Things progressed smoothly, the war against Chernobyl was effectively over. The full restore of resources from the System hadn’t healed injuries, but it still made treating them a piece of cake. Teresa had cleared out several groups of Avatars on her own, though there were certainly more out there still. It would have been nice if killing the Prime Avatar completely killed off Cher, but that wasn’t the case.
Teresa only returned to the others after almost two hours of hunting down Avatars, after coming to the realization that Angelo’s party was still out there. She may have gotten a massive upgrade in terms of personal power, especially when dealing with Avatars, but four high level Completionists still had the potential to overwhelm her on her own.
Upon regrouping, the army cautiously began their trip back to Arconette. It went quickly, with no real incidents occurring along the way. Everyone had gotten
There were still Radioactive Portals, but they didn’t drop items anymore. Teresa didn’t mind taking out a few with her party on the way back anyways, finding the experience to be pretty easy. Her Mana reserves were now at the point where she didn’t have to worry so much about exhausting everything spamming shotgun
Scavenger leveled up again along the way, resulting in Teresa learning the skill
The return trip for the majority of the army would take about two or three days to reach Arconette again, but Teresa’s party was exempt from that. They ran ahead at full speed, clearing the path of Portals. They didn’t even sleep, pushing through their exhaustion to get back as fast as possible.
It wasn’t because they were just so excited to see Arconette again or something. They simply hadn’t forgotten about Thomas. They may have been sleep deprived, but it beat torture. Knowing that he had likely suffered far more than them, nobody complained despite everyone feeling incredibly tired.
Preston Waln, the man who Teresa had met in a horrid state abandoned in a self destructing cave, had mentioned the smell of something cooking, possibly a bakery. That implied he had been kept in a cave somewhere near Arconette. The war had taken several days, it was more than likely Thomas was already dead.
Just in case, they had to be fast, sparing no time to return quickly. They may have taken out several Portals along the way, but the reality was it barely slowed them down at all. They took out six Portals, each one only taking about a minute to eradicate on average. The Portals got weaker the closer they were to Arconette, meaning that while a level 60 Portal might have taken closer to two minutes, the level 38 Portal had been cleared in as little as 30 seconds.
A hundred monsters could be dispatched in no time if they were weaker than Teresa. On top of that, with support from the rest of her party, it was a one sided slaughter. Nobody was joking around, everyone understood the implications for Thomas’ wellbeing. When Teresa hit level 69, Preston didn’t even say ‘hah funny number,’ or anything.
With Arconette in view, Teresa was now level 69. When she had fought the Prime Avatar, she had only been level 62. Killing it had leveled her up once, and going on an unstoppable rampage afterwards helped level her up a lot too. At this rate, Teresa didn’t believe it would take much longer for her to reach level 100, maybe a week or two at most. Okay, maybe three depending on circumstances, but she felt she could get there faster.
The party didn’t enter the city, but instead began checking caves at an incredible pace. Teresa was the only one who could do so safely though. The caves were too dark for the others to see in barring Sarah and Randall, though it could be lit up with
Instead, they simply searched for caves on the surface while Teresa went through them. At one point, they found a body. The woman had been dead for quite some time, and it was nobody they recognized. Still, Teresa brought out the corpse for the others to safeguard while she kept looking.
The corpse had been in a state similar to Preston Waln’s, with her hands cut off and heavy rock crushing her legs to prevent her from escaping. She didn’t have any space in her
Not worrying about her own safety at all, Teresa could fully check a cave in just a few seconds. She had to leave her sword outside whenever she did so, but that wasn’t a huge deal.
Teresa searched for hours. She wasn’t sure exactly how much time had passed since they left Chernobyl, but it had gotten dark out and the sun had risen again, standing high up in the sky. They had sent Preston into the city to inform people about what was going on, and there was a full search effort from the Guild sending parties out to various caves near the city.
Multiple bodies were recovered this way, and were taken to the Guild to be identified. The woman Teresa had found was named Casey, a 35 year old woman who had been suffering from withdrawals since the apocalypse started. Teresa was only made aware of this in the hopes that they might spot a pattern of some sort. It didn’t take long to figure out that the victims each had issues in their personal lives.
Mitch, a 28 year old victim, had anger management issues. Nikita, a Ukrainian refugee, likely suffered from PTSD and had a public panic attack at the sight of armed guards patrolling the city weeks ago. Patrick was a man who had been missing for some time who had been hoarding water to himself. Rashid suffered from night terrors and would sometimes wake up screaming, alarming his neighbors in the process. Zeke, an elderly caretaker, had been caught beating children. It had been initially believed that he escaped custody, as Arconette also had an issue dealing with how to incarcerate people with superpowers.
All of them were dead, and as the reports kept coming in Teresa felt worse and worse. Someone like Zeke being a victim she could understand to a certain extent. If some old asshole had beat her brother back when he was just a kid, she would want the person responsible to die too. But someone like Casey, she didn’t deserve death. Most of them didn’t.
The fact none of them were found alive also weighed on her, knowing that wasn’t a good sign for Thomas. Still, she kept searching, until finally they sent someone to come get her and the rest of her party.
“Teresa, we need to talk.” Saylee said, coming out to greet Teresa’s party.
“What are you doing here?” Teresa asked, worried.
“We found him.” She answered, making everyone perk up. Saylee shook her head, conveying everything they needed to know.
Thomas was dead.
“Oh.” Teresa didn’t know what else to say. They were too late.
“I’m sorry for your loss. Mathew and Gabriel are at The Mall with Madeline right now. We still have to notify them.” Saylee said, making Teresa’s heart sink. “I know you probably don’t want to right now, but everyone here is looking for an update about the Contaminated Zone. We saw the quest was completed, but you’re the only ones to have made it back. If everyone else is dead, we need to know what happened.”
“No, most of them are still alive. We ran back ahead of everyone to look for Thomas.” Teresa told her, affirming Saylee’s biggest fear wasn’t true.
“I take it you heard about it from the messenger we sent then.”
“We never encountered a messenger of any kind, we found out the hard way.” Teresa replied.
“Well, I know you’ve been up all night but we do have to debrief everyone. Arconette hasn’t been doing great while you were gone. We were able to keep it under wraps that almost half of the Completionists were on a secret mission outside the city, but when twenty more Completionists left conspiracies started to break out among those who noticed. Arconette has a much larger perimeter than The Mall does, they’ve been spread thin trying to keep the city safe.”
“How’s The Mall doing?” Teresa asked.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Nothing to worry about there. Jonathan has actually been putting in some real work, categorizing skills while figuring out what qualifies someone to learn specific skills. George is walking now, he said there’s a way to replicate the effects of some skills to a limited degree without actually having the skill in the first place. He’s been working closely with Jonathan on that front, and their testing has resulted in several others becoming powerful enough to help defend both The Mall and Blue Waters. The Albino Gorillas have been helping construct cabins, learning from a few contractors and laborers, and the Scilians have been responsible for providing drinkable water. There’s a lot more, between other cities and something called a System Dungeon we found in the tundra, but we can walk and talk.”
Saylee caught Teresa up to speed as they made their way into Arconette. Apparently Mijo had also been going out on excursions to kill monsters that roamed too close to The Mall, and it was decided that stopping him would be both too difficult and counterproductive. Instead, groups were accompanying the dog on his walks, using the chance to level up while under the protection of a pretty powerful canine.
The city also got System rewards, and there was now a shop accessible via a City Monolith to spend points at. They were able to purchase entire buildings using the city’s points. Small residential buildings cost the least, but there were options like additional shops that would allow the purchase of electronic components. If they wanted, they could spend almost everything on an Assembly Station of their own to manufacture components directly, though they would still have to worry about obtaining the necessary resources themselves.
Saylee said they were more inclined to purchase a variety of System stores, allowing them to purchase materials and components instead of making them. They’d still have to use System currency to buy these components and resources, but the stores were cheaper than the Assembly Stations.
Individual points could be spent on a variety of things as well. Drops from the Contaminated Zone could be purchased for points, including the Human Evolution Feed that could improve someone’s race to F+. On the very expensive side of things, skills could be purchased in exchange for points too, though nobody currently at The Mall had enough to buy one.
They had to be mindful of what they bought with points, since they weren’t going to get anymore. They could always earn more currency by selling monster parts, but destroying Radioactive Portals no longer awarded any points. Points could not be traded between individuals, and skills cost anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 points, meaning Teresa could buy two at most.
Saylee was also now in communication with a few representatives from various cities also in Arconette. Stormwreck, New London, and Haven were three separate human settlements that had various teleportation agreements with Arconette, each of them larger than The Mall by a significant margin.
Teresa was mostly getting the broad strokes of everything, she only got a lot of details about the System rewards because she asked for more detail. She was tired and she felt like shit, what once would have been exceptionally great news barely registered anymore. It was all in the shadow of Thomas’ death.
He hadn’t even been found by his own party, someone from Arconette found him. There were so many factors to this that made Teresa feel sick, including that Mathew and Gabriel didn’t know yet. Someone had to tell those kids that their dad was dead.
They had to cut their conversation short as they entered the town hall. There were a few issues with getting Teresa’s sword past the security checkpoint, but an official from Arconette waved her through after she refused to part ways with it even temporarily. Teresa was fully aware of how much of a security issue she was, but still she dared anyone to try and disarm her. She was in no mood to be accommodating.
“How many times do I have to say it? People have a right to privacy, and shouldn’t share their status screens if they don’t want to!” Someone was saying. Really? They were still going on about this?
“They just have to share their race, make sure it’s affiliated to Earth.” Someone else argued back.
“What about the people who don’t know how to use the System fluently? What if there’s a quest of some sort that says something similar?”
“These what if’s don’t outweigh the safety of-”
“Enough.” Teresa said, pointing her sword at the person arguing against this. “Show me your status screen.”
“Teresa-” Saylee started to say, clearly alarmed. Teresa cut her off.
“You have five seconds. Do it, or I’ll assume you’re one of them and I’ll kill you.” Teresa meant it too. She had been too accommodating in the past, too willing to compromise. The war against Chernobyl had changed her, it showed Teresa that sometimes ruthlessness was necessary. People were dying, suffering fates that Teresa didn’t even fully comprehend, and it was thanks to assholes like this that it kept going on. As far as she was concerned, they were killing people with their incompetence.
“Once Ezio hears about this, he’ll kill you.” The man said, eyes still focused on the end of the sword.
“No he won’t.”
“You think you can beat everyone in this roo-”
“Times up.” Teresa swung her sword, deliberately moving far slower than her top speed. The man yelped, and revealed a status screen before the blade could cut into him. A quick glance showed he was indeed from Earth, meaning he was either just incompetent or in on it through some other means.
“What are you thinking? Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?” Someone else yelled. “I may have disagreed with the man, but that was excessive! That’s not how we do things! This will be an international incident!”
“I’m here to tell you about what happened during the operation, and I come back to find out you let one of our people die. Not only that, but he was tortured right outside the city limits by one of your own. If you guys had taken the most basic of measures to look for any of your missing people, you would have found him by accident. Don’t think I’ll just gloss over that fact.” Teresa was not worried about going too far here, not in the slightest.
From what she gathered by being amongst Arconette’s Completionist, they liked to get shit done. Someone who takes forever to accomplish the most basic of tasks would never beat the Tutorial. Additionally, as much as Teresa didn’t like to toot her own horn, she could easily be a walking disaster far worse than Angelo. After all, she had the Elephant’s Foot in her
Teresa could just plop it down and the casualties would be immense. It didn’t abide by the pre-System rules of physics, the radiation from it would start wiping people out in all directions unless they were a decent level. Would Teresa do something like that? No, definitely not, but no one could deny she had this ability now. The looming danger Teresa could pose combined with the respect she had earned amongst the Completionists forces were enough to give her a lot of leeway in what was considered acceptable.
“Angelo is not acting on behalf of Arconette’s interests, we aren’t responsible-”
“Make an excuse again, and I will kill you. I am not in the mood for this.” Once again, Teresa meant it. Maybe a clearheaded version of her would consider that as going too far, but this was not the time to show even an ounce of leniency. Everyone in her party seemed to feel the same way, their hands on their weapons as they were fully prepared for things to kick off. The only one to show any sign of hesitation was Randall, but he hadn’t personally known anyone who died due to recent events. Regardless, if it came down to it Teresa was sure he’d have her back.
“I would like to take the chance to apologize, we have not handled this as well as we should have.” An elderly man said, sounding sincere. Teresa actually had her eye on him, since
“Yes, he will be back within a day or two.” Teresa answered. “During our trip to Chernobyl at the heart of the Contaminated Zone, we were attacked numerous times by Avatars. Along the way, we were ambushed by a group of over 15 Completionists from Arconette, who spared no expense trying to kill us. They’re all dead now, but a follow up attack came from the Avatars while we were weakened. Thanks to that, there were casualties in the army from both The Mall and Arconette. Angelo and his party, also Completionists from here by the way, ambushed us using multiple monster lures to surround us with high level monsters. We killed our way through the monsters, made our way into the heart of Chernobyl, and shut it down. Most of the infrastructure there was destroyed in the process, and a large number of the remaining Avatars were hunted down and killed. Now here we are.”
“We’re going to need more details than that-” The annoying man began to say, but the elderly Completionist cut him off.
“Thank you, we will get additional details from Ezio. Now I should ask, you mentioned hunting down the remaining Avatars. Does this mean there are still Avatars out there?” The elderly man asked.
“Yes, it appears that so long as an Avatar is alive then Cher is too.”
“Cher?”
“The name of the sapient entity we assume to be operating the Avatars along with the now destroyed nuclear power plant. They are called Avatars of Cher, after all.”
“Right.”
“Now I want a few things. I assume the place we stayed at previously is still available? We need sleep. Additionally, we need to speak with Mathew and Gabriel. Lastly, it was the final wishes of a Preston Waln, one of Angelo’s victims, for his cause of death to be kept private. I believe his girlfriend’s name was Marci, I am not clear on her last name. She should be told he died instantly while hunting monsters.”
“I understand. We can make the arrangements. Of course you’ll still be provided housing, or would you prefer for us to cover the cost of teleportation back home?” The elderly man asked. This seemed to upset a few people, as teleporting Teresa anywhere long ranged was likely to be incredibly expensive. Nobody argued with him though, sensing that Teresa very well might kill them.
“I’ll sleep here for now, I need to be more awake before I make decisions like that.” Teresa replied, turning to the door. There were plenty of things left to discuss, such as what to do with the City Monolith in the ghost town of Arid Junction. That, and the System shop rewards could come later when Teresa had enough sleep.
They left the building, certainly leaving behind quite the impression. Saylee would likely have to manage a lot of the fallout, but those assholes needed the wakeup call. Their inaction was getting people killed. Pre-System morality didn’t carry over perfectly. There were three options for the government of Arconette.
Option one was to get their shit together and actually start handling the missing persons crisis. Option two was to acknowledge they weren’t equipped for this sort of thing and step down, allowing someone with the proper knowledge to take over. That was what Teresa did, and there was no shame in that. Option three was Teresa would kill them.
There was no more room for leniency with Arconette.