Teresa, Jake, and Mitsuki had to travel at a relatively low speed, but they still regrouped with the others much faster than expected. Their meetup was supposed to be at Stormwreck, but her party plus Saylee and Eli found them much sooner than that. Teresa felt the signature pull of someone tracking her using Karmic Magic, and understood what was going on.
While running, Teresa spotted the others heading towards her along the trail to Stormwreck. A quick look over everyone revealed nobody was particularly injured, though she would still use
“It totally slipped my mind that you can just track me like that.” Teresa admitted when they got together again and she spammed her healing spell. Eli looked a little worse for wear, but he stayed quiet without looking anyone in the eyes.
“Are you okay?” Randall asked, looking at Teresa.
“Yeah, no injuries here. Jake got stabbed but he’s better now.”
“It was just a flesh wound.” Jake said, seeing Eli giving them a funny look.
“But are you okay after all of that?” Randall asked.
“Yeah, like I said, no injuries or anything to be concerned about. Got into a fight with someone who had a level cap, but he’s dead now. I got him in my
Teresa began using
“Do you really need to desecrate his corpse like that?” Eli asked, clearly upset. Teresa couldn’t blame him, they really had basically kidnapped him. Was it for good reasons that ultimately got him out of a city where he could potentially be taken by multiversal invaders who would do who knows what to him? Sure, and leaving him there definitely would have resulted in a terrible fate for him, but that didn’t mean Teresa hadn’t kidnapped him.
“It gives me experience for my class even if he doesn’t have anything good on him.” Teresa explained. “How was your guys’ escape?”
“We jumped over the wall, no one spotted us.” Preston answered. “So what’s the plan?”
“Stormwreck is going to at least have suspicions we were involved, so we need to decide how to handle that.” Saylee said.
“We reached the same conclusion here too, do we want to cover it up or tell the truth?” Teresa asked. “The truth would probably be better, and we really aren’t at fault here, but I’m not really fluent in politics or diplomacy. Last time I tried taking the lead in a meeting we accidentally conquered the place.”
“You handled the aftermath surprisingly well, you didn’t hesitate to cut ties with New Haven.” Saylee said.
“Sam, my brother, really liked strategy games. Chess, Civilization, Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, stuff like that.” Teresa said.
“I only know chess from what you just said.” Saylee responded.
“They’re video games. In one of them, he would complain about how other civilizations could invade him only for him to kill their armies and counter attack. Even if the other civilization declared war on him first, attacking back would make the bots in the game think he was a warmonger and it would screw him over somehow. I figured something similar might happen, and even if we ignored that I wasn’t sure we’d be able to deal with an organized counter attack on us.” Teresa explained.
“So you’re crediting your quick response to video games?”
“No, I’m crediting it to my brother complaining about video games. He also complained a lot about a ‘happiness mechanic,’ but that definitely isn’t going to help me anytime soon.”
“Is there any reason we even should cover it up?” Jake asked. “They attacked us, we defended ourselves, and we escaped.”
“Ultimately, getting ahead of it and telling the leadership of Stormwreck the truth would be the best move in an ideal scenario.” Saylee answered. “The only reason we would cover it up is if we thought Stormwreck wouldn’t be able to obviously tell we were involved. However, even then it would potentially expose us to serious problems down the line.”
“I don’t like all this politics and diplomacy stuff.” Teresa admitted. “So what if we accidentally conquered the place? They attacked us, we fought back, they lost. End of story. Instead of worrying about the fallout of this, why not use it to our advantage? Can’t we use them as an example to make sure no one else tries anything?”
“Maybe, but we don’t want to come off as threatening. The fact we can ‘accidentally conquer,’ a city is a huge deal. If that gets out, meeting all of these government officials will become a thousand times harder. Additionally, if they do want to ambush us they will prepare significantly more and we won’t be able to just walk away like that.” Saylee countered.
“Regardless, we’re going to need to rethink our strategy when it comes to those meetings.” Teresa continued. “We don’t want to become targets ourselves, but if we keep meeting people the way we are it will become inevitable.”
“You think we should stop making diplomatic connections?” Saylee asked.
“I don’t know, maybe? That or we just need to be more discreet.” Teresa answered. “Any other solution I think of has too many risks. We can pretend we are already under the control of some multiversal faction, but what if they question who? What if that makes other factions want to attack us more? Until we secure our families and the families of everyone in The Mall, we’re vulnerable.”
“If we want to do that in a reasonable timeframe, we need access to teleportation. If we account for how big some people’s families are, the other planet, and the growing number of people moving to The Mall, then it’s just not feasible within the next decade.” Saylee said. “There are over 10,000 humans in The Mall, not counting other life forms that might also have families. If we manage to somehow rescue an entire family every single day, it would take 10,000 days before we’re successful. That’s over 25 years. We only have so many people with
“I… don’t know enough to be honest. Staying on the down low while we do what we can isn’t feasible, but making a big show of ourselves isn’t either. At least, not without overwhelming power, which we don’t have. This isn’t something I think we just solve right now between the group of us, we would need a lot more input from a lot more people back at The Mall.” Teresa didn’t see any obvious solutions to their problem. At least, not any perfect ones. They would probably need to compromise and accept a certain degree of losses, but this was out of Teresa’s league. “Let’s just get back to Stormwreck and deal with that first.”
They continued traveling towards Stormwreck, the return trip taking longer due to the added company. Mitsuki, Jake’s grandpa, didn’t seem to understand much about what was going on. Eli on the other hand, seemed pretty skeptical of everything. From his perspective, a bunch of strangers showed up, went into the city hall, then it blew up.
Despite his obvious skepticism and mistrust, everyone was trying to be extra nice to the guy. They all felt a bit bad, even if they did get him out of a dangerous city. They got him involved, and while the circumstances were unavoidable it was still a shitty situation for Eli.
Four hours later, they were back at Stormwreck. It was getting late, though finding a place to stay the night could come after they got a very important discussion over with. Walking through Stormwreck, Teresa still kept using
With it being late, monster hunters would be returning to the city. Meanwhile she had been in New Haven during the day, when anyone with a decent level would likely be outside of the city. Her short time in New Haven had not been enough to accurately gauge the average level.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
They passed through a security checkpoint to ensure there were no zombie related injuries and were let into the city, where they immediately went straight to the city hall they had met with Zackery at before.
“Do we just… knock or something/” Preston asked as they approached the building.
“I can hear someone inside, so yeah.” Sarah answered. “You know, I wonder if I can start discerning people by the sound of their breathing or their smell or something. Dogs recognize people by smell or something, I’m just hesitant to turn my sense of smell up too much.”
“Maybe, honestly not that outlandish.” Teresa said. She also rarely ever turned up her sense of smell with her Perception. Altering how heavily her Perception affected her senses was incredibly natural, like blinking when her eyes got dry. She couldn’t turn any of her senses below a certain baseline, she had to at least have the senses of a normal human being. Alternatively, she could pick and choose which senses were enhanced. Her eyesight was always exceptional, but she almost never turned up her sense of smell or taste.
Amplifying her ability to smell would result in her nose picking up every nasty smell nearby, and nowadays people didn’t smell that good. When it came to taste, turning that up too much made it hard to enjoy food. She would be able to taste every minute imperfection in a meal if she utilized her Perception too much. None of her senses would become too ‘loud,’ or anything, she was pretty much built to be able to withstand a lot of sensory input, but there were definitely ways someone could utilize those enhanced senses.
Unfortunately it wasn’t very abnormal for people to walk around with blood stains on their gear, since hunting monsters was often messy and cleaning gore out of clothing took quite a while. As a result, turning up your sense of smell would almost never result in a good time. Maybe someone should build a magic laundromat or something.
Saylee stepped forward and knocked on the door, and immediately it opened.
“You know, developing super smell isn’t that bad of an idea.” Zackery said as he greeted them. “I have a high Perception too, I can hear you guys outside. I tried timing it so I’d open the door right before she knocked, but I was off a little. Weren’t you guys supposed to be heading to New Haven?”
“We have some serious things we need to talk about regarding that.” Saylee said. “Is there somewhere more private with better soundproofing?”
“Not really. As far as I know there aren’t any ways around the fact anyone can have a high Perception.” Zackery replied. Teresa considered mentioning Arconette actually had something that could block sound, though she decided not to say anything.
“This isn’t something we want anyone overhearing.” Saylee said.
“Is it really that serious? I doubt anyone’s listening, and it’d be a pain to-”
“You know Peter? Leader of New Haven?” Teresa asked, interrupting him,
“Yeah, he’s kind of a prick.”
“He’s dead.”
“Oh.” Zackery paused for a few moments, looking around at them awkwardly. After a few seconds, he sighed and shook his head, exiting the building and closing the door behind him. “Alright, I’ll go get my party members and we can meet outside the city.”
They accompanied Zackery as they walked around the city to gather his party. Thankfully, they all lived pretty close together near the city hall, so it didn’t take very long. Within half an hour, they got Patrick, who they already met, Max, a tank archetype, Tyler, a ranger archetype, and Elijah, a mage archetype.
After finishing some introductions, they made their way out of the city. Saylee looked at Teresa, who shook her head as if to say no. There was no chance of them beating all of these people in a fight.
Zackery had the highest level, being level 80. Patrick was level 71, Max was level 66, Tyler level 73, and Elijah level 70. It was Teresa’s job to size them up and discreetly communicate if a fight was winnable, but that didn’t mean she was looking for a fight. She was a bit curious, depending on their titles and fighting expertise she might be able to take them on one at a time. However, if a fight really did break out, she doubted they would give her the courtesy of taking turns fighting her.
Regardless, a fight would be extremely detrimental anyways.
“So what exactly happened in New Haven?” Zackery asked once they were a decent distance away from Stormwreck. “You also have two new people with you, are they from there?”
“During our last meeting we discussed the topic of multiversal invaders trafficking and blackmailing. Did you share those details with your party, or do we need to catch them up?” Saylee asked.
“Of course I told them about it, what kind of idiot would keep secrets of that magnitude from their party?” Zackery replied.
“You’d be surprised.” Teresa said, thinking of Ezio.
“During our trip to New Haven, we found who we were looking for and had a meeting with Peter, Elder of New Haven.” Saylee began. “At the start of the meeting, Teresa spotted someone with a level cap when using her
They decided to just tell the truth. There was no benefit to altering any of the details, and as far as they knew Stormwreck was not compromised. Yet, at least.
“So you killed the city Leader in close proximity to the City Monolith then?” Zackery asked.
“Yes, I did.” Teresa confirmed.
“Doesn’t that mean you would have taken over right after?”
“Also yes, although we immediately forfeited the city and left. There should be no traces The Mall was involved unless we were mentioned directly within a System notification. Eli got a notification saying that New Haven was conquered, however it did not say anything about who did it thankfully. Holding the city would have been incredibly difficult and would have resulted in many casualties.” Teresa answered.
“So you accidentally conquered them. That’s fucking hilarious.” Zackery grinned, seeming not that worried for someone who just learned their neighbor got killed. “He was kind of an asshole anyways. Do you know how much shit he gave me for being a Necromancer? Kept blaming me for the undead monsters.”
“Your actions are foul, this is directly forbidden by God.” Eli interjected.
“Dude, I can’t even raise a skeleton. I can do some cool necromancy stuff, but so far I’m honestly pretty disappointed with the lack of summons my class has.” Zackery said. “If I could make a bunch of undead do my bidding, believe me, I would be doing it proudly. Unfortunately, the System hasn’t given me any skills for it and I haven’t heard of anyone with summons. I’m hoping it’s just not an F rank thing.”
“You think yourself above what God set in place by playing with the dead. You may think you’re in control, but this is an invitation for evil.”
Shit, Teresa hadn’t honestly considered a lot of classes and skills would be blatantly heretical according to a lot of religions. Especially Necromancer, of all classes. Now that she thought about it, didn’t a lot of branches of Christianity think magic in general was just evil? Same thing with a lot of other major religions, maybe it was a good thing Teresa hadn’t used any skills in front of Eli, she knew he was pretty devout. It would also help explain why so many people had low levels in New Haven if several refused to use any form of magic at all.
It wasn’t like it was specifically an Amish thing either. A lot of religions were really opposed to much of what the System offered. Teresa doubted a lot of religious people in the 21st century ever really expected magic of all things to be something they’d have to deal with, but for some it would probably pose a major problem huh? If anything, the fact there were any people at all in New Haven who used magic was surprising if a good chunk of the population was morally opposed to it. She doubted every Amish person was, except for the particularly devout like Eli.
This situation also opened up the question of how the hell was Teresa supposed to handle this?
“Uh, Jake, would you mind walking with Eli for a bit?” Teresa asked, figuring Eli’s opinion of them was going to plummet more the longer he was a part of the conversation. Jake nodded and led Eli away, yet another problem on her plate. Hopefully there wouldn’t be any recreations of the Salem Witch Trials she’d have to deal with, though she doubted anyone opposed to magic would be strong enough to enforce that world view. Shit, was Teresa technically a witch?
“I see why you wanted this to be private now.” Zackery admitted.
“Are we sure we want to believe their story?” Tyler, their ranger, asked. “It all could just be an elaborate ploy of some sort.”
“Then they would have killed me at the city hall when I was alone.” Zackery countered. “We’ll probably hear about Peter’s death later anyway, so I can’t really see a lot of benefit they’d get out of making this up. From what I understand we have an Ambassador of our own already in their city. I’m sure they’re keeping some secrets from us but nothing out of the ordinary.”
Well, those secrets included the fact Teresa had the Elephant’s Foot in her
“We’d like to keep our involvement in this hidden. Currently, you’re the only ones who know of our trip to New Haven, and should that information spread, a lot of innocent people could be hurt.” Saylee said. “Both The Mall and Stormwreck have very few methods of dealing with these threats at the moment, and it would be best to avoid making enemies with multiversal forces beyond our understanding.”
“I get what you mean, it’s definitely far too early for us to be dealing with anything like that.” Zackery agreed. “Was there anything else?”
“Unless your Ambassador has already completed their tour of The Mall, I do not believe that to be the case.” Saylee responded.
“We will need a place to sleep, actually.” Teresa added.
“We can help you with that.”
“Great, then that’s all.”
With that, the meeting concluded. So far, time and again, Teresa found that dealing with Stormwreck was much easier than Arconette. Or New Haven, for that matter.
Not that she was just willing to implicitly trust them or anything.