Chapter 129: Instructions Not Included

  In classic fashion, Teresa was already trying to abuse the rules of her new skill. The description said it enhanced a single physical attack, and that both body and weapon would be temporarily enhanced. The real question was, what counted as a weapon?

  Her sword worked just fine with the skill, although her sword was meant more for cutting things rather than smashing them as

  would suggest. Using the skill didn’t make her sword ‘cut’ better, it added a crushing effect similar to wielding a massive hammer. At least, that was how Teresa felt. She didn’t exactly have a lot to cut, Avatars were made out of some pretty durable metal.

  It wasn’t the time for tests that Teresa didn’t think would provide results. She wanted to see if she could use

  without a weapon, or by just using her fists and considering her body a weapon. If that didn’t work, could she simply ‘grab’ a fistful of air and consider that a weapon? Honestly she didn’t think those tests would yield any desirable results, she just wanted to see what would happen.

  Instead, she focused on tests that might actually be useful. The Avatars didn’t always land their shots. Their aim was definitely better than a Storm Trooper’s, but against an army of superhumans that could accurately see where they were aiming and preemptively move out of the way then there were a lot of flying bullets that missed their intended mark.

  They had actually shot up the wall to an Assembly Station, resulting in large chunks of concrete littering the ground. Teresa grabbed a chunk the size of her torso and smashed it down on an Avatar that had been positioned nearby. With

  active, it did significantly more damage than her sword, resulting in the level 76 Avatar giving her a kill notification.

  Unfortunately, the chunk of concrete practically disintegrated in her hands right after. Not literally, it just turned into a smaller pile of unusable rubble, but it gave Teresa the impression that some ‘weapons’ worked better with the skill than others.

  Next were the activation conditions. The cooldown had to be expired, of course, but she couldn’t use

  at an upwards angle. Her attack had to angle straight down with 30 degrees of acceptable variation in either direction. Any more horizontal than that, and the skill would not activate.

  While using a large rock had promising results, it would be a massive hassle and a terrible idea to go back and forth looking for big rocks to hit death robots with. She stuck to using her sword, only deviating from that when there was something large, heavy, and blunt that was not out of her way to pick up.

  The Avatars were immediately facing problems. This was not a battlefield of their choosing, and for once they were playing defense. As always, the destroyed Avatars were getting in the way of those that were still functional. While each one varied in appearance, they were all large. The smallest were the size of a truck, while the largest were the size of a tank. If it was built right, a large Avatar could maybe drive over the top of a particularly small Avatar, but that specific situation rarely actually happened.

  Their first encounter with the Avatars only lasted four and a half minutes. There had been 35 of them, and after the initial encounter they had been easy pickings, the dead ones providing cover. Unfortunately, the monsters that had made it this far were also thinning in numbers, any minute now Chernobyl would be able to give them their full attention.

  They pressed on, leaving behind the wreckage from their brief skirmish. Another patrol of Avatars spotted them, and a brief look at Teresa’s resources told her what she needed to know.

  HP: (689/1550)

  Stamina: (670/1550)

  Mana: (254/1584)

  While each fight was easy due to the amount of experience Teresa had with the Avatars, it would be an entirely different story once she ran out of resources. If they fought every single batch of Avatars between their current position and the actual reactors themselves, they would all run dry, and Teresa was pretty solid at conserving her resources compared to the others in the army.

  Deciding against another confrontation, she decided to take a gamble. She pivoted and ran straight through a concrete wall, shoulder checking her way into an Assembly Station. Inside, numerous assembly lines with conveyor belts were manned by the humanoid looking worker Avatars. A brief glance around revealed they were placing multiple components within a pre-built metal frame similar to the gun turrets she had seen on numerous occasions. At the end of the line, they were loaded onto carts by several worker Avatars operating what looked like a fancy pulley system of some sort.

  However, there weren’t any Avatars that looked like they could actually fight, and the interior would be significantly harder for them to drive through without running a bunch of important looking machinery over.

  “Let’s go through here!” Teresa yelled, figuring they could always make a new exit the exact same way she created an entrance to the building. There was actually a garage door, but it was a bit out of the way and would be a hassle to open. Teresa couldn’t help but wonder how city infrastructure could possibly work now that it was possible for people like her to burst through walls like the Kool-Aid Man.

  The army charged straight through the Assembly Station while the humanoid Avatars were powerless to stop them. Instead of taking a path accounting for the Assembly Stations in the way, they ran in a straight line towards the turbine hall of Chernobyl. This involved running through several buildings, and Ezio only felt the need to be careful inside of an Assembly Station once, which led to them actually using the door. Something about what was being produced in there got him on edge, but that only happened the one time.

  On the bright side, they were getting a lot of points in their quests.

  Assembly Station Damaged!

  500 Points Awarded

  Assembly Station Damaged!

  500 Points Awarded

  …

  They still had no idea what the points were even for, and it wasn’t until they got to the actual structure of Chernobyl itself that they ran into problems. The area was so ridiculously radioactive, that it was just melting through everyone’s active buff. Those with a high Fortitude were losing Restoration Mana at a much slower rate, but some wouldn’t even last half an hour in these conditions before needing the spell to be reapplied. Teresa wasn’t sure there was enough Mana to go around for that.

  She voiced her concerns to Ezio and Nikolas, neither of whom were healers. However, it appeared Elaina had also arrived at the same conclusion. They didn’t have enough time.

  “We’ll have to split up. There are four reactors and four groups, possibly six reactors depending on how much the System hates us.” Ezio said. “Enough of us have been briefed on how to disable the reactors, have the tanks do the handling and make sure to bring a healer.”

  He began assigning groups to different sections of the building. The turbine hall connected to four different reactor buildings. Group one would go to reactor one, group two to reactor two, and so on. Teresa’s party belonged to group four, so they took off in the direction of the appropriate reactor. There were no arguments over whether it was a good idea, as there was simply no time.

  They weren’t actually positive that they were really going to reactor number four specifically, but that didn’t matter. There was already a lot that they weren’t positive about. The quest said to destroy Chernobyl, but not how. For all they knew, turning off the reactors would do nothing. It was also possible that the reactors wouldn’t operate the way Ezio imagined, using some magical alternative instead. There were a lot of unknowns that Teresa was stressing about, but panicking would solve even less.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Teresa, Jim, and their respective parties navigated towards the block access door along the north wall. A garage door opened opposite them, and Avatars began to enter the building. Teresa immediately prepared for a fight as everyone got into position, but the Avatars didn’t fire. It seemed they didn’t want to damage the interior of Chernobyl haphazardly either, though Teresa wasn’t keen on sticking around until the Avatars changed their minds.

  They managed to find the correct door. All of the labels and signs were in Russian, but everyone had the skill to account for that. Teresa was sure glad it worked for reading as well. Teresa, Jake, and Jim led the way, entering the block 4 access corridor.

  Teresa immediately realized why they hadn’t been stopped. The place was a maze, especially considering that they had a very vague idea of where to go. There were paths leading to a water treatment and ventilation section that was properly labeled, along with several mechanical rooms that looked like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to Teresa.

  There was a monitoring checkpoint along with paths that led to laundry rooms and electrical maintenance. They weren’t going to figure out where to go by standing around, so they began running through the halls at high speeds. If they could only move at the speed of a normal human, this would take far too long and they would all die well before they found what they were looking for.

  Since they weren’t normal humans, they damn well could search the place with brute force. Turns out, there is a lot of stuff needed for a nuclear power plant to function, and as a result there were quite a lot of rooms even considering how fast they were moving. Preston nearly got lost in the pump gallery, Jake found a compressor room that led absolutely nowhere, Jim found the deaerator corridor, but none of this was what they were looking for. If not for the signs on the walls, none of them would even know what the rooms they were in were called.

  After nearly 10 whole minutes of searching, Teresa heard screams coming from the turbine hall. Brute force searching wasn’t going to cut it, and she had another idea come to mind. She kept track of her Restoration Mana within her body and paced around the hall she stood in. The rate at which she lost Restoration Mana varied depending on where she stood by a tiny amount. By doing this, she could find the most radioactive path she could take, which would surely lead to a reactor.

  Teresa explained her plan to the others as they met up in the initial hall once again, many of them having heard the screams.

  “Honey, I don’t think that’s how it works.” Randall said after she explained. “The most radioactive area might not even be in the room we’re looking for.”

  “It’s worth a shot, it beats what we’re doing right now. At the very least, it might get me close.” Teresa replied.

  “If we had Ezio with us this would be way easier.” Sarah said, resulting in multiple people agreeing with her.

  “He can’t be four places at once, we have to figure this out.” Teresa said. “I’m going to track the radiation, I’ll refresh on a few of you but I can’t do everyone, I’ll need to save enough Mana for myself.”

  She cast her healing spell seven times, only targeting those with a low Fortitude. After this, she actually didn’t have enough Mana to give herself a full powered buff again, but she could always use

  or by herself.

  HP: (695/1550)

  Stamina: (668/1550)

  Mana: (39/1584)

  In just a minute she would be able to use on herself again, as she pretty consistently recovered 10 Mana per minute by this point. It took anywhere between 40-50 Mana per use of the skill, and she would be able to consistently keep herself afloat in the given conditions. It was only when other people were involved that she had to worry.

  As soon as she finished spamming her spell, she took off running. She needed to pause a few times and backtrack whenever she felt her Restoration Mana get used up slower, but it was leading her down a path she hadn’t explored yet.

  There was a lack of danger from the Avatars while inside the main structure, at least that’s what it looked like. She couldn’t ignore the screams from the turbine hall she had heard, but she didn’t need Avatars to press just how urgent this was.

  After running for maybe 3 minutes or so, pausing and backtracking every now and then, she found the radiation became extremely intense. The slowest part was checking multiple directions to see what was the most radioactive, and her exploration eventually led her into a basement area.

  Would it make sense for a reactor to be in the basement? Maybe. Teresa didn’t know. Perhaps it would lead her to a set of stairs or something. She activated

  , as her was no longer able to keep up. Realistically, a little radiation getting past her healing spell wouldn’t kill her so long as she protected her brain. It took days for radiation poisoning to take effect under normal circumstances, it was just the magical aspect of everything that threw off the norm.

  Hell, maybe it would only take hours under normal circumstances considering how intense the area felt to Teresa. No, certainly less.

  Teresa entered a room with a hole in the roof. Right underneath that hole, a weird glob of some metal substance was on the floor. It was glowing orange, and pulsing as it continuously spewed out absurd amounts of radiation. Simply being in the same room completely eradicated Teresa’s , she was relying entirely upon

  to keep her brain from forming numerous tumors.

  The room was incredibly hot, and there were inscriptions written in various colors of powder all over the room and even on the glowing slag itself. Teresa had a pretty solid idea of what she was looking at, but she decided to use just in case.

  

  Materials: ???

  Enchantments: ???

  A molten reactor core formed during a nuclear meltdown. It has been modified to function as a self contained reactor, generating electricity and ??? directly.

  Well fuck. What the hell was she supposed to do about this? She had a general idea of what to do with a normal reactor, although honestly she was still pretty iffy about that. There was a procedure that she could perfectly recall from what Ezio had informed, but Ezio simply could not explain nearly enough in such a short amount of time. At least she had a vague idea, and would hopefully only break a few things in the process.

  This, though, was not in the playbook. It also upset her a bit, she had spent a lot of effort trying to process what Ezio had taught multiple people, and even if she was not at all confident in what she learned at least she was hoping to apply it.

  How does someone turn that thing off? There weren’t even any buttons to press or things to grab, it was just a hot slab of metal. She also didn’t want to hit it with

  or anything, since she had no idea what that would do. This was some magical stuff she hadn’t prepared for!

  At least she was used to that, being caught off guard. A smile crossed her face, as she had what very well could be a comically stupid idea.

  There’s no way this is going to fucking work, she thought as she approached the glowing object. She had to keep one hand pressed against her head with

  active, and she had less than a minute before she wouldn’t even be able to use that anymore.

  Teresa pressed her spare hand against the Elephant’s Foot, immediately causing it to melt through her glove and sear her hand. She screamed and activated , but didn’t stop. She pushed against it, using her whole body weight as she managed to break its connection to the floor.

  The Elephant’s Foot slid, just a bit, and she activated a skill.

   used to require a lot more motion to store something in it. When she first got the skill, she had to imagine she was putting something in a locker. Now, it just required a tiny bit of motion to activate after gaining several levels, and its storage space increased too. By her estimate, the Elephant’s Foot was about two to three times as heavy as the ogre club she had used, most of the difficulty from moving it came from the fact it had melted onto the wall and the ground.

  It took about 10 seconds of searing agony before it broke free enough for to work, resulting in the Elephant’s Foot safely being deposited within her Soul.

  Teresa collapsed to the ground, the radioactive slag of metal no longer providing her with support to stand. She laid on her back, staring at the hole in the ceiling as she kept

  active, the radiation in the room rapidly dwindling.

  “Hey! I think I found the reactor room!” Jim yelled out, his voice coming from the hole in the ceiling. “Is it supposed to look like this?”

  “I’m down here!” Teresa called, hoping Jim would help her out with some of his own healing.

  “What are you doing down there?” Preston asked, his voice also coming from the room above her.

  “You’ll never guess what I just shoved in my Soul.” Teresa replied, laughing despite the fact she struggled to remain conscious.

  HP: (230/1550)

  Stamina: (601/1550)

  Mana: (2/1584)