"So what have you got?" Teresa asked, referring to Jake's new class choice.

"Well I've got three options, though I know which one I'm leaning towards." He responded, sharing his screen.

Class: Immovable Shield (F+)

Your shield is a structure, your body a support, and your Soul is the foundation. Only powerful attacks can faze you, and let your feet move only when you command them to. Extreme focus on damage mitigation and force absorption.

+2 Strength, +3 Fortitude, +1 Endurance, +1 Vitality, +1 Unallocated per level

Class: Gilded Barbarian (F+)

Your axe wages war as you place yourself on the frontline. Your shield and armor are hard to look away from, and your war cries steal the attention of your enemies. None shall pass you with a clear mind. Their Perception exists only to target you.

+2 Strength, +2 Fortitude, +1 Endurance, +1 Vitality, +1 Agility, +1 Unallocated per level

Class: Axe Wielder (F)

Swing your blade through your enemies who dare stand before you. Your axe will split your foes in two, your attacks are heavy so long as your arms can move.

+3 Strength, +2 Endurance, +1 Agility, +1 Unallocated per level

"Okay so Axe Wielder is obviously getting eliminated, it has the least amount of points and the lamest description." Jake said as everyone was reading over the choices. "Immovable Shield sounds cool, but that's not what I'm going for. Gilded Barbarian sounds like it'll have a lot of skills like <Taunt> or even <Golden Anchor>, which would keep enemies focused on me and not on you guys. It'll also level my Agility so I can scale well with everyone else. Immovable Shield mentions my Soul which suggests it might lead to more magical stuff, but as cool as that sounds I think I prefer being useful."

Jake's <Golden Anchor> skill was one he had been offered quite recently. It latched a golden tether that attached to a single enemy, making it very hard to break out from a certain radius around him. It also cut his Intelligence, Wisdom, and Perception all in half while active, which would be absolutely catastrophic for someone like Teresa. However, Jake didn't need those stats all too much, though dropping down to literally 2 in each of those attributes was pretty horrendous.

It makes thinking incredibly difficult for him, and he becomes very nearsighted to the point where he's almost considered legally blind. It's a very useful skill should an enemy refuse to slip focus on him, but it also meant that said enemy has to be dealt with quickly before Jake goes down himself. That was why Preston had immediately attacked the tethered Elemental in the previous battle. The skill also trapped Jake within a set radius until the skill was canceled, but despite all of the drawbacks it was a very effective tool for the party.

"I think that's a good move dude, then you can finally put your points somewhere other than Agility." Preston said. "Really you should focus on your mental stats a bit, including your Perception. You need to be able to see everything going on and make decisions quickly about where you should be positioning."

"Those are good points, almost good enough to make me forget about how bad you are at playing tank." Jake responded with a smile.

"Dude, tank is hot ass, I don't know how you play Reinhardt. Genji is where it's at." Preston told him.

"Of fucking course you're a Genji main." Sarah said exasperated, shocking Jake and Preston. "Either you're goated and have no life or you're absolute dog shit, no in between."

"Shit, the second we get the internet back we gotta play together so I can outfrag your ass, I bet I smurf your peak." Preston and Sarah continued to argue about video game characters and ranks while Jake selected Gilded Barbarian as his class.

"Alright, do we want to head back or go look for another? Another Monster Spawner might have appeared somewhere nearby, not a lot of people have been around here due to the higher level Portals." Teresa said. "If we don't clear them, monsters will keep spawning at an exponential rate, then we'll be fucked once the Mana dome is gone."

"I don't think it's exponential, it's multiplicative isn't it?" Preston asked. "Like, if the Portals are spawning at a linear rate, and monsters spawn from those Portals at a linear rate, that would be multiplicative right?"

"Shit, yeah I think you're right. Unless the spawn rate of both is affected by the amount of monsters in the area, in which case it would be exponential. I think. I don't know, I can do derivatives and integrals and shit but don't make me actually think about it." Teresa replied, unsure of the correct term. "So what are we thinking?"

"It wouldn't hurt to look around for a while longer, if we don't find anything we'll just head back for the night." Sarah replied. "The faster we level up, the sooner one of us can get <Familial Duty>, at least I hope. I know parents are supposed to be the ones to get it, but didn't Madeline say she could sense her husband really far away? Maybe there's still hope."

"Sorry Preston, you're shit out of luck with that one." Jake teased. "I know damn well you're clinically single."

"Hey, she just goes to another school, you don't know her!" Preston sarcastically responded. "Like you're one to talk, how many hours do you have on Siege?"

"Too many." Jake answered, shaking his head. "Too damn many. Let's go find a Portal."

With that, the party began their journey deeper into the woods. It was nice being around people again, or more specifically people Teresa was comfortable with. A lot of the time they all acted like dicks to each other, but it was never actually serious. While most of the time the conversations were super unserious, there were occasionally genuine talks.

Apparently, Jake's last name was Asano. It was a very Japanese last name, but Jake did not look Japanese at all. His great grandparents had been Japanese, and had passed down the last name to him. His grandfather had wound up raising his mom as a single parent, and then his mom had wound up raising Jake as a single parent as well. Most of the tradition and culture was gone by his generation, but apparently he knew a little bit of Japanese from his grandfather.

Preston's last name was Miller. His family had been pretty small, as both of his parents were estranged from the rest of the family. Apparently their relationship had been frowned upon, and instead of caving into a lot of pressure from relatives they just cut everyone off. Preston and Jake were both only childs, both from the same town in Idaho. Went to the same school, played little league baseball for a year together when they were kids, then after they moved onto different extracurriculars they stayed in touch playing games on their Xboxes and taking the same classes.

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Sarah Brown was a part of a military family. They had moved around a lot growing up, and apparently she had even spent some time in South Korea. Her and her twin sister Sasha had wound up going from one school to another due to the family dynamic, and the only way they could stay in touch with old friends was over the internet. They had both gotten into a lot of games because of it, and apparently they were pretty good. Teresa thought "apparently," because she simply had to take Sarah's word for it.

But conversations about serious things like that were depressing. Nobody knew how many of their friends had died over the last two days, how many of their family members were still alive. Any one of them could be an orphan now, and they wouldn't know it. So instead, the conversations generally steered away from the doom and gloom and closer to shits and giggles.

"Dibs!" Sarah called as they spotted a monster. It was just a single Earth Elemental, likely a straggler from the Portal they had just destroyed. She fired an arrow that shot straight through its head and changed course into the ground. This stunned the monster, who was then shot with the exact same method two more times until it dropped dead.

"Did you use <Collateral> on a single monster?" Jake asked.

"Yeah, I just made the arrow target the ground after. The second hit is way lighter, so it's way more convenient to just pull the arrow out of the ground than out of a dead elemental. Plus it gives my skill experience."

"Fair enough."

"You know, I wonder what Elementals eat." Teresa said, looking at the dead elemental. It was too low level to be worth taking the Monster Core, they weren't even sure what they were for anyways. Her <Inventory> had hit level 13 recently, but there was still limited space after taking out the previous Portal. "Like, do they eat Mana? People? What does a monster's diet look like? How many calories do you think they get in a day?"

"I dunno, but probably people." Sarah said. "That Clubber wanted to eat me after all, so I never really paid it much thought."

"Hang on, do monsters even need to eat?" Preston asked, frowning. "We kept that one Clubber alive for a week, I don't remember feeding it anything unless you guys did."

"No, I don't think any of us fed it." Teresa said. "Does that mean they just eat people for the love of the game? What assholes."

"Maybe that was just because it was the Tutorial, do we even know if the monsters in the Tutorial were real?" Preston questioned.

"Actually that was something I'm still unsure about. A lot of monsters now display some degree of sapience, a lot more so than in the Tutorial. The thing is, sometimes monsters were actually smart, so I don't understand how that would work if only some monsters were sapient and others weren't." Teresa replied. "Like, there was the pack of Vampire Deer that circled me and tried to strategize taking me down, that was abnormal. Oh, and the super fast mosquito that could actually fly, it was weirdly smart, it had actual self preservation. There also wasn't exactly any water out in the desert, so I'm not sure how the monsters could have actually survived in that ecosystem. There was a well at a few Monster Strongholds, but the skeletons are quite literally the last monsters in the Tutorial I would expect to need water."

"Mine!" Preston called out as yet another Earth Elemental entered their line of sight. Huh, there were quite a few of these guys. Teresa activated <Facilitated Restoration> and <Magic Wellspring> on herself, just in case something was about to go down. She had enough experience with stuff like this to recognize that something might be up. Preston saw her do this and hesitated. "Wait, is it high level? Shit, I can just wait here if it is-"

"No you're fine, it's only level 18. It's just weird that we found two on their own so quickly after each other, why weren't they in a group?" Teresa asked, getting suspicious. "It could totally be nothing, but I don't know."

"I'll trust Teresa's gut on this one." Sarah said, grabbing an arrow and keeping it at the ready. "They always say it could be nothing in horror movies, and then it turns out to very much be something. It is weird that they aren't travelling together, either elementals have different migration patterns than other monsters or something's going on."

Jake killed the elemental with his <Air Slash>, using the skill four times in order to fully kill the creature. Elementals seemingly had a high Vitality, or maybe it was just the nature of their being that made them hard to kill. They weren't flesh and blood after all.

They were all on high alert now, and Teresa kind of felt bad about that. Really, it could be nothing, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Conversation died down as everyone focused on using their Perception to the max. Except for Jake, his Perception kinda sucked. Preston's wasn't great either, but at least it wasn't 4.

Out of nowhere, the sound of multiple birds chirping and flying away got Teresa's attention from above the canopies. If not for her absurd 52 Perception, she wouldn't have heard it. From the sound of it, there were quite a lot of birds flying away. What was going on?

"There's a bunch of birds going crazy above the canopies. I don't think I've heard birds very much before now, but there's definitely a lot up there." Teresa said, her eyes pointed up. Even with good Perception, she couldn't see through solid objects blocking her line of sight.

Not too far away, there was a gunshot. Teresa and Sarah heard it the clearest, but it didn't take super hearing to catch the sound.

"Did someone drop something?" Jake asked, but Teresa already began running towards the sound. Somebody had a gun, and if they were firing it clearly something was wrong. Ammo was incredibly limited, nobody would fire a shot off without good reason.

It only took a few seconds for Teresa to find the source. There were ten people, half of whom on the ground. Amongst the people standing, one was holding a handgun pointed directly at one of the prone bodies.

It was a corpse.

Teresa thought quickly, taking in her surroundings. It might be possible the people with the gun were just defending themselves, but it didn't take long to dissuade that notion. There was a discarded wheelchair next to the prone party, hinting that at least one of them were physically disabled.

"Don't come any closer or I'll shoot!" The man with the gun said, now aware of Teresa. A quick <Identify> revealed his stats.

{Human (F+) (lv 19)}

Each of the people in the party were close to his level, and Teresa saw one of them start to panic.

"Patrick, I can't see her level-"

Teresa didn't let them finish. <Dash> got her moving at max speed almost instantly, she pulled out her knife and got <Embers> going in her free hand. She stabbed the gunman through the throat, clearing the distance before he could properly react. Fire engulfed the rest of his allies, burning them all to a crisp except for their tank.

Hesitation was death, and the tank was hesitating. She darted towards him and stabbed him through the bottom of his jaw, eliminating the threat almost instantly.

What the hell? Why was that… easy? They were higher level than the last people she fought, and they had a gun they never even got the chance to fire at her.

"Teresa! You good man?" Preston called out from behind as he was the first to catch up.

"Yeah, I took care of it." Teresa said, looking at the five dead bodies around her. Six, if you counted the man they had killed before she got there. She felt both numb and overwhelmed, how long was it going to be before she lost track of how many people she's killed?

"Help him, please!" One of the prone men said, shaking the corpse of his companion. Unfortunately, there was nothing Teresa could do. He had been shot through the head, Teresa couldn't bring back the dead.

"I'm sorry, but we can't." Teresa said, gently placing a hand on the man's shoulder. "He's already gone."

She used <Identify> on the group, finding they were at most level 3. She turned to the highest level, who seemed to be the most calm.

"Hey, there's a settlement not too far from here. Let me help you up, I'll take you there." Teresa said, offering a hand to the man. "My name's Teresa, you guys are safe now."

The man took her hand, and gestured to the wheelchair with his head.

"Thank you, we've been hiding from monsters for too long now. The name's George."

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