Liam was the first to die.

He was one of the members from Nikolas' party. A light warrior, he extended a bit too far and stepped on a Cactal Tumbleweed. It looked like a generic tumbleweed with thorny spines growing all throughout it. His foot got caught in the monster's body, which stabbed into his ankles and held on, restricting his movements. This was a death sentence for the Agility based light warrior, who was quickly swarmed by more Cactal Tumbleweed.

Matteo, also from Nikolas' party, tried to help. He was a ranger archetype that could summon Mana bullets, though there was not much he could actually do. Both Matteo and Liam shot and cut at the Tumbleweed restricting Liam, until he went pale and collapsed. A squad rotated over to help out, but by the time they killed the strange monsters Liam was already dead.

The Cactal Tumbleweed had drained his blood through the prickly spines. Had only one or two of them latched on, <Facilitated Restoration> would have been enough to consistently replace blood at an equal rate until his HP gave out. Unfortunately, several of the monsters had latched on, draining both his blood and his HP at a ridiculous rate. Light warrior archetypes were not known for their Vitality, which is what would have bought Liam enough time for help to arrive.

Someone put Liam's body into their <Inventory> as Matteo watched wide-eyed, before switching back into gear and firing as fast as he could make Mana bullets.

Teresa herself stayed focused on the Paralytic Fungi that Preston was up against. It was a bad matchup for him realistically, she had just seen how a monster that can restrict movements were deadly to light warrior archetypes, but with the amount of monsters around them things had just wound up this way. They needed to deal with the Paralytic Fungi, and Preston just happened to be nearby.

<Embers> slowly and carefully killed the monsters while Preston used his <Mana Blade> to help overcome high Fortitude and Vitality stats among the monsters. He didn't have a lot of abilities that used Mana, many of them were reliant on Stamina, but even so he still had to be cautious about activating it only when swinging his sword. This resulted in his attacks being a bit telegraphed as his sword began to glow whenever he was about to attack, but his mushroom opponents weren't smart enough to pick up on that.

HP: (1389/1480)

Stamina: (1205/1480)

Mana: (900/1532)

The Paralytic Fungi were dealt with, as there had been only around 40 that had sought out the army. Preston and Teresa nodded at each other before they both continued moving to where they were most useful. Teresa kept the status section of her resources open so she could monitor herself, and it looked like she needed to let her Mana recharge for a few minutes before it started getting too low. It was still above half, but they hadn't even reached Chernobyl yet.

Jim and Jake were fighting Grayed Trolls, so Teresa made her way towards them. She leaped into the air and summoned her sword, bringing it down into the eye of a monster. Her arms encountered some resistance as she powered through the Troll's Fortitude, but it still pierced through and stabbed the monster through the brain. It collapsed as she pulled her sword out and darted back as another Troll swung a fist right at her. It hit the corpse of its ally, knocking the body back towards another Troll and making it stumble a little.

Teresa was hesitant to use <Dash> as it took both Stamina and Mana, so she avoided it in favor of relying on pure Agility. She targeted the Troll that just tried to hit her and swung her sword down onto its kneecap. It didn't cut very deep, but still cut enough to make the Troll begin bleeding pretty bad. The Troll turned to target her, but her high Agility and mental stats let her attack multiple times before the Troll could try anything.

Her sword proceeded to slice the backside of its other knee, cutting deeper and rendering the leg unusable. It collapsed, struggling to put weight on either leg as three more Trolls tried attacking her at once. It was simple enough to run between one's legs and repeat the process, hobbling Troll after Troll while Jake and Jim cleaned up behind her.

"I'm not getting your Vitality boost!" Teresa called out to Jim. It was true. Her maximum HP was still the same, though her Strength had a small buff.

"I had to cancel it, using two auras at once uses too much Mana to maintain for long. I'm just using the Strength buff right now, but I'm almost out already." Jim replied. "I tried turning it back on earlier when those plants grabbed that guy but it wasn't enough, I don't have the sta- oh shit"

He was interrupted mid-sentence by a Troll that took all of his attention away. They each resumed fighting, with Teresa outclassing the Trolls in speed to the point where they posed no threat to her.

Level Up!

HP: (1392/1515)

Stamina: (1130/1515)

Mana: (916/1550)

Another small boost to her stats came in as Teresa leveled up, though it didn't give her any resources. It increased her cap, but after a level up one still had to regenerate their resources on their own.

The Grayed Trolls were dealt with after a few more minutes, but the army had a much larger problem.

Mutated Slimes.

Globs of radioactive material began to bombard them, taking several of the tanks' attention as they had to use <Light Shield> and other defensive skills to block the projectile spam. Teresa had fought those monsters once, and then had to retreat. They had been wiped out by a high level monster that Teresa had lured using <Monster Hunt>.

Mana arrows and bullets struck the Slimes, only to do minimal damage. The issue with these monsters was the nature of their bodies. A Troll, Kobold, Failini, whatever, they all had brains even if they didn't use them very much. It didn't matter how much HP you had, you get stabbed through the skull and you're dead. Even ethereal monsters weren't a major concern, as they could be set ablaze with <Embers> and were weak to skills.

The Slimes were a different story. They had a physical body, so they didn't have the weaknesses of an ethereal monster. They had no brain, so they couldn't be insta-killed. Their bodies were made entirely of slime, so making a slime bleed out wasn't an easy option either.

The only way to kill them was by continuously damaging their bodies until their HP ran out. The army's entire advantage during fights with monsters way higher level than them was that a human can strategize much better and could deliberately target a monster's weaknesses.

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Mutated Slimes didn't really have a known weakness aside from being exceptionally simple minded. Their ranged attacks could barrage them almost endlessly, their bodies were acidic and could damage equipment which would take Mana to repair, and it took a lot to kill them.

In other words, given their current circumstances, the biggest threat out of all the monsters in the horde were friggin Slimes.

There were only 30 of them, give or take a few. Still, that meant 30 monsters were repeatedly shooting at them while tanking a lot of the damage they received. From the way the arrows and bullets easily penetrated their bodies, Teresa could tell they weren't very specialized in Fortitude. They made up for that with a ridiculous amount of Vitality and likely some Intelligence and Wisdom for the ranged attacks.

Teresa ran towards the Slimes, deciding this was a priority as she had experience with them and they were quickly draining people's resources. On their own it wouldn't be a huge deal, they could easily circle around the monsters and repeatedly attack from safety. Teresa couldn't exactly do that at the moment, and she needed to conserve as much as possible.

They had made it pretty damn far through the horde, they were closer to the outer edge than where they had started. Monsters were beginning to fill in the space behind them that they had just cleared, surrounding them on all sides. It wasn't looking good unless they could get one final push. The Slimes were preventing that from happening, and at the moment they were honestly more of a problem than even Avatars.

Teresa put her sword away as she approached the Slimes, summoning her club and slamming it down on the creature closest to her with the very end of the club. Bits of gel flew everywhere, though Teresa had learned against the Salt Homunculus to attack in a manner that prevented her from getting splashed. Hitting it with the far end of the club exclusively helped keep most of the acid flying away from her, and she stashed her club the moment it hit the ground to prevent it from staying in the acid for too long.

The slime shot a glob of radioactive material at her, which she avoided by simply stepping aside, she was much faster than the monster. She repeated the process, slamming the club on the Slime multiple times until it finally died after the fifth hit.

Teresa actually had a lower Agility than what Preston had when they had faced the Slimes together last time, and those had only been level 50. However, she also had the mental stats to boost her reaction speeds, meaning she could actually react in time to many of the attacks.

She moved on to the next Slime, smashing it again and again with her club that was now sizzling. Teresa was getting good at it, as the Slimes didn't actually have any resistance to her attacks. It was almost like swinging a weapon through empty air to her, and as result she got really fast at attacking.

Teresa could smash her club down about three times every two seconds, resulting in her becoming a Slime murdering machine. Realistically, Teresa was the only counter available to the Slimes. Her method required a lot of Strength to wield her club, a lot of Agility to move rapidly, the mental stats to react fast enough, and a decent chunk of Fortitude and Vitality to deal with any acid that did splash onto her. Of course, her healing spells helped, but fighting Slimes quickly and effectively required a bit of everything.

Slime after Slime got mowed down by Teresa as she swung her club like a maniac, getting the hang of it more and more. By the time she killed five of the slimes, she got her swings fast enough to two per second, which would have been faster if the club weighed less. Actually now that she was thinking about it, the club did weigh less as the acid was melting through the weapon, and it didn't have the enchantment to repair it with Mana.

Oh well. There were plenty of Ogre Clubs in the Contaminated Zone.

Using this method, Teresa took out all 31 of the Slimes herself within two minutes. They had stopped targeting the rest of the army and focused on the woman swinging a massive 1,000 pound club, returning things to the expected level of chaotic for everyone else.

"WE'VE BROKEN THROUGH! ADVANCE!" Ezio yelled as Teresa regrouped, her club practically useless now.

She ran with her party as they grouped together, running past the monsters and escaping from all but the fastest creatures. Sarah and Randall periodically fired behind them, Sarah seeming to have learned how to shoot a bow while moving. It was wildly inaccurate, but she didn't really need accuracy when there were several Failinis on their tail.

"Shit!" Someone yelled as a decently sized wall of flames shot behind them, consuming the Failinis that had a high Agility and slow reaction speed. It was Noah, and his arm was broken as he just used shotgun <Embers>. <Facilitated Restoration> was fixing it, but the healing buff was running low on everyone.

Teresa refreshed the buff on her party as well as Noah's, as they had lost their healer. It cost a good chunk of Mana, but there was a reason she had been doing everything she could to conserve her resources.

HP: (1237/1515)

Stamina: (1098/1515)

Mana: (511/1550)

There was a body behind them that belonged to one of the Completionists, though it was already being torn apart by monsters. Teresa swallowed the vomit that started rising in her throat, her Perception picking up the sounds of flesh being ripped apart far too well.

The sound of buzzing caught her attention, and in the distance she saw the artificial hill with several drones flying above it. Several missiles were fired at the ground right in front of the army, forcing several tanks to use <Light Shield>. The missiles weren't much of a real threat, and Teresa hadn't seen them since the first time she had encountered the Avatars. Perhaps Chernobyl had recognized them as obsolete, and had only brought them out now to continue draining their resources.

Anyone with a gun began to fire at the drones while Teresa tried using <Suffocate>. She was running, which made it incredibly difficult to use. The spell broke twice before she decided to wait until they got closer. Her spell could definitely reach if she was standing still, and she could probably do it if she was just walking. Stretching <Suffocate> that far was too difficult, and the tanks weren't able to use <Light Shield> at that great of a range to spawn a barrier in front of the drones.

It was fine. It was a minor expenditure that would soon be rectified. The missiles were dealt with by the tanks, Mordecai even managed to shoot a few of the drones out of the air from a ridiculous range. As they got closer, the low flying drones were quickly shot down by several projectiles from the rangers. No point in wasting a bunch of Mana on a very expensive spell when a couple of cheap Mana arrows can do the same thing.

Teresa ran ahead, going past the front line as she pulled C4 out from her <Inventory>. It was her last piece, and she quickly buried it underneath the ground a short distance up the hill. Avatars peeked out from the crest of the artificial hill and fired at Teresa, but several instances of <Light Shield> kept her safe. She retreated, running as fast as she could without <Dash> while activating the remote detonator.

An explosion rang out behind her as the hill was blasted apart near the base, causing oil to spill out. The exterior of the access tunnel hidden within the hill was exposed, but it had not broken open like it had last time.

"Deploy lures!" Ezio ordered. Three monster lures were thrown through the air, landing behind or near the top of the hill and activating. A pulse of Mana rang out, getting the attention of many of the fighting monsters behind them. The horde began approaching rapidly as the Avatars fired down on the army, only for the bullets to be repeatedly blocked by defensive skills.

With the monster horde approaching, it was time for part two of the attack plan called 'get the fuck out of the way of the monsters.' The army followed the perimeter of the hill, doing what they could to stay close without becoming a target for both monster and Avatar alike.

Thankfully, they did not have that issue. The monsters faithfully targeted the lures, resulting in several traps on the hill being deployed. Avatars fired down at the incoming monsters, forced to divert their focus from the humans to the mindless monsters that threatened to completely swarm Chernobyl itself.

Now, they just had to figure out how to get over the hill themselves.

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