There were a few things Teresa wanted to find out, but she wasn't eager for the testing involved. For one, <Embers> was effectively useless to her right now. Her spell couldn't compare to whatever Ezio was using, and even then multiple robots had survived his attacks. Fire was out of the question, which left her other skills.

Was <Sturdy Outer Shell> bulletproof? Teresa didn't really know enough about guns and physics to definitively say she could tank a bullet. There were different bullet sizes that could be fired from different guns, the type of ammunition was important. She could probably survive small arms fire if it didn't hit her in the eyes or perfectly in the ear, but massive rounds fired from mechanized vehicle turrets? Safe to say she probably wouldn't be walking one of those off normally.

With her skill though, there was only one way to find out.

"We'll need defensive positioning with a strong counterpush once we whittle their numbers down." Ezio explained as his party prepared. "Axton will keep <Transparent Bulwark> up while Mordecai shoots safely from cover. Elaina will make sure the low levels keep their hearing and apply buffs to Lilith who'll take out any that get too close. Once they start swarming, I'll hit them with nuclear <Embers> and that'll give us our opening to run. Stay near the mouth of the cave in case they try to collapse the ground over us, and- what are you doing?"

Teresa had stepped out from the cave to face the oncoming robots, <Sturdy Outer Shell> active. She kept both arms in front of her as though she were boxing, guarding her head which was most difficult to heal. Bullets immediately shot straight at her, one slamming into an arm and causing a nasty crack in her bone. Teresa stepped back into cover once again, ready to see just what a bullet had been able to do to her.

The shot had landed on the thickest part of her forearm, causing a nasty bruise and a fracture. Teresa discretely used <Healing Touch> to fix the wound as Elaina's <Facilitated Restoration> was rather slow at dealing with physical injuries. Teresa didn't mind revealing she had <Healing Touch>, all healers had it after all, but <Facilitated Restoration> revealed a lot about a healer. It was a culmination of all their healing skills after all.

For example, Teresa could pretty much guarantee Elaina had <Purify> due to her spell handling radiation. Her <Purify> was probably much stronger than Teresa's as that aspect of her <Facilitated Restoration> was remarkable.

The same couldn't be said for Elaina's <Healing Touch>, which was likely weaker than Teresa's. The actual healing aspect of her spell was lackluster, being carried heavily by Elaina's stats which were probably absurd. This much was easy to infer, but there was more that Teresa actually found alarming.

Elaina's Restoration Mana was trying to access Teresa's Soul. At the very least, it was drawn to her Soul, giving Teresa reason to believe Elaina had some sort of skill that interacted with other people's Soul. Teresa didn't have an explicit reason to distrust these people, but stranger danger. Surprisingly, Teresa was able to control Elaina's Restoration Mana within her own body and completely disallowed it from going near her Soul, which was rather complicated as it made up a good portion of her torso and head. There was some weird, metaphysical geometry going on where the Restoration Mana was able to freely travel through her body without interacting with her Soul that should be occupying the same space. Magic was strange sometimes.

"What the hell was that?" Axton, their tank, asked.

"I got it from my Combat Medic class, it's all about getting to people in danger without dying in the process." Teresa lied. That felt like a lie that would be easy enough to keep up, it made sense and they had no real reason to doubt it. She was planning on using <Dash> as well, which could be explained away with the exact same reasoning. Her class wasn't about fighting, it was about maneuvering through a tricky situation to save people.

Totally.

"What is your Fortitude? Those bullets would rip all of us to shreds except for Axton." Elaina asked, sensing no real injury on Teresa.

"Not that high, the skill is just reliant on my Intelligence and Wisdom is all." Teresa lied again. That was something Elaina would certainly buy, as Teresa was confident that was what her normal healing relied on. Elaina nodded, seemingly pleased with the answer.

A gunshot echoed out as Mordecai took a shot, making Teresa wonder how his gimmick worked. Even if he was a high level, there was no way he had the kind of ammo laying around to justify this. If the rifle was his main weapon, then getting to the 70s would require thousands upon thousands of bullets.

More bullets fired, and Teresa noted with curiosity that his rifle wasn't expelling any shell casings. He fired quickly, taking several shots that were accurate yet still in rapid succession. After just a few seconds Teresa would imagine he would need to reload, but he never did. Maybe he didn't need ammunition, maybe he was like those bandits who had ambushed Teresa. Their rangers had been able to summon glowing Mana bolts in their crossbows rather than actual physical arrows, perhaps Mordecai was doing something similar with bullets.

"I'll stick with Lilith and help her with any that get close." Teresa informed the newcomers. Lilith was their mace wielder from what she had gathered via context clues, this was going to be another nightmare of remembering names wasn't it?

"You sure that's a good idea? These guys are tough, even for their level." Lilith warned. "We're confident they have percentage based stat boosts from something, we've fought enough strong monsters to tell there's a difference."

"It's fine, I can probably deal enough damage to disrupt their movement and damage them but I doubt I can finish them off." Teresa replied.

"If you say so, if you die that's on you." Lilith conceded, readying her mace. Teresa stepped back towards her own party, acting as though she were grabbing a sword from Preston. She activated <Inventory> as she stretched her arm out towards him, summoning her sword away from everyone's view.

The first swarm of robots grew closer to the mouth of the cave. For a brief few moments explosions rocked the earth, causing dust to fall from the cave's roof. Axton, the tank, activated his wall of light to block a small missile that had been about to enter their den and blow them all to pieces. An explosion caused his light shield to flash, but it held steady.

Their opponents were far closer now, and as a result they had a vantage point seeing into the cave. A few began to inch a little too close, finally allowing Teresa and Lilith to do their thing.

<Dash> and <Sturdy Outer Shell> both activated, with Teresa putting an emphasis on using her Mana more than her Stamina. If she wasn't really going to be using <Embers> a lot, then she didn't necessarily need to conserve Mana at all.

She darted out of the cave alongside Lilith, immediately plunging her sword into an elbow joint on a relatively humanoid robot with two turrets for arms. The sword tip managed to wedge into the robot a little bit, but the damage was minimal. Maybe she would need to use <Retaliate> if she really wanted to contribute.

Lilith's mace slammed into the robot, taking advantage of the very brief instant Teresa had bought. Teresa definitely got the kill notification, but the experience gain wasn't as great as it could have been.

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Teresa activated <Retaliate>, planning to drain just a bit of HP continuously only for her idea to immediately get interrupted. A bullet slammed into her chest with <Retaliate> active, which actually doubled her HP loss from the attack. What the fuck was that shit? <Retaliate> had never done that before! It wasn't a lot of HP, only an extra 50, but if that happened with a stronger attack it could inadvertently kill Teresa!

She ran around to the backside of another robot as it fired at her, struggling to hit the fast moving target. The front of the robot was coated in quite a bit of armor plating, but towards the back Teresa spotted a crease in between the track and the main body of the mechanized vehicle that wasn't covered. She stabbed her sword in there, hoping to fuck up something with it's movement.

Metal cracked as the frame of the robot splintered, an axle and several wheels being sent out of commission as her strike did a surprising amount of damage. Teresa pulled her blade back and leapt on top of the robot, plunging her sword downward into its frame as she landed. The robot seized as several wires and circuits were obliterated, it turns out machinery does not like having a sudden tear ripping through it.

A turret on the robot rotated trying to lock onto Teresa, but she held on behind the turret and tried to overpower its motion with pure Strength. An idea popped into Teresa's head, and she placed both palms near the base of the gun barrel and activated the sticking component of her gloves.

She held on firmly and used <Embers>, trying to heat up the gun as much as possible. Fire itself wasn't visible underneath Teresa's grip as there was no oxygen in between her hand and the turret, but it sure was generating a lot of heat. The metal of the turret was able to absorb quite a lot before it began to glow red hot, but Teresa held on anyways letting her Fortitude and <Sturdy Outer Shell> tank for her. Bullets ricochetted off the robot as other robots tried to shoot Teresa, but after forcing the turret to turn she finally got what she was hoping for.

The gun had heated up enough to accidentally discharge a bullet, firing it straight at another nearby robot. The bullet completely shot through the target, ripping a devastating hole in its frame and causing it to die almost immediately.

You Have Slain{Avatar Of Cher (F-) [Attuned: Radiation] (lv 74)}

You Have Slain{Avatar Of Cher (F-) [Attuned: Radiation] (lv 71)}

The robot Teresa was riding died as it continued to get shot as well, though the bullets weren't doing nearly as much damage as the one Teresa just fired. That was something Teresa definitely noticed, and she already had thoughts on the matter. <Retaliate> could boost her damage output pretty damn well, but that much for so little HP? No way in hell. That was different, and there was only one difference in the way she used the spell this time around.

She had received damage from an outside source while using <Retaliate>.

Maybe taking damage from something else and increasing it had a better efficacy than just draining her own HP manually. In other words, the buff she received from <Retaliate> would be far stronger if she lost HP because of an opponent while using it. That would make sense, it was called <Retaliate> after all. So far she hadn't been using the skill very vengefully, so perhaps there was more to it all.

She used <Dash> again to blitz another opponent, this one looking more like an Albino Gorilla. It still had a frame resembling a vehicle with tracks, but sticking out the top of the frame was a vaguely humanoid robot with four arms. It was less human and more gorilla, making Teresa feel pretty confident that this robot had actually been based off the Albino Gorillas.

One arm on each side had a turret similar to the previous robots, while the extra arm on each side looked like a baton with small wires poking out of it. The machine turned its upper body to face her and fire, but even with <Sturdy Outer Shell> active Teresa was pretty damn quick. The ridiculous amount of practice in combat with both skills over the last few days was really paying off.

She plunged her sword into the tracks of the robot, but found it didn't really do much. Shit, <Retaliate> was running out. Welp, there was a pretty quick and easy solution to that problem.

Teresa activated the skill and ran straight into its line of fire, allowing herself to get shot at point blank in the arm. Bone immediately broke and Teresa's head started swimming as she realized fuck, getting shot at point blank range kind of sucked. On the bright side it was still nothing <Healing Touch> couldn't fix easily, there was such a dramatic difference in her capabilities when she didn't have to worry about her resources.

Red energy glowed bright around Teresa as she repeated her previous action, ducking under a baton swing and stabbing her sword into the machine's tracks. Metal cracked as the track completely came undone, effectively disabling the robot. She had plenty of energy left but Lilith beat her to the punch, finishing off the robot with a single swing of her mace.

Arrows and gunfire came from within the cave as Sarah and Mordecai both worked on damaging whatever components they could. Unfortunately the arrows seemed to completely glance off most robots without leaving a scratch, but the rifle was able to destroy limbs and even decapitate a few humanoid robots.

Lilith herself had a swirling blue mist around her, with a steady stream of the mist originating from within the cave. Elaina, their healer, was emitting the haze from her fancy staff and guiding it towards Lilith somehow. Teresa wasn't sure exactly what it did, but it was hard to argue with results. Lilith was killing a ridiculous amount of opponents, for every robot Teresa took out Lilith killed two.

"Inside now!" Ezio yelled as more robots began to swarm. Teresa honestly didn't want to stop yet, she had so many resources left, the fight had only just started! The robots gave so much experience too, but unfortunately not everyone present was able to go on a robot killing rampage.

Teresa ran back into the cave taking cover behind Axton the tank as Lilith did the same, multiple destroyed machines in her wake.

"Combat Medic my ass." She heard Mordecai mutter as she returned to the cave. Everyone except for Axton stood behind Ezio as he raised both palms towards the swarm of robots, his eyes closed as he focused. His palms glowed red, but Teresa didn't really sense a lot of Mana flowing anywhere. She couldn't really sense Mana in other people's bodies, but as far as she could tell Ezio was hardly using any at all.

A flash of bright light erased that thought from her mind as a tsunami of fire erupted from the mouth of the cave, incinerating a vast amount of Avatars. The attack only lasted for a second, but if not for Teresa's Fortitude she probably would have gone deaf.

"Let's go!" Ezio called out as his party pushed out of the cave and into the open air where the temperature was still scorching. Several high level robots were still standing, but Lilith and Mordecai were having no issues dispatching them while Axton provided cover.

This was a great opportunity to run, and that was exactly what Teresa and her party should do. She looked back to see them already prepared, with Jake ready for a piggyback ride. Was it just her or did they all seem… kind of depressed? That was saying something considering her own circumstances.

"You good?" Teresa asked as she and Jake led the way out of the cave.

"Yeah, it's nothing. Don't worry about it man." He responded, trying to sound reassuring.

SHIT! Teresa just remembered something she needed to talk to the other party about, but they were already heading out. Elaina, their healer, was in the back. She could catch up to her just fine. Teresa pointed south and gestured for the rest of her party to go ahead, and ran over to meet up with Elaina for a moment before the parties went their separate ways.

"Arconette isn't too far from here, head south!" Elaina yelled as she noticed Teresa. She frowned and gave Teresa a second look as she saw Jake in heavy armor getting a piggyback ride from the five foot three woman.

"There are gods from other universes abducting people!" Teresa replied, immediately realizing how insane she sounded. "They're sending in outsiders to kidnap people and take our resources, we don't know why yet but they attacked us not too long ago!"

"What?" Mordecai yelled, his hearing evidently good enough to still hear Teresa from a distance away. "That's…"

He and Elaina shared a concerned look before stopping entirely.

"Stop! We're heading back to Arconette!" Mordecai yelled, getting the attention of the rest of his party. "They might know something about the missing people!"

"She said it's because of alien abductions." Elaina added as the rest of their party briefly convened.

"That's ridiculous." Ezio said, but Axton shrugged.

"I don't know, we're fighting robots in a radioactive wasteland with magic near a den of dinosaurs. I could believe alien abductions." He said, his logic simple.

"We should still bring them back, they might have useful information." Elaina continued. "We can regroup and make another push for Chernobyl later, this might save lives."

"I'm not a fan of the idea but we can vote on it real quick. Who thinks we should go back?" Ezio asked. Of the group, only Ezio and Lilith seemed in favor of continuing into the wasteland. He sighed, and nodded to Teresa. "Looks like we'll be heading with you."

Just like that, their route to Arconette was practically guaranteed.

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