The burn marks along the ground shot behind Teresa as she followed Madeline's trail back to her party. There were few sounds along this path, and it was much quieter than it had been earlier. Teresa remembered hearing before the System that if the animals in a forest got either really loud or really silent, that was a sign of danger. What was going on?

Weirdly enough, she made it back to her party without incident. Teresa was gassed at this point, for the first time in a while. Her Stamina reserves were depleted. She ran a lot in the desert, but that normally didn't have the same degree of urgency.

"Where's Madeline?" Jake asked as Teresa put her hands on her knees breathing heavily. She raised a finger telling him to give her a second to catch her breath, and thankfully it really did only take a few seconds to do so.

"With Mackenzie. Everything's okay, and I've got a place for us." Teresa replied. "The campground I mentioned? Apparently it's a System thing, it's safe from monsters for a week. It has a bunch of kids there who are all being taken care of by old people. I'm gonna take you guys there, then go find anyone else nearby who might need help."

The party visibly relaxed, everyone was glad to hear Mackenzie was alright. Everyone began exchanging looks with each other for a moment, all of them collectively agreeing on something.

"Alright, well let's head to the camp and then we can help with finding people too." Jake said, everyone else seeming on board with this plan.

"Hang on, you guys are like, level 3. Not even that actually, Jake is level 3." Teresa told them, eyebrows raised.

"Don't do the whole 'I'm just trying to protect you guys' spiel, it's lame and overdone." Preston said. "Earlier I said my universal ranking was in the five hundred millions. You want to know what it is now? Four fifty. I think it's ranking everyone on Earth by some sort of metric, and people are dying Teresa. I actually gained a level earlier, but my rank was already rising before that. Your rank is ridiculously high, it was what? 969? I bet it's still 969. You don't have a live feed of people dying just available all the time man, I can't sit still in a camp while literally millions of people are getting killed."

"I don't want to sit still either." Sarah spoke up. "I know I kind of fumbled the bag in the Tutorial, but I want to make it up. Even if we just help one person out, that is one person who isn't dead because we decided to take a risk."

"Fine, but I still think you guys should take someone with you." Teresa said, now walking alongside them following the scorch marks. "There's bound to be other competent people too, try to get some people to join the party. Also make sure you don't get lost, make marks in the trees or something. Oh, and another thing, we have to think about food-"

"We get it, don't worry man." Preston said, smiling. "Well, actually that last thing is something we should definitely talk about. Do you think we can eat monsters or something?"

"I don't know, that's another problem we have to figure out soon." Teresa answered. "I have the highest Fortitude and I have healing magic, so when we get the chance I'll try eating it. One thing, I don't really know how to prepare an animal, let alone a monster. What part of it do we even cook? The skin? Are the organs the edible part? I know some dishes get real freaky with it, but I don't know shit about that."

"Alright, do any of us know how to prepare an animal?" Jake asked, looking around at the party. No one spoke up. "Shit."

"I'm sure we can figure it out." Sarah said optimistically. "Sorry Teresa, but it'll probably taste terrible."

"It's fine, I ate hand-warmed hamburger meat in the Tutorial. I'm used to it at this point." Teresa said.

"Why didn't you just use the kitchen? It was completely functional." Jake asked, confused.

"I had to go deep into the desert for the second stage of the Tutorial. For a long while I ate everything that wasn't frozen, but it eventually went bad so I had to switch to the other options. By that point I had <Embers> though, so I could kinda warm it up if I controlled it really carefully. My hands are basically really shitty stovetops."

The party continued on back to the camp, no monsters attacking whatsoever. Teresa found that suspicious, considering in the Tutorial pretty much everything attacked on sight.

"Teresa, I think you should just go on looking for people now man." Preston said, looking at a screen. "Really, you don't have to worry about us dude, there's gotta be someone who needs your help more than we do."

"Aw, already trying to get rid of me?" Teresa asked sarcastically with a smile. Preston laughed.

"Yeah, you're completely unbearable. We can't stand you, get lost loser." He replied equally sarcastic.

"Stay safe!" Sarah said, as Teresa began running already. They were right, she shouldn't be overprotective of them right now. People were dying, and a lot of them. Shit, was her family alright? Preston had said millions were dying, and the more Teresa thought about the more she realized he was probably wrong.

Way more than millions of people were dying. The way Teresa thought about it, there were eight billion people on Earth. She could totally see one in eight people dying in these conditions, hell it was probably worse than that.

Teresa opened her ranking screen, anxious about what it would say.

968

What? She was definitely 969, did someone above her die? She certainly didn't gain any levels, well actually her <Dash> had reached level 8, her <Mana Control> level 12, and her <Magic Wellspring> level 10 but they had all been close to a level. Was that enough for her to rise a rank?

Or did someone stronger than her die?

Teresa was running perpendicular to the scorch trail Madeline had made, meaning she was heading out into an unexplored direction. She kept track of where the settlement was, but when she really thought about it she could kind of feel where it was. Did that have to do with the stupid quest thing? It totally had to do with the stupid quest thing, what else would it be?

When Teresa had been sweeping through a massive area, she had only really run into one party. Would she even find anyone? How many people were nearby? Teresa tried to make the most of her absurd 49 Perception, straining her ears to listen for any voices or commotion.

Eventually she heard fighting, but when she went to check it out it was just a few Albino Gorillas and Treants getting into a brawl. Did they not get along? Where were all the Treants coming from? The ogres had a spawner, did the Treants? Teresa hadn't really thought about it, but did the Albino Gorillas have a spawner?

Finally, she found something. There was a group of nine people, and their levels were disproportionate. Five of them were level 0, while four were all level 1. Teresa went straight towards them, stopping directly in front of the group.

"Hey, you guys speak English?" She asked, skidding to a halt as she rounded a tree. One of the girls yelled FUCK in surprise, so that answered her question. "Great, alright next question. None of you guys are like, serial killers or anything right?"

"Uh, no?" One of them answered, eyes wide.

"Well, that was kind of a shit question, my bad. A serial killer wouldn't just admit to it. I really should have thought this out better, I do that a lot. Anyways, somewhere over in that direction-" Teresa pointed out in the woods at a slightly different angle from where the group had been traveling. "-there's a settlement that's safe from monsters. A bunch of kids and elderly are there, so if you're looking for anyone along those lines that's a good place to check. Have you guys seen anyone else? Any Monster Spawners maybe? Oh, shit, you probably don't have <Appraise>, a Monster Spawner looks like a giant supernova orb sorta like the class selection thingy."

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"How do we know it's not a trap?" Another man asked skeptically. Fair question, but there was an easy answer. Teresa activated shotgun <Embers> and pointed it away from the group. After a second of charging, an explosion of flames shot out from her hand burning everything in its path before the Elemental Mana fizzled out. One of them muttered fuck we're cooked under his breath, but Teresa's Perception was enough to still hear him.

"If I wanted to kill you, I would have already." Teresa answered. The party was silent for a moment.

"You said that way, right?" The skeptical man asked, his finger outstretched.

"Yeah."

"Alright, thanks." He said, and he began heading in that direction. Everyone seemed a little hesitant, but followed him nonetheless.

"So no Monster Spawners?" Teresa asked once more.

"I don't think so."

"Oh, alright. Well, bye?" They went their separate ways, the conversation having an extremely awkward tone to it.

Teresa was honestly surprised that went well, she really needed to work on her social skills. Just as she was thinking this, she saw she had another notification. Her <Translate> had leveled up. Okay, that was funny timing and all but they had been speaking English. Why did it even gain experience?

She thought about it for a bit as she explored more of the forest, and eventually she came to the conclusion that it probably had something to do with accents. It was still kind of weird to her that it worked on accents too, could <Translate> actually capture the right vibe that someone was trying to give off? How literal was it? Teresa knew some languages had a formal and informal way of speaking, how did it translate to those languages?

Spanish had formal and informal words, if Teresa talked to someone who only spoke Spanish which version would they hear? Formal or informal? Or was it based on how Teresa said it in English? What if someone was bilingual, which language would stuff get translated to then?

Magic was complicated.

She came across another group not long after, this time being attacked by a salamander the size of a pickup truck. Teresa totally would have expected a salamander to spit fire like a Wyvern-Fish, but instead it seemed capable of controlling the ground. It didn't make walls of dirt or manipulate the earth in the same way that a skeletal mage did, but rather made the ground behave like quicksand.

A party of five were slowly sinking into the ground while the salamander watched, waiting for them to be completely submerged.

{Giant Salamander (F) [Attuned: Ground] (lv 25)}

This one was actually a pretty high level, at least compared to what Teresa had seen so far. Additionally, the party sinking into the ground all were around level 10, which was not too bad either. Teresa kind of wondered why the Giant Salamander didn't just jump down and bite their heads off, but its stats were probably all focused on Intelligence and Wisdom.

The Giant Salamander was also the first monster since that Wyvern-Fish to be "attuned," meaning it was probably really dangerous. Well, dangerous for most people.

<Embers> burnt a hole through the Giant Salamander, the flames killing it almost instantly. The ground stopped being liquid, and some members of the party became capable of pulling themselves out of the ground. Right, not everyone got points in Strength, and none of these people had gone through a class change yet.

"Anyone hurt?" Teresa asked, <Facilitated Restoration> active in one hand. The party looked at her, a range of emotions present on their faces

"Not really, my <Healing Touch> can probably take care of it." A man in blue healer robes said. Teresa decided that was probably for the better, he could use the experience more than Teresa. "Thanks for the save, though. I'm Leo."

"Teresa."

"Pleasure to meet yah. Shit, I can't even see your level, I haven't had that one happen before."

Wait, what?

"You can't?" Teresa asked, surprised. That hadn't happened to her either yet, and it also let Teresa know they had made it through at least stage 1 of the Tutorial. That meant they probably had a full set of <Identify>, <Appraise>, and <Inventory> spread out amongst them.

"Nah, I can't either." A woman said. She was wearing the same outfit as Sarah, so Teresa knew that had to be the group's ranger. "Name's Chloe by the way."

The rest of the group introduced themselves in turn. The tank was a guy named Theo, the light warrior was a tall woman named Amelia, and the mage was a guy named Noah. Teresa absentmindedly thought that she was going to go insane trying to remember everyone's names, but thankfully she had her super memory.

"Nice to meet you all. Out that way is a settlement you guys should head to…" Teresa gave them the quick rundown of the situation. Everything went pretty normal until she asked a certain question. "... so yeah, as long as you guys aren't serial killers it should be fine. Anyways, have any of you seen a Monster Spawner by any chance?"

"Yeah actually, we have." Amelia the ranger said. Wait, no, the ranger's name was Chloe. Damn it, come on super memory do your thing it's barely even been a minute. "There was one just about two kilometers that way, so not very far. It was level 30 though, so I'd avoid it if I were you."

"Oh, that should be fine then." Teresa said. "I can't just let it stay there spawning high level monsters in, that'll get people killed. I'm just gonna loot this salamander then head over and take care of it real quick. Oh yeah, another thing. Do any of you know how to prepare an animal to cook?"

"I know how to butcher deer. I'm not quite sure how that would equate to monsters though, but I can give it a shot." Theo the tank said. Alright, she got the name right on that one. "If you're hungry we still got some stuff from the Opera House."

"The what?" Teresa asked.

"You know, Sydney Opera House?" He continued. Teresa shook her head.

"No, my Tutorial was at the Statue of Liberty in the middle of a desert." She said. Theo snorted.

"What were you doing there, that's American?"

"Yeah, I'm American. <Translate> affects accents."

"No shit, it does? Well fuck me I didn't know that. The rest of you are Australian too, right?" Theo confirmed the rest of his party were indeed Australian, except for Amelia who was actually Kiwi. "How did we not know you were from New Zealand this whole time?"

"I was wondering why the Tutorial was the Sydney Opera House, I figured the System just didn't have anywhere in New Zealand for a Tutorial." Amelia said. "Shit, you guys are Australian? How has this never come up in conversation?"

"Don't worry about it, I still don't know my party's last names, even though it literally caused me a major problem earlier today. I keep thinking I should ask but I never remember to." Teresa told her as she stood over the dead Salamander. She pulled out her kitchen knife and began searching for a Monster Core. It was attuned, surely it had to have something special right?

"We were wondering why our <Translate> skills kept slowly gaining experience. We just figured any talking was enough to level it up." Noah the mage said. Teresa raised an eyebrow at that, not because of how ridiculous it was that they didn't know Amelia was from a different country but because a decently leveled <Translate> skill would be incredibly useful. Eventually, Teresa found a brown gem near the head of the salamander.

<Ground-Attuned Mana Crystal (F) lv 25>

Type: Material

Can be used in medium quality ground based general enchantments and magical crafts.

The description was very similar to a regular Mana Crystal, but it still showed that it was attuned. Another thing that was interesting was that it was a crystal, not a core. The ogres had a Monster Core in them, the Spawner had been what gave her Mana Crystals. Why did the salamander not have a Monster Core?

"How many high levels have you guys seen? My party has been running around trying to help people too but they're still low levels, if I knew there were level 25's in the forest I probably wouldn't have agreed to let them do that." Teresa asked.

"We saw the Monster Spawner and this one here, otherwise everything has been manageable. How are you higher level than your party, didn't you go through the Tutorial together?" Leo the healer asked. Alright, Teresa was getting better with the names. The odds of forgetting their names by tomorrow were pretty high, but she could just rewatch her memories if need be. It wasn't an ego thing or anything, Teresa had just met a lot of people today even if most of them hadn't introduced themselves.

"We went through most of stage 1 together, they had to drop out at the end of it. After that I soloed the rest." Teresa explained. It looked like multiple of them were about to continue talking, but Teresa cut them off. "Alright, I really should get going to check out that spawner. Settlement is that way, if you run into a Sarah, Preston, or Jake tell them about the level 25 salamander. There might be a Madeline, but I doubt she left the camp. See yah!"

With that, Teresa used <Dash> and dipped out of there. She couldn't just leave a level 30 spawner near the settlement, someone would certainly die from it sooner or later. She was going to destroy it.

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