Teresa’s sword cut through two Ahuizotl like they were made of butter. They were small, dog-like monsters with spiked fur. Their hands were like a monkey’s, able to grip things just as well as a human could. The Portal was level 65, near the outskirts of Blue Waters. The Ahuizotl moved swiftly within the water, Teresa suspected they got a movement buff when swimming. Not that it really mattered in the end.
Killing monsters was alarmingly easy now.
“You doing good man?” Preston asked Jake as the two cut through a few Ahuizotl of their own.
“Not particularly.” Jake responded. He was trying to sound monotone, but his voice refused to obey. Out of everyone in the group, Jake actually had the least amount of family to look for. Despite that, he was the only one with immediate family members who were dead. He had no parents to look for. “I can’t stop thinking about when it happened.”
An Ahuizotl made a sound like a crying human baby, only to get shot in the face by Sarah who was provided ranged support. She couldn’t dive into the thick of things as easily as the others, but she could selectively kill a particular target far easier. Normally it was useful for picking off monsters that were dangerously positioned, but this time she was targeting the Ahuizotl that interrupted their conversation.
“Like did she die in the Tutorial, or was it after that?” Jake asked. “If we said fuck Chernobyl and looked for her immediately, would she still be alive? But then if we did that, she would have died later anyways once Chernobyl wiped all of us out. There’s just no winning.”
“I’m sorry Jake, I don’t think there was anything you could have done differently.” Teresa said, trying to comfort him.
“She was cool too, she knew how to make amazing salsa.” Preston said. “Your mom was awesome.”
“... Do you think it was quick?” Jake continued. “I mean, look at these freaky little things. They’re trying to rip our eyes out, I doubt dying to them would be painless. If my mom’s dead, it’s likely monsters got her, and in that case-”
“You don’t want to think about that.” Sarah said, shooting another crying Ahuizotl as it leaped out of the water in a feeble attempt to feast on someone’s face. “But I understand you can’t just stop yourself. I’m sorry for your loss, Jake.”
Randall wasn’t with them, he was getting to know the others back at The Mall. He had chosen to stay back using that as an excuse, though Teresa suspected he knew they needed to have some time to themselves.
“It’s so ridiculously unfair. I mean, why does Madeline get to spawn right next to her kid, but the rest of us are shit out of luck?” Jake asked, not locking eyes with anyone as another red wave of
“We actually felt the same way, early on.” Preston admitted, looking over at Sarah. This was new to Teresa as well, but she figured not all conversations would happen with her present. “The first few days, I just couldn’t help but think of that. Madeline got to be with her kid right away, and she had the right skill to possibly help us. Despite that, she stayed here with Mackenzie, and I get that she should definitely be with her toddler but it doesn’t make your feelings about it invalid.”
“Exactly. In her shoes, we all would have done the same thing.” Sarah said. “What Madeline did was completely understandable and not at all in the wrong, but when you’re grieving then sometimes logic goes out the window. Preston and I were worried about acting bitter towards her, so we made a conscious effort to not do that. You should do the same, even with the circumstances. Don’t say anything now while you’re upset, for something like this you just need time to process everything.”
“I- I know. I’m not actually mad at Madeline or anything, it’s just… I don’t know. She was all I had from my family. My grandpa and I were close too, but it’s not the same. She raised me by herself, and I couldn’t even keep her safe.” Jake sighed as the last of the Ahuizotl were exterminated. The Portal was lower level than Teresa, and not many of the monsters were very strong. The Mall regularly sent large parties to haul clean water from Blue Waters to the settlement, but they had needed to take a slightly longer route recently due to the Ahuizotl, as Mijo was already doing his part elsewhere.
“Maybe we should head back if you’re not feeling up to it.” Preston offered, but Jake shook his head.
“I think I’m going to, I just don’t feel up to this right now. It was nice at first to do something productive and move about killing monsters to keep my mind off things, but the baby cries from these guys kinda ruined it. I think I just want some time to myself if y’all don’t mind.” Jake replied, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his fingers.
“Yeah that’s alright dude, we’ll be fine. None of these things really compare to the Avatars, I know they’re higher level than most of us but it still feels like we’re bulldozing them.” Preston said.
“I think I’ll head back as well, after the last few days I’m exhausted and I need a break.” Sarah added.
“It would be nice to take a break for a bit.” Preston said, seemingly considering whether he should head back as well.
“In that case I’ll finish up the problem Portals, there’s something else I wanted to check as well.” Teresa told them. “It shouldn’t take long.”
After some brief discussion, they parted ways for now while Teresa shoved some high level monster cores in her
She did consider selling it, which was an option. Teresa just didn’t really need the money that much, and the Elephant’s Foot had value as a threat. She could do untold damage to a city with it. Once again, she wasn’t planning on doing that, but it certainly might keep some bad actors away in the future.
Teresa activated
There were a lot of things she wanted to talk about with the others, especially George. There was the dual planet issue, her skills, pseudo skills, the rewards store, and a lot more. She also wanted to talk to Saylee about negotiations with other cities.
No karmic threads seemed particularly dense, but Teresa was getting better at using the skill. She didn’t need to pull on a thread to get an idea of what it was attached to. All she could really tell at a glance was what level the attached monster would be, and it wasn’t exact. For example, she could tell there were monsters nearby with levels in the 30s, but she wasn’t sure what kind of monsters they were. There were also shitloads of low level monsters and a single monster in the 40s lurking about somewhere, but they weren’t worth hunting.
It’s totally possible a low level Avatar could be hiding close to The Mall. It would completely evade Teresa’s search with
Teresa continued her route that completely lapped The Mall, clearing out Portals that were too difficult for many of the low level people inhabiting the settlement. It was easy work, and it would provide a lot of food and materials for the short term.
In Arconette, most people wore their Tutorial outfits, in some cases mixing and matching pieces from various classes. At The Mall, they were beginning to make their own custom equipment from monster parts. This still happened in Arconette of course, but their population was significantly larger than their supply. As a result, a greater proportion of citizens in The Mall had custom equipment.
High level monster pelt could help protect low level fighters in battle. Those aiming to reach level 5 as safely as possible were given coats that would protect against most damage at their level. Some stronger fighters that recently hit level 30 wore some pretty decent pelts of their own, and soon there was going to be more than just monster hide available as materials.
Simon was actually digging a legitimate mineshaft. Apparently there were underground caves with Portals in them that Simon had been clearing out, leading to him earning a lot of experience while hauling out various materials in large wooden barrels.
Additionally, George also had some more experiments he wanted to discuss. According to Jonathan, he had damn near burnt the forest down during one of those experiments. They also had to discuss what to do with the leftovers of Chernobyl and even Arid Junction, but honestly that kind of stuff could be left to them.
In other words, Teresa also wanted to head back with the others. She felt she could get a lot done there, but she figured she should comb the area for Avatars first and foremost.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
A few hours passed this way, with Teresa blasting through multiple Portals. It was just barely enough to hit level 70 by the time she finished, many of the Portals were wimpy by her own standards. If she wanted to fight something stronger, she’d have to venture further away from The Mall where no one had been managing the monsters nearby.
There were also a lot of animals that she chose to spare. There was a difference between monsters and animals after all. Monsters came from Portals, while animals were around even before the System. They might look a lot different like the Albino Gorillas, or they might be from a different planet, but if they didn’t attack Teresa then she wouldn’t attack them.
She returned to The Mall and reported to one of Saylee’s assistants about the destroyed Portals. The Portal for a group of weird reptilian monsters called Sylks were already prepped thanks to Teresa’s
Michael noted all of this down as Teresa decided to sell most of the Monster Cores and Mana Crystals, keeping only the ones she felt might be useful. One Portal had dropped dark attuned Mana Crystals, so maybe something cool could be done with those.
It was now early morning. Having a messed up sleep schedule really threw Teresa off, but whatever. If only there was a skill that made it so she didn’t have to sleep. She consciously thought that too, since apparently desires could influence skill selections. She doubted that would be enough, but there was no harm in actively thinking about it.
She went to the City Monolith, where she found Preston talking with George, Jonathan, Madeline, a few Albino Gorillas including Gary and Daisy, Arbor from the Scilians, Apisit from Saylee’s party, Simon with his dog Rheneaus, and lastly Mijo who seemed to be there specifically to get pet.
“You guys look busy.” Teresa said as she approached.
“We’re looking at the rewards store for both individual and city purchases.” Preston explained. “A lot of the skills offered haven’t been seen before, so we’re adding them to the repository while trying to hypothesize how to earn the more valuable skills ourselves.
“We are also rooting out the ones that are inherently not worth purchasing.” George added. “There’s a way for us to get
“Yeah, but experience is a renewable resource. Individual points aren’t.” Teresa countered.
“Time isn’t a renewable resource, and it passes for everyone. Purchasing a skill is useful for the same reason participating in the Tutorial was useful, it puts you ahead of those who didn’t use the opportunity.” George said. “Unless you think there’s something better than skills in the store, I know what I was looking at as well.”
“The Evolution Feed.” Teresa said as she placed her hand on the City Monolith. It wasn’t to view the store, it was so she could sell the monster parts that were useless. “I know how to get new skills, I just have to kill a bunch of monsters. I don’t know how to get Evolution Feed to advance my race, which is apparently required for a rank up. Not sure how that works yet, but it sounds pretty important.”
“You know, that’s exactly one of the things we were looking at.” George said, smiling. “In the city rewards, we can purchase stores using points, allowing us to spend regular System money to buy stuff. One of those options is an F+ Evolution Feed Stand, allowing us to buy Evolution Feed.”
“I’m already at F+ though, I was looking at the E+ option.” Teresa said. “I’m extremely confident I’ll be hitting level 100 soon, and I’m pretty sure that’s the line between F and E class. The Elephant’s Foot and the Prime Avatar were both E ranked, and they were both past level 100.”
“Can you imagine if E rank actually started at like, level 102 and a half or something?” Preston joked. “Like what if the System doesn’t use base 10 to count.”
“Yeah, or what if you got to hit level 128 or 256 for binary stuff.” George added. “Sorry, your level is stored as an unsigned 8-bit integer, hitting level 256 sends you back down to level 0.”
“That would be so stupid.” Teresa laughed. “Though it would actually flip back to negative 255, not 0. That or negative 128 if it’s still 8 bit.”
“No, uints can’t be negative.”
“Yeah, but levels can be negative, so odds are they’re stored as an integer.” Teresa replied. She had a basic understanding of programming, she had taken an introductory computer science course in college before deciding it wasn’t what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. She had done the same thing with a mixed engineering course, psychology, biology, chemistry, and blah blah blah. It all looked fun, but not lifelong levels of commitment fun.
“There’s no way levels can be negative.” George said, but paused as Teresa shared a screen. She showed them the notification from the System when it tried to give her
“Well, back on subject. Is there an E+ Evolution Feed store?” Teresa asked.
“Not one that we can afford.” Jonathan answered. “We can also purchase stores with regular currency, so we’re looking at things completely unique to the rewards store.”
“I mean, you could use an integer for error codes, but that’s poor practice.” George continued under his breath. “Really the System should use a struct or whatever the equivalent is to store error codes separately, and having the error just say ‘-1’ is terrible! Magic numbers! Should typedef it with an enum or something to make it clearer. Is the System just badly programmed, or did it print the value of the error code rather than the name of the enumerator? That wouldn’t be super far-fetched, happens all the time, but it’s not like we have access to the error code definitions!”
“You good dude?” Teresa asked, hearing him just fine with her Perception.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” George answered.
“Okay sweet, there’s more I should mention to you guys if you don’t know already.” Teresa said. “It looks like a good portion of the human population is on another planet, so if the people with
“You’re joking.” Jonathan said, clearly ready to get angry. Teresa braced herself for Jonathan to go on an angry rant, but he actually just stayed silent for a few moments and surprisingly collected himself. “Fuckin… Damn it. Okay, one more problem to deal with. If those multiversal invaders have people on both planets, that can pose a lot of problems for us.”
What do you mean? Gary, the leader of the Albino Gorillas, signed to Teresa.
I do not understand either. Arbor said. Oh shit, Teresa realized they might not be familiar with the concept of a planet.
“Do you guys know what a planet is?” Teresa asked. They each confirmed that they did not, so she began giving them a basic rundown of space, stars, and planets. By the time she finished, she noticed George was grinning. “What are you thinking George?”
“If there’s another planet, that means we’re going to need to go into space, right?” He asked.
“I mean, eventually, if we can.” Teresa said.
“Hell yeah, I’ll get started on that.” George replied, confusing Teresa a bit.
“What do you mean? It’s not like you’re just gonna build a spaceship in your backyard or something.”
“It might take a while, but actually we’re way closer to that than you’d think.” George said. “The first problem is figuring out where in our solar system the other planet, or maybe even planets, are. Next problem, we need a way to get into space. Then, we need to adjust our orbit to intersect with the other planet, we need to survive atmospheric entry, and we need to be able to land. With our Souls generating Mana, the people on board can be considered an infinite fuel source if we do it right.”
“George, I’m sorry but I don’t think we’re very close to any of that.” Madeline said. “We don’t have the engineering capabilities or the manpower to build something like that.”
It is a problem of engineering? Gary asked. We would like to help build a spaceship. We have enjoyed learning about construction greatly, our species knows fully well that the advantages humans possessed with their advanced tools were what put them on top of the food chain. We have been diligently working with the houses, once they are done this sounds like something we would be interested in.
“It’s not that simple though, right?” Teresa said. “You have to make sure the air is sealed and clean, you need to ensure that enough rations can go with you, there’s a lot of problems.”
“I’m aware, but we’ve solved one tough problem you probably don’t know about.” George said smiling. “Bit flips. To oversimplify it, computers are just a bunch of transistors. They’re little gates that flip one way when powered, and flip the other way without power. It’s more complicated than that and there are a lot of logic gates involved, but for the sake of time I’ll oversimplify it. Each of those transistors are the physical components that represent binary. When a transistor isn’t powered, that’s a 0, when it is then that’s a 1. In space, there’s a bunch of solar radiation that can mess with computers. Radiation is a form of energy, and when it passes through a computer it can affect those transistors and make them flip, turning a bunch of 0s into 1s and vice versa.
“If a satellite or something experiences a bit flip, you can’t exactly go work on it very easily, so spacecraft need to be able to handle those issues themselves. From a software perspective, you can use code scrubbers that compare copies of the code and use a majority rules voting system to correct errors on the fly. You can also use watchdogs, which monitor a specific condition. A watchdog has a trigger and an effect. Say a watchdog is set up to monitor software latchups on a subsystem. If the subsystem code freezes, it ‘kicks the dog,’ and activates the effect, oftentimes a reset of some sort. Sorry Mijo, I didn’t make the terminology.
“But even if we had immaculately written software, it wouldn’t be infallible on its own, so we need hardware that is also resistant to radiation. Thankfully, we have a bunch of dead Avatars with what I assume to be rad-hard components, and a rewards shop where we can buy more.” George explained, demonstrating a surprising amount of knowledge about spacecraft. “We should buy stores that sell rad-hard materials and electrical components and start looting the destroyed Avatars. That, and I’ll need a place to keep experimenting where I don’t have to worry about burning down the forest. We might not have realized it, but we already started taking steps into space travel the moment you entered the Contaminated Zone.”