! I was wondering what was up with that. You guys live in a mall? That’s sick, makes sense though. You guys remodel all the stores into living space or something?”

  “No, it’s not actually a mall, it’s more of a campsite than anything. It’s just called The Mall.”

  “You named a city Mall?”

  “The Mall. You can’t forget the The.” Sarah corrected.

  “Why?”

  “We let a dog name it.”

  “How?”

  “We made him our president.”

  “Now you’re just fucking with me.” Sasha said, clearly thinking this was a bit. Sarah didn’t correct her, neither did anyone else. It would be funnier if they let her think they were joking.

  “How do you like the armor?” Jake asked Teresa.

  “The gambeson is pretty nice, but I’m not a fan of the metal bits I’m wearing. They creak whenever I bend my arms or legs.” Teresa said, gesturing to the pieces she was wearing around her elbows and knees.

  “Do they? It seems pretty quiet to me.”

  “Perception.”

  “Oh yeah, that’d do it. With that logic, aren't all forms of armor loud?”

  “Yeah, it rustles, but the sound the metal makes is more annoying. I’ll put up with it, though if we ever encounter velcro I think I’m going to lose my mind.”

  “What’s the plan now?” Saylee asked, bringing the conversation back to being productive.

  Shoot, that was a good question. Teresa had once thought finding everyone would take months, maybe even years. Since leaving Arconette, it had only been days. Days. It went completely against her expectations. The planet was the size of the pre-System sun, this absolutely could have taken much longer.

  Thankfully, everyone appeared far closer than expected. As a matter of fact, there were a lot of people nearby, considering how large the planet was. It had to have thousands of times the surface area of Earth, yet quite a lot of people could be found in a relatively confined area.

  There was still a lot of stuff they needed to do, though one thing came to mind.

  “Nouarosso, we need to make plans around that.” Teresa said. “I say we head back to The Mall and prepare. It’s tough to find high level Portals here, we’re too close to several cities. The Mall is pretty isolated, and we haven’t explored up north yet. Saylee, you mentioned something about a System Dungeon in the tundra a while back, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, though we aren’t sure how it works yet.” Saylee said. “When you get close, a screen pops up stating the requirements to enter. From what I’ve heard, it’s a tall gate built into the side of a hill, but you need to be level 100+ to enter.”

  “Well, I think we need to get some levels anyway. We were able to get out of both New Haven and Nouarosso pretty easily, but I doubt they were leaving their best and brightest in the city all day. We need to plan this out carefully, after the Contaminated Zone we have to keep casualties on our side to a minimum. We can’t keep losing people every time we need to do something like this.” Teresa said.

  “We also should talk to Nikolas about security.” Saylee said. “We have the unique perspective of people who have actually infiltrated and escaped hostile cities, even if it was by accident. I also want to put my skills to use, I’ve gotten a few in the short time we’ve been traveling together.”

  “I’m a little lost here.” Sasha said.

  “I’ll catch you up, don’t worry about it.” Sarah told her, as the planning continued.

  “I get that we should get some levels before we invade Nouarosso, but won’t they be doing the same thing?” Jake asked. “I doubt they’re going to be sitting on their asses waiting politely for us to level up.”

  “Then we have to do it faster.” Teresa said. “Each of us will keep hunting Portals solo or in small groups. There are a lot more Portals near The Mall, and they’re higher level than what we’ve seen out here. It sounds like the opposite of a problem, but these people don’t have enough monsters for everyone. There are hundreds of thousands of people in this area. Stormwreck, New Haven, Nouarosso, they’re all spaced out a good bit but I couldn’t find any Portals in the 80s since all the local powerhouses are clearing them before they get to that point.”

  “There are definitely some strong Portals I’ve found, I’m not so sure about that.” Sasha said.

  “Perhaps, but there’s not as many. At The Mall, when I use I can see far more threads leading to Portals. We don’t have as many people, and the Scilians certainly weren’t hunting monsters a whole lot. There are definitely a few good Portals here and there between the cities, but there was a lot of uninhabited land around The Mall. The Contaminated Zone isn’t fully cleared up yet, and there were a lot of high level Portals we had to avoid during our trip to Arconette for the first time. We’ll also be able to use Saylee’s skills to help us hunt faster, George might figure some more stuff out about pseudo skills, the skill registry might have some useful information in it, The Mall is the best place for us to train right now.”

  “I’m on board, I need to improve my resource pools before I can really utilize my skills the way I want.” Sarah said. “That stealth archer we fought had a camouflage skill that let him hide in plain sight. If I can get something like that, I’m set.”

  “My dad will be able to join the hunting expeditions as well, so it’ll be good for him too.” Preston said.

  “Will I be able to help with Nouarosso?” Benjamin asked. “I know I’m pretty weak right now, but I don’t want to stay that way.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t think you’ll be able to do a lot.” Teresa said honestly. “You’re really far behind right now, if you tried to fight you’d probably get in our way. You can help make preparations though, I’m sure there will be a lot of work to do once we have an actual plan.”

  “Point me in the right direction and I’ll do what I can.” Benjamin said. He was pretty eager to get revenge on Nouarosso, and was willing to do whatever he needed even knowing what that involved.

  Good.

  It was time to head back to The Mall.