Teresa was back at the settlement with her party, all gathered around near the monolith. Theo's party had found a massive pack of Charger Boars and killed them. Thankfully Theo managed to successfully harvest the dead animals' bodies for meat and hide. The party put it away in their <Inventory>, and now everyone was having grilled hog meat.

There were nearly 10,000 people in the camp now, and it was bound to have a couple people who really knew how to cook. The hogs were pretty massive, easily enough to feed everyone for several days. Theo had discussed monitoring wildlife levels once food was taken care of to ensure they didn't over-hunt their food source into extinction.

This was a great break for Teresa, sitting down with her friends and finally telling them the story of her time in the Tutorial. She had yet to bring up hunting together, but she had her hands full talking about her amazing exploits. Her friends were all in shock and awe at every word, marveling at the absolute legend before them.

Just kidding! They were insanely humbling.

"Oh shit, there were skeletons?" Preston asked, a huge smile on his face. "Dude that makes it so easy for you then huh, just gotta use healing magic on them. No wonder you beat the Tutorial."

"I what?" Teresa asked, extremely confused.

"They were skeletons? They're undead. Healing magic kills the undead."

"What? Since when?"

"Since every RPG ever. Even in Minecraft healing potions damage skeletons. Healing magic counters the undead dude, are you telling me you never used healing magic on the skeletons?"

"I… I don't think so. That's bullshit, there's no way that would have worked."

"You used buffs on random monsters to level up your skills, but never on the skeletons?"

"There were already so many! It wasn't like I was having an easy time against them!" Teresa retorted. She eventually came to eat those words when she started talking about how she speedran two Monster Strongholds in a day.

"Well that's neat, you got another staff then." Madeline said as Teresa described the skeletal mages.

"What do you mean I got another staff?" Teresa asked, confused yet again.

"The staffs from the skeleton mages that were controlling the ground, you looted their staffs right?"

"... Fuck."

"TERESA!" Madeline exclaimed, shaking her head in faux exasperation. "You took the goblin's war crime staff but not the earth magic staff? Also watch your language around Mackenzie here."

"I was speedrunning! I was distracted by a lot of things, I already had two staffs and I was thinking about the magic C4 and treasure chest loot!"

"Never tell Simon about this." Madeline warned, barely containing herself from laughing. "Can you imagine how many holes he could have dug by now with an earth magic staff?"

"Oh he would be heart broken." Sarah said, covering her mouth as she snickered.

"I mean I was just thinking of how you didn't grab a shield sooner, now this?" Jake said, shaking his head laughing.

Teresa put her hands on head and sighed heavily before she also burst out laughing. As much as it sounded like they were roasting Teresa's decision making skills, it was all in good spirits. If anything it was just proving to Teresa that she needed to stick with her party, they were making some unfortunately good points. Besides, that earth magic staff totally would have required a special skill to use properly.

"Please tell me you at least got <Purify> after this." Jake said, his face still red from laughing so much. Teresa snorted.

"I got that at the very end of the Tutorial and I didn't use it once through the whole thing." She admitted, and everyone burst into another round of laughter.

"Why?" Sarah asked, wheezing.

"It's a situational skill!"

"Yeah, a situation you keep finding yourself in!"

"Okay but I could just heal damage away already!"

"Sure, sure, oh my God Teresa this is too funny." Sarah said, literally crying.

"Listen, I actually beat the Tutorial unlike some people, so as far as I'm concerned you can all suck it losers." Teresa said, a big smile on everyone's faces.

"Also the healing magic thing was wrong, holy magic counters undead." Sarah said, looking over at Preston.

"Same difference, besides healing magic totally counters undead." Preston replied, and the two began to jokingly argue about the nuances and differences between healing magic, holy magic, and how technically Teresa used restoration magic which might as well just be healing magic. It was good to be back.

"I'm sure there's plenty of stuff we've all missed, that's just how it goes. Who knows what incredibly obvious things we're missing now that we'll look back on." Teresa said before taking another bite of hog meat. They didn't really have utensils or anything aside from friggin swords, but that obviously wasn't the right kind of cutlery. As a result, they were eating it with their bare hands, but food was food.

"Oh did you hear, Simon found a dog today." Jake said. "Like, another dog, not Maxwell. She didn't have a collar but he's calling her Rheneas."

"Nice, we've got two of them now. You know, I was just wondering earlier how that even works. Like, the gorillas have four arms but the dogs seem to just be pretty normal." Teresa mentioned. "How does that work?"

"Are we sure the dogs are normal? Like, have you used <Identify> on them yet? Maybe they're like, mutant dogs or something. Super dogs." Madeline asked. Teresa shook her head.

"No I didn't think of it, I figured if they made it in the Mana dome then they weren't monsters. Shit, where's the nearest dog? Let me scan it." Teresa replied, looking around. She didn't see Maxwell anywhere, he was probably with one of the kids.

"Well if you find Simon he's got his own dog now for you to check out. Shoot, I hope house cats are still a thing." Jake said optimistically. "I want an apocalypse pet."

"Oh, there's something else I wanted to bring up." Teresa said, getting to the main point. "I want to go out as a party again, I'm sick of doing it alone. I'll even help you guys level up more."

"I'm down." Sarah said without hesitation. The rest of the party thought about it for at least a few seconds.

"Sure, but how exactly are you going to help us level up?" Preston asked.

"Yeah, same question here. I'm all for it though." Jake told her.

"We can go find a higher level Portal that I could easily solo, and I'll just monitor everything. If stuff gets out of hand, I'll make sure nobody gets hurt. Simple as that." Teresa answered, hoping that was good enough of a plan.

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"Eh, works for me." Jake said, and Preston agreed right after.

"Well, as you all know I'm not going to be going anywhere soon. I've got Mackenzie to take care of." Madeline said, gesturing to the infant resting in her arms. "I don't think I'm even leaving the dome for a while, I love you all but I've got my priorities."

"Yeah no, that makes total sense. Nobody is expecting anything else." Teresa told her. "I'm sure everyone would do the same in your position."

"Excuse me miss." A man said, who had approached Teresa with his party. It was the party from the Swiss Armed Forces, the ones who had gone into the Tutorial with two guns. "We were talking about the situation with the bandits and the prisoner, and we wanted to run some things by you."

"Uh, okay?" Teresa said uncertainly.

"The military has multiple methods to avoid friendly fire, and currently we are not using any of them. We think we should have a training program for anyone leaving the settlement, and we would be willing to lead this program with your permission." He explained.

"Okay, I mean that sounds fine with me but it's not like that's something you need to run by me. I'm not exactly-"

"With all due respect, you are underestimating how valuable your word is miss. Just having you onboard with the idea is enough to get most people following along."

"Well, what exactly do you mean by friendly fire training? I get not attacking each other in combat by accident, but in regards to bandits? We can't just assume people are hostile, there are lots of people out there who need help." Teresa said, expressing her concern.

"I believe it would be better to enter every encounter with an unknown party ready for combat, but that does not mean treating them with outright hostility. Simply assessing the potential threat first and being trained on exactly how to handle that would alleviate a lot of concerns." The man said.

"Oh, we could even have like a secret password or something, maybe a uniform?" Preston offered. "Okay, maybe not a uniform but like an armband or something. Then we can just tell the gorillas to watch for the armbands!"

"I don't know, that could backfire." Teresa replied as she thought about it. "If I was a bandit and I was trying to take our stuff, I would kill somebody with an armband, steal it, then attack the gorillas while wearing the armband. Cause a war, then pick up the scraps left behind."

That also wasn't to mention the issue of espionage. They were keeping it quiet, but the man who had originally told Teresa about the hardware store had actually vanished. Nobody had seen him since, which was plenty incriminating. Who knew who else was spying on them right now? A lot of the coordination behind guarding their only prisoner had been finding people from different parties to group together to minimize the risk of betrayal.

"Do you think they're that coordinated?" The military man asked. Teresa nodded.

"Definitely. They had a trap set for me that would have probably worked if I didn't have <Purify>. They had extremely advanced equipment for taking prisoners, and a high level of combat efficiency that didn't match their actual levels. I'm convinced they even have a few titles under their belts. They're all dead now, but there might be more." Teresa explained. The man nodded.

"Alright, in that case I suggest we start keeping more track of who goes where outside this settlement. We can coordinate with Saylee to keep a log of where our people are going, who they are likely to run into, and where they might be most useful." He explained.

"Do you think people are going to be upset about that? Being tracked?" Teresa asked.

"That is very likely, but given our current situation we can't afford to make sure everyone is comfortable, we should ensure safety first."

"Hey, I've got a question." Sarah said. "You guys are military, you had guns, how was the Tutorial for you? My sister's in the military, well the US Navy, and I was wondering if it's different at all."

"Well, from what we've heard the Tutorial itself was about the same. The first stage had five waves of monsters, the second stage had us go out into a wasteland to take out Monster Strongholds, and we don't know about the third stage. Never got that far. Only two of us actually had our weapons on us, and the ammo was gone by the end of stage one. As a result, two of us were higher level than the rest by a large margin, and none of us had any skills level up except for Matteo's <Intuitive Aim>. We only stuck around as long as we did because we thought we had to beat the Tutorial to stick together."

"What do you mean, it literally said you could leave the Tutorial and stay as a party." Sarah said, confused.

"The exact wording was that we 'may choose to stay together or split up upon completion of the Tutorial' but we weren't sure what counted as 'completion.' We only found out after we had a close call and Liam tried to leave early. Gave him the choice to stay together, so we figured it might work. None of us wanted to appear somewhere random on Earth by ourselves, what if it dropped us in the middle of the ocean?" The man said. "The System has been incredibly vague about a lot of very important things."

"I'm confused how you guys didn't beat it." Preston said. "You're literally trained for combat, shouldn't this be right up your alley?"

"Militaries around the world generally focus on training you to use a gun, not a sword or a bow." The man explained. "We do hand to hand combat training, but it has a strong focus on grappling that doesn't carry over to monsters all too well. There's some striking with basic Muay Thai, but really it was considered more useful to be good with a gun. It doesn't matter if you're the best martial artist in the world, a gun will take you down. At least, that's how it used to be. A pack of high level Stoney Lions spotted us, way beyond what we were capable of fighting. Forced us to leave early, if we waited even a few seconds more we would all be dead."

"You guys are still pretty lucky, the only people in our party that knew each other was Preston and I." Jake said. "All five of you were in the same military? There's got to be ridiculously low odds for that to happen."

"A lot of people have been theorizing about the mechanics of the Tutorial and how it worked, but nobody knows for certain. Some think parties were formed based on occupation, others think it was general athletic prowess, wits, combat capability, religion, ethnicity, you name it. Nobody really knows, but there's a lot of evidence that nothing was completely random." The man said.

"Oh, I know this is late but I'm Teresa by the way, didn't get the chance to properly introduce ourselves." Teresa said, realizing she still did not know the man's name. That also reminded her of something she was also meaning to ask her party, but that could come later.

"Nikolas." He said, reaching his hand out. Teresa shook his hand, and everyone in the party quickly took turns introducing themselves.

"Yeah, I guess there's no way anything was completely random. I mean, the planet is the size of the sun and we just so happen to appear close to Mackenzie? Spread eight billion people evenly across the sun and I doubt you would run into anyone for miles." Teresa said, thinking more about it. "Random isn't even, but still. 10,000 people is a lot considering the circumstances."

"I hope it wasn't random, I don't want to travel to the opposite side of the friggin sun to find my mom, but I totally still would." Jake said. "Maybe that'll mean the rest of our families are nearby. I just need to get <Familial Duty> and I'll be set."

"About that." Nikolas said, looking concerned. "So far, <Familial Duty> has only really been seen in parents. You don't have to be biological, there's a dad here who found his adopted son with the skill, but only people in that category have the skill. It might just be coincidence, but there's a chance none of you will be able to get the skill unless you have someone you would consider your own child."

Everyone went silent. That was… incredibly distressing. Did that mean no matter how hard Teresa tried, she would never get <Familial Duty>? No, they didn't know that for sure, she was still going to do her damn best to get it.

"I'm going to try and get it anyways." Teresa announced. "I have to have someone I'd consider my own child? Well my brother is younger than me, maybe I can just think of him as a son. Really weird, not sure I'll be able to do that, but damn it I'm going to try."

"I don't think that's the same, honey." Madeline said softly. "I literally have a need to protect Mackenzie, one that goes just as deep as my need for food or water. I think it might even have that beat, I'm not sure you could replicate that out of nowhere."

"What am I supposed to do then, just give up?"

"No, I'm sure you'll figure something out. You beat the Tutorial, I'm sure you can beat this. The only way to guarantee you never see your family again is if you stop trying." Madeline told her. Teresa paused, trying to collect herself for a moment.

"We'll figure something out man." Preston said. "All of us have people, the second anybody else manages to get the skill, we'll share absolutely everything with the rest of the party."

"I did get the chance to grab a karmic magic skill, it's called <Monster Hunt>. It's supposed to help me with finding monsters, but it also might let them know I'm coming. Either way, I think it's a good first step to take next time I get the chance." Teresa shared, throwing the idea out there.

"I think that's a good idea, and even if it doesn't pan out that sounds incredibly useful." Jake said. Teresa nodded, hoping that if she did get <Familial Duty> she could level it up enough to help her friends out. Madeline's situation was different, she couldn't just travel across the planet with an infant that young, and she already found Mackenzie. How did leveling up the skill even work for her now?

As Teresa thought about this, she suddenly recalled a question she had been meaning to ask the rest of her party for some time now.

"Oh yeah, before I forget. I want to know all of your last names. I want to know where you're from, what you did for a living, your parents' names, hell I want to know the street you grew up on." Teresa said, completely serious. Everyone looked at her confused for a moment, until realization dawned on their faces.

"Oh fuck, I didn't even realize I don't know your last names." Jake said, shocked. Preston, on the other hand, took it in an entirely different direction.

"Guys, I think she's trying to hack into our bank accounts." He said, getting a few laughs out of everyone. However, Preston did not laugh. Instead, he had a very concerning expression on his face. "Holy shit, none of you are going to believe this. We have System Bank Accounts."

A screen appeared in front of him as he willingly showed everyone a feature of the System nobody had been aware of.

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