No no no no no- Sam was thinking as he tried to run away. His right leg was severed at the knee, his HP was dwindling, and any moment now he was going to die. He couldn’t die, not like this. He had beat the Tutorial for crying out loud! Sam had survived one hellscape and then been thrust into the next, but he had survived every time.
With the army he had made it this far into the Contaminated Zone, and they were in the process of shutting down reactor 2. It had been ridiculously complicated, and that was before that thing found them.
They hadn’t shut down the reactor, and now almost everyone in this portion of the army was dead. The healing buffs on Sam had run out, and he could feel the radiation in his body, rapidly mutating cells and growing tumors. His brain was turning into soup, making it harder and harder to think.
As bad as it was, he didn’t want it to end. He could make it. He hadn’t made it this far by being a quitter, he just had to stay conscious-
“AGHHHHHH!” Someone yelled, and after a moment Sam realized it was him. Protruding from his chest, a long metal blade coated in the blood of his party severed his spine and slit his heart open. It was a miracle he had even been able to scream.
The pain went away as his body went limp, and Sam didn’t have the mental facilities to be scared anymore. The sword was yanked out of his body, and with that, Sam died.
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Cher was pissed, but this was still fixable. The Avatar pulled its sword out of the man’s body, having successfully defended a reactor. In reality, Cher only really needed one, the rest could be recovered and the quest could continue.
On the bright side, Cher’s test was going exceptionally well, and Cher loved tests. When Cher had first been brought to this world outside the Tutorial, it had been given a quest. Cher had been put in charge of the Contaminated Zone, which only really existed because of Cher in the first place. Cher received a continuous salary from the System, the payment dependent on the size of the Contaminated Zone.
That all would have been useless if not for one of the only skills Cher possessed.
It was likely a result of Cher’s Soul being self-made, granting increased control over how it worked. Cher could shave a portion of its Soul off and plant it within an object, effectively creating another body it could interact and think with. Cher was able to use money to purchase components from the System, allowing it to create Avatars, expand the Contaminated Zone, and thus make more money all while growing stronger.
Using the skill, the Soul would actually heal the part that had been shaved off, and with the way the Contaminated Zone was set up, each Radioactive Portal increased the overall size of Cher’s Soul. Additionally, each reactor did something similar, while also drastically increasing the rate at which Cher’s Soul could heal and generate more Mana, although Cher didn’t really have many skills that could use it.
Unfortunately, Cher’s Avatars were incapable of gaining new skills. It was likely a result of
Initially, Cher had chosen to make higher quality Avatars, aside from the original of course. Each had a pretty large chunk of its Soul, resulting in far fewer Avatars. However, they were at least able to use some of Cher’s other skills, such as
It led an invasion of a city named Arid Junction, annihilating everyone in it. This had been a great victory, one that awarded Cher a significant increase in experience and income from the System as a part of the limited time quest set to expire after only a year, after which Cher would be on its own.
Then Ezio happened. Cher had believed its Avatars were of great quality, but Ezio’s nuclear
Enraged, Cher began investing in quantity over quality. The most expensive aspect of every Avatar were the new flame resistant parts, and each Avatar only had a small sliver of Cher’s Soul. Since then, the expansion of the Contaminated Zone had sped up dramatically, numerous Avatars were able to patrol the area and prevent anyone from destroying too much. It eradicated the non-Radioactive Portals around the Contaminated Zone, gaining experience for each Avatar while also making room for the expansion of the Contaminated Zone.
Then Cher found The Mall. Rather than wiping them out immediately, Cher had opted to study them, as it understood from Arconette that leaving a few humans alive could have its benefits, as seen with a man named Angelo. Even if Cher wanted to wipe them out, they were a long distance from Chernobyl itself, and it would leave Cher open to retaliation from Arconette.
Around this time was when Cher began working on a separate project, one meant to kill opponents that grew too powerful. One of the issues with this world were the materials, against an enemy with a high enough Strength stat metal might as well be paper. The Avatars could grow more durable by increasing their Fortitude stats, but what about weaponry? The bullets weren’t a part of the Avatar, and thus there were limiting factors that made a standard bullet become obsolete at high levels.
The solution was recycling.
Even after death, the Avatars' bodies remained durable, so why not recycle magically enhanced metal to create stronger weapons? Take a destroyed Avatar with a Fortitude of around 200, salvage it and make something stronger.
It was a very slow process, one that required a lot of experimentation as converting the salvage into bullets was extremely difficult, and it wasn’t like Cher was getting any magically enhanced gunpowder.
Quantity was great, but one strong powerhouse with a whole lot of quality could make a huge difference. That was where Cher’s project had led it, keeping this project out of the war to grind levels faster than any human could possibly compare to.
Eventually, Cher’s decision to spare The Mall paid dividends. While yes, they were currently involved with an invasion, there was a human that made Cher glad it could show mercy.
George.
This was the name of a human that resided within The Mall, one that Cher had been observing with a particularly expensive spy Avatar. It was not outfitted towards combat at all, with a build entirely revolving around stealth and Perception. Very recently, Cher had learned of pseudo skills from observing George, a technique that was new to everyone that had only been seen within The Mall less than 24 hours ago.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
Cher hadn’t gotten the full hang of it yet, but in an Avatar with a sufficiently large Soul it was capable of replicating the effects of some skills at an extremely low level, often weaker than what level 0 would provide. It was something George had discovered during his attempts to walk, Cher’s only wish was that he had discovered it sooner so that the Avatars could have properly utilized this information.
A searing pain shot through Cher’s existence as another reactor was taken offline. Reactor 1 had already been disabled, reactor 3 had people working on it, reactors 4 and 5 were still hidden, while reactor 6 had not been repaired yet.
The Elephant’s Foot was suddenly gone, a unique ‘reactor’ that provided Cher with more Mana and Soul regeneration than any other individual reactor. That was reactor 4, which Cher had thought was too dangerous and convoluted for the humans to disable, even Ezio. An understanding in nuclear physics wouldn’t be enough to understand something like that, as the Elephant’s Foot was magical in nature.
Now it was just gone. Vanished, without a trace. When reactor 1 had gone offline, Cher at least could sense it as it happened. This was almost instant, and Cher’s Soul had suffered backlash as a result.
Cher made its way out of the block 2 access corridor and started towards block 4, sword still in hand. The Elephant’s Foot could provide Cher with more than two and a half standard reactors, and it was actually the only reactor Cher had started out with. It also produced the most radiation due to its magical enhancements, which helped spread the Contaminated Zone faster. It was time to get its favorite reactor back.
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“Are you feeling okay?” Randall asked, incredibly concerned while Jim healed Teresa. “Putting that in your Soul can’t be good for you.”
“I feel alright in that regard actually, though it took up nearly all of my
She stood up, her body mostly healed while she held onto her Mana staff. The radiation had rapidly begun to dwindle, falling to levels Teresa would expect to find miles away. On the bright side, she doubted she would need to apply another instance of
“Isn’t the Elephant’s Foot supposed to be pretty big?” Jake asked.
“Like I said, my
“We should get going, I imagine it can’t be safe to stay still. Someone might need help with their reactor.” Sarah said, sparking everyone to agree.
“Do we want to go back from here or climb back up?” Preston asked. “Which way is faster?”
THUD THUD THUD
Several loud footsteps clanged from above, sounding like metal clashing against metal.
“There’s no way that’s human.” Sarah said, frowning as she and Teresa looked up.
“I vote we don’t go that way.” Teresa decided. “I know the way back, try to be quiet. I don’t want to deal with something new right now, let’s just try and meet up with people in the turbine hall and see where we’re useful.”
They began to backtrack with Teresa in the lead, still clutching her staff. Nobody spoke, knowing damn well that could give their position away to whatever they just heard. Teresa’s ability to replay memories to recall the correct path was coming in clutch. Light sources were rare, and it was impossible for most of the party to see anything.
“Teresa!” Ezio yelled, his voice coming from behind them. She looked back, confused for a moment, but didn’t say anything. Her and Sarah made eye contact, both caught by surprise. There was no way Ezio could have disabled his reactor and then made it all the way over to theirs, which was on the complete opposite side of the turbine hall.
Even if he took the perfect path to get to them, why would he? Aside from the four reactors they sent people to, there were potentially two more to check out. Ezio, Nikolas, and her all got into debates about what to do all the time, but none of them would have made the decision to ignore the possibility of two more reactors.
“You didn’t shut it off!” He yelled, still getting no response from anyone in the party. He had been addressing specifically Teresa, and while not everyone in the group understood why she was suspicious, they understood she actively chose not to respond.
There’s no way that’s actually Ezio. There were a lot of possible explanations, and none of them looked great. Someone from Angelo’s party could be trying to pull something, or an Avatar could just have a speaker system on it.
They ignored the voice and continued running, everyone remaining silent as Ezio’s voice continued trying to get them to come back. That was another obvious play for an impersonator to make. Really? If that actually was Ezio, he probably wouldn’t need Teresa’s help turning off a nuclear reactor. That was literally his thing.
If that actually was Ezio though, she would feel pretty damn bad about it, but in that case he shouldn’t sound so damn suspicious.
After a short run through several rooms and hallways, they made it back to the turbine hall. Now that they were there, Teresa realized there was a problem. They had no way of knowing where to go next. Of course they could check out the possible additional reactors as she would expect Ezio to do, but where would they go to do that? The extra reactors weren’t connected to the turbine hall the same way the base four were, they’d have to search a completely separate building for that.
In retrospect, maybe they should have had some symbol to put on the wall outside of a handled reactor hall, but hindsight was 20/20.
Thankfully, or rather unfortunately, she soon noticed a sign of where to go next.
“That’s Sam!” Jim whispered as they came across a body. Why was he whispering? Oh shit, right, fake Ezio.
Sam’s corpse was lying right at the entrance to the block 2 access hall, though he had been crawling away from the look of the bloodtrail behind him. His leg was severed, and he had been stabbed through the torso. None of his wounds matched what would be expected from a fight with the Avatars, which is what concerned Teresa the most.
“Oh shit, you guys finished yours already?” Someone yelled out. Coming from block 3 was another portion of the army, likely having finished their work. “Oh fuck, that looks bad, what happened to him?”
“I thought things were going too easy.” Someone else said while Teresa frantically gestured at them to be quiet.
“Why would you say that? You just jinxed it!”
“That’s not- oh.” They shut up as they saw Teresa’s movements, eyes wide. She pointed towards the north wall near block 4, and Teresa began making robotic gestures. It felt really stupid, but doing the robot was the first thing that came to mind to convey her concerns.
THUD THUD THUD
The footsteps were back, and everyone got ready for a fight. Both groups stood together, ready to face whatever was coming with the tanks in the front. Everyone was in position, while Teresa chose to stay back with the rangers. She didn’t have the resources to be a tank at the moment, her HP was too low. Teresa wasn’t talented enough with the bow to really make much of a difference against an Avatar with it yet, and her Mana was too low to act as a mage.
She’d have to make do with acting as a light warrior archetype, which might not be enough. Maybe if she had made better decisions regarding her skill selections she would have been better suited for the situation, but that wasn’t how reality played out. There was no point in lamenting it now, she just had to deal with it.
A large humanoid Avatar sprinted into the room, sparks flying along the ground from where its feet collided with the ground. It held a large metal sword with a few jagged edges, its overall size being comparable to a slightly larger Jim.
Teresa activated
{Prime Avatar Of Cher (?) [Attuned: Radiation] (lv ???)}
Looking at the information, Teresa was immediately concerned. It wasn’t just that she couldn’t see its rank or level that disturbed her, the same was true of the Elephant’s Foot, and it might be possible to use a skill to hide information from
They might not be able to win this one.