Shadows flickered along the ground as countless Albino Gorillas navigated through the canopy high above Teresa. She noted that some of their levels had already increased, several were now level 12 or even 13. The last time she encountered them, the highest had been level 11, so having multiple gorillas reach this point was a sign they were progressing too.

Teresa kind of wondered how that worked. The Scilians had clearly gone through their own Tutorial, had the Albino Gorillas? They didn't have any Tutorial gear, so most likely that wasn't the case. Where did they even come from? Teresa wasn't exactly familiar with gorilla demographics pre-System, but there was no way there were this many Albino Gorillas. They also definitely had two arms back then, not four.

"I want to make a deal!" Teresa called out, hoping <Translate> would work. She repeated herself, speaking much slower so the magic could kick in. Teresa had returned to the general area she and her party had appeared in right after the Tutorial, though it wasn't the exact location. She just ran in the general direction and looked for gorillas while killing a few monsters. She had even found another party of people along the way and told them about the settlement, though she still hadn't seen any high level people.

A few gorillas dropped down from the trees above, and Teresa even recognized one by its missing arm. It kept its eyes averted, and Teresa wasn't sure if it was angry or embarrassed. A total of three gorillas had dropped down to meet her, likely the same three she had originally interacted with. One pointed at her, lightly crunched both hands, then shook them horizontally.

What do you want?

Teresa tried not to show her surprise at how well her <Translate> was working, and she wondered what was up with that. It barely worked for the Scilians, but was much smoother with the gorillas. Was it because of how different the forms of communication were? There were different kinds of sign language, were the gorillas communicating with ASL? Whatever, she could think about it later when she wasn't in the middle of brokering a deal with giant gorillas that could probably use magic.

"If I see an Albino Gorilla in danger, I'll help them out. If you see a human in danger, you'll help them out. That is all." It felt like a reasonable enough deal, at least to start out with. This was still only day one, though the sun wouldn't be in the sky for much longer. The gorilla began making gestures with its hands once more.

Humans will kill us. Deal not good.

Shit, there was that. Humans might get saved by the gorillas only to think they were monsters too, that could cause a lot of problems. Teresa would prefer to avoid any conflicts with legitimately sapient creatures, in her opinion there was not much difference between killing a gorilla with the Intelligence of a human and killing just a regular human. Kind of hypocritical considering she literally burned an arm off a gorilla, but that gorilla had tried to kill her first. If a human tried that, the human would probably be dead.

"They might try, I will not lie to you. However, you also tried to kill me. I will let that slide, I'll forget about it entirely. I will do that, if and only if you agree to do the same should a human try to kill you. Most of them are weaker than me, but I would recommend not making any sudden movements towards them." Teresa replied. It was kind of heavy handed the way she went about it, but at least she was honest. A good leader would probably handle it differently, but Teresa wasn't a leader. "For the record, this deal is with me. Not with the other humans."

The gorillas began conversing quickly with their hands, too fast for Teresa's <Translate> to keep up. They spoke amongst themselves for a minute, the conversation evidently very heated. Some of the gorillas were clearly very angry, while others seemed to be incredibly nervous. Teresa wasn't sure when she got good at reading gorilla facial expressions, but she was willing to just blame it on magic.

New deal. How about we don't kill each other? The gorilla responded, being deliberately very slow with their signing. We don't kill humans, you don't kill us.

"I accept on the condition that we do not close the door for additional negotiations." Teresa answered, matching the gorilla's slow pace. This was already a pretty big win, she wasn't sure if the gorillas had been actively choosing to fight humans but they definitely wouldn't be now.

She was also deliberately trying to sound formal. Teresa was pretty terrible at that, but she was pretty sure she nailed it that time. On the condition that we do not close the door for additional negotiations, what a banger. She was kind of proud of herself for that one, sounding all fancy.

We will see. The gorilla responded. They began to leave, ending the negotiations for the day. That was kind of quick, but it was a start. Shit, was the System going to see her negotiating with other species and think that made her a qualified leader or something? She was obviously just a concerned citizen, nothing more. Well, a concerned citizen with the power to wipe out a small civilization, but the second part wasn't that important.

Teresa was trying to think long term. If the gorillas were smart enough to be considered equal to an everyday person, then odds are somewhere down the line they might even be considered just regular citizens. Humans weren't the only sapient species anymore, to Teresa that hopefully just meant they would be able to coexist.

She was also aware of the more pessimistic option of war, but she was already putting in work to avoid that. Humans barely could get along with each other, how well would they get along with Albino Gorillas? Scilians? Whatever else was out there? Honestly, humans fucking it up was a totally real possibility, she just had to hope it wouldn't come to that.

Teresa decided it was time to check out the settlement. The human one, that is. The sun rose in the east and set in the west, and depending on where exactly on Earth she was she had a pretty okay idea of the cardinal directions now. She had personally scoured a large area south and southwest of the human settlement. Directly south were the Albino Gorillas, and southwest were the Scilians in their strange swamp.

It was a shame there wasn't a convenient level 35 monster threatening the Albino Gorillas that Teresa could take care of, that would have totally helped out negotiations a lot. At least they didn't think she was a war goddess or something, yeah she really didn't like that word. It was just a word that grossed her out for a reason she couldn't really explain, at the very least when it was being used to describe her. Calling Athena or Artemis from Greek mythology a goddess made sense, no problem there. Calling Teresa a goddess? Ew, gross. Kill it with fire.

She ran towards the settlement, wondering if she had done enough today. How many people had she actually saved? Considering the lack of high level humans around, probably not as many as she should have. Teresa had covered such a large area, and there just hadn't been very many people. Why was that? There were eight billion humans, even if she spread them all out in groups of five around the planet, shouldn't she have run into more by now?

It's not like she was familiar with the math behind it. She had once seen a video about how every human on Earth could be piled into the Grand Canyon, maybe there just weren't as many people as she thought there was. Where even was she? Like, where on Earth? Was she on Earth still? Probably not, considering the weird trees and the strange swamp.

The valley became visible, and soon she saw the human settlement. There were significantly more people there now, making her realize they were probably going to have problems with food and water. Shit, was that Scilian swamp water drinkable? It was kind of sketchy, they should probably boil it or something first. That was how you cleaned water, boiling it, right? Something like that.

Where was her party? Were they back yet? Teresa's eyes darted from one person to the next, trying to find a familiar face. Madeline was there, talking with a group of people Teresa had not seen before. What about the others? Her heart began to sink, until she spotted them on the opposite side of the camp.

Teresa ran down and around the camp, figuring it would be faster to run around to the right side of the camp rather than walk across all of it. Pretty much everyone within the settlement saw her coming, and she recognized a lot of parties that she had guided. That was relieving, a part of her had been concerned since she hadn't actually escorted them back herself.

Jake, Preston, and Sarah all saw her approach and smiled, though their appearance seemed hollow. They had a few wounds that looked like they were treated by a low level healer that hadn't completely restored them, but a quick healing spell from Teresa would fix that.

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"Hey, you guys alright?" Teresa asked, firing multiple instances of <Facilitated Restoration> rapidly at her party.

"Yeah, we're doing good." Jake responded, though it was clear he was absolutely lying. Their eyes were all sunken in, and a quick use of <Identify> revealed-

Holy shit.

"How the fuck are you guys level 8 already?" Teresa asked, eyes wide. Jake and Preston had both reached level 8, while Sarah was right behind them at level 7. Teresa herself had leveled up pretty quickly once she was free to hunt monsters in the second stage on her own accord, but she hadn't been expecting this.

"When we went out, we found a party." Preston started, his eyes averted. "They were the first people we found. All British, low levels. Like, level 0 low. We told them about the settlement and tried to bring them back, but we ran into a group of monsters along the way."

Teresa waited for the rest of the story, but Preston trailed off. Seeing that he wasn't going to continue, Sarah finished the rest of the story.

"Out of all five of them, we only managed to bring one person back. Guy named Simon. There were a bunch of level 13 Stinger Wasps, they were massive. Jake's <Taunt> got most of their attention, I kept shooting them down and Preston was cutting down any that got too close, but it wasn't enough. There were eight of us in total, but by the end there were only four. Those wasps, they had poison. Jake was able to tank it, but if anyone else even got nicked a little bit they would swell up until they were paralyzed." Sarah explained. "They were too fast to run from, so we had to kill the whole swarm. The other healer, he went down first. Then the light warrior, then the ranger, then the mage."

"Fucking hell, I'm so sorry." Teresa said, trying to find the right words. They had tried to save lives just to watch them die. Teresa had spent a lot of time in the Tutorial purely motivated by saving Sarah, how would it have gone if Sarah had just died?

"We got one." Jake said, trying to be optimistic. "We got Simon. He's alright, well as alright as he can be. I don't know, none of us knew what to say to him. Sorry your party all died, but at least you made it? Yeah, that wouldn't fly. He's in a tent over there, we figured it might be best to give him some space for a bit."

"Hey, you guys saved someone's life. That's more than what most people are doing right now when everyone's just trying to save their own." Teresa told them, hoping they weren't going to beat themselves up over this too badly. It was true, Teresa's honest opinion about the situation was that if four of them died on the way back then all five of them certainly would have died sooner or later without her party's help. She couldn't just say that though, that would be incredibly insensitive.

"Then we went back out." Jake said, surprising Teresa. "We found some more people, apparently they had seen you somewhere. They were from Thailand, though only one of them spoke any English. One of them died on the way back to another group of monsters, a woman named Mali. The others, Saylee, Michael, and a mute man named Apisit, they went with us to look for more people."

"By the end of the day, we had a searching party of twelve. We kept finding more people, we would bring them back then some of them would come with us to help. Even with a bunch of us, sometimes we would lose somebody to a sneak attack." Jake continued. "We saved a lot of lives, we know that. It doesn't change the fact we lost a lot too."

Fucking hell, were these guys fighting a war? From the sounds of it, they may as well have. A part of Teresa was angry with herself for not going with them, but it was undeniable that as a group they had saved a lot of people.

"There's a few more things you should know if you haven't heard about them already." Preston said, getting Teresa's attention. "First things first, have you heard about the Portals?"

"Oh yeah, the Monster Spawners." Teresa replied, knowing exactly what he was talking about. Preston nodded.

"Yeah, that's basically what they are. For the love of all things living Teresa, if you see one, destroy it. One of the people we ran into had the idea to try mapping out the area a bit, we marked where a few of them were. Teresa, we literally saw one appear out of thin air. The air started shimmering, then a massive orb started growing out of nowhere. It started out at level 10 so we were able to destroy it with the twelve of us, but if they go unchecked we'll be overrun by monsters in no time."

"Shit, I didn't know they just appeared like that. I destroyed a few already, and there's a few things you should also know about." Teresa gave them the rundown of everything to the south and southwest, including her encounters with the Scilians and the Albino Gorillas.

"Already playing diplomat, so you really are gonna be the leader huh?" Sarah said with a smile. Teresa frowned.

"How do you know about that?" Teresa asked, confused. "I don't even really get what that's all about, I touched the monolith in the center of camp and it just gave me the quest. I'm not actually going to lead a settlement guys, I don't know how to do that shit."

"Well, from the way it's looking you're probably going to." Sarah told her. "Everyone already knows about it. Apparently, if you aren't considered a qualified candidate then you can't enter the race. There's some weird rule to it, non-qualified candidates can only enter the race when no qualified candidates are present. Once a qualified candidate enters, no one else is allowed to run for leader except for other qualified candidates."

"Fuck, I don't even know why I'm considered a qualified candidate. I figured it's probably because I beat the Tutorial, but that shouldn't make me qualified. Really, we should have someone who knows what they're doing leading the settlement." Teresa told her, making her stance clear.

"Well, it's between you and one other person right now. Only issue is, nobody knows who the other guy is. We can view the names of all the qualified candidates, but the other guy hasn't said anything or been seen at all. Kind of sketchy if you ask me, so between you two I would prefer you." Sarah said. "Here, we can go check it out. Walk and talk."

"One more thing, I swear it's the last thing." Preston interjected. "The woman who was making the maps and stuff, apparently she's some space scientist or something. She saw one of the kids here had a protractor for some reason, so she used it for an experiment with some sticks. Apparently she measured the difference in angles left by the shadows of the sticks, I don't really get it but somehow she was able to use that to determine the circumference of the Earth."

"Okay, so like is the planet a different size or something? I don't really notice a difference in gravity or anything." Teresa replied as they walked to the center of the settlement.

"The new circumference of the Earth is somewhere around 2.5 million miles." Preston said. "Teresa, that's almost the size of the sun."

"How the hell does that work?" Teresa asked, eyes wide. "Last I checked, everything seems to be falling at the same speed. I haven't really checked or anything, but everything feels the same."

"No idea, I'm willing to bet it has something to do with magic." Preston said. Teresa laughed.

"You know what, that's my go-to excuse too. Yeah, probably magic."

They made their way to the monolith in the center of the settlement, walking past multiple tents and people. The camp had become far more dense, likely due to the influx of people. There was a tent next to the monolith where Teresa had left her stuff, and she spotted William coming over to greet her.

"Welcome back, sounds like you did a lot out there." William said, a big smile on his face. Teresa waved at him, glad to see the man was still around.

"I guess so, I still feel like I could have done more." Teresa replied, then immediately regretting it. She didn't want to sound like such a downer, but thankfully William didn't seem bothered.

"Do you know how many people you've saved today? I don't, but I've been hearing about it a bunch. Your friends too. There's a whole lot of people here that wouldn't be if not for you kiddos, you all did a damn fine job." He said gently. "Most people never save anyone's life. You want to know how many lives I've saved? One, gave a guy the heimlich at a bar in Edinburgh a few decades back, but other than that zero."

Teresa snorted, trying to imagine the elderly Scottish man in front of her going on a bar run.

"I see you set up a tent for me, thank you William. I appreciate it." Teresa told him, approaching it so she could set down another <Inventory> full of Mana crystals. She also had some stuff in her backpack, but she was pretty sure she lost a few of those crystals in the fight against the Swamp Elemental. Inside was enough space for her to dump her growing stash of loot along with a spot for her to lay down and sleep.

"Well, I've been meaning to ask you." William started. "I've heard something about you being the leader of this place, something to do with that monolith there. The System or whatever gave me a bunch of information about it, but I still don't know how to work the damn thing. Are you actually going to? Apparently the other guy has been completely absent."

"I don't think so William, not unless I really have to. There are plenty of other people who would know more about that sort of thing than me, I'm not cocky enough to think running this place would be a walk in the park." Teresa told him. William smiled at that.

"Well, you do whatever you think is best. Don't let those other kids pressure you into something you don't want to do. That's how my friend Jerry got into improv, biggest mistake of his life." Teresa laughed, glad that William got it. She glanced at the monolith, feeling a little curious. Well, she might as well take a peek.

She placed her hand on the structure, and a few screens appeared in front of her. Teresa began navigating through the UI, mentally pressing one button after another until she eventually found the qualified candidates list. Her name was at the top of the list, probably because she was the first to accidentally register. Under hers was the only other qualified candidate, a name she did not recognize.

"Who's Mijo?"

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