Teresa was scouting ahead of her party, hunting for monsters to grind her skills. It was about time she got to test her <Monster Hunt>, and she also needed to improve her <Facilitated Restoration> to last longer. Her plan was to buff herself after slowing the Mana within the skill, then enter combat to try and improve its efficacy. It felt like a reasonable plan, plus it got her some practice with Karmic Magic.

Yellow threads branched out from her, each seemingly connected to her Soul. They were intangible, and each had varying properties which Teresa did not quite understand yet. Which one should she try first? There were a few that were particularly bright, a few that seemed dense, and a few that seemed to be pulled tighter than others.

She decided to go with a bright one. There wasn't any real reason behind it, she just needed to start somewhere. Karmic Magic was weird. With her other spells, Mana left her Soul and traveled to wherever she was casting the spell. With a healing spell, the Mana would go to her hands. With <Sturdy Outer Shell>, it spread out everywhere with an emphasis on a given area of her choice. For <Monster Hunt>, it was something else entirely.

Mana coursed out from her Soul and followed along the yellow thread, enveloping it without ever becoming physical. It formed a covering along several feet of the thread, and this was the part where Teresa needed to "pull," on it. She forced the Mana back towards her body, yanking on the thread to see what would happen. Information intuitively entered Teresa's mind, it was like how picking something up was a good way to find out how heavy it was.

She had an intuitive sense of roughly how far away a monster was, actually scratch that. This one thread connected to multiple monsters, maybe even a Portal. She wondered if she even really needed to pull on the threads to figure out where the monster was, but as she traced one with her eyes through the trees she found they didn't travel in a straight line. Even the ones that seemed to already be pulled tight had unexplainable curvature to them, despite the fact they seemed taut.

Teresa didn't know what level the monsters she sensed were, but she figured she might as well go find out. Teresa took off, heading in the general direction she sensed the creatures. As she ran, she occasionally pulled on the thread a few more times to pinpoint the exact location, but even then it was still pretty vague. Each time she did it, the skill took a large amount of Mana. Sometimes it took over 200 Mana, sometimes less.

It didn't take long to find her target. She activated <Identify> as soon as she was in range of the monsters.

{Monstrous Salamander (F) [Attuned: Air] (lv 30)}

{Monstrous Salamander (F) (lv 28)}

{Monstrous Salamander (F) (lv 25)}

There were multiple surrounding a level 30 Portal, remaining relatively motionless for the most part. By her count, there were 23 level 30s, and 15 monsters in the mid to late twenties. It was nothing she couldn't handle, she activated her new rough draft version of <Facilitated Restoration> that followed Jonathan's advice. The Restoration Mana in the green fire naturally moved around quite a bit, but she had managed to slow the movement down drastically. She wasn't sure if it would actually work for long, but it was worth a shot.

<Embers> lit up in both hands and she began spraying two streams of flames into the encampment of Monstrous Salamanders, immediately killing several mid level monsters. She activated <Dash> so she could continuously reposition for better angles, but she noticed something interesting. Her <Embers> began to sputter out downstream, preventing it from completely incinerating a few of the tougher monsters.

Out of nowhere it became difficult to breathe, and soon she felt like she was suffocating. Obviously this was the air attuned Monstrous Salamander, but Teresa thought that was kind of a sick skill. It was lowering the air density around her, which also resulted in her fire having difficulties maintaining itself. She kind of wanted that skill, she felt like there would be a lot of creative applications for it. She had never seen The Legend of Kora, but she was pretty sure there was an airbender who could suck the air out of someone's lungs in it. Kinda badass if you ask Teresa.

She thought back to Noah, the mage from Theo's party. He had learned the skill <Adhesion> by having it used on him and analyzing it, which led to it being offered during a skill selection. Could Teresa do the same? She wasn't sure she would take it right away, but having the option for somewhere down the line would be cool.

Teresa didn't need to use <Embers> anyways, she had other skills. She turned <Dash> off and on again to quickly change directions, getting her out of the low oxygen environment. She took a few deep breaths, then used <Sturdy Outer Shell> while drawing her sword from her <Inventory>. Teresa could totally speedblitz the attuned monster, but the effects weren't so bad that she was incapacitated. If she really needed to, she could shoot a bright version of <Facilitated Restoration> into the air like a flare gun, and Preston would be on his way in no time to provide backup.

Her defensive skill slowed her down dramatically, making it far easier for the attuned monster to target her with its spell again. That was fine, she could tank it. A Monstrous Salamander charged her, and after doing some quick math in her head she figured she probably wouldn't be able to beat it in terms of pure Strength.

Thankfully, Agility affected more than just running speed. She could strike faster too, even if her overall movement speed was reduced she could still kill the monsters in melee combat using technique. As the monster lunged, Teresa stepped to the side while guiding more Mana to her legs for <Sturdy Outer Shell>. The Monstrous Salamander clamped its jaws down, grabbing her by the left leg. The defensive skill didn't block all of the damage, but it was enough to prevent any serious injury from a single attack. She plunged her sword through the salamander's eye, killing it instantly as her healing skill automatically repaired her leg.

Two more salamanders approached, and Teresa took the initiative to catch them by surprise. She disabled her defensive skill and used <Dash> to very suddenly close the distance, going from a standstill to max speed almost instantly. She swung her sword at one of their legs, completely dismembering it as she ran past. This got her out of the air attuned spell again, letting her take a few more breaths before she speedblitzed the second salamander. She ran towards it and stabbed it in the back, not doing lethal damage but still heavily injuring the two monsters.

There were still multiple left, and they weren't polite enough to attack her one at a time. A group of four rushed her all at once, which led Teresa to activating shotgun <Embers> in her free hand. She was paying close attention to her surroundings, and felt Mana moving only around her head. She had seen air based skills before, particularly from the goblin shamans in the Tutorial. Now that her <Mana Control> was far stronger, she had a better sense for discerning other people's spells.

The Elemental Mana was pushing air away from her face and forming a barrier that made it hard for air to enter. It was like using a towel to block a small stream of water. Some of it still got through, but a large amount of air was diverted or blocked by the Mana. Teresa didn't have a lot of experience with Elemental Mana aside from the fire based version that <Embers> used, but she could tell only her head was being targeted at the moment.

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That left a perfect opening for shotgun <Embers> to suddenly blast into the four salamanders, instantly killing two while injuring the others. She continued channeling Mana to her offensive skill to finish them off until the air began to thin the flames.

There were still the two salamanders she had cut with her sword to worry about, and she turned on the ball of her foot and activated <Dash> to rush them again. One attempted to swing a hand at her, but she easily ducked under it and countered with a blade to the throat. The salamander with the missing leg tried to tackle her, but she easily sidestepped it and finished it off with another swing of her sword.

She continued slaughtering the monsters in the camp, not facing any real difficulty. They were pretty low level after all, even if they all had at least one or two stats that beat hers they couldn't compete. Eventually, only the air attuned Monstrous Salamander was left, which canceled its spell and made a run for it.

Teresa had an okay grasp of how it worked now anyways. She was still pretty unfamiliar with that specific type of Elemental Mana, but it wasn't that alien to her anymore. Fire based Elemental Mana created fire using itself as fuel, while air based Elemental Mana simply moved the air in a manner dependent on the spell. She caught up and killed the Monstrous Salamander before it could get far, plunging her sword into an eye.

It was cleanup time, which meant destroying the Portal and collecting the monster loot. She wouldn't take all of it, just the higher level stuff. She would probably wind up leaving bunches of it behind since she only had so much <Inventory> space and she was bound to find even better loot later, but this gave her an idea.

Teresa still didn't have a second class. It was the perk of her legendary class she had been neglecting for quite some time, but now it might come in use. They had rations for a few days, but eventually they would need to get their own food. There was a Gatherer class she could take that would help with finding edible plants, but honestly she didn't see why she couldn't just use <Appraise> more often instead.

None of the classes seemed all that great, at least not yet. She wasn't sure how it worked in the long run, but she could change her secondary common class once a month. Out of the list of various common classes like Militia, Campfire Cook, Housekeeper, Lumberjack, and so many more she felt like Scavenger was the best pick. They could start a fire just fine, even if they weren't great with the technique they could brute force a fire by rapidly rubbing sticks together with their absurd Agility to generate friction and therefore heat. The issue would be getting food in a cookable state in the first place.

She wasn't sure what parts of a monster would be edible or how to prepare a corpse at all. Scavenger might help with that, and then they would be able to eat meat on a regular basis. It would be monster meat, but they had long since found out that many monsters were still edible.

Class: Scavenger (F-)

Make the most of what you find. Your weakness in combat is compensated by your ability to make use of the scraps. Explore lower level scavenging and carcass prepping.

Teresa selected the class, and felt absolutely nothing change. Was that it? She didn't get a skill along with picking the class? Well, she was about to scavenge a few Monster Cores and Mana Crystals so that was just free experience. This meant Jack Of All Trades would level up 25% slower as the experience for her classes were split 75% two ways, but it was a net positive overall. There wasn't as big a rush to get <Familial Duty> now, especially since they had Thomas now. Teresa wasn't sure she would ever get the skill from how the requirements to get it sounded, so leveling up Jack Of All Trades a little slower for more quality of life skills wasn't such a bad trade off.

She got to work, collecting the level 30 Mana Crystals and Monster Cores. The rest she could leave behind, they weren't that important. Could you eat salamander? They weren't poisonous, were they? Well, Teresa was kind of curious now. What part was she supposed to cut off exactly? Well, she could take a leg and figure the rest out later, her Fortitude and <Purify> could fix whatever problems come up.

Shit, she could just eat poison now huh? That made her think, were any of them tasty? Capsaicin was supposed to be poisonous, sorta. Spicy food was delicious anyways, what if cyanide was really tasty? Okay, cyanide probably wasn't tasty, but surely there was another capsaicin out there waiting to be discovered. Humanity had probably gone through generations of trial and error figuring out what was edible and what wasn't, but maybe that didn't really matter as much anymore.

Once everything was stashed away in her <Inventory>, Teresa got ready to take off again. She remembered the way back with her perfect memory, so she had no problem running through the woods to find her party.

"How'd it go?" Sarah asked, being the first to spot her.

"It was alright, found some level 30s. Not a whole lot of experience for my personal level, but it helped a lot with my skills." Teresa replied. "When I use <Monster Hunt>, it's like there's a whole bunch of threads branching out from my Soul in various directions. I just have to pull on one with Mana and I can kinda sense where the monsters are. I picked a bright thread and it led me to a Portal, so next time I want to figure out what the other threads do."

"When I use <Familial Duty> I kind of see threads, but you make it sound like they're really visible." Thomas said, frowning. "Do the skills work differently maybe?"

"That or it's our difference in <Mana Control>." Teresa said. "What level is yours at now? I'm at 15."

"Level 6, but I figured out the Soul thing." Thomas said. "I don't know why my Soul is green considering it isn't a physical thing, but it definitely is."

"Your Soul is green? Mine's orange." Teresa said, surprised.

"I wonder what that means." Preston inquired. "What if the color of your Soul has to do with what magic you're best with?"

"Is that from an isekai?" Jake asked.

"No, actually maybe I don't know. I mix them up all the time, once I watched a show and only realized halfway through I had already seen it."

"Dude, you've gotta watch something better. Attack on Titan, Death Note, anything that's not an isekai really."

"It's not like I only watch isekai, I've seen both of those and they're peak I'll give you that. But isekai just goes hard yah know? I also started reading a few before the whole System thing."

"You're reading isekai? You're too far gone man."

"Hey at least I'm reading!"

"What if the color of your Soul doesn't actually matter?" Sarah interjected, getting them back on track. "Eye color doesn't really affect anything really. I mean I'm pretty sure people with lighter eyes are more prone to vision problems, but you get the point."

"Actually that's a myth, I know that one." Teresa said. "Although lighter eye colors are more sensitive to light, that much is true, but they aren't any more likely to have bad eyesight."

"That's also totally possible." Preston admitted. "I need to hurry up and find my Soul."

"Same here." Sarah said.

"Imagine having <Mana Control> nerds, couldn't be me." Jake laughed. "I just blast my skills out at full capacity all the time, works just fine."

"Is that why you're always running out of Mana? Here I thought it was because of your 8 Wisdom." Preston snickered.

"I'll put more points into it, just give it some time."

"You guys know we're in a forest surrounded by monsters right? Shouldn't you be more on guard?" Thomas asked.

"Eh it's fine, we've got good Perception." Teresa answered. "Just relax a bit, it's going to be a long, long trip. Hey, does anybody know what salamander tastes like?"

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