After a moment of hesitation, Teresa used <Identify> on the creatures.

{Scilian (F) (lv 0)}

Four of them were level 0, though the light warrior of the group was level 1. Their clothing and equipment were modified drastically from the standard Tutorial gear, made to fit their bodies. Their appearance caused a very contradictory reaction in Teresa's instincts. On the one hand, the dog-like fur on the creatures made her almost want to pet them. On the other hand, well, they were half squid creature. It was like a cursed version of a centaur, though as far as first impressions went Teresa was not doing a great job.

There were dead monsters all around, and she was covered in their blood. She wasn't sure what these creatures had seen, but there was a nonzero chance they saw her murderize a bunch of monsters with her bare hands. If another human had seen her, she probably wouldn't be able to just explain it away with I was upset and hungry. She wondered if these were like the Albino Gorillas, animals with the ability to communicate. However, the gorillas didn't have Tutorial gear.

"Uh, hey there?" Teresa said, trying to fill the awkward silence that had stretched on for a few seconds too long. Shit, did that sound condescending? She kind of spoke like she had just seen a cute dog that may or may not be friendly. Were these things more like a cross between a dog and a horse or more eldritch squid monstrosities? Why couldn't there just be regular centaurs?

Her voice seemed to spook them, and they immediately bent their front knees to kneel. They made a noise similar to a whale's voice, and thankfully <Translate> came through on two words.

War Goddess.

What the fuck? Was her <Translate> having a stroke? Was Teresa having a stroke? One of the… Scilians… reached a squid hand into a bag. Did squids have hands? No, that was a dumb question. These things kind of had hands, but they had a different number of fingers and they all seemed closer to thumbs. They had three skinny arms sticking out each side, making for a total of six.

Teresa was ready for action, but the creature pulled out what looked like bread. It presented the bread to her like it was some sort of divine gift, and spoke again with its strange voice.

Offering.

Alright, this was getting weird. It was already weird, but the weirdness kept one-upping itself and now they were here. What was she even supposed to do in this situation? She obviously wasn't an eldritch squid god, would it be sacrilegious to take their bread? Alternatively, would it be rude not to take it? Maybe they just had a super different culture or something. Additionally, could she even eat it? There was the whole alien-viruses issue again, would <Purify> help when she hasn't even used it normally yet?

Then again, she was hungry enough for the alien bread to look pretty damn good. Eh, fuck it. If she died eating alien bread, that would be a hell of a way to go out. She wiped her bloody hands off a bit on her also messy healer robes and took the bread.

"Thank you?" She said uncertainly, not positive if this was the right move. Just in case, she activated <Purify> on it but nothing happened. The Scilians' eyes all went wide as she activated the spell, making Teresa feel a little surprised they had similar facial expressions to humans. Bracing herself mentally, she took a bite of the bread and it was… really really alright. Like, super duper okay. Kind of doughy, could probably use some butter, but who was she to complain? She just got free food. Mentally, she made a note to avoid killing these guys whenever possible.

She wasn't planning on waging war against a group of squid centaurs, as a matter of fact she was vehemently opposed to killing things that displayed sapience unless they tried to kill her first. She hadn't gotten the chance to talk with Madeline about the morality of monster killing yet, but she felt this was a pretty reasonable take.

"I should tell you, I'm not a god by the way. Uh, me, not god." Teresa said, hoping <Translate> would do its thing. The Scilians stood upright and gestured for Teresa to follow them, and they began walking into the woods. Should she follow them? The whole reason she was out here was because she was searching for people in need, could she really spend time on this?

Then again, this felt pretty important. She could spend a little bit of time with the Scilians, so long as she kept track of time. Hell, they might even be able to help her out with finding people. Same with those Albino Gorillas actually now that she thought about it. Teresa herself had found several parties, but getting more groups of capable people out and about would likely save lives as well. Having good diplomatic relations with the intelligent creatures of the forest would not be a bad move at all.

She tried to talk with the Scilians as they traveled, but conversation was incredibly difficult. <Translate> could only do so much at level 1, and their form of speaking was completely different from a human's. It was a miracle she understood anything so far, but she was working on it. Each time she tried talking with them, her skill gained some experience. It was really slow, but it was better than nothing.

They didn't seem to understand that they needed to talk slowly for the skill to work at low levels. Teresa was trying to figure out how their language worked, as a greater understanding of the core aspects of her skills often helped with their efficacy. She had formed a guess as to why they weren't doing the single word sentence strategy. They spoke in a continuous vocalization, as though their sentences were just one long word. It was like if English didn't have any spaces, and it was spoken by whales.

Teresa had no real way of telling what they were saying just on her own, she would have to be totally dependent on <Translate>. She didn't stop her efforts though, she continued with speaking single words hoping they understood her. She tried introducing herself, telling them she was a human, that she was from a planet called Earth, and she tried asking them questions as well. In reality, she had a lot of questions, but she stuck to the simple ones for now.

Unfortunately, the Scilians rarely responded in a manner that Teresa could decipher. Sometimes she got lucky, hearing words like trial and smite, but she didn't get any context. Those were definitely not words Teresa was hoping to hear, as she couldn't really think of any good context to them.

It also made Teresa think they didn't understand she wasn't some sort of war goddess. Really, it was icky to have them think that and honestly made her uncomfortable. She tried to explain a few times that she was just a human woman, and she was high level giving her a bunch of stats. That was kind of hard to explain in very simple terms that <Translate> could work on, but if she didn't at least try to convince them otherwise she would feel like a scam artist.

Within about twenty minutes, Teresa's <Translate> had reached level 2. Continuous and conscious use of the skill certainly helped, but she was still struggling to understand the Scilians. It was getting to the point where she was about to try and excuse herself to leave, people were dying by the minute. Before she could say anything, the terrain changed drastically.

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The forest she had just been in consisted of a chessboard like pattern, where trees arced into the sky then back into the ground. Where the trees grew into the sky, a canopy blocked out a lot of light resulting in small plants growing underneath. Where the trees burrowed underground, a lot of light was able to find its way to the ground allowing plants to grow massive. The pattern wasn't even, it was more of a drunk chessboard than anything, but that was no longer the case here.

Now, the land had turned into a swamp. It was eerie, as the swamp water was strangely clean and had a very blue hue to it. The area smelled like hand sanitizer mixed with gummy bears, a combination that made no sense to Teresa's brain. She was admittedly pretty thirsty, but she wasn't sure if <Purify> would make the water drinkable. She really needed to get on with figuring that skill out, she kept finding a lot of potential uses for it that were limited by the skill's complete and utter lack of experience.

What caught her eye next was shocking. Tents. There was a settlement here in the swamp, and Teresa spotted numerous tiny Scilian children running around in the camp. The settlement was small, being about half the size of the human settlement. This only raised more questions. Where did these guys come from? Was this some sort of multiverse thing? The System was supposedly multiversal, though honestly most of Teresa's understanding of that subject came from superhero movies.

The Scilians stopped, seemingly afraid to go any further. Teresa frowned, confused. She had already been confused for some time now, but the world never failed to make her even more bamboozled by literally everything. Did they want her to lead the way or something? Was there some sort of Scilian internal conflict that she didn't know about? Alien civil war? Oh fuck, was Teresa the first person to talk to aliens? Take that Neil Armstrong.

Strange water ripples caught Teresa's eye. There was something in the water circling the settlement but never crossing over the Mana dome that protected it. Was there some sort of monster camping their home? Teresa could probably kill it, that was kind of a dick move. Besides, if a powerful alien came across the human settlement and saw a monster prowling the borders, she'd hope it would be willing to help out.

Treat others the way you want to be treated, even Pomeranian squid centaurs. Teresa tried to use <Identify>, but found she couldn't use the skill on the monster without a clear line of sight. The water around it was incredibly foggy, and it had a weird effect on Teresa's vision. If she didn't look directly at it, she wouldn't notice the massive cloud of fog in the otherwise clear blue water. This was totally magic, something that messed with her Perception of the monster.

Well, nothing was going to get done standing around. She felt kind of bad standing in the waist deep water covered in blood, as she was definitely polluting the area. Still, something had to kill whatever that thing was. She tried to use <Dash>, and found it incredibly difficult to move through the swamp. Rather than being fast enough to catch a prop plane on a runway, she was slowed down to teenager completely disregarding the speed limits in a suburban neighborhood.

She pushed through the water, moving towards the creature as quick as she could. Behind her, the Scilians made a noise that matched an emotion too complex for <Translate> to figure out. The monster in the water began to approach her, and she was ready for it. Whatever it was, it had to be small. The water was waist high on Teresa, and she wasn't very tall. The foggy cloud covered a wide area, making Teresa wonder what shape it would be. Maybe it was like a stingray, really flat but large in surface area. Whatever it was, she would punch it in the face.

The water burst into the air as a massive hill of shifting mud and twigs shot out from the water. A stream of mud shot out from the hill towards Teresa, forcing her to literally jump out of the water so she wouldn't get blasted with the attack.

{Scilian Swamp Elemental (F) (lv 35)}

The monster was higher level than even Teresa, making her realize she needed to take this seriously. She began charging up shotgun <Embers> while in the air, just in time for another stream of mud to be shot at her.

Teresa blasted one explosion of flames from her hands, being cautious not to fire in the direction of the settlement. This successfully redirected her out of the way, and she fired the second charge right at the Swamp Elemental.

The spell coated the mud in flames, causing a layer of it to harden into something similar to clay. The monster vibrated, causing a sound that <Translate> interpreted as pain. The clay broke off as the Swamp Elemental began moving, the entire hill darting through the swamp towards Teresa.

Teresa was not going to be faster than this monster in its own terrain. Her only hope was to keep jumping out of the water while trying to fight it. She did her best leap out of the water towards the side at the last moment, activating <Embers> once again. She didn't try to use the shotgun variation of the spell, settling for just trying to coat the Elemental in as much fire as possible.

Two streams of flames shot out, slightly altering Teresa's trajectory in the air. The twin streams scorched the Elemental, making it continue to vibrate angrily. It remained stationary for a moment as Teresa attacked it, but as soon as she hit the ground she realized she was in trouble.

The mud in the water underneath her feet grabbed her by the ankles, pulling her into the ground. She took in a quick breath before her head went underwater, and she panicked thinking about what she should do. She tried firing <Embers> while in the water, but the flames made her surroundings start to boil. She would kill herself long before she killed the Elemental at that rate.

She wasn't sure how long she could hold her breath. Did one of her stats help with that? She hadn't exactly tested this yet, it had never occurred to her. She went over her skills, trying to think of what could work. She activated <Purify>, but it didn't affect the creature. <Dash> made it harder for the creature to hold onto her, but it wasn't enough to get above water again.

The rest of her skills were either healing skills or general skills that improved her quality of life, she was shit out of luck. Fuck, she couldn't put the damn thing in her <Inventory> either. Could she flood her <Inventory> with water? She hadn't experimented with it a lot, and it was already pretty full. She was pretty sure its capacity was based on mass, so she likely wouldn't be able to get nearly enough water into her Soul anyways.

Shotgun <Embers> might work, but that would ideally be a last resort. Who knew how much damage she would do to herself with that? She might blow her own legs off, and she was pretty sure she couldn't grow lost limbs back. Eventually, she came to the conclusion she had three options. In her <Inventory>, she still had her Bottle Of Holding. Its description said it could hold more liquid than the volume of the container would suggest, and it was time to test just how true that was.

If that didn't work, it was either use shotgun <Embers> or a secret third thing she was saving for a rainy day. She pulled out the container and opened the cap, and immediately a massive current of water started rushing into the bottle. It caused a small whirlpool to form around Teresa, lowering the water just enough for her to take another breath. The bottle quickly filled up though, and it was back to being underwater.

She focused on the bottle and tried to make all of the water shoot out of it, and thankfully it worked. She pointed the bottle down and it blasted water out at a ridiculous speed. This combined with her <Dash> enhanced kicking legs allowed her to finally break free from the Elemental's grip and pull herself out from under the water.

Standing up again, Teresa decided on a Hail Mary strategy. She dove headfirst at the Elemental, burrowing into the monster's main body on purpose. She struggled to breath as the mud of the monster began compressing, trying to crush her inside of itself. Teresa's bones cracked as she wiggled her hands deeper into the mud, charging up her shotgun <Embers>. The spell would be fired away from herself, so the odds of getting hurt were decreased.

Two massive explosions went off within the Swamp Elemental, causing mud and debris to go flying everywhere.

You Have Slain {Scilian Swamp Elemental (F) (lv 35)}

Experience Granted

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