Chapter 156: Grave Robbing

  Sasha, Sarah’s sister, was the one they were least worried about. Sort of. The first time Randall had tried to track her through Sarah, all of his Mana had been forcefully taken out of his Soul. Since then, it had not happened again, but Sasha was always getting closer on her own.

  That left two options. Either Sasha was powerful in her own right and was tracking down Sarah, or someone powerful was using Sasha to find Sarah similar to how Randall was using Sarah to find Sasha. Either way, they had quite a distance to go.

  While in Arconette, they had been a little over 4,000 miles away from Sasha. Since teleporting to Stormwreck and eventually going to Nouarosso, they were now a little under 1,000 miles apart. No way had they traveled 3,000 miles in that time, not while making stops at New Haven and Nouarosso. It was actually likely they would find Sasha within a day or two, as Sasha was hauling ass towards them.

  Teresa and her party had run for roughly four hours after Nouarosso before taking a break. She had also looted the items off of the dead bodies, and had found some actually useful items they could use.

  

  Materials: Silver

  Status: 100% Charged, 100% Converted

  Enchantments: Self Repair, Fire Mana Enhancement

  A ring capable of storing unattuned Mana and to convert into low quality Fire Mana. All Mana stored will gradually become attuned, allowing for an extra infusion of Fire Mana in a compatible spell. Burn, engulf, and consume all that stands in the way of your path to master the element of fire.

  The first item was a ring from the fire mage. Teresa tested it by using shotgun and standard while infusing it with extra Fire Mana from the ring. It gave a nice boost to the power of her spells, but it was extremely inefficient.

  Teresa charged the ring up from 90% to 100% and let it convert, and it had taken 66 Mana to do so. Using that information, it was safe to assume the ring could store about 660 Mana give or take a tiny bit. However, it did not convert to 660 Mana’s worth of effect in her spells.

   normally took Mana per minute to function, or Mana per second at Teresa’s level. For a level 0 who doesn’t have a lot of Mana to use nor the ability to push a lot of Mana into a spell at once, they would probably measure Mana consumption by the minute to keep the spell active. For Teresa, she could go really slow, but at full blast she typically used anywhere from 10 to 15 Mana per second, as things got a bit inconsistent when pushing the spell as far as she could.

  It may not seem like a lot of Mana per second considering Teresa had a capacity of 2,348 Mana, but that also meant it would only take a little under 4 minutes to fully deplete her Mana while fully utilizing the spell in the best case scenario.

  The ring would add onto that, so she could draw an extra 5 Mana per second from the ring to boost the skill. However, even if she did that, did not act like it was boosted that much. Instead, it acted as if she had only channeled an extra 1 or maybe 2 Mana per second, though it was really hard to get exact numbers without some sort of tool to measure the effectiveness of aside from observation.

  In conclusion, it was an inefficient way to add a little bit more to her that didn’t match how much Mana she was actually investing into it. The same went for using shotgun , which used anywhere from 15 to 200 Mana per use depending on how long she charged it. She could charge it a lot faster than normal as she was just building up Mana in her palm and unleashing it all at once rather than maintaining a steady stream of Mana from her Soul to the skill. Shotgun was already disgustingly inefficient in terms of Mana consumption, and adding the ring didn’t really benefit it in a noticeable way.

  Randall, however, found a lot more use with the ring. Despite using a musket, he was really using . He just used the skill and channeled the Fire Mana into the musket, as the weapon was built specifically for that. When he used the ring, the only thing he was limited by was the quality of the musket. He could put a good chunk of the Fire Mana from the ring into the weapon and it would be more efficient than if Teresa used it, and it could use more of the ring’s Fire Mana at once.

  That meant it let Randall get a few high powered shots out per fight, though he would need to recharge it in between fights. The ring could store more Mana than his max capacity, which was a downside, but he would grow into it as he leveled up. It was more useful in his hands than in Teresa’s as her didn’t really need a power boost to fight monsters several levels higher than her.

  It might have made a slight difference fighting against other people, but honestly Teresa didn’t want to have to fill the ring back up between fights over and over again. Her resource consumption was currently her only real limiting factor, she could take out several Portals in one hunting trip while only stopping because she was low on Stamina or Mana. Once she started hunting monsters full time again, she would be limited by how long it took to recharge first and foremost.

  Sure, Teresa could actually benefit from the ring by only using it when needed, but it would practically guarantee a longer downtime while regenerating resources, as she would need to charge the ring as well. Maybe she could find a way around that by charging it in her sleep or something, but she had no idea how she would do that and ultimately the ring just had more benefits for her dad, who could use the extra firepower. Heh, firepower. Teresa had thought that was funny.

  That wasn’t the only item they looted though.

  

  Materials: Steel

  Enchantments: Self Repair, Minor Durability Enhancement, One-Way Translucence

  For many races, damage to the head is critical. This helmet will guard your skull while remaining translucent on the inside, ensuring there is no loss to visibility.

  

  Materials: ???

  Enchantments: Self Repair, Minor Buff Enhancement

  Your job is not to fight, but to empower. Increase the effectiveness of buffs cast on others while reducing the effectiveness of buffs cast on yourself.

  The helmet went to Jake, as he was their tank after all. The necklace, nobody really wanted. Teresa would keep it, as she was the only one who could benefit from it, but it would be weak in combat. While Teresa was the one who could buff her allies with , she also used magic more than anyone else aside from maybe Randall.

  There was a loophole they could take advantage of, however. If she put the necklace on, used her buffing skill on everyone else, then took off the necklace then she would be able to use her skill on herself. The benefits the necklace provided were pretty minor, but it could still be useful. She would only be able to take advantage of this loophole in between fights, as Teresa likely wouldn’t get a lot of opportunities to keep equipping and unequipping the necklace during a fight.

  The necklace was also pretty ugly and uncomfortable. It was effectively just a rope string with a few tiny skulls on it that she couldn’t identify, perhaps rodent skulls or something. If she got the chance to trade it for something that fit her better, she would take it.

  While they were taking a break, Preston was teaching his dad how to use a sword. His dad had the light warrior class, meaning he had . He had to use Preston’s sword though, as his own had been confiscated at Nouarosso. Benjamin had zero experience actually fighting, he had left the Tutorial with his party pretty much immediately.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Now that Teresa thought about it, for most people there was absolutely zero reason to stick around in the Tutorial. Teresa’s party had stayed out of curiosity and concern over what awaited them if they left while still weak, but a lot of people just noped out of there immediately, Benjamin included. He was ‘lucky’ enough to appear near Nouarosso, so he didn’t get eaten by monsters several levels higher than him. Preston was going to help him get his to level 2 and his to at least level 1 before sending him to fight monsters.

  Saylee was coming up with plans for Nouarosso, while also considering how to manage their public image. Teresa had also gotten another point in all her stats again as her Ambassador title showed the faction level once again. It was likely a result of them finally claiming Arid Junction. When Saylee brought a few things up, Teresa realized a couple problems.

  So far, they had attacked every single neighbor that Stormwreck had pointed them towards. That wasn’t a good look. First, they killed the Leader of New Haven, then they killed a bunch of people in Nouarosso. From Zackery Pile’s perspective, they may not have left a good impression. Teresa didn’t regret any of it, New Haven and Nouarosso had it coming, but she couldn’t just tell Zackery that they attacked both of his neighbors because they sucked, even if it was true.

  Besides, they didn’t attack New Haven. New Haven attacked them. It was all stupid politics anyway.

  Since Saylee hadn’t reached any conclusions yet, the rest of the group took the break to get a few levels. Technically, hunting together was more efficient for experience. If one person killed a monster, they would get 100% of the experience from that monster. If two people killed a monster, they each might get 60% of the experience, meaning a total of 120% of experience was generated.

  The actual numbers likely weren’t that exaggerated, but it was still something they had learned while in Arconette. So with that logic, it only made sense for them to all hunt together. Right?

  Wrong. Completely wrong actually. Hunting together was more efficient, yes, but it wasn’t faster. They might get more experience per Portal in total together, but they wouldn’t get as much experience per hour. If Teresa, Sarah. Preston, Jake, and Randall each took on different Portals solo, then they would be able to take out five Portals at once instead of one Portal at a time.

  Doing some math while accounting for how long it took to destroy Portals, it was just faster for everyone to solo Portals. With all of them together, they could take out mid level Portals extremely fast. Teresa could use to find Portal after Portal, and they would go on a rampage slaughtering the vast majority of Portals in a localized area.

  Alternatively, they could meet up, have Teresa use to point everyone in the direction of a Portal, go destroy their Portals, then repeat the process. The increased time spent between fights needing to meet up to get pointed in the direction of a reasonable level Portal would slow this method down a lot though.

  Between the two options, it was close only because Teresa had and no one else did. However, Teresa could also fight a lot longer than anyone else, and she also needed more experience per level.

  If they were able to take advantage of Saylee’s ability to detect Portals on one of her maps, then they wouldn’t have to worry about Teresa using to help the others, and everyone going to solo Portals would be unbelievably faster. Once they were settled down back at The Mall, they would definitely be making use of that, so they might as well get some practice in now.

  Besides, even without Saylee able to help it was slightly faster for them to split up. Maybe. Less efficient, definitely, but faster. It’s not like there was a shortage of monsters or anything though, so they didn’t have to worry about efficiency.

   still wasn’t perfect, and it could alert the very monsters they were going to hunt of their location. Preston was going to be staying with Saylee and Benjamin, so the other four separated from the group a decent distance before using the skill.

  It still wasn’t powerful enough for Teresa to get an exact read on the levels, but she knew enough about how the various karmic threads that appeared worked to pick Portals that would be good for her party to hunt. If she never paid attention to how her skill worked and just let it level up to improve, then she would have been checking random karmic threads all day trying to find something appropriate to hunt. Instead, she knew the visual cues that determined if the karmic threads led to a single monster or a pack of them. She knew how to determine which threads would lead to monsters of the desired levels, matching them to the levels of her party members.

  Once again, it still wasn’t perfect, but she could get everything within reasonable expectations. She sent off Jake, Sarah, and Randall in the direction of Portals that was closest to their levels she could find before searching for one herself.

  Higher level Portals also had more monsters, but since she had the most experience soloing Portals and the best skills for crowd control she expected she would be able to take out two at her level in the time it took everyone else to take out one.

  Teresa found a thread that looked about right for her and pulled on it, getting the information she needed about her target. A few minutes of running at full speed without later, she found the Portal. It was a level 80, and spawned monsters called Philans. They were pretty humanoid, with green skin and orange snake eyes. If not for the eyes and green skin, they could have been models by pre-System standards. There was one more important thing about them.

  {Philan (F) [Attuned: Nature] (lv 80)}

  They had an attunement, meaning they were more likely to have a skill of some sort. Teresa watched them from a distance for just a minute, and in that time she observed their feet had peculiarities that got her attention. With every step, roots grew out of their feet and burrowed into the ground, though Teresa wasn’t able to tell exactly what the purpose of that was.

  Once she felt comfortable, Teresa began firing her bow, shooting a Philan right in the head. The arrow didn’t go very deep, and the Philan that she shot immediately turned to look in her direction. The ground began to rumble, and Teresa activated as she decided to get in range for .

  Beneath her, roots began ripping out of the ground in an attempt to grab her, as the Philan all focused on her. Roots appeared all around her, though let her move fast enough that she was never trapped.

  She had to zig zag a bit to get closer as the Philans started trying to block her path with the roots, but and her sword were enough to get through anything that actually blocked her. Teresa opened up with a continuous stream of that washed over the front of the pack, making them scream out in a high pitch squeal. The Philans began to rush her, surviving the fire though clearly taking damage in the process.

  Seeing that wasn’t going to cut it on its own, Teresa hacked at a few Philans using her sword. Consciously using her skills had always provided better benefits than just letting the skill do its thing on its own, so Teresa decided to focus on how affected her fighting.

  She cut through several Philans at once, feeling a good deal of resistance that didn’t quite compare to the Avatars in the Contaminated Zone. After bisecting several of the creatures, cutting them in half at the waist, she realized they were still alive and moving. From the inside of their torsos, roots began flailing out in an attempt to stab Teresa.

  Thankfully, the monsters weren’t very specialized in Agility, so she was easily able to avoid any injuries. Instead, she stabbed the injured Philans in the head to finish them off.

  Stabbing them in the head one at a time felt a bit slow, even if it was a steady fight in her favor. They were likely specialized in Vitality and Fortitude, possibly something else too. In the process of hacking and stabbing away at the monsters, a root burst from the ground and smacked her calf.

  It hurt, but it didn’t break skin. If anything Teresa felt confident in being able to tank quite a few of those roots, but if enough grabbed onto her then she would eventually be overwhelmed. Instead, she took this as an opportunity to improve her footwork when using a sword.

  Had these things hit harder, she would have lost her balance. Swinging a sword wasn’t the same as throwing a punch. Instead of standing like she was about to throw hands, she adjusted her stance and movements to account for her increased reach and slower motions.

  Swinging a sword was slower than throwing a punch. With her high Agility and Strength, Teresa had been able to completely ignore that and swing her sword almost as if she was holding a Wii remote. While that worked for stupid monsters and against opponents slower than her, there might come a day where she would need to face off against something faster. If that happened, her bad habits would come back to bite her in the ass.

  Instead, she tried to make good habits while she could. Only issue was, too many things felt ‘right’ according to . Spreading her stance wider felt right, but so did a more narrow stance. The timing for swinging a sword was also a lot different than throwing a punch, still requiring her to use her core if she wanted to do it properly but somehow it was both more exaggerated and less at the same time.

  The skill was still level 0, so it shouldn’t be too surprising that she was getting conflicting responses from it. Instead, she just began making extremely minor tweaks rather than try to figure out the ‘right’ way to use her sword. Teresa also tossed a few dead bodies out of her that she had collected from Nouarosso, the very bodies she looted gear off of. The bodies would distract the bisected Philans, so no crawlers would catch her off guard.

  Her fight with the monsters continued smoothly to the end, as they weren’t able to put up enough of a fight. She had figured out that worked perfectly against the injured Philans, melting their exposed insides to finish them off en masse. The rest she focused on targeting their heads, though since creatures often had different heights it was a bit tricky.

  Whenever the roots in an area got dense enough to pose a problem, she just repositioned and attacked from somewhere else. If she didn’t have her sword, this fight would have been a hundred times harder as they were pretty durable, but she finished off over two hundred of them in only 5 minutes. She could have been faster if she was willing to burn more resources too.

  Glancing at the notification letting her know she hit level 72, she decided she had time for one more Portal before meeting up with the others again.