"Thank you all for being here. I know I've introduced myself already to many of you but my name is Teresa, and for better or worse I'm one of the two qualified candidates." Teresa said, looking at the large group of people gathered around her. The settlement was having its first official meeting, which was being held in the woods a short distance from the camp. Present was Teresa's party, Theo's party, Saylee, William, Nikolas and his party from Switzerland, Simon, and multiple people Teresa had not met. They were the ones who had been attempting to build infrastructure and log cabins, though Teresa did not know many details.

Teresa gestured for the rest of her party to introduce themselves, which led to everyone at the meeting doing the same. Teresa did her absolute best to commit everyone's name to her immediate memory. She could recall most of her memories due to her stats, but being able to immediately access information from them was another thing entirely.

"I called all of us here together because we need to have some level of cohesion. Over the last few days, a lot has been going on and it has been rather chaotic. There are a few things I would like us to talk about, and this is a good opportunity for anyone else to bring their concerns forward." Teresa continued.

"You made it sound like you don't want to lead the settlement, is that true?" One of the construction workers asked. His name was Jonathon, and this was Teresa's first time interacting with him. "If it's not you, then it's going to be that Mijo guy, and nobody knows who he even is. You don't exactly inspire confidence, no offense, but at least you're better than the other option."

"I don't want to lead anything and I don't plan on it. In the event this Mijo guy never shows his face and we never get another qualified candidate, then sure, I'll take the position. Then I will immediately resign, and let everyone vote for someone who's actually qualified." Teresa said, making multiple eyebrows raise. "I don't know enough to manage 10,000 people, and honestly that would get in my way. My party and I have all been working on leveling up until one of us gets <Familial Duty>, after which we will take off in search of our families."

"Are you sure any of that is possible?" Jonathan retorted. "For all you know, becoming the leader will be a permanent position."

"In that case, I really do not want the job. That's called being a dictator, and I am not going to be a dictator. Nobody should be a dictator for that matter, one person having absolute power is a disaster waiting to happen."

"Would it be that bad?" Saylee asked. "It would be you in power after all, not some power hungry psychopath."

"That's the issue, everyone thinks that about themselves. Oh, I wouldn't go crazy with power, no ma'am, absolute power wouldn't corrupt me. I'm not like other dictators, I'm quirky and unique. I'm a nice dictator. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, it doesn't matter who you are or where you're from."

"That may have been true before the System, but the world isn't the same." Jonathan said. "I'm sure you've realized by now that pre-System logic and morals don't hold up anymore. For someone to be a leader, they need to be powerful, otherwise anybody could just walk up and kill them. Are you really going to let some silly pre-System notion jeopardize everybody's safety?"

"The girl said she doesn't want the job, that should be the end of the story." William interjected. "She wants to go find her family. I was lucky enough to be a caretaker in the same settlement as my grandkids, if they weren't here you best believe I would be leaving as soon as possible."

"Everybody wants to find their family, she's not special." Jonathan replied. "Do you think I don't have family? Everybody in this meeting, hell everybody at the settlement has family. Should all of them pack their shit up and go out on a hopeless adventure to find people who might not even be alive? My sister lived in Nova Scotia, should I just jump ship and go looking for her?"

"Hey cool it asshole, I feel like if anyone deserves to be reunited with their family it's Teresa." Sarah said, scowling at the man. "She doesn't want the position, end of story. You don't like it? Figure something out. There is no reason your issues should be her problem."

"As much as I would prefer for Teresa to be the leader, I have to agree." Theo said. "Teresa has already done a lot for us. She saved me and my party's lives along with so many others, she secured a source of water for us, got us on good terms with our non-human neighbors, what more do you want? Honestly, my party and I have been talking about it and we feel the same way. Once one of us gets <Familial Duty>, we'll help them out and see if leveling up the skill can help the rest of us out as well."

"That's unbelievably selfish." Jonathan said, shaking his head. "So what, are the rest of us just fucked then? There are children here, and the Mana dome won't last forever. For every person that leaves the camp, that's one less person keeping those kids safe. Would it really be so damn hard to just stay and wait it out? Build up the settlement, make it an actual town with buildings and amenities, recreate civilization until the world is put back together again."

"How long would that take?" Teresa asked. "People are dying every day, the longer we take to go looking the worse our odds get. I am telling you this definitively now, if I become the leader, do not expect me to stick around. I have been saying this for a while now, and I'm not sure why nobody is getting it through their heads that I am being serious. I am not going to be some sort of ruler. I have helped out where I can, because I could. That's it. I'm not sure what kind of fantasy you have in your mind about me building up civilization and being some sort of dictator or queen or emperor, but I am telling you to stop imagining it. It's not happening. Like I said, if it comes to it I'll take the official System position so that way some random isn't given absolute power, but my first priority is leaving. Now, if we want to talk more about it we can do that later. There's other actually important stuff we need to discuss."

Teresa paused, taking a moment to get her mind going in the right direction. Honestly, it did sound kind of fun to play ruler and build up some sort of kingdom for herself, but there were a bajillion problems with it. Magic was real, the world was the size of the sun and in this small patch of the planet there was already so much going on. Could Teresa really explore the world, learn more about magic and find her family if she was in charge of what might one day become a city? Hell no. There were so many new things she wanted to try.

What if she wanted to learn how magic items are made? What if she wanted to explore new alien lands? What if custom spells were possible? It was something she hadn't tried and wasn't sure where to start on, but one day that might be possible. Hell, the multiverse was real, there had to be a lot of cool shit out there to try out. Teresa wouldn't be able to go do all of this while feeling good about herself if she knew there were a whole camp of people and children depending on her.

"First things first, we found more bandits last night." Teresa said. "They are all dead now, so there's no major cause for concern-"

"They're all dead?" Nikolas from the Swiss Armed Forces asked. "You couldn't take any of them for questioning?"

"I… I didn't think to. It didn't even cross my mind." Teresa admitted. "The last time I was attacked by bandits, it was rough. They were highly coordinated and despite being less than half my level they would have taken me down without help from Theo's party along with my own. These guys we found last night were even higher level. I figured the first time I ran into bandits, I should have speed blitzed them, so I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice. I took four of them out, then while the fifth was hesitating I moved on autopilot and killed him too."

"You killed somebody on autopilot?" Madeline asked, an eyebrow raised. "Sorry, I wasn't there for this, what do you mean you killed somebody on autopilot?"

"I mean all that was going through my head was what I could do to kill him before he could kill me. These guys were higher level than the last, like I said. They also had a gun. I'm not sure if a normal person could cut me with a knife if I let them try, but a gun could probably still kill me. All it would take is a single headshot, superpowers or not I would be dead. My Fortitude isn't high enough to tank that yet, at least I don't think so."

"I just don't think you killing someone on autopilot is a good sign honey."

"They were literally robbing disabled people. One of them was in a wheelchair. They shot someone through the head, killed him. He had cancer, Madeline. They held up someone with cancer and shot him in the head to take his shit. As far as people who deserve to die go, those guys were pretty deserving."

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"I'm not saying what you did was wrong sweetie, I don't think we should be killing anybody but I understand sometimes it can't be helped. I'm not upset with you Teresa, I'm concerned for you. That couldn't have been easy, and a lot has been on your shoulders lately. Maybe you should step back and just take a day for yourself, you've been running yourself ragged for how long now?"

"I can take a day off once all our problems are dealt with. Until then, I would probably be more stressed sitting around doing nothing. Alright, next. The people we saved found a way to manipulate monster migration patterns, getting packs of them to split off more and more until the monsters were isolated. They used their own blood to make small trails that split off in two directions. A monster pack would see it and split off into two groups. Apparently it doesn't always work, sometimes the pack will stay together, but sometimes it actually does work out. That's how they got a guy in a wheelchair to level 3."

"Jesus, can you imagine being in the woods with a bunch of monsters while in a fucking wheelchair?" One of the military men muttered to a party member. It was meant to be quiet, but Teresa was able to pick it up with her Perception.

"Their healer was able to keep them all going for the last few days, but he's dead now. That was the man with cancer who was shot and killed before we got there. Unfortunately we won't be able to talk to him about using healing magic on those with permanent conditions and illnesses, but it sounds like it can't be used to cure these significant issues. At least not at lower levels, but it can alleviate symptoms." Teresa continued.

"That's true, Apisit is the healer in our party. He's mute, and thought being a healer would allow him to speak again. Unfortunately, it did not. However, I have experienced what it's like to have <Facilitated Restoration> applied to me, and I can confirm it helps a lot with my endometriosis." Saylee said. "It seems fair to assume that at low levels healing magic can help with symptoms but it cannot completely solve a wide variety of medical issues."

"There's also a man in the camp with diabetes, he's been kept alive using healing magic. I'm not sure about the details, but you would have to ask his party." One of the military men said. Shit, Teresa didn't even think about diabetes. How often did they need insulin? She did not know nearly as much about diabetes as she probably should.

"Teresa probably knows more about magic than anyone else in the camp at this point." Madeline said. "Believe it or not she was originally our healer, but now she has <Embers> on a level way beyond my own. I think it would be a good idea if Teresa wrote down what she knows, if she would be willing to that is. She also discovered that people do in fact have a Soul, for those who don't know."

"Really? I thought those were rumors." Saylee said.

"Yep, the System itself confirmed it." Madeline replied. The military men also confirmed that this was true.

"That would be fine with me." Teresa said. Really, it would be pretty useful for other people to start figuring out how to do more stuff with Mana as well.

"We're still hauling off a whole lot of snake skin from that Portal you destroyed, we could probably use blood from them." Theo said. "The hide is incredibly durable as well, we can probably start making armor out of it if we can find someone who knows how to actually do that."

"We can ask around." Nikolas offered. "We've been mostly on guard duty anyways, we might be able to find someone who can work with animal hides."

"Awesome, that leads us to the next thing." Teresa said, turning to Jonathan and the construction workers. "I know you guys have all been working on a bunch of different projects, but I don't know exactly what those projects are."

"I'm building a cabin for myself and my friends." Jonathan said.

"Shoot, I was building a longhouse for a bunch of people." Another man said.

"You were too? I didn't know that." Said a third.

"I'm killing monsters to level up, then I'm going back to digging holes." Simon said, making his objective clear. He also had Rheneas with him, his new dog. She was laying on the ground not paying attention, which reminded Teresa of something. She activated <Identify> to see if there was anything special.

{Dog (F) (lv 3)}

Huh, she really was just a normal dog. It was surprising that she was level 3, but otherwise nothing really to be concerned about there. She would let Madeline know later that yes, they are just normal dogs.

"This is one of the reasons we are having this meeting. We need some sense of focus, everybody has been running around like a chicken with its head cut off. There needs to be some coordination." Teresa said. "I think everybody should focus on group housing and an outhouse. An outhouse would be really nice actually."

"We don't exactly have tools, I've been using medieval weaponry for this stuff. It would help a lot if we had something to actually work with." One woman said, Teresa recalling her name was Jess. "Plus I'm a mechanical engineer, not a civil engineer. Want me to make a part for your 3D printer? I'm your girl. Want me to build a house? Well fuck, you know?"

The construction workers all began to argue for a minute, and Teresa decided to let them. It was a pretty quick way to get them talking, and it let her focus on something else in the meantime.

"Saylee, have you been keeping track of how often we find Monster Spawners?" Teresa asked.

"Yes, though the data is very limited due to the short time frame. Is there a reason you ask?"

"I want you to measure how often they appear, if the number of spawners already present in an area affects this, and whether certain areas spawn more or less Portals. Can you do that?"

"Absolutely, it will take some time to see anything meaningful though. We also have to account for whether certain areas are overpatrolled or infrequently visited. Currently, people are mostly adventuring out east, southeast, south, and southwest. Everywhere else is under patrolled. There's the level 36 Portal in the snow area northwest, but that's about all we really know about in that general direction. Additionally, we have avoided going too far south due to the gorillas, though a few people have been making trips to the swamp southwest due to the Scilians and their water."

Shit, that was a lot of information at once, and Teresa was trying to take it all in. Unfortunately, there was still more.

"The Albino Gorillas have also been getting closer and closer, and some people have stated that they look sick. We think there is something south of us affecting them, which we should also look into when we get the chance." Saylee continued.

That was concerning. On the one hand, it would give them something to use as leverage in deals, if they solved the issue it might actually improve relations with the Albino Gorillas drastically. On the other hand, if something was too big of a threat to a tribe of sapient super gorillas it was probably a threat to the humans as well.

"Alright, thanks for letting me know Saylee." Teresa turned her attention back to the group of discontent construction workers. "You guys, what's the consensus on building infrastructure?"

"We can get some stuff set up in the short term, but we have no idea about what to do in the long term." Jonathan said. "We can figure something out for the tools, we'll just have to make them ourselves. It will suck and take a while, but we can probably get it done. The issue is, we have no idea how to make anything that will last. Everybody in this town has superpowers, do you realize what kind of problems that can present? If we build a school one day, kids might have access to spells that are just as dangerous as a gun. If we build a prison, how do we keep people from just breaking out with magic? Everybody in the world is armed now, and anybody could be strong enough to destroy a building with their bare hands. How do we even prepare for that?"

"I don't know." Teresa admitted. "That's something you guys will have to figure out in another council meeting without me."

"What, are you saying this isn't going to be a regular thing?" Jonathan asked.

"No, it will definitely be a regular thing, I just won't be here. I called this meeting because it needed to happen, not because I wanted to be a part of it. Over the next few days, I am going to train with my party and get ready to head out. Even if one of us doesn't get <Familial Duty>, we can still look for other settlements and see if anyone knows something that could help us. We'll stick around until after the Mana dome goes down, make sure everything is fine, then leave. I've been running around doing whatever I could to help out, and I think it's time I set my foot down and say this is what I'm going to do."

"So you're really just going to abandon everyone here?" Jonathan asked. "You're not even going to wait until you get <Familial Duty>?"

"At what point would it be enough?" Teresa responded. "When we have buildings? Walls? A governmental structure? An economy? When all the monsters are gone? At what point would it be okay for us to leave? There's always going to be problems, hell I bet there's some cataclysmic event just waiting to happen any second now to give me another reason to stick around. You want a leader? Then do it yourself. You want someone to take out all the Portals? Then go out, kill some monsters and level up until you can do it. I'm not the only person in this settlement, and my party aren't the only competent people here. I'm not even top 1,000 in the rankings anymore! I got back to the high 900s after I took out the Giant Serpent Portal, but it didn't take long to fall behind again. There have got to be plenty of people out there who beat the Tutorial, I am just one of them. You can say I'm abandoning you, but if you guys can't keep your shit together without me then honestly that's just a skill issue. I've told you how it's going to be, now figure it out."

Teresa felt selfish saying all of that. She could help out a lot more, even if she already had done quite a lot. It was only day three, and so much shit had happened. Everything was a chaotic mess at the moment, but she couldn't just stay here forever.

In just a few more days, Teresa was going to leave in search of her family.

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