Type: Elemental Magic
Channel Mana to your palm and convert it into plant pseudo-life in the form of a vine that will function as an extension of the body.
Type: Elemental Magic
Channel Mana to your palm and convert it into ice-based Elemental Mana that will be dispelled rapidly from your hand.
Type: Passive
Gain minor protection against temperatures beyond your natural tolerance.
Of everyone who had a class level up, these were the ones that seemed to have any chance of making an impact.
Lastly,
In other words, they had to work with what they already had.
“We can’t just have a tank carry someone across?” Teresa asked.
“Even if you dealt with the fire using
“We can use my
“That… might work.” Nikolas said. “There’s still the fume problem though, and would you be able to use that on everyone?”
“No, not everyone. I’ve got enough Mana to use it maybe 9 or 10 more times.” Clyde admitted.
“We’re going to have to split apart.” Ezio decided. “There’s no way to safely get everyone across. Only those with a high Fortitude will be able to go, along with a couple people we can throw over.”
“We still aren’t sure
“Then only those with a half decent Fortitude will use the
“We’d also be leaving half of our troops.” Nikolas said. Before Ezio could say anything else, Nikolas continued. “So we’ll need to select who advances carefully.”
“I was worried you were going to be opposed to the idea.”
“I hate unnecessary risks, but I don’t see us getting a better opportunity. Whoever advances will have to deal with the Avatars, whoever stays behind needs to be capable of dealing with monsters and most likely Angelo’s party.” Nikolas said.
They quickly began discussing at a rapid pace, a conversation only welcome to those with a high Agility and Intelligence. It took some arguing, but they decided on how to restructure the army in less than a minute. Teresa and her party would be included amongst those advancing. Other than them, mostly Completionists would be going forward.
Theo’s party was staying behind, including Theo himself. He had the Fortitude to cross the oil field, but they couldn’t leave their reserve forces with no tanks. Additionally, his party was experiencing enough mental hardship after the death of Leo.
Teresa was surprised at how quickly Ezio and Nikolas were able to agree on some of those things. They took into account the mental wellbeing of those who would advance, which made sense when there were only so many people that could cross.
She absentmindedly wondered about what would happen if they knew about her own mental struggles, though of course she sure as shit wasn’t about to bring that up.
The idea of using several people’s
Once things were in order, they got started with the most ridiculous strategy they had pulled this far. Teresa used
Those affected by
The advanced party ran over the heated oil, although Teresa still heard many exclamations of pain as they crossed an area as hot as a furnace. Once mostly everyone was across, she began running herself. The scorching air didn’t really bother her all too much, but what did bother her was her
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She was in a rush, as
A mage was using
They were in the heart of the Contaminated Zone.
Avatars were in a heated battle with high Fortitude monsters that had stormed in. There were several corpses on the ground, though they mostly belonged to a few monsters that flew across only to get shot out of the sky.
The area was several miles in diameter, and there were gray concrete buildings scattered throughout with humanoid robots hauling carts from building to building.
A nuclear power plant was visible, though it didn’t really look like what Teresa imagined. Normally they had those massive, concave tower thingies that every nuclear power plant had. According to Ezio during their initial planning, those were cooling towers, and Chernobyl didn’t have one. Chernobyl had relied on a river to cool it down, so it didn’t have the iconic nuclear cooling tower.
Apparently modern nuclear reactors always had a cooling tower, though the ones at Chernobyl had never been finished. Chernobyl itself actually had four reactors, with two more building sites that were incomplete. The two unfinished cooling towers were in disrepair, though that wasn’t where they were going.
They needed to figure out which reactors were active and shut them off. Apparently, Chernobyl had actually stayed active for years after the famous meltdown, though Teresa didn’t really know the details. Really, none of the reactors should be working. Two of them had been shut down, one had caught on fire, another exploded, and then there were the two that were never finished.
Relying on pre-System history wouldn’t work. The pre-System Chernobyl also wasn’t a sapient murder factory, so historical fact wouldn’t be enough to determine which reactors worked. However, the layout of the facility should be the same, and they had Ezio to help navigate. Everything should be fine.
“I have no idea what half of these buildings are for.” Ezio said, looking around. Uh oh.
“What do you mean? You’re the nuclear engineer!” Teresa exclaimed, suddenly worried.
“That doesn’t mean I memorized the layout of Chernobyl! I recognize a lot of these structures, but some of these definitely aren’t a part of the original facility. Maybe those are the Assembly Stations?” Ezio wondered. “I refreshed my memory on it before the operation, so I know how many reactors there are and the general idea behind how the plant functions, but I never looked at it in detail.”
“I mean, it can’t be that hard to break a bunch of stuff.” Teresa said. “I mean, I doubt any nuclear facility accounts for people shooting fire out of their hands or punching through concrete.”
“Maybe not normally, but we can try it. If I had to guess, that would be the turbine hall, that building there probably houses a reactor, that one probably has two just based on the size…” Ezio began identifying buildings as they all considered their options.
During the initial planning, Ezio had discussed the general principles behind a nuclear power plant. Rods containing uranium were placed in water, and ultimately the reactions within the rods would result in heat. That heat would convert water into steam, which would spin turbines connected to a generator ultimately producing electricity.
This meant there were multiple vulnerable targets they could strike. They could go straight for the turbines, preventing the generation of more electricity. They could disable each reactor individually, or they could target the cooling system, resulting in a meltdown and possible explosion. That last one Ezio was unsure about, as he had no idea how this facility didn’t already overheat. There was no river to cool down the reactors, and the cooling towers were incomplete. As such, disabling the cooling systems wasn't an option, as they probably ran on magic that none of them understood.
That left the turbines and the reactors. Going after the turbines was probably the first idea that came to mind, but according to Ezio that might backfire. Shutting down a generator may prevent that reactor from generating actual electricity, but that didn’t mean the reactor was powered off. It would still be heating up water and producing steam with nowhere for it to go. That could result in a runaway reaction similar to what happened to pre-System Chernobyl, dousing the area in too much radiation to handle. That, or radioactive steam might flood the area, which could also kill everyone before they fully shutdown the plant.
Teresa’s understanding of the science behind it was limited. Ezio had also gone into detail about how graphite acted as a moderator in RBMK reactors, but those details had honestly gone over her head. She was glad they had Ezio, even if he could be a prick about some things. Otherwise, she’d have no idea where to start and would have probably kept her C4 to blow something random up.
The plan was to go after each reactor and shut them down individually. They would also have to ensure that the Avatars couldn’t just turn them back on, though most of them had been walked through the procedure on that.
They started advancing towards a building, passing by several Assembly Stations along the way. The goal was to sneak in and avoid a battle against the Avatars if they could help it. Teresa also had selected a new skill she wanted to test -
. She had considered taking a skill that had been offered ages ago called , which would have probably helped with getting past the flaming oil. However, it wasn’t entirely needed and was far more situational than
. Her new skill also used exclusively Stamina, which was perfect for her at the moment.
HP: (978/1550)
Stamina: (1061/1550)
Mana: (205/1584)
They were only able to get so far before getting spotted by Avatars. A humanoid worker robot saw them, which was quickly dispatched by Lilith who crushed it with her mace. It had been carrying a cart full of electrical components, but they didn’t really get the time to look them over.
Several Avatars closed in on their position, though many were still dealing with the monster horde. Bullets clashed into a
Without the full army, there weren’t enough tanks to repeatedly spam
A level 83 Avatar took aim at her, prompting her to activate
Bullets smashed into her as she protected her face with her arms, crossing the distance in just over a second. She swung her sword straight down on the Avatar, activating
as she did so. The skill activated for the first time, and she felt like her attack just became heavier.
Her sword crashed into the Avatar, denting the metal chassis. Loud clanging and scratching noises came from within the machine as it struggled to move, and she followed up with an uppercut to the turret’s gun barrel. With the Avatar effectively disabled, she moved on to attacking the next death robot in her sights.
had a 30 second cooldown, though that was practically guaranteed to drop. Most skills with a cooldown started out with a really long cooldown that gradually became shorter with levels until it hit its cap. For example,
was likely to drop from 30 seconds down to something more reasonable.
Teresa was shot again as an Avatar targeted her, but with
With her club it would have been easy, but unfortunately it had fallen apart against the Slimes. As Teresa went from one Avatar to another, her Stamina draining, she kept an eye out for something that would function just as well.
She wanted to crush these things.