"Wait, I thought you did kickboxing." Sarah said, confused. The party had settled down and made camp along the side of a hill as they watched for any sign of civilization coming to hunt the Portals.

"Yeah, I tried it for a few months as an extracurricular in college. The coach for the course was a boxer though." Teresa explained.

"So they had a boxer teach kickboxing? Those are two very different things."

"Yeah, they couldn't find someone with experience in kickboxing to teach it."

"What I don't get is why didn't they just have a course for boxing instead then?" Preston asked. "If they could only find a boxing coach then just teach boxing, that's so confusing."

"It was a college, doing that would make too much sense." Teresa responded. "You know, maybe I should have just tried going to trade school for something-"

"Hang on." Sarah interrupted, pointing out at something in the distance. "A pack of monsters spotted us, they're heading this way."

Teresa followed her eyes to where Sarah was pointed and spotted a group of 8 creatures approaching. They looked like lions with snakes growing out of their sides, each with glowing green eyes. The lions had essentially stolen Medusa's hairstyle, and Teresa took a moment to feel relief that she wasn't turning to stone just by looking at the beasts.

{Lesser Chimera (F+) [Attuned: Radiation] (lv 50)}

{Lesser Chimera (F+) [Attuned: Radiation] (lv 53)}

{Lesser Chimera (F+) [Attuned: Radiation] (lv 54)}

Shit, they were high level. Just a few days ago Teresa had been overwhelmed by a bunch of level 50 Mutant Slimes, these were even stronger. On the bright side, there were only 8 of them, Teresa could handle that much.

"I'll take care of them, though I wouldn't mind ranged support." Teresa said, nodding to Sarah. There was no need to take unnecessary risks, Sarah shooting from afar might help her out.

"Can I use the crossbow?" Mathew asked, but his father shook his head.

"Mathew, you kno-"

"Not this time kiddo." Sarah said. "I have <Intuitive Aim>, you don't. If you miss you can hit Teresa, plus I'm not even sure that crossbow can hurt those monsters without a skill."

"But I do-"

"Teresa you should get going." Sarah continued. She was right, the monsters were approaching pretty damn fast, they had seconds before they caught up. "If any get past you Jake can distract and Preston can deal some damage."

Teresa nodded and activated <Dash> while prepping two instances of shotgun <Embers>. There was no need to draw out a battle today. An arrow whizzed by and slammed into a Chimera, just barely scratching it. Sarah was currently level 30 and her bow had only recently been upgraded. Her damage output would be negligible unless she hit something vulnerable like an eye.

An explosion of fire shot out from Teresa's palms as she engulfed the first Chimera in Elemental Mana, searing its flesh. The creature wailed as multiple burnt snakes thrashed on its back, most of the snakes appearing dead. Were the snakes and the lion two separate entities? The System didn't seem to think so seeing how Teresa didn't receive any kill notifications, but she was admittedly curious about how Chimeras worked.

The rest of the Chimeras passed the injured monster and attempted to swarm Teresa, forcing her to activate <Dash> again to rapidly change directions and keep a safe distance. She fired shotgun <Embers> from both hands once again before switching to two constant streams of fire to ward off the attackers.

They were fast. Incredibly so, it was better if Preston kept away. Even while using <Dash> each individual Chimera had more movement speed than Teresa, if not for the fact they had to avoid getting burned by her offensive spell then they would have already turned Teresa into mincemeat. Teresa also noted that Sarah had stopped firing, which was probably a smart move. If she drew the attention of just a few, everyone would be overrun in seconds. They could handle maybe one, but it was best that Sarah was choosing her shots wisely.

The group of Chimeras spread out around Teresa as she ran, making it far harder to keep them back with her <Embers>. She had injured multiple already, but her goal was specifically to blind them. That was a strategy that typically worked, but it seemed the tried and true method of blinding opponents had met a difficult match. She spotted a lion with both eyes completely burnt still giving chase, giving Teresa reason to believe they could see through the snakes' eyes as well.

They were definitely focused in Agility and Perception, which would account for about 2 to 6 stat points per level total. That left a few points that could be distributed elsewhere, Strength maybe?

A Chimera lunged through Teresa's <Embers>, tanking the damage in a desperate bid to kill Teresa. She dodged to the side as quickly as she could, but one of the snakes growing out from the Chimera snapped its head at Teresa like a whip. The fangs were glowing green and left a colored streak in the air as its open mouth swung towards Teresa, clamping down on the back of her shoulder. She responded by canceling one constant instance of <Embers> and blasting the Chimera point blank with shotgun <Embers>. The fire melted through the side of the monster, making it drop dead.

She didn't even have time to heal her injuries before she was attacked by yet another Chimera. Teresa immediately blasted it with shotgun <Embers> again, resulting in a corpse toppling over before getting the chance to eat her. She activated <Dash> and darted right at the next Chimera as an arrow plunged into one of its snakes. The arrow made the Chimera roar in anger just as Teresa delivered a lethal dosage of fire to the monster's face.

From there, cleanup wasn't too bad. It was a short fight where Teresa had gone full power right from the beginning. The remaining Chimeras were already injured, and she even received some more support from the rest of her party. Preston had closed a lot of the distance and was firing <Air Slash> at some of the monsters, cutting up snakes while Teresa finished them off. As there were only two left, a red wave of energy shot through them and made the Chimeras hesitate enough for Teresa to easily finish them off.

"Well that wasn't too bad." Teresa said as she activated <Healing Touch> and <Purify>. She closed her wound and treated it in seconds before returning to the hill where they had made camp.

"Are you okay?" Mathew asked, wide eyed at where she had been bitten.

"I'm fine, that was nothing. <Facilitated Restoration> did most of the work, really it may as well have been just a scratch." Teresa reassured him. "The slimes were so much worse."

"Yeah but I didn't really see that happen, just the aftermath. This was so fast but you didn't slow down even after you got bit. Is that how it always goes?"

"Getting hurt is normally a Teresa thing." Sarah clarified. She paused, frowning. "Actually it's also kind of a me thing, I got hurt pretty bad once but Teresa patched me back up. Most of the time the tank absorbs the vast majority of the damage, but occasionally someone else still gets hurt. People at The Mall like to hunt in larger groups so there are multiple tanks with protective gear doing damage prevention so it's spread out a lot more."

"Do you want to just use my armor?" Jake asked. "I mean you could probably use it, all things considered."

"Nah, you're good man. I've got <Sturdy Outer Shell> to train, this just didn't seem like a good time to use it."

"Is that because it slows you down? I remember you talking about that." Mathew asked.

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"Yeah, it's great for tanking lots of weak ranged attacks or dealing with a few slow opponents, but if I used it against these guys all eight of them would pounce and I'd be trapped under a mountain of Chimera trying to eat me. When fighting I really think you should try and put yourself in situations where you can use your skills, but sometimes you have to know when not to use one." Teresa explained. Hopefully that would be good advice for the guy someday, the sooner he started thinking about it the better. "Well, time to practice <Extract Core>."

Teresa got to work removing the Monster Cores from each of the Chimeras. There were only 8 in total, so it didn't take too long. She had gotten some practice with her looting skill over the last few days, though these were the highest level monsters they had actually killed yet. By the time she was done, <Extract Core> had hit level 3 and she had two additional, very important notifications.

Both of her classes had leveled up. Jack Of All Trades had been gradually gaining more and more experience, meanwhile Scavenger was still pretty easy to power level. Teresa wasn't complaining, she opened the skill selection from Scavenger first.

<Pluck: lv 0>

Type: Looting Magic

Remove the fur of a viable corpse.

Scavenger had only given Teresa one new skill in her selection menu, what a rip off! That meant the choice was between <Pluck> and <Skittish Looter>, and it was obvious to her which one to pick. <Pluck> would be nice if they were more reliant on hunting for food, but since they had gotten the vitamins there wasn't as much urgency. They hadn't needed to eat any of them since they already had some food that would eventually go bad and took up more space, but <Pluck> just wasn't that useful at the moment.

A passive increasing resource regeneration while looting wouldn't hurt, so she choose <Skittish Looter>. If her secondary classes only awarded one or two skills per level, then it probably wouldn't be too difficult making selections in the future. Now, time for the big one.

<One Armed Weaponry: lv 0>

Type: Weapon Mastery

Learn the way of the warrior, death to the enemy by a thousand cuts. Gain a minute understanding of one armed combat, carrying a one handed weapon will require significantly less effort outside of combat.

<Suffocate: lv 0>

Type: Elemental Magic

Channel Mana to your palm and convert it into air-based Elemental Mana that can be used to lower air pressure in a small volume.

<Strong Throw: lv 0>

Type: Combat Technique

Enhance the power of your throw by utilizing Stamina. Cooldown: 1 minute.

There were some pretty good options, and what caught Teresa's attention the most was a new offensive spell. She was almost tempted to nab that right away, but this wasn't as simple a selection as what Scavenger provided. There were definitely things Teresa might not be considering.

"Class leveled up again, you know what time it is." Teresa said as she shared her screen with the rest of the party. They took a few moments to read it over before discussing.

"Honestly, <One Armed Weaponry> might be a good pick for you." Preston said. "You can use Stamina to improve your technique during a fight, but it wears off once you stop using it. It also just helps with scaling your weapon usage with your stats as they grow more and more ludicrous."

"True, Weapon Mastery skills are pretty good for that." Jake confirmed.

"I have <Archery>, does essentially the same thing. Helps a lot over time, but weren't you considering another skill?" Sarah asked.

"Yeah, <Retaliate>. It consumes my HP and lets me do more damage. The buff improves the lower my HP is, but I also don't know much about how HP even works. It doesn't mention canceling other buffs either, so I think it would work with <Magic Wellspring>." Teresa explained.

"That's right, I think that might be a good move as well." Preston added.

"I mean… do you really want a skill that slowly kills you when you use it?" Jake asked. "Seems kind of dangerous, also feels like it's in poor taste all things considered."

"Why is it in poor taste?" Mathew asked. "Is it because she's already getting hurt all the time?"

"Yeah, exactly." Jake lied. "What other skills do you have? Your class is level 7 isn't it? You've got to have a lot of old options still sitting around."

"I've got a bunch." Teresa confirmed, looking through the list. She took a deep breath before listing them off. "I have <Taunt>, <Ignite>, <Bulwark>, <Terrible Presence>, <Warm Meals>, <Lucid Dreams>, <Pain Tolerant>, <Silent Step>, <Skate>, <Moment Of Focus>, and <Retaliate>."

"That's a lot." Mathew said. "<Terrible Presence> sounds cool, what's that do?"

"Makes everyone around me uncomfortable, but I don't think I need a spell to do that one." Teresa answered. "<Moment Of Focus> might also be nice, it would let me perceive stuff really fast for a little bit. Then again, it has a debuff afterwards and it would cancel out <Magic Wellspring>."

"I think it boils down to one of the Weapon Mastery skills, <Retaliate>, or <Suffocate>." Sarah said. "Though I would cross out <Suffocate> as well since it doesn't seem like it would help with your resource preservation."

"Aw man, I want another offensive spell. <Embers> is great and all but I'm getting sick of using the same spell all the time." Teresa admitted. "I guess I can use <Sturdy Outer Shell> and punch something, but that's not quite the same."

"Well if you want to then just take <Suffocate>, not every decision has to be optimized as much as possible, you can choose the fun choice from time to time." Sarah reassured her. Teresa shook her head.

"No, I don't think so. I do want to pick <Suffocate>, but it's not the responsible pick. Increasing my resource consumption is only going to make my problems worse, I think I should take <Retaliate> and address the underlying issues with my build first." Teresa responded. Next time she would take <Suffocate>, that or one of the Weapon Mastery skills. Honestly there were a lot of choices that still felt appealing, and she was kind of curious about what kind of Mana <Lucid Dreams> would use. Ugh, if only class levels weren't so damn slow.

"You sure you don't want <Taunt>? You would make a good tank." Jake said jokingly.

"As if Teresa needs a skill to draw a monster's attention to herself." Preston replied back, smiling. "I'd recommend <One Armed Weaponry>, then you would have both of my starter skills and I wouldn't be so special anymore."

"Also tempting, but I don't think it helps me as much as <Retaliate> does. That gives me an entire resource pool to utilize better."

"Hang on." Mathew said, deep in thought. "If you just use <Retaliate> to drain HP and Restoration Magic to gain HP, wouldn't you get an infinite loop of buffs?"

"No, probably not." Teresa answered. "I'm still not positive on what HP is exactly, but it's complicated. If I lose a lot of blood, I'll lose a lot of HP. If I use magic to make more blood, my HP goes back up. Restoration Magic doesn't replenish HP exactly, it fixes an issue with the body and I think HP reflects that. If I try healing myself after using <Retaliate>, the Restoration Mana would have nothing specific to heal. That, or it might even cancel out the buff from <Retaliate>. I have no way of really knowing, but there are some safeguards to keep me from cheesing the System."

"Safeguards like what?" Mathew asked.

"<Magic Wellspring> increases the efficacy of my spells by improving my Intelligence and Wisdom. However, it is also a spell itself, so one would think that I could use the spell on myself again and again while each recast would make it stronger, right?"

"I think I'm following along, yeah that makes sense."

"Well it doesn't do that. Any of my skills using Mana are definitely enhanced, but <Magic Wellspring> stays the same. I also can't spam <Facilitated Restoration> on myself to keep getting more Restoration Mana and making it last forever, each instance cancels the previous. There have been a lot of times where I've replenished my buffs while they were still active, and they've never been more powerful from spamming it on myself. Trust me, I keep them both active pretty much all the time, I'm getting better at making <Magic Wellspring> last longer too."

"Darn, so there's probably a safeguard for healers using <Retaliate> then." Mathew said, disappointed.

"I don't know, maybe. Probably. Only one way to find out." Teresa selected the skill, and the knowledge on how to use <Retaliate> entered her mind. "Now I just have to try it on something."

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