<Facilitated Restoration> acted like a Geiger counter, once it started doing stuff then Teresa would know they were within range of the radiation. It was only the evening of their first actual day of travel, but unfortunately the time for radiation had finally come. The Restoration Mana in her body was very slowly being consumed, and it wasn't just fizzling out over time either. It was rapidly cleaning and repairing extremely tiny flakes of damage, and sometimes she caught it canceling out to eliminate something she couldn't actually see.

"We're in the radioactive zone now." Teresa said, bringing the party to a halt.

"How radioactive are we talking?" Thomas asked, concerned.

"I don't know, but <Facilitated Restoration> seems to be holding up just fine. I'll refresh it on all of you just in case, but do any of you feel anything? Itchiness, pain, something abnormal?" Teresa questioned.

"Nope, nothing." Preston answered. Everyone answered similarly. "Do you think as we get closer we'll start getting microwaved?"

"What?" Thomas exclaimed.

"Give it a few days and we'll be able to toss a chicken in the air and it'll come back down air fried." Jake replied, smiling.

"What if the radiation is why the Albino Gorillas have four arms?" Sarah asked. "I know that's not at all how radiation actually works, but maybe magic can bullshit its way into explaining that somehow."

"I wonder if we'll find New Vegas." Mathew said.

"Dude you played that? I love that game!" Sarah replied.

"No, I haven't actually. I've just heard of it, I'm a poser sorry." Mathew responded. He was fitting into the party surprisingly well.

Teresa refreshed her passive healing spell on all of her party members, using her extended duration version of <Facilitated Restoration>. It wasn't fully tested yet, but they would be camping out where the radiation was weaker anyways. It was still pretty early, but Preston was going to scout the area nearby to make sure there was nothing to be concerned about.

They were still in the rolling forest, with trees sprouting out of the ground only to form a massive arc and burrow back into the ground. The canopies overhead were like a drunk chessboard, there were patches of clear sky and patches of thick leaves and branches.

It was interesting that the greenery seemed to be totally fine. The trees and vegetation looked identical to their completely healthy, non radioactive counterparts. She hadn't really thought about it, but how did plants hold up against radiation? It's not like they could just get up and leave, at least not as far as Teresa knew. Treants could probably do that.

Oh shit, what about radioactive monsters? Were they going to get special skills and powers because of the radiation, or were they just going to get cancer? That would suck from the monster's perspective, they appear only to get spawn killed by tiny particles that give them cancer. Radiation poisoning was a terrible way to go, Teresa had once heard a horrific story of a Japanese man who had been doused in a ridiculous amount of radiation and then was kept on life support for months until he eventually died of a heart attack. That was literal hell, and Teresa was the only thing keeping her party from radiation poisoning.

Great, that wasn't stressful at all. No pressure, but dying meant all of her friends would die an agonizing death too. How splendid, wonderful, as if Teresa wasn't already anxious enough.

"Why don't you just use your wooden beam thingy?" Mathew asked.

"Do you mean <Totem Of Life>?" Teresa replied.

"If that's the thing next to the City Monolith that heals people then yes." Mathew confirmed.

"Well it's on cooldown, I can only use it once every five days. If it gets real bad then I will, but I'm also not sure it's strong enough to actually help us that much right now." <Totem Of Life> was still standing in The Mall, or at least it had been when they left for the second time. Teresa had two guesses about how long the skill lasted. Either it would last for five days and then fizzle out, or it lasted indefinitely. That just seemed to make the most sense to her, but considering how much variety a single skill could have it might be more complicated than that. On the bright side, the skill was very slowly gaining free experience over time.

"Can you make multiple if you wait long enough?"

"I'm honestly not sure, not enough time has passed yet."

"You have a healing buff on all of us, if you die does it stop working immediately or does it last a while?"

"I have no way of actually knowing that."

"If you cast the same buffing spell on someone twice, what happens?"

"It overwrites the first one."

"How does magic work with your gloves? Shouldn't they block your spells from firing?"

"They just go through them, I haven't really thought about that."

"Does that work for all gloves or just yours? What about if you hold a piece of paper flat against your hand, will it still go through? If that works, what's the cutoff point? Two pieces of paper? Fifty? Or is it only a special kind of material that it works with?" Mathew asked.

"I feel like that falls into the category of making magical items, which I haven't done by the way. I'm not sure anyone has yet, at least not at The Mall. Everything is still pretty new and we're all still figuring it out too. I am glad you're thinking about stuff like that, I think everyone should be asking questions about how this all works." Teresa answered.

The party began to set up camp, which didn't really involve a whole lot. After spending the night in the woods with the Albino Gorillas, she had realized she should have brought tents. The hut they had made was a nice gesture, but there was no harm in making the most of Teresa's <Inventory>. She pulled kits for two tents out of thin air, and the party began to set them up.

She also had her Bottle Of Holding which contained a large supply of water, though everybody had their own water bottles that Teresa would periodically refill with Scilian water. Once everything was set up, it was time for everyone to practice what they were working on again. Sarah was teaching Mathew how to shoot, Thomas was doing some exercises with his Mana, and Teresa activated <Monster Hunt>. There was the risk of alerting a monster to her location, but she was pretty sure that would only happen if she actually pulled on any of the threads.

This was just to study them. Teresa had a feeling the luminosity of a thread was correlated with the number of monsters the thread was attached to, but she would have to experiment more to find out for certain. Her skill was close to level 1, and she was incredibly tempted to use it again but decided to have better judgement than that. Sometimes, Teresa wanted to just run around on a monster murder rampage like she used to, but she had responsibilities. It wasn't that late yet, they were mostly sticking around to see how Teresa's <Facilitated Restoration> would hold up in a weaker radiation zone, but maybe once Preston got back she could go out and hunt some more again.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Fortunately, it didn't take long for him to come back. Unfortunately, he had news.

"There's a big problem, I found a Portal nearby. I don't know what level, but I haven't seen a Portal like that before." He said.

"I can go check it out." Teresa offered, but he shook his head.

"I don't think this is a solo act Teresa, we should be careful with this. My body started itching like crazy just from getting close, and there's a weird taste in my mouth that only went away once I left."

Teresa placed her hand on Preston's shoulder to sense her Restoration Mana, and was shocked to see it had been drastically depleted. The buff was still active, but the quantity of Restoration Mana had been cut in half. That definitely wasn't a good sign.

"Are you sure we should bring everyone? We've got Mathew and Thomas with us, we can't leave them alone and we probably shouldn't be walking them into danger." Teresa said. From the sound of it the Portal seemed to be emitting radiation, but she couldn't be completely sure without checking.

"You're right, we probably shouldn't take everyone then. Are you two good to stay back?" Preston asked Sarah and Jake.

"We'll be fine, if it's that big a deal then go." Sarah confirmed. Teresa and Preston nodded at each other, then began to run off. They seemed to have an unspoken agreement to be quick, having only half of the capable members of the party on guard duty wasn't great by any means. While Teresa would strongly prefer to take care of the radiation problem, they just might wind up needing to go around the radioactive lands. Their primary goal was to escort Thomas and his son after all.

Within minutes they arrived at their destination. There was a dark green Portal with a pulsing light, and Teresa felt her Restoration Mana putting in work to stop the radiation. The flora was actually being affected by the heavy doses of radiation now. There was moss that had turned orange, trees with their roots sprouting out of the ground like small spikes, leaves with irregular shapes, even the dirt seemed to be brighter. Preston and Teresa were keeping their distance, but there had to be over sixty monsters in the area.

<Mutated Slime Monster Portal (F+) [Attuned: Radiation] : lv 50>

Materials: ???

A one way portal that connects monster Souls with generated bodies. Can be destroyed for resources.

{Mutated Slime (F+) [Attuned: Radiation] (lv 50)}

{Mutated Slime (F+) [Attuned: Radiation] (lv 50)}

{Mutated Slime (F+) [Attuned: Radiation] (lv 50)}

Okay, Preston was right. This was not something that would be a solo act. This was a huge problem, they were only a day's travel away from The Mall. Sure, it was a day's travel going at their speed, but this was very clearly not good. What an astute observation.

The slimes were large green masses of various shapes and sizes, their bodies gradually changing shades. One might be a bright lime green, only to slowly turn dark over the span of a few seconds. Even with Teresa's whole party here minus Thomas and Mathew, she wasn't sure how it would go. Monsters with an attunement almost always had some sort of spell or skill, which certainly made things way more difficult. Oftentimes just one monster with a skill could dictate how the fight would go, but an entire encampment of monsters all higher level than even Teresa with an attunement? They would need an army to take this on.

"We're out of our league here, let's back off." Teresa whispered. "They're level 50 and they're all attuned with radiation, even the Portal. We wouldn't stand a-"

Teresa stopped suddenly and placed a hand on Preston's shoulder, holding a finger to her lips as they remained completely still. There were slimes in the direction they had come from, and they were now surrounded. How had they snuck up on her, she hadn't heard them until it was too late. Maybe slimes didn't make a lot of noise, but Teresa still had 58 Perception. They didn't seem to know about Teresa and Preston yet, but it was only a matter of time.

She racked her brain trying to think of what to do. Slimes were approaching, in just a few seconds they were bound to be discovered. Teresa tapped Preston's knee, gesturing for him to get ready to use <Dash> and run. He nodded in response, and Teresa got two instances of shotgun <Embers> ready to go.

A slime slid along the ground closer and closer, until it made a sudden shift as it detected Teresa and Preston. Two waves of fire collided with the level 50 slime, and a white slash of air cut into another next to it. Green gelatin splattered through the air, sizzling where it touched anything living. The two sprinted through the opening, running right past several monsters of various levels.

Teresa held her arm out and stopped Preston just as a stream of green liquid shot in front of them, and almost immediately they were under fire from multiple attacks. They both activated <Dash> again and began sprinting away, finding there were way more slimes than they had thought. Blast after blast of shotgun <Embers> cleared the way, and Teresa noted fearfully that she had not gotten a single kill notification yet.

Preston used his <Air Slash> where he could, but there was a huge discrepancy between his level and the level of the monsters. They were lucky the slimes weren't Agility based, otherwise they would likely have been speedblitzed by now. They soon came to the realization of just how completely surrounded they were, each time Teresa blasted a monster apart to make an opening another slime took its place. They had seconds before they were going to go down. Teresa could tank quite a few hits if need be, but Preston absolutely could not. Just one projectile landing on him would mean certain death.

"Jump as high as you can, use <Second Step> and go over them!" Teresa instructed as she used two continuous streams of <Embers>. She barely ducked in time for another green projectile that grazed her back, sizzling flesh as <Facilitated Restoration> did its best to combat the radiation.

"What about you?"

"I have an idea but I can't worry about you while I'm doing it, you're too low level you'll slow me down."

"I'm faster than you!"

"Just listen to me damnit, fucking jump!"

Preston took a few steps and leaped as high as he could, then jumped again in midair as he activated <Second Step>. He had 37 Strength and 108 Agility, with those stats he was able to completely clear the slimes and even landed on the arced surface of a tree, allowing him to slide down to safety past the monsters.

Teresa used <Embers> in both hands continuously and waved them around like a maniac, shooting fire in all directions as she ran towards a tree. Another projectile collided with her hip, making her bite back a scream as the monsters targeted her. She tried to jump up to a tree and begin climbing, but more projectiles splattered against the surface of the tree giving her nothing to safely grab onto.

She didn't have the same vertical movement that Preston had, and anywhere she tried to go she was cut off by flying balls of radioactive waste that burnt like hell. It looked like escape wasn't going to be an option, if she was going to go down she might as well do so while fighting. It was dumb that this was how it ended, some random Portal spewing out radiation. For all she knew this one wasn't even special, there might be plenty more out there. The radiation from this Portal surely contributed to the spread of the radioactive land, but it likely wasn't the only source.

Teresa rolled her eyes, she was being dramatic. How many times had she almost died now? There had been too many instances where she was put into a situation with equally terrible odds, this was nothing. Almost dying was just a Tuesday for her, or was it Monday? Shit what day was it?

Taking a gamble Teresa activated <Sturdy Outer Shell> and canceled <Dash> to conserve resources, she was about to try something that was going to be extremely taxing on her Mana pool. Another projectile shot into her stomach, but her defensive skill seemed to block the vast majority of the damage. It was about time it started paying dividends.

She blasted apart another slime with shotgun <Embers> again and again until she eventually got a kill notification. If she had to guess, these guys had a ridiculous Vitality build. Projectile after projectile smashed into her, but she was able to tank it for now. What came next would require just a little bit of focus.

Teresa was calling for reinforcements.

<Monster Hunt> activated and she began tugging on every thread there was haphazardly, taking zero effort to be discrete or cautious at all. In the Tutorial, the monsters had not been friendly to other types of monsters. She was hoping the same would apply in the real world.

After all, she could already feel multiple threads pulling back.

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