Teresa swore if she felt she was being tracked one more time she was going to find whatever was doing that and tear it in half with her bare hands, holy shit it was so annoying. Out of nowhere Teresa would feel her Soul get yanked and she'd immediately enter fight or flight mode. So fucking annoying.

"You guys certainly have an interesting method of travel." Ezio said, as everyone in his party was capable of keeping up on their own. Both parties were running side by side now, headed south to Arconette. There was not a single person in Teresa's party that was running on their own, everyone was either giving someone a piggyback ride or they were being carried.

"Not all of us have a high Agility yet." Teresa replied as she carried Jake.

"I didn't know Combat Medics had a lot of Agility." Mordecai sneered.

"Well you gotta be quick to get to people on time, you know?" Teresa explained.

"And pretty strong too, huh?" He continued, nodding at Jake in his heavy armor.

"If someone's hurt you can't just leave them lying on the battlefield, you need to bring them to safety."

"Then the sword? That defensive skill?"

"Well I need to be able to defend myself, if an ally needs healing then that means there's also an enemy capable of injuring an ally."

"You call destroying an Avatar Of Cher over 20 levels higher than you solo 'defending yourself'? That's-"

"Holy shit Mordecai, we get it, she's obviously not a Combat Medic." Axton groaned. "If she doesn't want to tell us her class then so be it, she's being careful. I would too in her shoes, they'd be pressed to all take out one of us, not to mention all of us. She's been pretty damn blatant about it but I respect it."

"You're pretty damn good at using multiple skills while moving." Ezio commented towards Teresa. "What's the trick?"

"I spent a week in the Tutorial doing nothing but practicing exactly that." Teresa answered. "It's probably just a time invested thing, there's not really an easy trick. You just have to practice it deliberately."

"You spent a whole week in the Tutorial doing just that?" Lilith asked.

"Yeah pretty much."

"Wasn't that… kind of a waste of time?"

"No? What do you mean?" Teresa asked, confused.

"There was only so much time to destroy the Monster Strongholds and get loot, you could have always just learned how to do that later outside the Tutorial." Lilith explained.

"Well I wasn't really that focused on min-maxing my Tutorial experience, I mostly wanted to just survive." Teresa responded. "Plus we didn't know about the Monster Strongholds when we spent a week training."

"Oh, you kept one alive too?" Ezio asked. "We did that for three days along with some time between each wave, as soon as we found out about the next stage we just focused on taking out as many strongholds as possible."

"I take it that's where you all got your loot from?" Teresa asked, looking at their various pieces of armor and equipment.

"Looks like you got some loot too." Elaina said smiling, eyeing Teresa's boots, pants, and gloves. "And you beat the Tutorial."

"What makes you say that?" Teresa asked, but Elaina just ignored the question.

"I want to know what happened to the rest of her party." Mordecai muttered, but Axton elbowed him sharply.

"Don't be an insensitive ass." Axton whispered harshly, wincing on Mordecai's behalf.

What happened to her party? Well they were right there running with them, what kind of question was that? Did they think that Teresa's party was just the remnants of multiple parties?

Holy shit, that's exactly what they thought. There was too big of a level difference between Teresa and everyone else, then there was a big level difference between her party and the family they were escorting. They probably looked like they were a group of three different parties, or at least what was left of those parties.

"Why do you have to assume the worst? Maybe her party split up after the Tutorial." Mordecai retorted, annoyed.

"Tell us about these abductions you mentioned." Elaina said, changing the subject. This was one thing Teresa didn't mind openly sharing.

"So we encountered these guys with a straitjacket…" Teresa explained the story of how they encountered a group of bandits and how that eventually led to a conversation with a god. She left out a lot of details, like anything involving The Mall or its existence. Sooner or later she would tell them about the settlement, but they were too dangerous to be careless around. If the five of them teleported to The Mall, they could all conquer the place themselves. They wouldn't need an army, just themselves.

Teresa needed to know more about them to entrust any access to The Mall. All of the information she had about the multiversal invaders on the other hand, that was fair game. Everyone needed to know about that.

"So you just threatened mutually assured destruction and that worked somehow?" Ezio asked.

"Pretty much."

"Are you sure? I mean, if it was a god capable of inhabiting a body I feel like it would be fully capable of dealing with you. Do you know the god's name? How to find their people? Anything about them?"

"Not really." Teresa said sheepishly.

"So how exactly would the destruction be mutual?" Ezio asked. "You know nothing, you wouldn't pose a threat at all. Despite that, you walked away with no repercussions? Either you're lying or you're getting played, and I'm not sure which is worse."

"Well we haven't had any problems with them since, but if you're from a settlement then you should definitely be concerned." Teresa replied.

"Why would some god be interested in a random group?" Mordecai questioned.

"Probably because we killed a party of his invaders."

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

The parties continued to travel for a little while without speaking until eventually Elaina spoke up again.

"So what did you guys all do before the System?" She asked, trying to start up a friendly conversation. Everyone hesitated for a moment until eventually Preston decided to respond.

"Jake and I were finishing our first year of college so I guess you could say we were students." Preston answered. That wasn't exactly vital information so it wasn't a big deal. Honestly there didn't need to be that much secrecy, Teresa was just taking her job as an Ambassador seriously.

"I just worked retail." Teresa added truthfully. Before that she had worked at a car detailership before it went under. They had tried to start their own brand of hot sauce for some reason, which had failed spectacularly. Who buys hot sauce from a car detailership? Who invests that much money into a product that has nothing to do with the company? Teresa was half convinced it was a failed money laundering scheme, but honestly it could have totally been a series of legitimate poor decisions. Teresa wasn't still salty about it, nope. It had only cost her a job after all, no biggie.

"Graphic designer." Sarah said. That much was true as well, and it had come as a shock to everyone when they first started actually talking about their lives pre-System. Teresa had expected her to have had an outdoorsy job based on her demeanor, but Sarah had only really learned some archery from her aunt back when she was a teenager.

"Data entry." Thomas answered.

"High school." Matthew added.

"Told you they were civilians." Elaina said to her own party. "Most of us were military at one point or another, Mordecai here actually went to the Olympics once."

"A long time ago, I got a bronze medal in the 50 meter prone. It's not an event anymore, but I actually competed in a few events." Mordecai explained. Well shit, that was terrifyingly impressive.

"Axton used to be in the NFL playing American football, you went to the Soup Bowl right?" Elaina continued.

"Yep, that's exactly what I did. The Soup Bowl." Axton responded, smirking.

"Holy shit that's insane, you went to the Super Bowl? Did you win?" Jake asked. Axton just shook his head. "Damn, still crazy though."

"The rest of us were all military, we had a hard time at first since not all of us speak the same languages but <Translate> took care of that on its own pretty quickly." Elaina continued. "Enough of us spoke English that it balanced out, now we can all speak in our native tongue and it doesn't make a difference."

"We're coming up on Arid Junction." Ezio announced, confusing Teresa a bit.

"What do you mean by that?" She asked, but as they reached the summit of another hill she saw an eerie sight.

In the distance there was a town of multiple fully constructed homes, it looked like a massive suburban neighborhood. It was far bigger than The Mall and far more developed, having actual structures rather than tents.

Yet there wasn't a single person, and they were still in the Contaminated Zone.

What the hell was this? Ezio said he came from a settlement of people, there was nobody here. It was a good thing she hadn't implicitly trusted the random party, this was-

"We'll head a few kilometers out from here and rest for the night, Arid Junction isn't exactly the safest hideout." Ezio continued. "It fell during the first week after the Tutorial. We had only made initial contact with them when the radiation started spreading. You can't really tell when you get exposed to radiation without the proper tools or spells, and they didn't have anyone capable of handling it. Thousands died from the radiation, the rest were cleaned up by Cher."

"Cher? You said Chernobyl earlier, you don't mean…" Teresa asked, but Ezio cut her off.

"In the center of the Contaminated Zone is Chernobyl, though the Contaminated Zone does not make a perfect circle. We've been holding off the Radioactive Portals to the south so it hasn't been able to spread that way, but they're getting stronger. All of the golems are controlled by the same AI, which we believe to be housed at Chernobyl." Ezio explained.

"Why would Chernobyl have an AI? It's a nuclear reactor built ages ago, that doesn't make sense." Teresa replied. "How would it build robots like that? Where would it get all those materials? Honestly I thought they just came from a Portal somewhere."

"We're not too sure on the specifics yet, we've only seen the facility once before we had to retreat. If we don't take it out soon, then Arconette will wind up exactly like Arid Junction."

Teresa looked at the ghost town as they ran past it, looking through the streets. There were paved roads that suddenly cut off, houses that didn't match other structures, and many signs that this town's infrastructure came from multiple pre-System cities.

Then there were the stains.

Reddish brown splotches discolored several walls, sidewalks, and even rooftops. There were scorch marks and craters that likely originated from explosions. In some windows Teresa spotted people sitting at dinner tables or slumped against the curtains, all dead. Sarah, who was carrying Mathew, deliberately matched Axton's pace to block the view of the town from the teenager.

It was like seeing a photo from a history book in real life, the site of a massacre. Even from a distance Teresa could smell the foul stench that the town gave off, likely thanks to her Perception. Arid Junction had certainly held more people than The Mall, and it had fallen in the first week all because of a shitty spawn location. They had been unfortunate enough to appear close to a sentient nuclear power plant with murderous intentions, and as a result they all perished.

"In case you don't know, anyone under the age of 16 gets automatically placed into a city. The same had been true here, just as it is in Arconette. We have a lot of problems going on, this is our most pressing issue." Ezio said.

"We've also been having issues with large groups going missing." Elaina added. "At first we were able to write it off as accidents while hunting, but we've had reason to believe otherwise recently. Too many non-hunters have gone missing, low levels who never leave the city. What you said lines up with what we've experienced, we wouldn't mind assistance with the missing people."

"They're randoms Elaina, let's not immediately assign them major responsibilities." Ezio scolded. "But she is right, we would appreciate any help you could offer."

Teresa almost asked about the City Monolith of Arid Junction, but she realized that might give too much away. They might be able to use it to teleport, but she wasn't sure how a City Monolith would operate in a dead city.

Fuck it, they had revealed a good bit about themselves, Teresa could drop a hint in reciprocation.

"What about the City Monolith? Could we use that to teleport?" Teresa asked, making Mordecai sharply jerk his head towards her.

"So you already know about those too, huh?" He asked. Rather than addressing it, Ezio ignored Mordecai and answered her question.

"Currently neither side controls Arid Junction. It's an unclaimed City Monolith that's too dangerous to possess. Nobody has enough military power to defend the town, Chernobyl included. It would be nice for teleporting troops, but it's all a lot more complicated than that. Anyone worth teleporting would cost a fortune, money that could be spent on improving the city. As for Chernobyl, if she took it over then we would have an outpost we could frequently attack to consistently trim her numbers. We don't even know what would happen if she took it over, but sometimes she'll send Avatars nearby to check the place out. We generally stay out of there."

"How fast does the zone spread?" Teresa asked, thinking about The Mall to the north.

"Depends on how fast you can destroy the Radioactive Portals. Unchecked, it can spread several kilometers in a day in all directions. Even if you do keep the Portals in check, they'll spread somewhere else. We can only take care of the southern perimeter of the Contaminated Zone, we can't prevent it from spreading everywhere else. The larger the zone gets, the stronger the Portals are. Towards the center they also get stronger, we estimate there to be at least four level 90 Portals. This all isn't even accounting for normal Portals appearing outside of the Contaminated Zone that we also have to deal with, there's a lot to handle."

"You sure seem comfortable with telling us a lot." Teresa said.

"Truth is we need all the help we can get. We've got a few people who beat the Tutorial in Acronette, all of us included, but we could always use more competent fighters. You were also able to survive in the Contaminated Zone, I'm personally hoping if we show you a bit of trust you'll be willing to help us fight the Contaminated Zone." Ezio explained.

"You have several people who beat the Tutorial?" Teresa asked incredulously. She was already getting anxious from this whole conversation, it seemed The Mall was in far more danger than she initially realized. One little robot invasion and they would wind up just like Arid Junction. Meanwhile Ezio's settlement had been struggling themselves despite having multiple Tutorial Completionists. That led to another question. "How many people are there in Arconette?"

"Roughly two hundred thousand."

"Oh." That's not what she was expecting.

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