As Teresa and her party rapidly approached one another, Jake yelled out a warning.

"No time to explain, we-"

"Robots and dinosaurs, fucking RUN!" Teresa interrupted, effectively summarizing the situation almost instantly. Mathew and Thomas were already being carried by Sarah and Preston respectively, so Teresa grabbed Jake's armor and tossed him over her shoulder like a bag of grain and continued sprinting.

"Where are we running?" Preston asked, running alongside her.

"Anywhere but that way." Teresa responded, briefly gesturing back where she just came from.

"We heard noises coming from the caves behind us, I don't think we can make it back to the forest without a fight." Preston told her.

"Maybe we can push through then, but we can't stay here." Teresa continued, until more roars and rumbling caught her attention. Dinosaurs were exiting out of several ravines and caves along the edge of the Contaminated Zone, all of them carnivores. Pterodactyls took to the sky, Velicoraptors sprinted out of caves in packs with a group of Allosauruses following close behind, Deinonychus climbed out of a ravine as countless creatures made themselves known.

Teresa kind of knew her dinosaurs, but the only reason she could name a few of them was because of <Identify> revealing that many of these creatures were higher level than her. The weakest were in the late 50s, while the strongest was still that level 93 Gigantosaurus. Teresa was already low on resources, and even at full capacity she couldn't take on hundreds of these beasts at once.

The dinosaurs weren't attuned, meaning Teresa could probably take on around 30 of their lower levels just fine in perfect condition. Instead, she was surrounded by people who would probably die within seconds of a direct confrontation. The only way to get out alive of this situation was to run, no matter where her destination was.

Since the dinosaurs weren't attuned, the radiation from the Contaminated Zone likely could still affect them. At least, Teresa was willing to bet on that considering how none of them were coming from deeper within the Contaminated Zone.

It was either dinosaurs, robots, or going deeper into the Contaminated Zone. Honestly, it wasn't like Teresa was 100% sure the robots or dinosaurs were hostile to humans, but why risk it? If Teresa could comfortably approach either group knowing she could handle things if they turned south, then she totally would.

With robots blocking their expected path and dinosaurs blocking their retreat, there was only one way to go.

"We're going into the zone, I'll refresh <Facilitated Restoration> when I can." Teresa ordered, turning to the only 'safe' direction.

"What do you mean by robots?" Preston asked. "Like terminators?"

"Like metallic tanks, they all look a little different. Some of them are humanoid on top, some just look like armored vehicles. There are robots and dinosaurs as high as level 93, we've got to go." The party continued their way deeper into the Contaminated Zone as the sound of an explosion echoed behind them.

Teresa glanced over her shoulder to see smoke rising from beyond a hill, as robots fired multiple projectiles at the dinosaurs. They didn't use magic, but rather weaponry that was more reminiscent of Earth pre-System. Gunfire rang out as a robot fired at a pack of Dimorphodons darting through the sky towards the robots. Multiple were shot down as they began performing evasive maneuvers, divebombing the robots and picking metal pieces apart where possible.

She turned her attention forward again, running with Jake still over her shoulder.

"Was that gunfire?" Sarah asked, eyes wide. "What the fuck are we supposed to do against guns? We're pretty damn fast, but not that fast!"

"I can probably tank a few from like a handgun or something, but I'm not sure what kind of bullets dinosaur hunting robots fire." Jake admitted.

"I don't think we're easy to hit while moving, but if one catches us by surprise when we're standing still then we're fucked." Preston agreed.

"Eyes up! Something is flying towards us!" Sarah yelled, drawing Teresa's eyes to the sky. A swarm of drones were approaching from deeper within the Contaminated Zone, flying at breakneck speeds.

{Avatar Of Cher (F-) [Attuned: Radiation] (lv 65)}

Each of the drones were around the same level, being in the mid 60's. At their current trajectory, the drones would be flying over them in just a moment.

"Maybe the robot faction is friendly." Preston said optimistically. Not even a second after he said that, a bright light flared underneath one of the drones as a metal object shot towards them.

A screen of light appeared in front of the missile, causing the projectile to explode in the air.

"Not friendly!" Jake yelled out from over Teresa's shoulder. <Light Shield> had a 5 second cooldown, which was relatively short but could still result in problems if the drones fired another missile in that timeframe. They were pretty damn fast, they would probably only take half a second to reach the party.

Teresa raised a hand and fired shotgun <Embers>, not with the intent of hitting a target but rather to obstruct the drones' view. Even if the drones had thermal sensors of some sort, they wouldn't be able to see the party through the fire. She had learned that trick against some Giant Serpents that saw with thermal vision, and she was glad her adventures were paying off.

"Give me a crossbow! I can help!" Mathew yelled from Sarah's back. Teresa barely thought about it before she retrieved it from her <Inventory>, running alongside Sarah and handing the kid the weapon. Honestly? This was a shit show emergency, the kid could have a damn weapon. She didn't expect him to actually do anything about it and he had absolutely zero chance of contributing, but if the party went down at least he could go down fighting with the rest of them.

Dying unarmed when a weapon was available was wrong on so many levels. This wasn't much better, but-

A green streak of light traveled through the air as a bolt was fired from Mathew's crossbow, launching straight towards one of the drones. The bolt hit one of the rotors perfectly, only for another surprise to be in store. The drone lost control as the rotor slowed dramatically, but the effect only lasted for a fraction of a second. The drone righted itself almost immediately, and the remaining drones in the swarm spread out to put space between the party and the flying force.

"What the fuck was that?" Teresa screamed, caught completely off guard. She turned her gaze to Mathew and used <Identify>.

{Human (F-) (lv 6)}

"How did you do that?" Thomas asked with a mix of emotions in his voice that Teresa couldn't immediately decipher. Another missile was launched their way, and once again Jake blocked it with <Light Shield>. Teresa fired shotgun <Embers> again, but she was already low on Mana. At this rate, she was going to be completely drained within a minute.

Regardless, she fired shotgun <Embers> again just before the previous fire began to spread out enough for someone with a high Perception to see through. Multiple white cuts shot through the air towards the drones, but they moved too slowly to actually land. Preston didn't have <Intuitive Aim>, and his skill was also pretty easy to avoid in the current circumstances.

Another bolt fired from Mathew's crossbow, striking another drone perfectly in a rotor. It slowed for a moment, but ultimately the drones weren't in any real danger unless they got close. If they were in range for Teresa to use <Embers> on them, then with some good timing she might be able to punish them after getting hit by whatever Mathew was doing.

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"It's <Ensnaring Bolt>, it's supposed to restrict movement, I don't know why it's not working."

"You're level 6, the only reason your skill is doing anything is because it's a good matchup." Sarah explained as Jake blocked another missile. "Against anything else at this level you wouldn't be doing shit."

"You knew about this?" Teresa asked as the pieces fit together in her head. Sarah had been training the kid, but apparently that went farther than target practice. What the fuck is wrong with her? Sarah knows that Thomas didn't want that. Teresa thought it was stupid, sure, but Mathew was a child!

Okay, sure, it was coming in handy, it was a dumb rule in the first place, and honestly it increased their odds of survival. Logically, it was the right move, but that didn't change how disgusting the situation felt. Teresa couldn't really put it into words why she hated this, and she definitely was not in a position to unpack why she felt so strongly about this. Fuck, her heart was racing now. They had been running for their lives and only now it does that? Bullshit, fucking bullshit.

This wasn't the time, she needed to focus on the situation at hand. But how could she? Either she was too focused on focusing to actually focus, or her mind wandered to Zoey-

"Fuck! Anoth-" Jake started before he was interrupted by an explosion. Teresa had seen a streak of white flying through the air towards the missile just a moment before impact. Even with her Perception, she couldn't see what happened in the time between when she was running and now as she lay crumpled on the ground with her ears ringing.

Her hearing quickly returned and she got to her feet immediately, inured to dramatic attacks like this one. Preston must have hit the missile with <Air Slash>, causing it to detonate just above them. There were only a few drones overhead now, most of them having left to assist in the battle against the dinosaurs.

Two of them fired a missile simultaneously to finish the job, though one was intercepted immediately. A shield of light appeared right in front of a drone as it fired, resulting in the missile immediately detonating next to the drone. This resulted in friendly fire destroying the flying contraption, but it didn't stop the second missile.

Her mind raced, making the most of her mental stats as she considered her options briefly as she went over all of her skills in her mind. The missiles seemed to detonate based on impact, which didn't seem like how a missile should behave but the evidence was there. <Sturdy Outer Shell> maybe? No, that would only protect maybe Teresa. Could <Facilitated Restoration> or <Embers> detonate it? No, almost definitely not. If the missile was closer to the ground maybe <Totem Of Life> could tank a hit, but that skill was also slow.

Was there something in her <Inventory>? Her mind initially went to something she had been holding onto for quite some time now, but that would only make the situation worse. Maybe her knife? Throwing it might take too long, she had maybe half a second. If not for the drones keeping their distance due to Mathew's bolts, it probably would have killed her by now.

There wasn't enough time to properly consider it, as fast as Teresa could think even this was pushing it. She wasn't even thinking with words, just general and vague concepts flooded her head. Teresa grabbed the knife from her <Inventory> as she flicked her arm forward, hoping <Intuitive Aim> would come into effect. She had 69 Strength, Agility, and Perception, she had to rely on each of her stats coming together to work in tandem as she launched possibly the fastest blades ever thrown in all of human history.

One might think the knife was a missile itself as Teresa put every ounce of effort into her throw. She had thrown the knife multiple times before at monsters and it had admittedly never been all that impressive. Knife throwing wasn't one of her talents, but these missiles were pretty damn small, being about the size of her forearm. If it was an actual ICBM or something there would be no chance in hell it would work,

The knife hit the missile, and yet another explosion knocked Teresa back to the ground as fire singed her flesh. She would have screamed if she could, but the experience knocked the air out of her lungs. It only lasted a moment before Teresa was coughing up smoke, pushing her face close to the ground to try and get a hint of clean air.

She looked to where her party was, and the sight was horrific. Jake was the only one that seemed alright, everyone else was suffering from terrible injuries. Both Preston and Sarah had used their bodies as shields for Thomas and Mathew respectively, but neither was a Fortitude specialist. Metal shrapnel stuck out from their charred backs, if they were alive they only had seconds.

Mathew and Thomas were both covered in burns, each of them screaming from their ghastly wounds. They would live, at least for a few more minutes, Teresa needed to use <Healing Touch> on Sarah and Preston now if there was any chance.

She scrambled towards them, her limbs barely responding the way she wanted them to. <Healing Touch> activated in both hands as she placed her palms on her two party members, immediately commanding her Restoration Mana to focus on the worst of the wounds.

Teresa wasn't sure if it would work, but she used <Retaliate> with the hopes of improving her healing efficacy. The skill said it increased damage, so it was unlikely to work, but she still had to try.

She was running dry, her Mana had already been low when this happened. She had to make the most of what she had, including what was already in their bodies. <Retaliate> was doing nothing, so she stopped draining her already famished HP pool as she focused exclusively on sealing major injuries.

There was no way she could fully heal them both, she just had to make sure they would live long enough for Teresa to recover enough Mana. She caused their blood to coagulate along the edges of their injuries, stopping blood loss as she began to do the same for their internal organs.

Both of Preston's kidneys were damaged, but Teresa couldn't fix them. A person could survive for a bit without their kidneys, right? They were about to find out, as all Teresa could do was stop the bleeding.

Sarah was in slightly better shape, as she had allocated a couple points to Fortitude and Vitality after she had been nearly killed by a Yectin Clubber. She and Mathew had gotten lucky and didn't get hit by much shrapnel, after stopping both external and internal bleeding Teresa expanded both Preston and Sarah's expected lifespans by about an hour. Now all that she needed to do was alternate between healing whoever was in worse condition and recovering tiny amounts of Mana at a time, then with some luck everyone might survive.

Not that it mattered. Any second now the drones would finish them off. Really it was surprising they hadn't already. Teresa mentally braced for her final moments, but they never came.

The last drone flew overhead towards the battle with the dinosaurs, where Teresa could still hear what sounded like a war continuing on. The drone had spared them.

… Why?

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Missiles detonated via mounted pressure sensors are vulnerable to projectile and summon based attacks. Rework into remote command detonation. Cher noted in her internal logs. It was frustrating, really, that the System was so lazy. Cher was not actually alive before the System, she wasn't even the 'true,' Chernobyl. She had been made by the System to exist within a Tutorial, and as such the System had not deemed it necessary to include detailed knowledge on the properties of her reality.

In other words, she had to reinvent things herself. She had a general idea of most things, including robotics, chemistry, and even radiation. Unfortunately, there were countless gaps in her understanding of the world that the System had overlooked.

In her second implementation of attaching firearms to her Avatars, she had tried firing bullets by launching the entire casing. Mentally, she considered it meant there was more bullet per bullet, so clearly that was an upgrade, right?

Wrong, obviously. It was embarrassing that her knowledge base had such random and juvenile gaps. It was something she was looking to rectify, and she believed she had found the perfect test subjects to experiment with.

A group of humans had been spotted in her territory near the dinosaur vermin. Initially, she had decided not to waste too much ammo and only fired one missile to take them out. When the missile had been blocked, she had looked into them closer.

They were a strangely diverse group. Some of them were weaklings, some of them were in the middle range of levels for humans, and one of them had been actually decent in terms of levels for a human. Cher could have wiped them all out by simply firing multiple missiles at once, but she decided to take the opportunity to test her new drones against them.

The party used creative problem solving against her, even if it was all futile. Cher could eliminate them the moment she got sick of them, the humans must have known this yet they fought back anyways. After they survived two missiles at once, she decided that leaving them alive for further experimentation might reveal more information about skills Cher herself struggled to possess.

They were much easier to control than the other humans that had been invading her territory. High level humans, one of which used a spell that seemed eerily similar to her own attunement in a way Cher did not understand yet. Cher hated that man, he needed to die, but unfortunately that task had experienced some delays.

No matter, there were other important tasks at hand. She had new test subjects, and she loved tests. Cher had already gotten as much as she could from her previous subjects, but the dinosaurs weren't creative enough to really be interesting. Cher operated multiple Avatars simultaneously as she cleaned up her previous test site, allowing her territory to expand once more to gain further rewards from the System.

It was time for the dinosaurs to go extinct again.

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