Teresa Of All Trades (Book 1 Complete)

Teresa ran for as long as her Stamina would allow. Stamina was a thing Teresa had not thought a lot about, as it had never gotten particularly low during any of her fights. It had certainly improved her overall cardio, but after running for several minutes straight she was still getting tired.

The Wyvern-Fish had been incredibly high level. The more Teresa considered it, the more she realized what kind of threat she just avoided. The Wyvern-Fish miniboss they had all fought at the end of the fifth wave had only been level 14, and it had wiped out nearly the entire party. Sure, it also had that attunement thing, but if levels scaled for monsters the same way they did for humans then Teresa wouldn't stand a chance.

If every level gave a Wyvern-Fish just a single point in Agility, some of them would have at least 29 Agility, not accounting for their other stats. Teresa could not fight something with 29 Agility. Her highest stat was Intelligence at the moment, with a whopping 29 points. For all she knew, that might have made Teresa a fireball slinging badass - if she actually had a skill for throwing fireballs at things. Unfortunately this only helped her healing and multitasking at the moment, which was certainly useful but not enough to single-handedly win battles.

What Teresa was really concerned about was Perception. Not necessarily her own, which was at a solid 16. Rather, she was concerned about the Perception of the Wyvern-Fish she just avoided. If just one of them had a high Perception stat, there was no way they didn't see her.

Teresa was increasingly confident something was interfering with long distance sight out in the desert. The horde of Wyvern-Fish should roughly be a mile behind her, probably a bit closer to two miles at this point. That was quite a distance to run on foot, but that wasn't the point. The issue was Teresa couldn't see them at all. Two miles was a pretty solid amount of distance, but she should still see at least something. It was a group of 13 Wyvern-Fish, that was something she should notice even from this distance.

Instead, there was a flat expanse of sand in all directions. She could still see the Statue of Liberty in the distance, which added to her confusion. She had been moving all day away from the monument, it was certainly quite far away by now given her increased physical capabilities. Still, she had an easier time spotting it than she did with any monsters, which gave her the impression that the Statue was somehow resistant to the vision distortion.

Eventually, Teresa had to stop and catch her breath. Surely she was safe by now, or at least as safe as she could expect to be. It was getting late, and she had made amazing progress being out in the desert for just one day. She was already level 9, and she still had an unallocated point from her most recent level.

She was half tempted to just throw it into Fortitude, which was currently her lowest stat. It certainly wouldn't be the greatest investment, but something about having uneven stats really annoyed Teresa. Still, she couldn't just invest the points based on her status screen's aesthetics. Agility was likely her best bet again, as it was always useful to be faster.

She continued in the direction that the <Tutorial Compass> pointed, now contemplating new things as a thought crossed her mind. She knew from her few physics classes that force was equal to mass multiplied by acceleration. If she increased her Agility, that would make her faster. If she was faster, she would be able to hit things at a higher speed, which would mean hitting things with more force.

Additionally, being able to run faster also involved exerting more force through her legs to push off the ground harder. Overall, it looked like Agility would make her able to produce more force with her body, which caused Teresa a bit of confusion. If Agility allowed her to exert more force, wouldn't that just be making her stronger? In that case, what was the difference between Strength and Agility?

Teresa shook her head, having formed new questions about how stats worked. If she increased her Strength a bunch, couldn't she theoretically run faster by pushing off the ground harder? Maybe she just didn't have a good enough grasp on physics or physiology to get how it worked, but it was something she would look into later.

For now, she had a new staff. During the original wave against the goblins, the Shaman's staff had been broken, rendering it unusable. It wasn't able to be repaired with Mana like the party's other equipment, so they never got the chance to figure out how it worked.

Now, she had a new Shaman staff. Teresa held it in her hands, and attempted to pour her Mana into it. When the Shaman had been alive, it had felt impossible to do anything with the staff. Now, the staff seemed reluctant to absorb her Mana, but Teresa's control over Mana allowed her to pour Mana into the staff anyways. Perhaps some weapons wouldn't work with other people if the owner was still alive.

It was a slow process, and far different from the Mana recovery staff she and Madeline had been using throughout the whole Tutorial. That staff would help her absorb Mana, having the Mana go from the staff to Teresa. This new staff went the opposite direction, and involved having Mana flow from Teresa to the staff itself.

Whenever Teresa used any of her healing spells, there was a small, borderline impossibly thin layer that her Mana would pass through. Her Mana would enter through one side completely normal, and would pass through to the other side in the form of restoration Mana.

To this day Teresa still couldn't understand exactly how the Mana was transformed. The layer it passed through was too thin, and trying to examine it was like trying to figure out how a blood cell could absorb stuff through its membrane. If she had a crazy strong microscope, sure, maybe she could figure it out. Except that the layer the Mana passed through didn't seem physical, so looking super duper closely wouldn't actually accomplish anything for her.

The staff operated a lot like that thin layer. Her normal Mana would enter, and it would get transformed into a new kind of Mana. However, unlike the thin layer that came with her healing skills, the staff was large and slow. It was as if the layer had been stretched out into the shape of a staff and made significantly more inefficient.

With her skills, her Mana would transform into restoration Mana at a nearly 1:1 ratio. She would get just about as much restoration Mana out of it relative to her normal Mana put into it. With the staff, it was probably closer to a 25:1 ratio. She believed this to be accurate since it took her 25 points of Mana in order for the staff to even start doing anything, and even then it took a few seconds.

After pouring in way too much Mana for this to be considered efficient, a small puff of noxious gas began to pour out one end of the staff. Inefficient or not, this was awesome. Teresa finally had a way to make her Mana offensive, even if it was riddled with problems.

For one, there was a huge problem that needed to be addressed. She couldn't control the poisonous Mana cloud once it left the staff, and she immediately began choking on her own attack.

Well shit, that was stupid, Teresa thought as she used her <Healing Touch> and <Facilitated Restoration> to heal her lungs. She had to take a few steps away from the small poisonous gas cloud, as her healing magic still wasn't capable of dispelling the poison. It could heal the damage caused by the poison even as the poison was in her body, but it couldn't get rid of the poison altogether.

Teresa focused on her breathing, feeling surprisingly not overly affected. The poison was definitely in her lungs, but it wasn't doing nearly as much as it had to Jake and Madeline during the goblin wave. There were probably a lot of factors that were coming into play for this.

Her first guess was that it was a skill issue. Not that she was missing a skill, although that may be it too, but rather that she was just using the staff poorly and creating lower quality poisonous gas.

Her second guess was that the staff itself was a lower quality. She didn't have the <Appraise> skill, so she couldn't figure out the details for certain. Still, different items might have different qualities, even if they do the same task.

There were a lot more possibilities too. Her <Mana Control>, her Intelligence stat, her Wisdom stat, her class, and so many other things could all be having an impact on the quality of the poison. Hell, maybe her Fortitude being a little bit higher even came into play, though she was sure her Fortitude was still lower than Jake's would have been during the goblin wave.

In between coughs, Teresa started laughing. She looked back at the now dissipating mini cloud of poisonous gas she had created, and started laughing harder even as she coughed.

Magic was real, and it was fucking awesome.

It was easy for her to get caught up in things lately, between the Tutorial, monster attacks, fighting for her life, Sarah's life being in her hands, etcetera etcetera. Just over a week ago, this would have been completely impossible. Even if Teresa had barely scratched the surface of using magic, she had to admit she was having fun.

I just poisoned myself, Wyvern-Fish might be hunting me down, and I'm alone in a desert. Teresa thought, still laughing a bit to herself. I've never been happier. Maybe I'm going looney.

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Teresa continued walking as she experimented with the staff. She had fastened her rag back around her face again to avoid any more accidental self poisonings, and was quickly draining her Mana. Thankfully, her Wisdom was now at 25, which gave her an astounding 344 maximum Mana capacity. If using the staff required a minimum of 25 Mana to even start using, then she could theoretically use the staff 13 times in a row before she had any problems.

The more she experimented with the staff, the better she felt she understood the weapon. She still couldn't understand how the Mana was transformed. Sure, the transformation process was expanded to be much more visible to her senses, but it was still incredibly complicated. If trying to examine the transformation layer in her healing skills was like looking inside a smartphone, then examining the staff was like looking inside a desktop computer. Except in this analogy, Teresa would be a medieval peasant who's never left her village trying to examine the computer.

For all Teresa knew it might as well be magic. Okay, scratch that. It literally is magic, but Teresa was still extremely new to magic. The Mana went through some… thingy, then it went in a weird circular pattern thing and did another thing and, well, somehow by the end of the process the Mana wasn't the same anymore.

Figuring out how to transform Mana was still well out of Teresa's grasp, but she was far more comfortable with the staff now. She had become familiar with how long it took for the staff to transform Mana into poison. It took roughly three seconds after the 25th point of Mana was absorbed for it to transform into poison, and she could steadily continue supplying more Mana to continuously make more poison.

Doing so was slightly more efficient in terms of Mana consumption, but it was also significantly faster at creating as much poison as possible in a short period of time. Constantly pouring in more Mana would eventually cause a stream of poisonous gas to constantly be emitted from the end of the staff rather than just a singular small cloud.

She still couldn't control the poisonous gas once it left the staff in the same way that the Shaman could, but it could still come in handy. Teresa spotted another group of the monster deer in the distance, and a quick <Identify> on a few of the creatures showed their levels.

{Vampiric Cordyceps Deer (F) (lv 15)}

{Vampiric Cordyceps Deer (F) (lv 13)}

{Vampiric Cordyceps Deer (F) (lv 16)}

{Vampiric Cordyceps Deer (F) (lv 17)}

There were four of them, all of which were a bit higher leveled than what Teresa would normally fight. However, Teresa's experience gain had been slowing down against lower level enemies, and she had a new weapon under her belt. Teresa decided to put her spare unallocated point into Agility once more, bringing the stat up to an 11.

At these low levels, every stat point would matter, especially when fighting multiple opponents who were all stronger. Teresa had fought Clubbers with higher levels before plenty of times, but they normally seemed to have inflated levels compared to their strength. She had never fought one of these deer at such a high level before, and most of them were actually higher leveled than the miniboss of the fifth wave.

Teresa set down her backpack and drew her bow, while keeping the poison staff on the ground next to her ready to be picked up. That <Inventory> skill would have really come in use by now, but <Identify> had already saved her life, so she wasn't complaining.

The monsters were now charging in her direction, and Teresa took the opportunity to once again try to pick a few off with the bow. It was a tried and true method, and had worked multiple times previou-

The first arrow collided with a deer's head, and just… bounced off? If anything, the arrow just seemed to have pissed the deer off more, and it began to charge faster. Shit.

Teresa wasn't able to generate enough power with the bow and arrow, as the deer seemed to have too high of a Fortitude stat. If their Fortitude was high enough to shrug off an arrow, would her poison even work?

There was no point in panicking, as it would accomplish nothing. She couldn't run, as the monsters were clearly faster than her in a straight line. She grabbed the poison staff and began pumping all of her Mana into the weapon, figuring it would be better than nothing.

As the gas poured out of the weapon, Teresa berated herself. It had finally happened. She had chosen to invest her unallocated points wrong. Maybe if she had gone for Strength, she would be able to draw the bow more and deliver a stronger shot that the beasts couldn't ignore.

No point in regretting it now, she had bigger issues to deal with. A poisonous cloud formed around her and continued expanding as she poured in more and more Mana, but the first deer had arrived.

It charged right at Teresa as many of the inhabitants of the Tutorial seemed to do, and thankfully Teresa had gotten pretty good at just dodging to the side. The deer sprinted past her, quickly turning around to face her once more. She was prepared to dodge another deer's charge, but rather than just swarming her the deer took the chance to surround her.

The deer all must have a higher Intelligence stat or something, as they were coordinating better than the previous monsters had. They eyed Teresa cautiously, seeming to mostly ignore the poisonous gas. That wasn't a great sign, but Teresa only had one hope and she was going to stick to it.

She kept pouring out poisonous gas, and the deer began to cautiously approach her. With her spare hand, she drew Preston's sword, getting ready for a brutal fight. The deer all got closer one step at a time, and it would only be a few seconds before Teresa got ripped apart from all directions.

Deciding that getting eaten alive by deer was a bad idea, she figured she should reverse the roles a little bit. She wouldn't be able to defend herself from all four deer at the same time from four different directions, but she might be able to if they were all attacking from the same direction.

Teresa charged one of the deer, notably the level 13 deer. It was the lowest level deer attacking her, and if she could pick off the weakest one first that would give her one less enemy to fight. She sprinted at the deer, going from stationary to a full sprint in under a second. The deer seemed caught off guard by this, making it hesitate just a moment before attempting to bite Teresa and block off her escape.

The hesitation combined with Teresa's experience in fighting monsters and her Agility stat made dodging the attack easy, and she quickly swung her sword down onto the deer's head. The blade was able to cut into the deer's skull, but it didn't make it very far. She had certainly sliced into some brain matter, but some monsters of the Tutorial had already proven they could withstand brain damage before.

She quickly darted past the deer, using it as a barrier to keep the other deer from charging her all at once. The air was still stifled with poisonous gas, but the deer didn't seem to mind at all.

While the deer who had just had its brain dissected was wobbling on its feet in a confused daze, the remaining three deer decided that playing it overly safe wasn't going to work. They pushed towards her simultaneously, making sure not to attack Teresa one at a time.

This certainly made dodging much harder, and Teresa decided to run towards the deer on her right. If she let the deer attack her on their terms, she would be swarmed and killed. She needed to keep moving if she wanted to survive.

Teresa quickly reached the deer on her right and lifted her sword above her, ready to cut down on this deer's skull as well. Seeing what had happened to its ally, the deer recoiled for a moment, giving Teresa enough time to position herself such that the deer in front of her was between Teresa and the other remaining deer.

She had feinted her attack, unsure if it would work against monsters. It had been a gamble that had bought her another couple of seconds, but she didn't have time to keep thinking. The deer quickly turned around, and soon she was surrounded on three sides by the deer. They each lunged at her, trying to take a bite out of her flesh.

Teresa kept stepping back, trying to weave between the monsters as best as she could. There was not much of a point to using the sword again, as it had barely been enough against the weakest deer in the group. She might be able to get a few cuts in, but she would likely receive a lethal injury if she tried to fight back in a melee.

For now, all she could do was stay nimble. She had finally formed a plan, and she wasn't sure it would work. The deer were slowing down now, having spent too much time in her poisonous cloud. The poisonous gas may not be strong enough to hurt the deer on its own, but there was one important piece of information Teresa was banking on.

Even if the gas wasn't going to kill the deer on its own, the poisonous gas still wasn't a substitute for oxygen. Teresa's rag was able to purify the gas before she breathed it in. If she was being honest with herself, she could maybe survive in the gas for a minute or two with just <Facilitated Restoration> passively healing her. However, the limiting factor of this would be getting oxygen into her body.

Magic or not, she was hoping the deer still needed oxygen to live. The fight had only gone on for about two and a half minutes now, but that seemed to be enough time for the deer to start suffocating.

She was pretty sure she had read somewhere that deer could hold their breath for a long time. Teresa wasn't sure if she was thinking of deer or moose, but she had seen online that whales actually hunted them and were considered a natural predator. This was because the animals were known to swim and dive underwater, which was how Teresa knew they could hold their breath for quite a while.

Okay, the more she thought about it the more confident she grew that she was actually thinking of moose. If she had her phone and an internet connection she could figure it out, but she had neither and this really wasn't the time. Point was, the deer theoretically should be able to hold their breath for a decent amount of time. Issue was, the deer weren't holding their breath. They had been carelessly inhaling the poisonous gas, and surely that meant all of the oxygen had left their system by now.

Teresa did not know nearly enough about biology to be confident in this plan when she started, but sure enough the deer began to slow more and more. The level 13 deer whose skull she had cut open had actually passed out, and the remaining deer weren't far behind.

Avoiding the deer became significantly easier, and was now barely even a challenge. She still didn't dare get too close to any of them, as they were still incredibly dangerous monsters. Regardless, their ability to coordinate and strategize with one another fell apart, and a few minutes later Teresa was surrounded by four unconscious deer.

She stopped pouring her Mana into the poison staff and approached the nearest deer, pointing her sword towards the creature's eye.

It was time for some delicious experience.