More Radioactive Portals had already begun to spawn in the land Teresa and her party had just traversed. It was getting to the point where it was difficult to avoid getting the attention of a group of monsters, trying to simply go around the Portals added significant travel time.

Teresa had to admit she was tempted to try and fight through a Portal or two. Experience and a consumable item from Portals this strong would be fantastic, but she wasn't confident they could manage even one without expending most of their resources and risking casualties. Not to mention the fact they were fighting a war against a sentient nuclear power plant that may or may not affect the fate of the world. That kinda had to be the priority. Just by a little bit.

Eventually there came a point where they encountered a long line of Portals with monsters roaming the gaps between, sometimes fighting amongst themselves. On the way to the center of the Contaminated Zone, there had been a large gap between the line of Portals that they had been able to easily run through. Now, that gap had been filled with three Portals in an astonishingly short amount of time.

Teresa had no doubt that if the entirety of The Mall was in an area with a monster spawn rate this high, they would be wiped out in no time. It was to the point where she was starting to get worried for her own party now, it was a good thing they hadn't chosen to stick around and be a nuisance near the artificial wall. There was a reason the Contaminated Zone hadn't already been wiped out by Ezio's party. If Teresa's party could singlehandedly keep Chernobyl busy for an extended period of time, then the angry Completionists would have probably had a much better point.

The line of Portals in close proximity expanded far out, with another line of Portals intersecting the monster spawners in the distance. They would have to backtrack to avoid the Portals entirely.

Instead, they did the next logical step.

Unstable Rock Elementals seemed to be amongst the slower of the monsters in the Portal lineup. They were best described as moving collections of large boulders, with green particles gradually shifting luminosity in a manner that felt like breathing. If Teresa had to guess, they were likely based in Strength and Fortitude, but definitely not Agility.

The party managed to simply sprint by the Portal while the Elementals summoned and hurled boulders their way that exploded on impact, sending sharp rock flying like shrapnel. Compared to bullets though, they were child's play. Teresa's mental stats plus her Perception were at the point where her eyes could nearly track a fired bullet in close proximity, although her body would have a very hard time moving faster than a bullet. With <Dash> active while in perfect condition, she was around a tenth the speed of a bullet, maybe a fifth.

Preston was probably half as fast as a bullet at this point, he just didn't have the mental stats to think quickly enough to properly use that speed. Regardless, with him carrying Jake, Teresa carrying her dad, and Sarah running on her own, they were able to blitz past the Unstable Rock Elementals without a scratch. Teresa honestly might have been able to destroy the Portal by just attacking it from range while utilizing her speed, allowing her to eliminate the monster spawner without actually fighting any of the monsters themselves.

It was probably best she didn't test that just yet. Maybe later she'd give it a shot.

"I think we were around here somewhere." Sarah said a few minutes later, trying to recognize the land. It was pretty difficult to do without a GPS, but they had gotten pretty used to it at The Mall. The party had to navigate around a few ravines while being wary of caves, but they were close to where they had initially fought the Completionists.

They crossed over the top of a hill, briefly slowing down as to not leap off the top of the terrain at a high speed. Tank tracks imprinted along the ground, and a collection of destroyed Avatars revealed they had found the spot they had originally fought.

Further out, there were several desecrated bodies with bloody trails leading away. They were those who had fallen in the fight with the Completionists, some of the corpses having been run over by a legion of mechanized vehicles. Most of the bodies belonged to the Completionists, but not all of them.

Somewhere, Leo's body lay unmoving, either run over by the Avatars or waiting to be picked apart by roaming monsters. The party cautiously approached the field of the dead, seeing tank tracks continuing in that direction. Teresa couldn't keep herself from looking at the bodies nearby. Unfortunately, The Mall had been the ones to take more casualties in the army, fighting another city's revolutionaries.

Now that she had some time to process the events, she mostly felt rage. Arconette had its problems, problems that she had previously excused. They were too secretive, held too much information hostage, and had dragged The Mall into a war that wasn't their own.

Teresa could understand having casualties during the operation against Chernobyl, that was a war that needed to happen. This battle against the Completionists from Arconette, however, had been stupid and unnecessary, brought about only by the incompetence of others.

Had they been more open about the multiversal invaders, perhaps the Completionists would have better understood the stakes. Had they managed their domestic issues better, perhaps the disagreement could have been solved long ago. Had Arconette gotten its shit together, maybe the Completionists that had attacked them would have fought alongside the army instead. The Mall managed to achieve a better degree of cohesion, and it was being managed by a bunch of people who didn't really know what they were doing.

What was Arconette's excuse?

"We need to keep moving, the tracks lead this way. I imagine that's where the army retreated." Teresa said, her voice low and monotone.

The party followed the tracks, which continued on for a while. Destroyed Avatars were scattered as signs of continued battle went on, after about a mile they found another body. Teresa recognized it as one of the Completionists from the army, and felt relieved it wasn't someone from the Mall. That relief was quickly followed up by guilt, this man had chosen to fight alongside her. She couldn't blame every individual for the failures of Arconette, she was just angry.

Her mind tried to justify it, figuring he was probably one of the assholes who were against maintaining friendly relations with other species. One of the xenophobes who considered Albino Gorillas 'pets,' rather than people. The reality was, he might have just been a good dude surrounded by bad people. If Teresa kept thinking along this train of thought, trying to demonize the citizens of Arconette because of what they dragged her people into, then it would be counter productive for the rest of the operation. It would be generalizing, and certainly wouldn't be fair.

I'm sorry, Teresa thought as they passed the body by without slowing down much. At the end of the day, that Completionist had chosen to help them take the fight against Chernobyl, while others had tried to stop them. Like the others who had fallen in the army, he didn't deserve for his body to be left like that.

After roughly another mile of scattered and destroyed Avatars, they found another body. Teresa herself wasn't familiar with the man, but many of those in her party were. Sarah gasped and went silent, as her, Preston, and Jake stared with a hollow expression. The man's name was Percy. Right after the Tutorial when Teresa had gone on her own to handle shit, the rest of her party had temporarily grouped up with others to destroy Portals and rescue anyone they could find.

Percy was among those they had grouped with, and now his body lay unmoving, grotesquely disfigured. Seeing so many deaths, Teresa couldn't deny a part of her almost wanted to burn Arconette to the ground with everyone inside, but that wasn't a logical thought process. She tried her best to calm herself. Acknowledging that she was angry helped a bit, but it didn't change the fact she wanted to hit someone in the face as hard as she could.

The trail of destruction continued, along with the occasional body from the army. With every corpse, Teresa's willingness to ignore Arconette's problems evaporated piece by piece. They didn't like alien species? They were going to have to fucking deal with it. Ezio didn't want to talk about how to use his <Embers> when it could potentially save lives, then maybe they should force it out of him once this was all done with. Alchemy, something with untold potential, had to be made public.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Once this operation was over, Teresa had some very strong thoughts on their relations with Arconette.

While tempers ran high, the tank tracks abruptly deviated. They made an abrupt and sharp turn towards the center of the Contaminated Zone and continued off that way. The destroyed Avatars stopped littering the landscape, and there seemed to be no signs of battle beyond that point.

This must have been where the Avatars and the army were fighting when Teresa and her party attacked that Assembly Station. It was relieving to see their plan had in fact worked, at least to some extent. They just needed to find where the army went after this.

"Where do we go now?" Preston asked, frowning as he was deep in thought. "We know they were here, but where did they go after?"

"I'm not sure." Teresa said, still thinking about how to go about their current situation. "How long has it been since we got the Avatars' attention?"

"We were there for a while, the army would have had plenty of time to run off." Jake said.

"You can send me out to look for them." Preston offered. "I have the highest Agility and I have <Dash>, I'll run at top speed. I can scout an area out on my own a lot faster than with other people."

"You sure you're up to that?" Teresa asked.

"Positive."

"Well if anyone else has any better ideas, speak up now." Teresa said, looking around at the party. No one spoke up. Tracking was difficult enough for someone who didn't know what to look for. In the rocky terrain that was completely different from the forest they were used to, they really had no idea where to start.

"I'm going to sweep the area as best I can, if they find you guys here send a bright <Facilitated Restoration> in the sky, as a matter of fact would you mind refreshing that and <Magic Wellspring>?" Preston asked, while Teresa proceeded to use both spells on her ally. "Thanks."

Preston took off, activating <Dash> to rapidly approach his top speed. He sprinted over a hill and used his abilities to maximize his pace. He vanished from their line of sight in under a minute, even their improved Perception.

With nothing better to do, Teresa focused on restoring her resources while catching her dad up to speed. He was pretty inquisitive about the details of the Contaminated Zone, especially the things they learned through Arconette.

"They said the Contaminated Zone grows faster than humans can keep up, how do you know that's true?" He asked.

"A couple people were tracking the expansion of the zone, and it was accelerating. Leaving a normal Portal unattended results in the Portal gradually growing in levels, but in the Contaminated Zone Portals spawn at a high level and continue to grow at an even faster pace. Additionally, Chernobyl itself is capable of producing Avatars and machines at a high level as well. The zone spreads across a perimeter too vast to reliably patrol." Teresa explained.

"So you can confirm yourself that they were telling the truth?"

"We've traveled across the Contaminated Zone, so we know how large it is. You do too. It's the size of a country by this point. The Mall certainly doesn't have the resources to contain it, it's already a struggle for most people to even enter the Contaminated Zone. Why are you asking?"

"I just wanted to make sure you verified what they told you. I have a few concerns is all."

"That's fair, they've been pretty sketchy and I have a few concerns of my own, believe me." Teresa said. Her dad had always been a little on the paranoid side, though not in an insane way or anything. He liked to keep his back to the wall so he knew which way the knives were coming, whatever that meant. Honestly, Teresa herself probably got a lot of her extremely cautious tendencies from her dad, prepare for the worst and hope for the best. "Anything else you're thinking about? You said you wanted to talk about something earlier."

Randall's eyes darted between Teresa and her party and back, seeming hesitant.

"I'm not sure it would be my place to say anything, I just met a lot of your friends and I don't want to leave a bad impression." He admitted.

"It's fine, I'd rather hear an unjustified concern than ignore a problem that may come back to bite me." Teresa said. She was a little worried what it had to do with her party, but an outside perspective was nice from time to time.

"They have a lot of faith in you, and that's great. Can you tell me about why you chose <Retaliate> as a skill?"

"Yeah. If I use some of my HP, I can use some of my spells at a lower output with the same result. As a result, I use less Mana in exchange for HP while accomplishing the same thing."

"Sure, but you're also putting a timer on yourself to end the fight. You mentioned earlier you wanted to fight for longer periods of time, but from the sound of it this would still keep a hard limit on that. In fights where you need to conserve HP, it wouldn't work."

"I mean, you have a point." Teresa admitted, thinking about it. <Retaliate> did leave just as many problems as it solved. "Is that what you were concerned about?"

"Not exactly. When you were discussing what skill to get with your party, what did they think?"

"It was between that and a Weapon Mastery skill if I remember correctly." Teresa said. "Something like <One Armed Weaponry> would improve my technique for a small Stamina cost, but it would help me improve the same way <Intuitive Aim> does. I think I felt like going for <Retaliate>, and then convinced everyone."

"There is the issue." Randall said, making a brief expression with his hands. "You said you wanted other perspectives, but when was the last time you wanted to pick a skill and decided to choose a different one because your party convinced you otherwise?"

"I mean…" Shit. He had another point. When was the last time her party didn't just convince her, but actually changed her opinion on something?

"Teresa just tends to make good decisions." Sarah said, shrugging. "Hard to convince someone otherwise when their judgement is generally reliable."

"Except I think a Weapon Mastery skill would have suited her needs better. You all have a lot of trust in my daughter, and I'm glad she's found good people. Still, no one is infallible. We all make mistakes, and that's a part of being human. Really, I cannot emphasize enough how happy I am that she hasn't been alone through all of this, and normally I wouldn't say anything. Issue is, lives are on the line. Your implicit trust in Teresa is perfect during combat, but when things slow down and you have the time to think about stuff, it can kind of turn you into a 'yes man.' I'm not saying you guys should get into arguments, I think what you've made of yourselves is actually incredibly impressive, I just wanted to give my own two cents. The utility from having a party doesn't just come from someone having your back and supporting your decisions, they're also useful for having someone who's willing to disagree with you." Randall explained.

"So you're saying we should disagree with Teresa a little more?" Jake asked, an eyebrow raised.

"It sounds bad, she is my daughter and I love her, but yes. Normally, this would be something for people your age to learn on their own through years of life experience, but given our situation I don't think withholding certain life lessons to let you experience them for yourself would be beneficial. I'm not saying you should go out of your way to disagree with my daughter, she's the most creative person I've ever met in my life and I can easily say I am proud of her, but be willing to say no."

Teresa took a few moments to process what he was saying. In a way, he was kind of right. When was the last time she had changed her mind about something as a result of her party's opinions? She had certainly taken their thoughts into account while contemplating multiple choices, but when it came to skill selections she had certainly been pretty unwavering in her choices. Teresa knew she had made mistakes in the past, whether it was putting off <Purify> or selecting <Retaliate> over another option that would have suited her needs better, but having a party was supposed to help offset that problem.

How much of that was her own fault? Her party had voiced concerns over her choices in the past, and maybe she had been ignoring them a little too much. It wasn't a catastrophic issue that threatened their very way of being, but Teresa was no stranger to introspection. She was willing to have her mind changed if her idea was blatantly bad, but between multiple appealing choices maybe she was a little too unwavering.

It was something she just needed to think about and be aware of in the future. She was glad her dad had pointed it out, even if it might not be a huge deal yet.

They had plenty of time before Preston would return, probably. Even if her dad turned out to be wrong, it wouldn't hurt for her to think about how she considered her friends' opinions, and even vice versa.

It was something she'd be more considerate about in the future.

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