Thankfully, Teresa’s party had all been already desperately attempting to help her. As soon as bullets started tearing through the walls, Jake stood guard in front of Teresa and blocked the projectiles with his shield. Sarah and Randall were close behind, diving to the floor to take cover while Preston kept the Prime Avatar occupied with Lilith.
Teresa felt a surge through her body as her stats drastically began changing, bringing her out of her dazed state. She adjusted her new sword to help block bullets, holding the weapon loosely by the flat side of the blade so her fingers wouldn’t risk getting shot off gripping the handle.
She wasn’t sure they could get shot off, but it was best to avoid any damage at all considering just how astronomically low she was on pretty much everything. She heard fighting amongst the Avatars outside as Nikolas’ party arrived. They had been with Ezio’s party while disabling reactors 5 and 6, though it looked like Ezio’s crew had run ahead of them upon hearing the commotion in the turbine hall.
The best she could do at the moment was hunker down. Teresa would love to fight the Prime Avatar and get that title upgrade promised by the System quest, but it would be foolish for her to do so. She already received a large boost in attributes, and there were a couple interesting things in the notifications she received that caught her attention.
It was the first time a quest had visibly shown the reward before completion, and what was up with
There was no more threat to The Mall or the rest of the planet at this point, so really the only thing Teresa was missing out on was a better title. She already had quite a few stat boosts under her belt, and had gotten another from the operation just now. She’d check it out later when her life wasn’t at risk, but really this was the cue for The Mall to retreat.
Just as she was thinking this, another quest appeared.
Questline
Contaminated Zone
Cher’s Last Chance (1/1)
With the defeat of Chernobyl, the threat to the world has been nearly vanquished. The Elephant’s Foot is the only chance for Cher to return to its former glory as a Galactal Eidolon. Should Cher recover the Elephant’s Foot, it shall have the potential to continue expanding the Contaminated Zone in a new location with System assistance.
The Elephant’s Foot is in the possession of Teresa Weaver {Human (F+) (lv 62)}. Prevent Cher from retrieving the Elephant’s Foot.
Survive.
Time remaining: 29 minutes, 59 seconds.
Reward:
Full Restore of HP, Mana, and Stamina reserves amongst allied forces.
Warning
Similar Questline offered to Cher.
Seriously? What the hell? Was this quest offered purely because Teresa wanted everyone to retreat? Maybe it was egotistical to think that, but if that wasn’t the case then why didn’t the quest get offered at the exact same time as the previous one?
The System is an asshole!
“Why are you the target of a quest?” Elaina asked, looking at Teresa.
“I shoved a glob of radioactive material in my
Yes. The answer was yes. Damn it.
The intensity of suppressive fire increased on their position, and the Prime Avatar began maneuvering the fight closer and closer to her. Teresa’s mental stats had always been her strong point, allowing her to perceive things and think at an incredible speed, but it felt even faster now. If she had 30 minutes to survive before her resources were topped off, then she might as well take a quick peek at what she was working with now.
Status:
Name: Teresa
Race: Human (Earth)
Level: 62 (F+) (30%)
Class: Jack Of All Trades lv 9 (F+) (2%)
Secondary Class: Scavenger lv 4 (F-) (40%)
HP: (14/1707 1760)
Stamina: (1/1707)
Mana: (2/1724)
Strength: 107
Fortitude: 107
Endurance: 107
Vitality: 107 (110)
Agility: 107
Intelligence: 113
Wisdom: 108
Perception: 107
Unallocated Points: 0
…
}
…
}
Type: Passive
Gain minor protection against radioactive sources beyond your natural tolerance.
Contribute significantly towards the defeat of an Eidolon (Galactal Tier). +5% all stats.
First to reach 100 points invested in each attribute within your home universe. +5% all stats.
Teresa cut down the screens to only check what was new, immediately revealing the descriptions for anything unfamiliar. There were definitely some things there she would need to process, like being the first in the universe to do something and helping defeat an Eidolon that was friggin Galactal Tier or something, but this was not the time to ponder any of that. Her one million questions could be saved for later. All she needed to know right now was that she was resistant to radiation and her lowest attributes were all at 107 now.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Let’s get the hell out of here, we’ve done what we came here for, the rest can be dealt with later.” Teresa said, everyone around her nodding. Randall looked like he was about to have a heart attack out of stress, and he was rapid fire questioning if she was okay. She was tuning it all out in favor of focusing on the important things like the positioning of her allies and enemies. Maybe it was rude of her when he was clearly concerned over her wellbeing, but if the Prime Avatar broke free from combat it could speedblitz them in only a second.
“One way or another, you can’t be here anymore.” Elaina agreed, also taking cover with the rest of them. She could manage her buffing skills from a distance, but moving out in the open would result in her own death.
“Jake, you’ll need to cover me, one hit and I’m dead.” Teresa ordered.
“I’ll meatshield as well, I have the HP to take a few hits and
The ground began to shake as the building began to collapse, but no one seemed too worried about that. As a matter of fact, everyone was performing at the top of their game, doing better than they were moments ago. It shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, considering everyone there probably got a 5% boost in all of their stats.
As a group, they began moving with Jake blocking bullets while Teresa dragged her sword behind her. She was the only one with the Strength stat to carry it aside from Jake, but he was occupied and her
Being so low on HP and all of her resources, she was able to feel the significance of each one much more. If Mana was something produced by the Soul and Stamina was something produced by the body, then HP was the energy that kept the two attached.
The reason Teresa was focused on this at the moment was because she was able to increase her Mana recovery rate by focusing on the Mana in the environment around her and absorbing it, but could something similar be done for Stamina and HP? If she focused on her body, every aspect of it, from her muscles to the blood flowing in her veins, she could almost sense something there. It was just out of reach for her, but it was so eerily similar to the sixth sense of
As for HP, she had experience with it from
That was something that would have to come later. She couldn’t figure out the secrets of HP at the moment, but she felt she made some insights there and a decent amount of progress towards understanding Stamina on a deeper level.
With each breath, she focused both on how her body recovered and on absorbing the Mana around her. She was in the middle of combat, running as a nuclear power plant literally collapsed around them, but if she wanted to do anything she would need every ounce of energy she could grasp.
Jake smashed through a wall and created an opening for the group to escape through, the building fully crumbling behind them as they escaped. Preston was still inside, unable to join them as he was keeping the Prime Avatar occupied with Lilith, Axton, and Mordecai, making Teresa incredibly concerned for his safety.
“Preston is still in there!” She yelled as they stepped outside, a massive plume of dust encasing them and their surroundings as a gust of wind washed beside them. Jake dutifully stayed between Teresa and the imploding building, keeping any flying debris from slamming into her.
“He’ll live, put some faith in my boy.” Jake replied, though it was clear he was worried as well. “If you were keeping up with that thing then he can too, he’s gotta have over 160 Agility at this point.”
“I definitely was not keeping up with that Avatar, I was only staying alive because I could think faster and it had all of those debuffs on it.” Teresa admitted. “I know Preston’s got some points in his mental stats now, but if I had to guess the Prime Avatar was at least twice as fast as me.”
With her Perception, Teresa was able to spot several figures still moving in the dust storm that had been kicked up. There was the retreating group on low resources taking cover behind tanks in a situation very similar to their own, while Ezio’s party plus Preston were still actively engaged in combat despite the fact a building had just been dropped on them. Axton seemed to have done something to keep them alive, though without Elaina there they were missing a healer.
“You guys should go back there, I’ll be fine now.” Teresa said, the gunfire now scattered as the Avatars were unable to spot them in the dust plume.
“Are you joking? You’ll die dude!” Jake exclaimed, still moving them along.
“No, think about it, where are we going to go? We’re still surrounded by an oil fire on all sides, running will only take us so far. If all of them were topped off on resources, I can see them winning, but with things as they are we’re going to have more casualties at this rate. Nikolas and his party are taking care of the regular Avatars on their own, but even they are going to die at this rate. The Prime Avatar is after me specifically. You guys should engage it, buy me a minute, and then let it look for me.” Teresa explained. “Then it’s just a 30 minute game of hide and seek. Keep the others alive until the quest timer expires and don’t worry about the Prime Avatar until then.”
“It’s a good plan, but it’s risky. If you die and it takes the Elephant’s Foot, we might be back to square one.” Elaina warned. “You sure you’re up to that?”
“I’m positive.”
“If you think I’m going to let you do that then you’ve lost your mind! I’m not letting you go off alone here, you’ll die!” Randall exclaimed, incredibly worried. “I just found you Teresa, please.”
Teresa looked over at Sarah and Jake, both of them hesitant too. They made eye contact, and Teresa did her best to look more confident than she felt. A nod was all it took, and she could tell they were on board and trusted her.
“Then make sure you survive this.” Teresa told her dad, before sprinting off faster than any of them could keep up. She kept low in the dust clouds, taking advantage of the fact that the Avatars weren’t very specialized in Perception.
Hide and seek, that’s all this was.
She had a space several miles across to hide in, though she needed to be smart about it. Jumping on top of a damaged Assembly Station and hiding there was possible, but it would be kind of obvious. If the others couldn’t defeat the Prime Avatar and followed through on her plan, that’s probably one of the first places it would look. At least, that’s where Teresa would look.
Alternatively, she could try to bury herself in the ground somewhere. She already had experience with a cave collapsing on her, but on such low HP she didn’t really want to risk suffocating at all. Additionally, burying herself would leave a visible blemish on the ground that might attract attention. One might think a small thing like that in such a large area would go unnoticed, but there would be more than just the Prime Avatar searching for her.
Teresa was the top priority of every single Avatar on the compound, including the worker robots in the Assembly Stations. Even if those weren’t a threat to her, if she was found several Avatars would converge on her position in no time.
That eliminated any of the Assembly Stations as an option. She didn’t have the HP to cross the oil fire, which would otherwise be her best bet. However, she could start disturbing the ground and making it look like she’s buried herself as a distraction, but she had no way of knowing if that would actually be useful or not.
Alternatively, she didn’t have to hide for the full 30 minutes. If she could just take 25 or even 20 minutes to recover her resources, she could simply regroup with the others and focus on surviving until the time was up. That was most likely, really.
Their fight with the Avatar had gone on for 5 minutes or so, not that Teresa was exactly counting the seconds or anything. She had started that fight with roughly 600 Stamina and barely any Mana. In 20 minutes, she would recover at least 200 Mana and somewhere between 150 and 200 Stamina, that one she was less sure about. Regardless, in a few minutes she would be able to consume another potion, and she also had a temporary buff to her Vitality from the pill Elaina had given her.
If she could simply hide for 20 minutes, she was pretty confident in her odds. Hiding might not be the most dignified strategy, but pride wasn’t going to get in her way.
All of these thoughts occurred over the span of just a few seconds, and Teresa had an idea of where to go.
She was going to hide in the basement level of Chernobyl.
It was cramped enough that only worker Avatars or the Prime Avatar could access it, there was enough of a maze there that if a worker Avatar did discover her she could probably kill it and reposition in time, and if the Prime Avatar itself went looking there then she would hear it coming and could get moving somewhere else. It had taken several minutes for group four to brute force search for the Elephant’s Foot, and the worker Avatars probably didn’t have enough Agility to scout the whole place out very fast nor the Perception to do so effectively.
She’d have to get a bit close to the action, but now was the perfect opportunity with the smokescreen provided by the collapsing building. There were some concerns in her mind that there might be cameras or something, but they were put aside. The building was in no state for the electrical systems to be working, and the power generation had been disabled. Maybe if it had a bunch of battery power it could keep some cameras functioning, or maybe there could be some sort of Avatar specifically for scouting, but if that was the case then nowhere was safe.
Teresa jogged towards the collapsed rubble, berating herself for sprinting earlier on such low Stamina. She had to hide in the debris once or twice as she spotted Avatars near her position, but the dust plume was still providing enough cover for now.
She found the stairwell leading to the basement level by tracing her steps in her memories, instinctively matching the path she took to reach it even with the structure completely collapsed. She had to dig through a lot of debris to find it, but she managed in the end.
Teresa descended the stairs, covering the entrance back up with some rebar and slabs of concrete.
Time remaining: 27 minutes, 45 seconds.