Chapter 164: Plenty Of Fish In The Trees

  No fucking way.

  Teresa was looking at a high level Portal, level 95 to be exact. Even for her it would be a tough fight, but still totally possible. What was interesting wasn’t just the level, but the monsters themselves.

  {Lesser Wyvern-Fish (F+) (lv 95)}

  Motherfuckin Wyvern-Fish. Teresa hadn’t seen them since the Tutorial, though these guys were a little different. They were humanoid fish creatures, with blue and gold scales. They had beady black eyes that were uncomfortable to look at, but if that was all they would be identical to the Atrocious Wyvern-Fish in the Tutorial.

  The change was their pulse. Golden light shone out from beneath their scales in tune with what Teresa assumed was their heartbeats. Their hands, which Teresa knew from experience functioned like suction cups that could climb vertical surfaces, now had long black claws protruding from their fingertips.

  Doing some quick math, if the monsters were level 95 then their specialty stats would be at 190 minimum, possibly up to 285. From what Teresa remembered, the Atrocious Wyvern-Fish had been mixed between Vitality and Intelligence focused. Their Fortitude had been on the weaker side, though they could take a lot of damage before dying. Enough damage to the head would counter that just fine.

  Though Teresa didn’t really know a lot about the hierarchy of Wyvern-Fish. There were the Atrocious Wyvern-Fish, the Flawed Wyvern-Fish they had fought as a miniboss that had smoke skills, and now these Lesser Wyvern-Fish. It’d be nice to know how those adjectives all compared to each other, was ‘flawed’ worse than ‘lesser,’ or was it the other way around?

  Regardless, the Wyvern-Fish were on high alert. Teresa wasn’t able to just run in and start blasting, she would get surrounded and killed by a shitload of flaming projectiles. She could potentially use to keep them from breathing fire, though she wasn’t sure how Mana expensive that would be. She definitely couldn’t use it against all the Wyvern-Fish, but if she needed it in a pinch it might help.

   was always a tried and true killing skill, though now that Teresa thought about it she may as well just use her sword. Her sword was actually the highest level thing present, being level 97. It was flame resistant as well, so it would work great against these guys.

  She still hadn’t used the self-repair glyph on it, as she had left The Mall rather fast. Shit. She really ought to use that on her weapon, though it should hold up just fine against these opponents. She also didn’t have to worry about burning the forest down, as their fire typically disappeared rather fast.

  Well, actually… there had been times where fire skills caused actual fires in the past. George was experimenting with it, and it had happened in the Contaminated Zone when they were trying to get past a trapped artificial hill. Teresa wasn’t too worried as it wasn’t likely every single Wyvern-Fish would attack her with a flaming projectile at once. If she was close enough, it would be impossible for most of them to shoot at her without hitting another Wyvern-Fish.

  The question was whether Teresa would actually be able to take them on. If they were hyper specialized in something and received 3 stat points per level in an attribute, it would be at least 285. She knew they had good Intelligence, so if they invested into Agility at all they would be extremely deadly.

  To start, she would try to use a hit and run tactic to isolate a Wyvern-Fish and try fighting a small group. Their flaming breath could possibly break through even , so she wasn’t expecting to just tank their hits either. The Portal was still deep in the forest, where the massive trees sprouted out of the ground and eventually arced back into the ground a distance away. She could likely use that to her advantage and attack from the canopy above, but then that would expose her to significantly more projectiles at once.

  Teresa smiled. This might actually be a tough matchup. Observing them from a distance, they seemed to have some decent Agility, though not great Perception. At level 95 though, it was unlikely even their worst attributes weren’t superhuman. The Unallocated Points received could easily round out their builds pretty decently.

  Withdrawing her bow from her , she began to climb a tree to get close to the thick canopy above. She wasn’t planning on being high up the entire fight, just for the initial testing. Drawing an arrow, she took aim at Wyvern-Fish and fired.

  As soon as the arrow left the bow, she began to climb up into the canopy to hide. The arrow struck a Wyvern-Fish straight through the head, but she didn’t get a kill notification. Since the arrow cleanly penetrated through to the other side of the monster and exited its body, they would have a generally difficult time tracking Teresa. Sure, the arrow was now implanted in the ground and they could just use that, but it wouldn’t form a straight line to her as the arrow would have slightly deviated course due to the impact against the Wyvern-Fish’s skull.

  Teresa moved through the first layer of the canopy, hoping to reposition. The canopy was made up of absolutely massive foliage, a field of green that she could run on with another field of green above her as there were multiple layers to the canopy. Unfortunately, there were some Wyvern-Fish in the canopy as well. They were weaker, only level 85 at max, but there were still enough that they spotted her instantly.

  She could take on level 85s without too much worry. Several Wyvern-Fish began sprinting towards her, moving at about the same speed she could without active. Perhaps they were faster, actually.

  The closest Wyvern-Fish opened its mouth, and a golden glow came out from within. Teresa immediately activated , then swiftly drew out a shape of decompressed air that encompassed the space around the Wyvern-Fish while leaving a thin trail that led to her hand.

  The golden glow sputtered, but the monster was still able to fire out a ball of golden flames. The projectile moved slower than her arrows, but still faster than any arrow a level 0 could possibly fire. However, it was pretty easy to figure out where they were shooting and when they were going to do it. The fireball breath attack was incredibly telegraphed, after all.

  Teresa deliberately let it hit her with active. It was a weakened attack from a lower level Wyvern-Fish, so she wanted to see how she’d fare against it.

  The answer was not very well.

  Golden flames smashed into Teresa, burning like hell. Even underneath a defensive skill and layers of armor, Teresa felt like she was getting cooked medium rare. Her skin roasted as she felt the heat permeate through her flesh, taking an injury that would have disabled her if not for Restoration Magic.

   brought her back into top shape over the course of a few seconds. Lesson learned, do not try and tank the Wyvern-Fish’s signature attack. If she got hit with one of those during a melee fight, she would be cooked. Literally.

  While taking a few seconds to heal was pretty fast, the Wyvern-Fish were fast as well and closed the distance before Teresa could even finish healing. Teresa raised her arms and cast , sending a consistent stream of fire that melted through the Wyvern-Fish just fine. Except that they kept moving for an astonishing length of time.

  They were like chickens with their heads cut off, their bodies were still running towards Teresa but eventually collapsed. She could melt their heads into goop, and they still kept moving for a moment. Were Wyvern-Fish related to chickens in some way? Or was that a fish thing? Could fish move after dying, or was Teresa thinking of something else?

  Huh, how related were fish and chickens? Everything on Earth was generally related somehow, though the moving after death thing wasn’t uniquely a chicken or fish thing. Couldn’t a lot of animals move after death because of ATP or something?

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  Teresa focused back on the fight as she observed several Wyvern-Fish preparing to attack her. She charged towards them, watching their posture carefully just before they attacked. It wasn’t too tricky to do, but she quickly familiarized with how they moved up until the moment fire came out of their mouths.

  She avoided their fireballs just fine, moving laterally while activating to get out of the way quicker. It was like memorizing a video game boss’ animations, except with a real living being. Teresa probably wouldn’t even need to use to avoid their fireballs anymore since they were so insanely telegraphed. She considered that if these Wyvern-Fish could fake her out by intentionally telegraphing their attacks a few times before attacking with a non-telegraphed fireball. That would be devious, but the sapience of the monsters was questionable, if not nonexistent. Sentient, yes. Sapient? No, not really.

  Teresa withdrew her sword from her and swung her blade horizontally at the Wyvern-Fish once in range. They tried to swipe at her with their clawed hands, but Teresa’s sword had more range. The Wyvern-Fish were physically faster than her, but not enough to compensate for her larger weapon.

  Cutting several Wyvern-Fish in half was incredibly easy. What wasn’t easy was that they kept moving, and one managed to claw Teresa. The attack stabbed through her armor, though the claw got stuck in her shoulder as the Wyvern-Fish struggled to move after being bisected. A quick punch through the face took care of it, though she did need to pull the claw out of her shoulder.

  These guys were actually pretty damn tough to fight. Just enough Strength for their melee attacks to hurt, enough Agility to outpace Teresa, enough Vitality to keep moving for a moment after fatal damage, and enough Intelligence to both react fast and to make their fireball attacks easily pierce through any form of defense Teresa could manage.

  Okay, she could probably use her sword as a shield, but if she’s busy using it as a shield then she won’t be able to stab stuff with it. This was a good opportunity to get familiar with the movement of transitioning between using her sword offensively and defensively. would probably help her out there.

  Rustling behind her made Teresa look back, and she saw that the fireballs from the Wyvern-Fish she just killed had burned a hole in the thick canopy, revealing her position to several high level Wyvern-Fish below.

  Teresa activated and sprinted, aiming to get as far away from her current position as possible. Level 85 Wyvern-Fish were tough, the level 95 ones were likely even worse.

  The canopy below her was actually struggling to support her fast movements. Pushing off against the ground hard enough for the sudden acceleration from standing still to her top speed nearly made the extremely large foliage collapse, as it could only hold up so much. It wasn’t Teresa’s first time traversing the various layers of the forest’s canopy, but she had grown a lot since then.

  Unfortunately, there were quite a few Wyvern-Fish in the trees with her that gave chase. The canopy was actually coming apart, as it appeared her own earlier had severely damaged the stability of the natural forest structure. Teresa had been hoping she could work her way down, attack the level 85 Wyvern-Fish until she felt ready to take on the level 95 monsters.

  She hadn’t known there would be Wyvern-Fish in the trees, but she wasn’t complaining. She enjoyed this thoroughly, the tougher the fight the harder it was to think about anything else.

  Teresa sprinted towards the nearest tree holding up the canopy as the foliage gave out in several places. Golden fireballs were shot around her as she managed to avoid attack after attack. Whenever she was close enough, she would use to melt through a few Wyvern-Fish, deliberately tuning the spell down a bit. The monsters didn’t have a lot of Fortitude, so she could actually kill them while using a pretty tiny amount of Mana.

  Once she was close to a tree, she considered her next move. She could return down to the ground level once again, but there were a lot of Wyvern-Fish there that she couldn’t take on all at the same time. There were also quite a few climbing the trees now that her position had been revealed, and fireballs were now bursting through the canopy in an attempt to hit her.

  Quite a few Wyvern-Fish went down to friendly fire, but it made the canopy too dangerous for Teresa to stay in. She could watch the Wyvern-Fish aim and predict where the fireballs would go, but she couldn’t predict when a fireball would randomly burst through the foliage as the Wyvern-Fish below unleashed significant quantities of fireballs.

  Instead of climbing down one of the trees which would be more predictable, Teresa chose to keep running until she was a comfortable distance away. Several Wyvern-Fish chased her, only unable to catch up thanks to . When Teresa was far enough away from the Portal, she turned and faced the group of Wyvern-Fish that had pursued her.

  There were exactly 20 of them that had continued chasing her for this long, and several of them immediately began to inhale to prepare an attack. In response, Teresa positioned her sword between herself and the monsters.

  As the first few fireballs were unleashed, she simply moved away from where they were aiming at the last moment. The issue with that strategy was it began to erode at the foliage around her, burning large holes in the ground. She couldn’t let the fight drag on too long or she’d eventually be caught in a bad situation as there were less and less places to step.

  Teresa pushed towards them, and blocked a single fireball using her sword. She briefly considered trying to whack them out of the air using the flat of her sword like a baseball bat, but she didn’t have confidence in that strategy after tanking a hit with her sword held flat in front of her. If she did it perfectly, she might be able to pull it off, but it was a risky strategy that offered little reward. Teresa didn’t think she would be able to take a full powered fireball and keep fighting.

  Something unnecessarily risky she did do however was engage in a melee. had already proven to be effective, but she didn’t want to become a one trick pony like many others in Arconette. worked better than her sword largely because she wasn’t that great at using her weapon yet.

  It was likely going to be a frequent trend amongst skills that Teresa believed was a trap. When getting a new skill, it was likely going to be weaker than many other skills due to it starting at level 0. If was level 25 and if was level 0, then using her sword would be far more efficient and sent.

  Teresa could see how people could fall into the trap of favoring one skill. It was like having a starter Pokémon be way higher level than a bunch of other Pokémon that might have better base stats, though truthfully Teresa only ever decided what Pokémon she liked as a kid based on how cool they looked.

  Deciding this was a good time to train her sword skills, she engaged in a melee only using as crowd control to avoid getting swarmed. Ideally she would learn to do that with her sword, but she was taking it one step at a time.

  Teresa stabbed forward with her sword and decapitated a Wyvern-Fish, then quickly retreated before the flailing body could stab her. As she did this, a thought clicked in place. After throwing a punch, the most common thing people expect to need to do after is pull the arm back as fast as possible. However, among some of the more advanced fighters Teresa had seen them leave their arm extended to obstruct their opponent. It wasn’t something Teresa learned how to do very well herself, but perhaps it could be applied to more aspects of fighting.

  Two more Wyvern-Fish darted at her, which she dispatched with a slower horizontal swing. She didn’t need to swing her weapon with full power every time the same way she didn’t need to use at full blast, their Fortitude was low enough that she could favor control over power. After cutting the two Wyvern-Fish in half, she kept her sword between herself and the bisected monsters to keep their separated upper halves from lashing out and striking her.

  It worked, sorta. She managed to stop one, but the other landed a slash that cut open the left side of her face. She leaned back in time to keep it from hitting her eye, and kicked the offending monster away from herself.

  Four Wyvern-Fish tried to swarm her at once, though she used to take care of them. What? Just because Teresa wanted to improve her sword skills didn’t mean she was going to be stupid about it. She knew her limits, and there were plenty of Wyvern-Fish in the sea. Or in the trees, in this case.

  She repeated the process of trying to use her sword to keep distance after an attack, while quickly switching between holding it by the handle and holding it by the flat of the blade using a combination of on her hands and activating her gloves’ ability typically used to scale walls.

  Time and time again, she took a hit when attacking two Wyvern-Fish at once. One at a time was no problem at all, but their ability to keep fighting after taking lethal damage was pretty unique. She didn’t even get the kill notification immediately after completely obliterating a Wyvern-Fish’s head, it took a few seconds for them to truly ‘die’.

  When she eventually made it through the 20 Wyvern-Fish, she had to reapply to herself. was still working fine, but she reapplied that as well anyways for good measure. Just from that short encounter, she felt a little bit more comfortable with her sword, and there were even things that could carry over to unarmed combat. These were only the level 85 Wyvern-Fish with a few level 95 mixed in, but they were still difficult.

  Despite that, Teresa climbed out of the canopy down to the real ground before moving towards the Portal again.

  Hit and run tactics would have to suffice for now.