Teresa Of All Trades (Book 1 Complete)

Thirty eight drones were shot out of the sky before the bombing finally stopped. That wasn't to say there were thirty eight drones in the clouds, but rather that they managed to take down thirty eight before the rest left. The attacks had gradually slowed until they ceased entirely, the drones lasting longer than the Avatars on the ground.

A battle on this scale hadn't been the typical chaotic mess that Teresa was used to. While it had gotten hectic initially, everything had eventually fallen into a routine. Everyone had a role, and so long as you did what was expected of your role things went smoothly.

Teresa's role had been to keep Ezio alive while the drones were distracted. That had been simple enough, though it still raised some concerns. The Avatars had a massive advantage over the human army. By all means, the humans should have had terrible casualties from the battle, but Chernobyl had completely thrown its advantage out the window by hard targeting Ezio. He couldn't have drawn their aggression better if he had <Taunt>, it was absurd and Teresa wanted an explanation.

For whatever reason, Chernobyl had it out for Ezio. As a result, they had been able to get through the fight with no deaths, a miracle in its own right. If they could take advantage of what was going on, then they absolutely should.

"You're going to have to explain why a sapient nuclear power plant has it out for you." Teresa said as she set Ezio down once they were sure no more bombs were coming.

"I wish I could."

"That's not good enough. We're risking our lives here, any and every shred of information can be useful."

"I'm just as surprised as you are. They've almost always targeted me specifically within my party, but we thought that just made sense. Elaina and I were prime targets, I did the most damage and she was the healer. Taking us out first would be the smart play, but what happened here goes beyond anything I could have expected."

"Almost always?" Teresa asked.

"We're not sure when it started, I only know we caught onto the pattern towards the end of week one."

"Sounds like you were fighting Avatars pretty early on."

"Arid Junction fell during the first week, my party took out the army of Avatars that was responsible for the massacre that took place there. If we had kept pushing, we probably could have taken Chernobyl out early on, but we didn't know the true nature of the Contaminated Zone yet. We just knew what the quest told us, there were Radioactive Portals and we needed to destroy them. We didn't find out about Chernobyl until a few days later, at which point it became increasingly difficult to reach the center of the zone."

Teresa wanted to continue their conversation, but was unfortunately interrupted as a crowd of people came over, including her own party.

"How would you like my job? I think you'd make a good General." Nikolas said, grinning as he approached.

"Easiest pass of my life, I've already got enough on my plate." Teresa answered. "Besides, the formation everyone uses was all you guys, I just ran around for a little while."

"You also got us out of that situation. Even if the wind thing didn't work out, you made another plan right after." Ezio said. "It's alright to feel proud every once in a while, what you did was extremely impressive."

"Though we shouldn't bank on the wind plan if it happens again, I don't think we actually had the means to blow the bombs away." Nikolas said. "A lot of the air based skills people have are too small to affect a large area like that. The most powerful spell anyone had was a skill that blasts the air back in a large radius around the caster. At best we would have been able to redirect the bombing a little bit, but we certainly wouldn't be sending those bombs all the way to the Avatars."

"So my original plan wouldn't have actually worked anyways."

"No, but I doubt we wouldn't have been able to come up with something else." Ezio said. "As you demonstrated, an individual could dodge those bombs on their own with the right stats. The bombs were only a threat because we had to stay in a formation that relied on others, we could have split up into individual parties and spread out, but then we would inevitably have casualties."

"What's the point of worrying about all that? We won, didn't we? Let's just take that and be happy no one died." One of the nearby Completionists said.

"We need to worry about it because it can happen again." Ezio warned. "What are we going to do next time when the drones come back? How are we going to take them out?"

"Why not just try the same thing?" The same Completionist asked.

"We can't guarantee it will work twice in a row. While what we accomplished is remarkable, it was also a fluke. We would be having a much more somber discussion right now if not for the drones choosing to target Teresa and I."

"Actually, the wind strategy might work next time, I think I can do something about that." Teresa said, drawing a few looks towards her as she shared a screen.

Class Level Up!

Teresa kept her class name from visibly appearing in the notification, but now that she could get another skill maybe things could change. There was an option, <Suffocate>, that could lower air pressure in a small volume. She also unlocked new skills that might be potentially useful.

"You get anything that could solve our problem?" Nikolas asked.

"Let me check."

<Traveler: lv 0>

Type: Passive

Use less Stamina while moving outside of combat.

<Magelight: lv 0>

Type: Lifestyle Magic

Channel Mana to your palm and convert it into an orb capable of emitting light.

<Quickdraw: lv 0>

Type: Combat Technique

Use a small amount of Stamina to ready a weapon at a faster pace.

On the bright side, she got three skill choices. On the not so bright side, they didn't really fit any of her needs. Really it was between <Suffocate> and <Strong Throw>. She doubted that she could throw something so high it would reach the clouds, but it might be possible with a skill. She had a fuckton of Strength, but even if she could throw something that high she wasn't sure it would hit the target. <Intuitive Aim> helped a lot with her ranged attacks, but that would be pushing it.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Not that she had much to throw at the drones anyways.

"I can choose a skill that might help, though it will be level 0. It might be worth a shot." Teresa said as she shared yet another screen.

<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.

"I'm noticing the words 'small volume' which makes it sound a lot less promising." Nikolas said.

"Yeah, but I can try getting creative with it. Maybe I can start out only affecting one bomb at a time and gradually improve, or I could power level it against monsters and robots until it is useful." Teresa said, when an idea struck her. "Shit, maybe I can use <Embers> to help make wind as well. I'd need to think about how that works, but like, PV = nRT or whatever. Pressure, volume, and temperature are all related. I don't remember what n or R stands for, but that shouldn't matter."

"The ideal gas law?" Ezio asked. "It's more of an approximation than anything. R is the ideal gas constant and n is the number of moles of gas. I guess you could try, but I don't think that would work so simply. Trying to use <Embers> to manipulate the temperature of a volume of gas isn't a bad idea, but I don't think it's practical."

"Well what about just using <Suffocate> then, you think that would work? I can try using that skill twice instead of using <Embers> as well."

"You have to account for how long a falling object would have force applied to it as a result of your spell. In other words, let's say you can make a cubic meter of air into a complete vacuum. Falling at terminal velocity, an object would only pass by that cubic meter for a fraction of a second. The wind you would generate would be pretty local using volumes that small, so I don't think it would work. It would be like putting a floating bedside fan in the air, it would only get affected for a moment." Ezio explained.

"Okay, but what about if I affected the air underneath it then? I could make a vacuum underneath exactly half of a bomb in the direction I want it to go in. That way only one side of the bomb would be affected by air resistance, which would push it away. It would be easier to execute and I could keep spamming it over and over again, depending on the range of the spell." Teresa continued.

"That… would actually stand a better chance of working. It would really depend on the range of your spell, which also limits how many bombs you could singlehandedly deflect. The total volume of affected space, the range of the spell, and your capability in actually using the skill would all come into play. You might be able to use the Magnus effect, make the bomb spin and it'll generate lift. That'll make it go far."

"I don't know what that is."

"The Magnus effect is when a spinning object falls and receives a horizontal force due to the spin and its effect on the surrounding fluid. It's like how a spinning golf ball might curve in the air."

"Oh, like those videos where people drop basketballs and stuff off the top of dams!" Teresa exclaimed, kind of getting it.

"I think so, I haven't seen what you're talking about."

"There's a bunch of videos, if we ever recover the internet I'll show you." Teresa promised. "I know you said you were in the military but you know a bunch about physics stuff. I get the basic gist but you seem to get the details, what exactly did you do in the military?"

"I was an engineer." Ezio answered.

"Nice, we have a few of those. At the very least we have a mechanical engineer, I forgot her name but she was at a meeting once. What kind of engineer? Civil, electrical, aerospace…" Teresa continued, trying to pry for more information. It was interesting at the very least.

"Nuclear."

"Sounds fancy."

"I haven't heard anyone refer to nuclear engineers as fancy before but I'll take it. You said you worked retail, but I don't normally talk about the ideal gas law with cashiers." Ezio pointed out.

"I did some college, didn't find anything I wanted to do for the rest of my life though." Teresa said. "I remember some of the basics from a few classes."

"So you went with retail?"

"It was a tough job market, I took what I could get. I did a lot of temporary jobs through a few different agencies."

"Fair enough. I would have hired you for something."

"No you wouldn't have."

"You're probably right."

Teresa laughed, having fun as she picked apart a skill she hadn't even selected yet. Even if it didn't work out dealing with the bombs, there were other people present who could figure something out. With what she had available, <Suffocate> was her best choice. There was a lot she could probably do with lowering air pressure, it opened the door for her to try a lot of new stuff. She was sick of <Embers> being her only real offensive spell anyways, <Suffocate> might be fun.

"I'm going to talk it over with my party before I decide anything, but I think I'll be going with <Suffocate>." Teresa said.

"Sounds good, we need to discuss our next plan of action anyways. It's not often we get a chance to loot the Avatars, we might try taking advantage of that." Ezio responded.

"We should also send scouts out to survey the area around us, make sure there aren't any drones sneaking past. If one of those gets above Arconette and starts dropping bombs, then needless to say a lot of people would die." Nikolas said.

"I can get behind that. You have anyone in mind?" Ezio responded.

"We've got a few with a high Agility, though…"

Teresa took her cue to leave, they could figure that bit out without her. She would gladly leave logistics to people who actually had experience in those kinds of things. She left the small crowd of people and began to search through the remainder of the army for her party. Multiple people congratulated her for coming up with a plan that saved lives as she passed through.

Jim, the healer bodybuilder, simply offered her a high five. Of course she took it, high fiving the man as she passed by. He seemed alright in Teresa's book, but she was operating off vibes alone with that.

It didn't take long for her to find her party, who seemed glad to see she was alright.

"I got a class level, I'm thinking of taking <Suffocate>." Teresa said before proceeding to explain the discussion she had with Ezio. Unfortunately, nobody in the party really knew enough to fact check any of the science behind it all, but from what they did know it seemed to check out.

Regardless, they went over her other skills just in case.

"<Suffocate> sounds great, but from the sound of it you mainly want it to deal with an immediate problem we have." Preston said after a few minutes of explanations. "I agree it's a good choice, but are you sure you want to keep picking skills for short term needs? <One Armed Weaponry> would probably benefit you better long term, though <Suffocate> isn't half bad either."

"I mean, I can still use <Suffocate> after all of this is over. It could be pretty useful in combat, like what if I just take the air out of someone's lungs?" Teresa asked.

"That would legitimately be terrifying, now that you mention that I'm fully on board with this." Preston said.

"<Ignite> might not be bad to pick up at some point, but I do agree this seems better." Jake agreed.

"What about <Moment Of Focus>?" Sarah asked. "I get it wouldn't be useful right now, but surely it can open up something useful down the line. It makes you perceive stuff faster for a short period of time, right?"

"Yeah, but it says it will temporarily debuff me after, and it only increases my reaction time. If my body is still too slow to do anything, then it won't make a difference." Teresa said. "It's also just Buffing Magic, so it doesn't really open the door for a whole lot. If it had something to do with manipulating time itself that would be badass, but I don't think that's how it works."

After confirming nobody had any objections, Teresa went ahead and selected <Suffocate> as her new skill. The knowledge on how to use the skill entered her mind, allowing her to understand it on an intuitive level.

"You think they'll let me test it on a Radioactive Portal?" Teresa questioned. "They're taking a bit to scout out stuff anyways."

"There's no harm in asking." Sarah answered. In that case, Teresa was hoping that Nikolas and Ezio would agree to let her kill a few monsters.

She had a new way of killing things she wanted to try out.