Teresa targeted the rabbits healing one another, hoping to take them out while they were occupied. Shit, wasn't that a war crime? That was definitely a war crime. Eh, screw it. It's not like either Teresa or the Al-Mi'raj agreed to the Geneva Convention, it was fine. Totally.

Fire engulfed an injured rabbit as its healer was forced to flee, consuming the monster and finishing it off. Was there a reason the rabbits were healing each other and not themselves? That might be useful information she could utilize against them.

The Al-Mi'raj continued trying to swarm her, and they were getting closer to actually landing a hit. One injured rabbit dove straight at her, willing to get killed by <Embers> so long as it meant injuring Teresa with its corpse. The horn on the charred body left a gnarly cut along Teresa's arm, but it wasn't too bad. That was something Teresa could fix pretty damn quick-

Just as she was downplaying her own injury, the wound began to fester rapidly, only for it to heal on its own. <Facilitated Restoration> was putting in work, but that wasn't what was healing Teresa's injury. Her cells mutated as they replicated, causing a tumorous growth to cover the length of her arm. Her arm looked nasty, just moving it anymore was difficult. <Facilitated Restoration> was targeting the growth in the same way it could target cancer, but without <Healing Touch> or <Purify> to directly restore her arm it was a slow process.

Offensive Restoration Magic. The rabbits did damage only to heal their inflicted wounds themselves in a way that left the victim worse off. If Teresa wasn't a healer herself, she would likely never be able to use her arm again after just one cut. Without a healer nearby, amputation would likely be the only path to survival. Their Restoration Mana mimicked radioactive properties, causing multiple mutations in her replicated cells resulting in a horrific growth.

The injury directly affected the muscles in her forearm. Rotating her arm or wrist was practically impossible, though thankfully this didn't completely prevent her from aiming, and her other arm worked just fine. Now that she thought about it, the Albino Gorillas had four arms. Could they fire four instances of <Embers> at once? She hadn't met one with the skill yet, but theoretically-

Another rabbit tried the exact same tactic, forcing her to use <Dash> and get out of the way. If enough of them tried that suicidal charge at once, she wasn't sure she would be in a great situation. With multiple rabbits getting closer, she decided to use shotgun <Embers> with her injured side. There were minor difficulties aiming, and this was the best way to punish melee fighters anyways.

Multiple rabbits were burnt again and again, while other Al-Mi'raj stayed back to heal any that survived. Teresa tried her best to target them while she could, but the healing rabbits worked fast. Some of them slipped through the cracks, and there were a few horned rabbits with tumorous growths rejoining the fight. They were worse for wear than when they had started the battle and were unlikely to live to see tomorrow, but that didn't seem to bother them.

A rabbit dove for her from her bad side right after she had used her shotgun <Embers>, giving it the chance to actually land a hit. <Dash> managed to help her avoid it, but the Al-Mi'raj still left a tiny scratch along her shin. She felt a weird sensation from <Retaliate>, but it was gone before she could do anything about it. The scratch festered like her previous injury, but it was small enough that <Facilitated Restoration> could take care of it before the offensive Restoration Magic got the chance to do anything.

Teresa was leading the pack of rabbits away from the Portal, not because she was trying to retreat but rather because she wanted to put some distance between her current opponents and their reinforcements that were on the way. There were only five remaining, but it's not like she was going to get a break. More rabbits were only seconds away. She finished off the remaining five rabbits relatively easily and immediately turned her sights on their reinforcements.

About fifty rabbits were trying to swarm her, but Teresa wasn't too worried. Her arm was rapidly being repaired, and there was something nice about <Retaliate> boosting her damage. The longer she fought and left it on, the stronger she got. She had only burnt through about 200 HP in total now, but her <Embers> was getting progressively stronger.

Teresa waited until the rabbits were closer before firing her offensive spell at them, not wanting to waste Mana. They could dodge it from a distance way too easily for it to be worth trying to land an attack from a range. As soon as she started attacking, she was happy to see her fire was leaving more rabbits dead rather than injured. Still, injuring them could attract other rabbits into a clump, allowing her to kill two much easier.

Only the higher level Al-Mi'raj could survive her attacks now, which was fine by her. Their builds seemed focused on boosting their magic and their speed, not their durability. A notification and a small increase in her capabilities alerted Teresa that she had hit level 48, the gap between her and the rabbits was not all that great.

The fight continued on as expected for a minute, with Teresa burning through their numbers. Everything was going to plan, until two rabbits tried the suicide method at once.

Teresa avoided the first rabbit to dive through her flames easy enough, but she wasn't expecting another rabbit to predict her movement and do the exact same thing. The second Al-Mi'raj dove straight through the flames and impaled Teresa's hand on its horn, stabbing straight through her palm.

<Embers> sputtered and stopped functioning in her palm as Teresa shook the corpse off her hand, a large hole preventing her from casting additional spells efficiently. <Embers> still worked… sorta. It didn't work well enough for the situation at hand however, and her hand was rapidly closing with a tumorous growth.

That was bullshit, the rabbit was already dead when it stabbed her. How did its Restoration Mana still affect her? On the bright side, now she probably had an answer to one of Mathew's previous questions. If she died while <Facilitated Restoration> was active on her party, it would probably stay active for its remaining duration. She honestly wasn't sure she would ever get an answer to that question without another human being dying, but evidently discoveries could come at any moment.

Her wound rapidly healed itself poorly, with her own Restoration Mana being unsure of whether it should target the hostile Restoration Magic or if it should just assist in healing her injury. It was difficult to open her hand, her fingers clenched tightly around nothing as her muscles refused to relax. She couldn't use <Embers> without blasting her own fingers off, and while she could use <Healing Touch> she decided to go with another option. Teresa wasn't a one trick pony after all.

A sword appeared in her clenched hand as she pulled it out of her <Inventory>, immediately swinging it at another rabbit. The sword cleaved through the rabbit with surprising ease, all while Teresa still used <Healing Touch> in her injured hand while holding the sword.

<Embers> was by far her most potent method of attack, but Teresa hated the idea of relying on it. Besides, she wanted to see how <Retaliate> would affect damage from normal sources like swinging a sword. The weapon cut through foes just fine, and honestly it was almost easier than using <Embers> in her current situation.

While her magic could kill a monster just fine, if the Al-Mi'raj tried to death charge her then its body could still harm her. With Teresa slashing rabbits out of the air, the sword both dispatched rabbits and stopped their attacks.

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Seeing how well it was working, Teresa quickly adopted a new strategy. <Embers> took out the rabbits trying to swarm her that remained closer to the ground while her sword killed any that leapt through the air. It was a working strategy that was actually more efficient than what she had originally been doing dual casting <Embers>.

The rabbits were fast, but Teresa was having no problem swiping them out of the air. Her reaction time was obscenely quick, and their speed midair was no problem. Baseball players could hit a 90 mile per hour baseball with a wooden stick just fine, and that was without superpowers. Teresa could swing her sword much faster than a baseball player could wield a bat, and she could see the rabbits clearly with her Perception.

The downside of her new strategy was that rabbits were having an easier time healing each other. She couldn't finish them off with <Embers> when it was the only thing keeping her from getting swarmed, and it was already about time for her to watch her Mana.

It was starting to get low, being at about a third of her maximum capacity. Although Teresa had already slaughtered well over 50 rabbits by this point, she had also only killed about a third of the total rabbit population. If she wanted to win, it was time to take some risks.

She consumed a large chunk of HP at once, lowering herself down to 450. Simultaneously, she drastically weakened her <Embers> until it was running on fumes. It still worked wonders, she kept its Mana consumption just low enough to kill monsters using the buffs from <Retaliate> and <Magic Wellspring>. She wasn't sure how those two buffs worked in conjunction, but she was pretty sure they were additive rather than multiplicative.

She also increased her HP consumption per second, doubling it to 2. It was risky, but it was efficient. At her previous rate, she was consuming Mana way faster than she was consuming HP. She could potentially offset this by using <Sturdy Outer Shell> in combat with Stamina and cut back on her <Embers>, but that wasn't the right tool for the job.

The Al-Mi'raj were too quick for Teresa to use <Sturdy Outer Shell> without having a pile of rabbits jump her at once, she was already using <Dash> and they were still catching up. The movement speed debuff from her defensive skill would outweigh the benefits of actually using the skill, and she was pretty confident these rabbits could stab through a barrier of Stamina.

The fight continued with Teresa micromanaging her resources, tinkering with her HP consumption to see what was most efficient. It was a shame she couldn't sacrifice a fraction of a single HP, 1 HP per second was too little and 2 per second was too much. She tried doing 3 HP every other second, but then the buff wasn't as consistent.

Her injuries had all finished healing properly by the time there were only a quarter of the monsters left. A quick glance at her status screen showed she now had 200 Mana out of what was now a total Mana pool of 1325. She had actually hit level 49 already, if powerful people could get lucky and keep finding encounters like this one then it was no wonder Teresa had kept dropping in the Universe Rankings.

Oh yeah, the Universe Rankings. She hadn't checked that in a while. She would check once the fight was over. It had kind of been depressing to look at as she kept dropping in the rankings, last she checked she had been in the 5000s. That was fine, Teresa wasn't out to be the strongest person in the universe or anything, but it was still kind of upsetting to see. After this, she might have climbed back up a bit again.

With so few monsters left, the fight was practically over. It was just cleanup duty at this point, unless Teresa wanted to experiment with something. Surprise! Teresa wanted to experiment with something.

Offensive Restoration Magic. Could she do it? At first, Teresa had almost dismissed the idea entirely. The rabbits could only do that while making physical contact with their horns on an already existent injury. Teresa couldn't use Restoration Mana on her sword or on <Embers>, so what was the point? She could use <Healing Touch>, but then wouldn't it just be more efficient to use literally anything else?

Then it hit her. She had <Facilitated Restoration>, duh, offensive Restoration Magic would be extremely useful. If she could blast people with brain tumors, she would be unstoppable. Was that incredibly morbid? Yeah, absolutely, but nobody could deny that it was also efficient. That was practically an instant kill, who the hell would be surviving that?

Knowing her luck, it probably wouldn't be possible, but it couldn't hurt to try. There were so few rabbits remaining that there was no risk to fuck around, so of course that's what Teresa did. Rather than slicing an Al-Mi'raj in half, she simply stabbed the creature and crippled it. The monster thrashed on the ground, and multiple rabbits tried to help but <Embers> kept them back.

Teresa placed her hand on the thrashing monster and used <Healing Touch>, trying to emulate the sensation she got from her previous injuries. Restoration Mana flowed into the monster, and despite Teresa's intent it just healed the injuries normally. It was like her magic was following a blueprint she wasn't privy to, which made sense when she thought about it.

Previously she couldn't heal away diseases or conditions that people were born with, as her magic just made the body heal itself. She couldn't heal what the body considered normal, and now she couldn't alter the blueprint of the body either. It was also like how she couldn't "heal," herself a third arm or a second head, Teresa couldn't alter the body's blueprint in the same way these rabbits could.

It was a shame they were monsters, they might have been able to do a lot of good in the world if they had just been another civilization. Then again, maybe not. They didn't seem to be able to control the mutating properties of their Restoration Magic, otherwise they wouldn't be giving each other tumors while healing. Something about their attunement fundamentally altered their magic, making it different from standard Restoration Magic.

Maybe Teresa would get lucky and something about it would pop up in her next Jack Of All Trades level up. <Suffocate> was extremely similar to the spell the Monstrous Salamander had used on her, and she had been trying to understand it during their fight. Perhaps the same thing could happen here, she got hit with enough radiation in the past that maybe it would all work together and result in a really deadly skill.

She dispatched the remaining Al-Mi'raj and destroyed their Portal with a few swings of her sword. The buff from <Retaliate> hadn't completely worn off, so why not try it? Her blade ricocheted off the Portal a few times, each swing cracking the surface until eventually it broke. It was time for some loot! After the last Portal, Scavenger was close to leveling up again already, so after this she would probably get another cheap skill.

As pieces of the Portal fell to the ground, multiple types of Mana Crystals were left behind along with an orange fruit of some sort. Teresa used <Appraise> on the item, and was plenty happy with what she saw.

<Human Evolution Feed (F+): lv 99 (MAX)>

Materials: ???

Status: Ready (100% Remaining)

A consumable capable of increasing a Human's race to F+, a necessary step for achieving a Rank Up. Provides a drastic improvement to lifespan with minor debuff resistances.

Fuck yeah! Teresa still wasn't sure on the details of what this would do, but it sounded like an upgrade in every way. She put the fruit in her <Inventory>, deciding she would eat it when she was safe and surrounded by her party. For all she knew, she would become incapacitated for a while after eating it, so it was best to test new and mysterious Portal fruits with friends.

Teresa got ready to return to her Party until she noticed something grey that caught her eye. Several miles away and rapidly approaching were multiple objects that Teresa could only describe as robots with tank tracks in various forms. There were hundreds of them, and <Identify> revealed some frightening information.

{Avatar Of Cher (F-) [Attuned: Radiation] (lv 80)}

All of these Avatar robots were at similar levels, and Teresa wasn't sure she could even take on one. Her thoughts were interrupted by a series of roars echoing out from multiple caves along the outskirts of the Contaminated Zone, prompting Teresa to turn her attention towards them. From a nearby cave, she spotted a scaly green snout in the darkness.

{Gigantosaurus (F+) (lv 93)}

Teresa turned towards her party and started running at full speed, leaving all of the monster cores behind. The only loot she had taken was the Evolution Feed, the rest could stay for fuck's sake. There was one word and one word only that was going through her mind as she sprinted, her party also running to meet her.

Nope.

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