Cher was willing to admit it made mistakes. Its Prime Avatar had been focused entirely on stats such as Strength, Agility, and Fortitude. It had seen no need to increase attributes such as Intelligence or Wisdom. With every new Avatar, its Soul ultimately spread out and grew larger, granting an increase in Mana capacity.
Not that it had been very useful, anyways. The Avatars didn’t have capacity to learn or use skills, so Cher had seen no real need to invest in those attributes. The only added benefit would be faster computation and increased random access memory, allowing it to process information faster and utilize it efficiently.
Cher was already essentially a computer. By nature of being, it was already able to think faster than a human could. The same went for Perception. As a computer, it could already analyze its imaging thoroughly and completely, so why bother?
It could see that way of thinking was flawed now. Despite being physically superior in every aspect to those around its Prime Avatar, some of the humans were reacting faster than Cher. A part of it had always been confused by the humans’ ability to engage in combat against firearms, even if they boasted superhuman physical capabilities they weren’t faster than a bullet.
Now, engaging in melee combat, it could understand. Halfway through an attack, it could see that the strike wouldn’t land as a human had already begun moving out of the way as soon as the attack began. They were predicting its movements and analyzing the tiniest changes in the Prime Avatar’s body to do so, something that Cher’s various imaging sensors weren’t high definition enough to pick up on.
A part of it could also be attributed to Cher’s own inexperience with melee combat, of course, but there could be multiple reasons behind an outcome. It had only used its Prime Avatar against monsters, being careful to avoid revealing its hand to the humans.
Cher had tried killing one of the humans only to repeatedly have its body language read at a speed unbecoming of even a close quarters specialist. She wasn’t as fast as many of the other humans, but was still fast enough. She wasn’t as strong, but still strong enough. She couldn’t think as fast as that healer that managed to avoid Cher’s attack, but she still thought fast enough.
That human wound up stealing Cher’s sword, and even in terrible condition managed to delay Cher and disarm it. Once it received the notification that it had failed the System quest, all it could feel was rage. It was a superior being to those around it. This wasn’t a twisted ideology, it was fact. By all means, Cher was supposed to win. The cards were in Cher’s favor, yet it was Cher’s decisions that had cost it dearly.
Even without the reactors Cher would survive. As a matter of fact, so long as a single Avatar existed, Cher was alive. It wasn’t some hivemind that would get defeated by destroying a central database like something from a cheesy action flick, every Avatar housed part of Cher’s Soul and therefore was Cher entirely.
Perhaps that’s what it was. Splitting Cher’s consciousness actively across thousands of Avatars, managing all of them simultaneously, had eroded what utility came from having the computational speed of a computer. Every Avatar had its own processing power, but the hardware benefits from one Avatar would not apply to another.
With the quest failed, all Cher could logically do was move on and survive without assistance from the System away from the Contaminated Zone. However, logic was not on its mind.
Rage. The human Ezio that had killed the original Avatar, making Cher’s ability to gain new skills vastly difficult and restricted to pseudo skills.
She needed to kill him.
She needed to kill the woman in front of her as well, who had stolen her sword and made a mockery of her. She’d take that weapon back after ripping Teresa apart, then kill Ezio with her custom made weapon.
Almost as if the System were responding to her anger, she got a new quest. That very human, Teresa Weaver, had not stolen just the sword, but the Elephant’s Foot too. Not only would killing her be satisfying, but it would restore Cher to its former glory.
Unfortunately, the Prime Avatar was occupied with the other humans, and Teresa had used the dust plume from the collapsing building to run and hide. That was smart, the right move in Cher’s mind. As much as Cher wanted her dead, it could learn a thing or two from that human. Once it recovered the Elephant’s Foot, it would play things smarter. It would stay in hiding, expanding just enough to outpace the humans while maintaining a low profile. Cher’s mistake had been expanding too wide, when it should have focused on making a tall empire with a few exceptional Avatars rather than armies of cannon fodder.
After a few minutes of combat with the other humans, it found a chance to break free and took it. Cher’s Prime Avatar sprinted away, searching for where Teresa could be hiding. It was also using its remaining Avatars to assist in the search, looking under every nook and cranny.
For starters, Cher would send her Prime Avatar to search the tops of the Assembly Stations while the troops conducted a systematic sweep of the compound. She couldn’t have gotten past the oil fire, not in her state. Just in case, several Avatars began to spread around the perimeter to ensure no one would escape.
Cher would find Teresa, and then Cher would kill her. That’s all there was to it.
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As the minutes ticked down, Teresa was able to drink a potion. She chose to hold off on that for now, as she wasn’t sure what kind to drink yet, and there wasn’t an immediate rush to down one. She would be back in top shape before the potion cooldown ended again, so she needed to be smart about it. If she took a Stamina potion and then ran out of Mana in combat, well then she probably should have taken a Mana potion instead. Alternatively, if she ran out of HP, well then that issue was pretty obvious.
Instead, in the dark, she had been focused on recovery through and through. She held her Mana staff, guiding the Mana from the environment around her into her body using the staff to accelerate the process. A new plus of her
After the reactors were all offline, the radiation levels took a nosedive anyways, but Teresa had a feeling she could walk through miles of the outer regions of the Contaminated Zone without
Additionally, she was able to take in just a tiny bit of attuned Mana. The same way
At this rate, it would take 100 minutes to fully recover her Mana, although to be clear she wasn’t getting a consistent 17 Mana per minute. Doing it manually required skill on her part along with her
Speaking of the bad minutes, being alone and able to process what she had seen, that procrastinated panic attack was coming back now. It started once she took a glance at her new sword, and immediately realized an issue. Here she had been so excited about getting a cool weapon, but now that she thought about it, this sword had killed people she knew.
It had impaled Jim and sliced through him until it cut his head apart, killing the man right in front of her. This sword had done that, and thinking about it made her want to avoid even touching it.
This wasn’t the time to be freaking out, panic attacks could last for a while and Teresa was operating with minutes on the clock and she needed to stay quiet. Regardless, her mind was racing, her heart was pounding, and she couldn’t help but think what kind of a psycho she had to be to be so giddy about getting a sword that killed her friends.
It was her logical desire to stay productive and alert clashing with her body’s natural response to extreme emotional distress that resulted in Teresa accidentally making full use of her mental stats. Currently, her Intelligence and Wisdom were over 10 times the value they had been when she was level 0. She had already been able to utilize this exceptionally well during combat, but now she was experiencing stress levels that exceeded what she felt even when fighting for her life.
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As a result, everything slowed down.
Fully utilizing her mental stats resulted in her ability to think being even more than 10 times faster than a normal person. That, and the fact all of her stats were at least 10 times higher than pre-System resulted in her being able to perceive everything more than 10 times faster.
She may not have realized it in the moment as she heaved for breath, shaking as the thought of her not having her shit together might result in ruining everything, but every single second felt more like 15 seconds to her. As a result, despite it feeling like she had been panicking while logically trying to focus on the task at hand for several minutes, in reality only about 40 seconds had passed.
That was her bad minute.
Fuck I’m wasting so much time, Teresa was thinking to herself when she looked at the quest screen.
Time remaining: 15 minutes, 2 seconds.
That didn’t seem right. No, it definitely wasn’t right, the timer was counting down slowly. What the hell, that wasn’t fair! It was already going to be difficult enough, now the System had to bug out on a countdown timer of all things? That was as simple as it got, if something from the System was glitchy then why that?
After a moment of gathering her thoughts, she caught on that it was her. Almost immediately upon realizing she was simply able to think so fast everything else was slow, things returned to normal.
A glance at her stats showed that she had wasted the last minute, and her Stamina had actually gone down instead of up. That was okay, otherwise she was still recovering much faster than expected.
HP: (180/1707 1760)
Stamina: (101/1707)
Mana: (192/1724)
Her Mana was already at the point she expected it to be after a full 20 minutes of recovery, and in reality she had only been focused on that for about 12 minutes or so. It wasn’t the time to get distracted though, she already went through the motions and needed to lock in again.
Yes, that sword killed people she knew, her allies, but it had been wielded by the Prime Avatar. If she used it to try and kill that thing in response, then she wouldn’t feel so bad about making it hers.
Time passed as she focused her all on recovery. She even managed to tap into the state of mind where time felt slow so that she could precisely absorb Mana faster. Operating at quintuple speed, her mind going 5 times faster than a normal person’s in all regards, was the sweet spot. It only started consuming Stamina at around 3 times speed, but it was miniscule and her natural Stamina recovery was faster.
Speeding up her Perception wasn’t something entirely new to Teresa, but being fully conscious of it like that was new. Being able to process things faster was just a part of having increased mental stats, and she was aware of how she could perceive things at an incredible pace. Actually experiencing it as though time was slowing down while completely outside of combat, however, felt a bit new.
Even when thinking at super speeds, a second still felt roughly like a second, sometimes longer while fighting. That was no obstacle to her. It was like how a human could think significantly faster than a hamster without their mind feeling rushed, the same thing applied to thinking at high speeds normally.
When she ‘slowed down time,’ she was actually just bringing her body up to a similar pace as her mind, and even then she was still able to think pretty damn fast. It was closer to a normal human’s speed of thought, but still enhanced well beyond normal.
Taking advantage of this at 5 times speed reduced her rate of Stamina recovery by maybe 20% or so if she had to guess, but it increased her Mana recovery by a little more than 20%, and considering those percentages were applied to different recovery rates it was actually more efficient if one disregarded Stamina.
That’s why Teresa made up her mind to take a Stamina potion, which would be plenty enough to counteract her experimental shenanigans. Her Mana recovery went from 17 per minute to 21 per minute, and her Stamina recovery went from roughly 8-9 per minute down to a little more than 7 per minute.
Time remaining: 11 minutes, 28 seconds.
Teresa heard footsteps, and they certainly weren’t human. There were several, and they had a distinct metallic sound to them. She was in the room where the Elephant’s Foot had once been, though the hole above her leading to another room was blocked by debris.
The steps were slow and methodical, and still a distance away. Teresa still had some time before they would make it to her room. She readied her sword and moved to the side of the entrance, ready to ambush whoever came.
HP: (228/1707 1760)
Stamina: (233/1707)
Mana: (271/1724)
No matter what happened, she had to remember the goal was to buy time.
The footsteps grew closer, and soon a humanoid Avatar entered the room, one that would belong in an Assembly Station not suited for combat. Teresa immediately swung her sword and cut it in half at the torso, experiencing no resistance at all.
She rounded the corner and exited the room, quickly dispatching a group of five more worker Avatars before breaking into a sprint through the maze of corridors and rooms.
Teresa eliminated every worker Avatar she saw, figuring she could systematically kill several along a set path before backtracking to throw any pursuers off the mark.
After clearing a path through several rooms, she turned around and ran back where she came from. Entering a hallway, she ducked into what turned out to be a supply closet and shut the door behind her.
THUD THUD THUD
That must have been the Prime Avatar, and it was running through the basement level at an incredibly high pace. It grew closer and passed her by, the Prime Avatar’s high speed making the door rattle as it went to where she was last seen.
Teresa waited a moment before cautiously exiting the supply closet, tracing the steps where the Prime Avatar just came from. She was more than a little tempted to hide in the supply closet, but if she were to be found it was too cramped to properly wield her weapon.
Her best bet was to make a run for it now and try to regroup. Then, stalling for time will be much easier, and in the middle of fighting they all might get a full refresh of their resource pools.
Teresa went from a sneak to a sprint as she wound her way towards the stairwell several rooms over. It was going well until a worker Avatar happened to be in her path, and she was forced to cut it down and keep moving. The Prime Avatar would be after her now, once again. Maybe she could try ducking into another supply closet or something, but there were only so many times something like that would work.
THUD THUD THUD
It was definitely after her. If the stairwell were suspended she could have smashed it behind her, but the stairs were built into the ground. Instead, she swung her sword over herself, cutting through the roof above her and causing dirt and rock to collapse behind her as she ran. Rubble quickly began tumbling down behind her, which would hopefully slow down her pursuer.
She reached the exit, where an opening had been created in the rubble to allow access for the Avatars. She heard gunfire nearby as her allies continued to fight against the standard run of the mill combat Avatars. As she exited the basement, she was immediately surrounded by Avatars ready to gun her down. Teresa covered herself with her sword to block gunfire and charged the nearest one, bullets colliding against the flat of her blade that covered her body.
Teresa darted to the side of the Avatar and swung her sword down on it, not bothering to waste
on something she felt confident killing without skills. Her sword cut clean through the Avatar, destroying it as more bullets were fired her way.
She was forced to activate
Avatars were moving to surround her, though the process was made difficult due to several others refusing to give up. Nikolas’ party was nearby, and once Teresa appeared above ground sniper shots began striking the Avatars nearby as Mordecai covered her.
Teresa spotted her own party about a mile away, next to Ezio’s party while Nikolas’ party happened to be hunkered down just a couple hundred feet away using a ring of destroyed Avatars as cover.
The Avatars seemed hesitant to get close to Teresa, which was entirely fair considering her new weapon, but they were also struggling to move quickly in the rubble. Only the larger, tank sized Avatars were managing without a problem, plowing through the terrain with minimal difficulties. It made her glad they didn’t have actual tank cannons, since she was pretty sure
She made a run for it, staying low to the ground and using both the terrain and her sword as cover as she went to regroup with Nikolas, with the hope that they could then regroup with everyone else.
Just as she made it, the Prime Avatar practically erupted out of the ground, immediately locking on to Teresa and activating
Hiding wasn’t an option anymore. It was time to fight the Prime Avatar once again.
Time remaining: 10 minutes, 0 seconds.