“That was smart, I forgot mosquitoes breathe through their butts.” Preston said as the party approached Teresa. She just nodded in response. Yep, I totally knew that.
“Are you going to be okay?” Jake asked, glaring at Preston for being insensitive.
“Hand me the staff.” Teresa grunted, reaching out to grab the Mana recharging staff from Madeline. She already had one hand using
“I don’t think that’s something you just walk off.” Madeline said, her face furrowed into a frown. “Really, I think you should sit this next wave out, and if things get bad we can just leave the Tutorial early.”
“No.” Teresa responded. “These were just mosquitoes, and they were not particularly high leveled either. I don’t think a single one had a level in the double digits, and it was a hard fought battle. Can you imagine what everything else will be like? If mosquitoes are kicking my ass now, that’s all the more reason to get stronger before we leave.”
No one spoke for a bit as the party considered Teresa’s words. Everyone knew she had a point, but they all were worried for her health. However, no one knew how close she had cut it more than Teresa herself.
Status:
Name: Teresa
Race: Human (Earth)
Level: 1 (F) (16%)
Class: Healer lv 0 (F) (1.3%)
HP: (28.6/85)
Stamina: (40/85)
Mana: (22/85)
Strength: 7
Fortitude: 4
Endurance: 7
Vitality: 7
Agility: 5
Intelligence: 10
Wisdom: 7
Perception: 7
Unallocated Points: 1
}
}
Looking over her stats, Teresa realized she lost over half of her health. She had also gained a level, and she had gotten the respective points in her Intelligence, Wisdom, and Perception, along with her unallocated free point that she could use on a stat of her choice. As a result, her Mana capacity had caught up to her HP and Stamina, though it seemed increasing the stat only increased the maximum capacity. That extra capacity did not come already filled with Mana, so she couldn’t expect to get any of her resources back from leveling up mid-fight in the future.
She also got a new title,
Suddenly, she got an idea.
Teresa put a little bit of will into her status screen to select her new title, and to her amazement, a new screen appeared.
Be the first to level up in your Tutorial party. +1 all stats.
It seemed like the system would reward Teresa’s reckless behavior, not that she was complaining. Getting an extra point in all of her stats was huge, or at least it was right now. She was sure that in the future this would be completely negligible, but she was not complaining about some short term gain when she really could use it. Her total skill points had shot up from 41 to 55 from that fight, putting her total stats at the highest in the party by 10.
“I just figured out you can view your titles if you select it in your status screen, you just gotta will it like you’re selecting a yes or no option.” Teresa shared, deciding this could be useful for the group. As the party each looked at their individual status screens once again, Teresa turned to look at her other title.
You have experienced something most beings in the multiverse have never considered - a life without the System. Your time outside the System has made you more aware of how the System impacts you. +5% Experience Gain.
“It works for skills too.” Jake mentioned, looking at his own screen that was invisible to the others. “Shows you a basic description of what it does. Shit, this would have been useful earlier. All my
“Do we have any water?” Teresa asked, still nursing her wounds. This next part was going to suck. She had decided that she couldn’t just pull out the mosquito limb from her leg quickly, as she would likely lose too much health from bleeding before she could heal herself. She was going to have to slowly pull the limb out of her leg, healing the wound as she did so. The process was making her incredibly thirsty, and she didn’t want to pass out from dehydration in the middle of healing herself, since that would probably result in her bleeding to death.
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“I think I can find some water.” Sarah said, standing up. She emptied her quiver on the ground, pouring her remaining arrows into a pile. “Preston, follow me. I think I know where a vending machine is and I’ll need your help to break into it. Madeline and Jake, would you two mind collecting all the arrows I shot? I only have so many. They’re probably not in great condition, but they’re better than nothing.”
“Alright, be quick. We only have 13 minutes left.” Jake said as he scanned his surroundings for arrows. With that, Preston and Sarah ran out the lobby while Madeline and Jake walked around the room, picking up arrows and keeping an eye on Teresa.
Teresa had not stopped using
Teresa bit the neck of her robe as she grabbed onto the limb and began to slowly pull it out. She couldn’t help but grunt in pain as she removed it a few centimeters at a time. Blood leaked out from the injury on both sides as the limb was slowly extracted, and she continued to use her healing skill to coagulate the blood and then heal the skin underneath the scab. It was absolutely nasty, her blue healer robes were stained red all over as she pushed through.
She kept going until her vision turned black, and she immediately stopped what she was doing to gasp for air. She had almost finished pulling out three quarters of the limb, and she only had a little bit left to go. Regardless, she knew she was on the verge of passing out, and she knew staying conscious would be far more preferable than the alternative.
“Jesus Christ.” She heard Madeline say as she dropped a few arrows onto the pile. “You should really wait until they get back, you’re whiter than my bedsheets. Get something to drink or eat before you keep going, I’ll see if I can find something comfier to sit on than the ground.”
“Thanks but I don’t think we have the time to look for something like that. I want to just get it over with, but I’ll wait until they get back. If we had more time between waves, this wouldn’t be nearly as big of a deal I think.” Teresa replied. She knew this wasn’t looking good, even if she managed to heal her leg in time. There were four minutes left, and after she was done with her leg she would still be low on HP, Stamina, and Mana.
She took the moment to look over her stats, which she had been doing quite frequently ever since the menu first became available to her in the white room. She still had an unallocated point, and she wasn’t sure what to put it in. Looking at herself and just mentally feeling her condition, she noticed some changes already aside from the hole in her leg.
Teresa had always been the kind of person to bruise easily, she would just wake up with a bruise on her leg or arm or something and it was one of those things she just never really questioned. Now, while her skin felt the same to the touch, it felt different to her. Somehow, it felt like her skin had become slightly more durable, and she intuitively knew she wasn’t going to have a problem with random bruises anymore.
Additionally, she was able to think through the pain a little better. If hadn’t gotten her level up, she definitely would have passed out right after the miniboss died. Now, she was able to force herself to stay conscious just a little bit more.
She felt pretty confident the increased durability of her skin came from her Fortitude stat, as she hadn’t figured out what else it could be related to yet. She also wasn’t sure if her pain tolerance increase came from her level, her Fortitude, one of her mental stats like Intelligence or Wisdom, or just from being in a life or death situation.
She considered putting the point into Fortitude since it was her lowest stat and the increased durability might come in handy, but she needed an immediate short term boost. Ideally, she would hold onto the unallocated point until she was confident she knew exactly what each stat did, but based on how the first wave of monsters went, she was going to need every point she could get. The durability increase certainly wouldn’t be enough to prevent a stab wound like the one she received, so Fortitude probably wasn’t a great bet.
Strength would also be beneficial if all it did was make her stronger. She couldn’t really tell the difference from getting a point in that stat from her title, but then again she had almost just bled out. If the one point she had already received didn’t make a noticeable difference due to her injury, then adding another wouldn’t provide any benefit for the upcoming wave.
Looking at her stats, either Agility, Intelligence, or Wisdom would be her best bet. She considered Perception if it would increase her reaction time, but that would be a gamble as she wasn’t sure how that stat worked. She felt like her senses had improved, but really she couldn’t focus on it too well through the pain.
Agility would probably make her faster, meaning she could avoid hits like this easier. Meanwhile, Wisdom would increase her Mana capacity allowing her to heal injuries longer, and she had a general idea of what Intelligence did since it had gained 3 stat points from her level up and new title.
Her ability to think fast and process information had improved noticeably. Additionally, she felt like the Mana in her body was able to flow a bit quicker than it did previously, making her
That might also be from her gaining progress in her skill, which had jumped up to a 20% progression since the start of the intermission. It was progressing slower now that she was out of combat, but it was still progressing nonetheless.
Considering the time crunch between waves, healing for a longer period of time at once probably wouldn’t be very useful, making Teresa decide against putting the point in Wisdom. Between Agility and Intelligence, she felt like Intelligence would be the better option. Being a little bit faster wouldn’t matter much if she still had a hole in her leg, after all.
Teresa put the point into Intelligence, using willpower to once again control the status screen. As soon as her intelligence jumped up to 11, she realized she probably should have assigned the point at the start of the intermission when she had been healing herself. Oh well, lesson learnt.
At the entrance she heard running, and soon Sarah and Jake made their way back inside. Sarah reached into her quiver which she had been using as a container to carry water bottles and bags of chips, and handed Teresa a water and a bag of beef jerky.
“Here, we managed to loot a vending machine. I got more if you want it, I’m going to set it all down back over there.” She said, pointing to a corner of the room that the battle had generally avoided. “Also, I have an amazing idea.”
“Really she does, I’m kind of upset I didn’t think of it.” Preston added, a smile on his face.
“Well let’s hear it.” Jake said, as the party convened with two minutes on the clock.
“Okay, so all of us lost a lot of Stamina and Mana that wave, and I’m sure most of us haven’t regenerated it back yet. Oh, and HP, I bet.” Sarah added, glancing at Teresa. “So what if we trained a crawler?”
“What?” Madeline asked, confused. “You want to train something? I’m sorry but I’m not sure those mosquitoes would make a good pet.”
“No, not train as in to teach. Train as in to kite a mob in a video game along a path. I used to play some zombie games with some friends, and they had a wave mechanic like this where each round would spawn more zombies that were stronger. If you were good at the game, you would get to high rounds and a single match would take hours. Sometimes someone else would have to go AFK to eat or do something in real life, but it was an online game without a pause mechanic.”
“So what we would do is throw a grenade into a crowd of zombies, and it would blow up most of them and also cripple a few. Their legs would get blown off, and they would become much slower as the zombies crawled towards you. You would leave one or two zombies alive at the end of a round while a friend was AFK, and just walk in a big circle as it slowly made its way towards you. You could take turns kiting the last zombie around with no real risk while everyone else in the lobby took care of things in real life.” Sarah explained. Teresa was able to follow along, and even was pretty confident she knew exactly what games she was talking about.
“So you want to throw a grenade into the wave of monsters? I’m not sure I understand what you mean.” Madeline asked, confused.
“No, I’m saying we should cripple one of the weaker monsters and leave it alive, then kill the rest of the wave. That way, we can take time to heal up after each wave instead of rushing during the 15 minute intervals.”
As she finished speaking, a bell rang out once again.
It was time for the second wave.