Teresa grabbed an arrow from a dead Charger Spider, a massive green spider monster the size of a horse with semi-translucent skin revealing the glowing green blood within. The blood was acidic and melted her arrowheads, but channeling some Mana through them would cause the arrows to start repairing themselves.

Sarah helped, plucking arrows from the dead monsters while channeling Mana of her own through the ammunition to repair any damage.

"Mana arrows are really nice, if you get the chance you should pick the skill up at some point." Sarah said as she grabbed another arrow.

"I haven't gotten the chance to get a skill like that yet, but after I focus on Stamina skills some more I'll give it a shot." Teresa replied with Mana coursing through an arrow in her hand.

"<Air Mana Arrow> is pretty nice. It seems like it's going to be weaker than an arrow at an equal level, but you don't have to worry about this part, or having ammo. There's a lot of Mana arrow skills, we should go through the list of known skills and see if there are any you want to work towards when we get the chance." Sarah continued.

"How do you guys even know which arrow is yours?" Jake asked, confused as he looked between two dead monsters with arrows in them.

"Near perfect memory, plus <Appraise> lets me see the arrow level so I know if it's mine or not." Teresa answered. Sarah had been instructing her during the last siege on a Portal, which hadn't gone on for very long. Teresa's party was capable of clearing quite a few of these Portals on their own, working with several other parties in rehearsed and well practiced formations made it child's play. It cut down on the amount of experience Teresa earned on her own, but as a whole the army was gaining a lot.

"You're doing better than you originally were." Sarah praised. "Before you were using <Intuitive Aim> as a crutch and had a lot of bad habits, especially with how you held the bowstring. Now I'd say you at least have decent form, though honestly I'm not experienced enough with archery myself to really be a great instructor."

"You taught Mathew, plus I feel a bit better with the bow in my hand so you've done a pretty solid job." Teresa said.

"A lot of what I taught Mathew was basic safety stuff. Things like 'for the love of fuck don't put your fingers there when you fire a crossbow,' you know? A lot of gun safety logic carried over pretty well too. Look beyond your target so you don't shoot something behind it on accident, keep it pointed away from people unless you actively want to shoot them, and even a crossbow that dry fires can take your fingers if you aren't careful."

"Isn't shooting a crossbow without a bolt supposed to be really bad for the weapon?" Preston asked, standing around awkwardly as he also was unsure of what arrows were Teresa's and which ones belonged to someone else.

"I think so, I don't know. Honestly teaching Mathew wasn't my first time using a crossbow or anything, but I wasn't very experienced either. There was actually something on the crossbow I haven't seen before that can pull the string back for you, though it took an embarrassingly long time to figure it out."

They gathered the last of Teresa's arrows, the entire task barely taking a few minutes thanks to their enhanced stats. The party stuck around to help keep guard while others collected their arrows as well, though that didn't last long either.

This was the eighth Portal of the day, the loot going to Nikolas and Ezio to decide the most strategic use case for the various items. Everything from the Portal rewards were consumables, and the points awarded by the System for each Portal was actually split in half to go to both The Mall and Arconette.

It was getting ridiculous this deep in the Contaminated Zone with so many people. It was impossible to travel more than a mile without being attacked by something, and there was a long distance to go. Packs of monsters repeatedly tried to swarm them only to be blasted apart by an army of people who had begun to feel more from brushing their teeth than fighting.

That wasn't an exaggeration either. They found more Supreme Human Mouthwash, which was rationed out to those that had been using charcoal and herbs for dental hygiene. Grinding charcoal into a fine powder and mixing it with water could make toothpaste, but it had nothing on hygiene products from the System itself. There were a few audible cheers when people heard about the mouthwash. When monsters attacked, there were at most a few groans of annoyance.

At first people had been rather excited about the constant influx of experience, Teresa herself had hit level 59 and was almost level 60 already. After several hours of on and off low stakes fighting, people were starting to get over it. They weren't even running low on resources, at least not yet. Mostly the Completionists were the ones getting annoyed, though Teresa was the exception.

She was loving this. She couldn't understand how others weren't having a blast getting a shitload of experience. There was the underlying stress that if they failed a lot of people would die, that was definitely always weighing down on her, but ever since the System became a thing she loved the sensation of leveling up.

The Completionists from Arconette were used to short bursts of fighting followed by searching for another Portal, which in small parties would result in a larger amount of experience gained per hour for each individual. Fighting constantly and repeatedly in a large group where the experience was reduced for the individual was much slower for them, but Teresa didn't have the same perspective as them.

She may have been able to earn experience faster on her own, but the current situation had a lot of benefits to it too. They were consistently fighting monsters in the 70s, 80s, and even a couple in the 90s which warranted a bigger response. The Mall consisted of people in the 30s and a few in the 40s, even with shared experience they were gaining a lot of levels.

Those from The Mall seemed down for completely different reasons than Arconette's Completionists. Teresa's party walked back to the camp alongside Chloe, the ranger from Theo's party. She was completely silent, and had only needed to gather a few of her arrows from a level 82 Charger Spider. The rest of her shots had used her own variation of Mana arrows.

"How are you guys holding up?" Teresa asked her. She briefly considered giving her space after Leo's death, but given their situation she would rather check on her. Chloe looked over at Teresa but didn't make eye contact, instead looking vaguely in her general direction.

"I think our party is going to disband after this, give it up." Chloe responded, her voice melancholic. "I don't think I ever really grasped the risks of all this. We all knew we might die, that much was obvious. I guess I never really imagined what would happen if someone else died and we could have saved them."

"What do you mean?" Sarah asked, interjecting. "There's nothing you could have done. An arrow fired by a Completionist isn't something you can do a lot about."

"Maybe I could have landed my shots." Chloe replied. "I don't know, it's too fresh. Everyone in the party blames themselves in some capacity, Theo especially. You know Nikolas' party?"

"I know of them, but I only really know Nikolas himself." Teresa answered.

"Well we had a race to have a full party of level 40s. We were pretty close, Leo was level 39. During the battle, he actually hit level 40 and we won the race, but that doesn't really matter now. I keep thinking about how stupid that idea was, to have a race like that carry into something this serious was just asking for things to go wrong. I don't know what would be worse, the idea that we could have done something or the idea that there was nothing more we could do. Either way, Leo is gone, our party has no healer, and… I don't know. I'll keep moving, keep fighting, and once this is over I can process everything. If there's anyone you should be worried about, it's Theo. He blames himself a lot for what happened, he thinks he should have been a better tank. Thanks for checking on me, but I think I'd prefer to be alone for a while." Chloe proceeded to walk away from Teresa and her party, ending the talk before anyone could continue.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Teresa didn't blame her. It had been only a day since her party member had died, if the same were to happen to someone in her own party she wasn't sure how she would react.

The army continued on as a group of scouts returned from their advance, never straying from the army for longer than a few minutes. That was enough time to check out a few caves and spot Portals, then they would hurriedly retreat. Angelo's party had been implicated in the battle of Completionists, but only one of them had actually been seen, then promptly killed by Teresa's party. That left four of them still out there, assuming his entire party was involved.

Nikolas and Ezio both raised a hand with four fingers extended, a call for group four to prepare to take the lead on the next fight. An additional method to conserve resources had been to split the army into subdivisions that could take turns bearing the brunt of large scale attacks. They already had something similar previously for the tanks that had been cycling <Light Shield> while accounting for each other's cooldowns, so it hadn't been too difficult to implement the concept.

The army had roughly 12 parties total split amongst four groups. Each group had one party of Completionists and two parties from Arconette. Not every party had an even number of people, meaning not every group was perfectly even, but that was fine. The benefits from fighting beside someone familiar outweighed the benefits of one or two more people in a group.

Teresa's party was in group four, along with Jim's party from Arconette and Erika's party from The Mall. Erika was the ranger who had lost an arm during the first ambushes by the Avatars that had been laying in wait within the caves of the Contaminated Zone. Her class was still a ranger archetype, being Battle Marksmen, but it supported melee combat to a limited extent. She wielded a shortsword and had gotten <Breakaway>, an activated skill that increased Agility when retreating from an enemy that she just injured in close combat.

The skill was likely meant for ranger types to escape, but that wasn't how Erika used it. Instead, she 'retreated,' from one enemy straight towards another with a speed boost. It wasn't comparable to <Dash>, but the injured woman had found some solace in helping with weaker monsters. Her Agility wasn't great and she wasn't very experienced with a sword, but if someone could provide a good distraction she could step in, stab the monster, then 'retreat,' to another monster in the same situation.

Teresa respected it a lot. Aside from the willingness to adapt that Erika displayed, she also found the strength to fight at a severe disadvantage. Last Teresa had seen her, she had just been injured and was heavily depressed to the point where many were worried she might try to kill herself. Now she was fighting again, doing anything she could to contribute. Was her risk seeking fighting style related to her depression? Possibly, but Teresa wasn't sure what she could say about it without being a hypocrite.

Teresa, Erika, and Jim each approached Nikolas and Ezio, their respective parties following along. Once everyone was there, they were quickly briefed. There was a level 89 Portal that they could not avoid without crossing another Portal. As a matter of fact, this Portal had been chosen as the one to attack, even over another Portal that was lower level.

The level 89 Portal was decided as the safest path, as the lower level Portal had Agility based monsters. They could probably take them out, but the level 89 was just safer. Every fight against a Portal was a war of attrition that didn't end until all of the monsters were dead, and in group four's case they were responsible for leading the monsters away from the Portal, after which Group three would destroy the Portal getting the monsters' attention from behind. They would then pincer the monsters, finishing them off.

Just beyond the Portal was the artificial wall. This was the last one they would have to fight before Chernobyl itself, and they were to expect an ambush from the Avatar army. This was why their group had been selected, as Teresa possessed anti-air capabilities with <Suffocate>, making them the most capable of dealing with a sudden attack.

The monsters were Unstable Rock Elementals, a kind of monster that Teresa's party had actually ran past on the way back to the army. They were slow moving with high Fortitude, making them easy prey. The only reason they were going through so much hassle against the monsters was because of the high likelihood of an attack by Chernobyl.

There were no objections to the plan. Everyone there understood how important caution was. They could theoretically send the entire army to deal with it, but since the monsters had a high Fortitude it would lower their resource reserves too much. At least with only half the army attacking, it staggered the resource cost.

They moved out as soon as the briefing was over, advancing towards the Portal in the distance. They arrived within a few minutes and observed the Portal, surrounded by moving piles of rock.

Teresa was honestly confident they could take out the Portal without even attacking the monsters because of how slow they were, but at the end of the day they had to move an army of people through the small gap the destroyed Portal would create. That meant dealing with the monsters.

"Anyone with a high Agility should be the ones to lead the monsters away. We can start out with a barrage from the mages and rangers with a Mana arrow to try and weaken them, but it's likely they'll need someone with a high Strength stat to finish them off once we accomplished that." Teresa said, strategizing with the party.

"Jake, Noel, Chris, and I can be the heavy hitters, though I've heard you have a lot of Strength too. I wouldn't mind some assistance with these guys." Jim said, looking at Teresa.

"I can help with that, I would actually prefer it. I'm trying to avoid using Mana too much since I've been so busy using <Facilitated Restoration> over and over again." Teresa confirmed. She wasn't the only one refreshing the skill in the army, but her version still fit the environment the best.

"Wally and I can deal with the distraction, we'll lead them right to you." Preston said, looking at the light warrior archetype from JIm's party. Unfortunately, there was no one matching that archetype from Erika's party, as their light warrior had died during the retreat.

Everyone got into position, Teresa joining the heavy hitters to deal with the Rock Elementals. Soon, Mana arrows and spells rained down on the large cluster of monsters, peppering them with attacks that did minimal damage. The barrage was short, as Preston and Wally began to slam their sword into any Rock Elemental that tried to throw something back.

They turned their heads towards the speedy melee fighters, unsure of what to pursue. Several waves of red energy shot out from Jake, Chris, and Noel, the three tanks of the group. That got the monsters to pay more attention to their general direction, which happened to be lined up with the light warriors that were making shallow cuts into their extremities.

The monsters began to give chase to the light warriors, occasionally throwing a rock that was easily dodged. The rangers, Randall included, fired at the few monsters that hadn't bothered to give chase.

Teresa didn't have to worry about that as the first Rock Elementals got close, giving her the chance to hit hard. She lifted her hands straight up and pulled her club out of her <Inventory>, then proceeded to slam it down onto the Rock Elemental in front of her. The heavy weapon paired with her Strength smashed into the monster's hard exterior, crushing what she assumed was its head.

You Have Slain {Unstable Rock Elemental (F+) [Attuned: Radiation] (lv 87)}

She killed it in one good hit, but the club was too heavy to lift above her head in a manner that would allow her to swing it again. Instead, she simply put the weapon back in her <Inventory> and repeated the process for the next monster, crushing one after another, most requiring two or three hits from her club.

The Portal was destroyed by group three, which got the attention of the Rock Elementals. They turned away from the heavy hitters, and were immediately punished for doing so as they each whittled away at their numbers.

Teresa was well aware that this felt… easy. At least to her. Going from getting shot at to slow moving piles of rock was a massive step down in difficulty, though she didn't mind.

Her heart broke a little as she saw Erika thrust her sword into a Rock Elemental, only for the blade to be deflected off while dealing no damage. It still gave her the speed boost for landing a hit, and she was able to retreat just fine, but the monsters barely paid her any attention, which was somehow more insulting. As much as Teresa had a massive amount of respect for her, the reality was her stats did not support close combat. It would take a long time before she could rely on using a sword to kill tough opponents, she would have to rely on Unallocated Points to help with her damage output.

Teresa was sure she'd get there eventually, and she was likely going to gain at least some experience from the short battle. She kept an eye on the woman out of caution rather than pity,

A notification caught her attention, and she opened it up despite being in combat. She still focused on her surroundings, but her mental stats made checking screens incredibly easy while in a fight.

You Have Slain {Unstable Rock Elemental (F+) [Attuned: Radiation] (lv 89)}

Experience Granted

Level Up!

A smile crossed her face just as she hit level 60, only for a strange, purple gas to begin creeping onto the battlefield. They were being ambushed. Thankfully, the army had a lot of experience dealing with exactly that.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.