Teresa Of All Trades (Book 1 Complete)

The bartender's eyes flicked to Teresa as she finished healing the man, the poison all gone from his system.

"He's up, I think they were hit with a paralytic and an anesthetic." Teresa called out as she made her way to the bathroom where Gabriel was. It was an educated guess, one of the poisons were stiffening his muscles and the other was slowing down the brain, Teresa had been hit with poison before herself enough times to feel confident in her assumption.

"What's going on?" The bartender asked as Teresa placed her palms on Gabriel, repeating the process. He looked at Mordecai and Axton with wide eyes, incredibly nervous. "Why are you here? Where is everyone?"

"That's what we were hoping to ask you." Mordecai said, stepping towards the man. "Start talking."

"I don't know where to start, I don't know what happened."

"What do you know?"

"Nothing!"

"Bullshit, walk us through it. What happened?"

"I don't know! It's been a pretty normal day. We had customers come in, have a meal and a drink, then leave just fine. Somebody ordered a Mai Tai and I was trying to tell him that we don't have the mixers or the rum, we don't have the stuff to make one. I tried explaining the menu to him but he got upset, then I was on the ground with that lady over me." The bartender explained quickly, looking at all of the people in the establishment. "I swear, that's all that happened?"

"The Mai Tai guy, describe him." Mordecai instructed, causing Teresa to hold her breath. 'The Mai Tai guy' had caught her off guard, and this was not the time to laugh.

"Shit, I don't know. Uh, he was blond, had light warrior clothes on, and kind of looked like a surfer."

"What about his height?"

"Maybe my height? A little taller? I'm not sure, the bar was between us."

Gabriel took in a sudden and sharp breath as Teresa finished healing the teen. He sat upright instantly, reaching for the sword on his belt. Teresa closed her hand on his wrist, stopping him before he rashly did something without thinking.

"You're okay! Thank god you're okay!" Thomas cried, hugging his now very confused son.

"Where did they go?" Gabriel asked, blinking a few times to clear his eyes. He frowned as he came to realize who was hugging him. "... Dad? Mathew? Shit, how hard did I hit my head?"

"We're here kiddo, we're here." Thomas reassured, tears still streaming down his face.

"Huh." Gabriel said, taking a few seconds to process his emotions. "Wait, is mom here too?"

"Sorry kiddo, we haven't found her. It's just us for now."

"We need to talk." Mordecai said, walking towards the boy. "What happened here?"

"Come on, that can wait can't it?" Thomas asked. "He's 16, obviously he didn't do anything."

"No, he's right." Gabriel said, standing up. "I saw what happened."

"Well, go on." Mordecai replied, gesturing for Gabriel to continue.

"I came here after finishing a job clearing a Portal nearby-"

"You've been fighting monsters?" Thomas asked incredulously, but Gabriel rolled his eyes.

"No interruptions or you're going to have to wait outside." Mordecai warned. He gestured towards Gabriel, who continued his story.

"I went to use the bathroom and while I was in here I heard a bunch of things fall to the ground. I thought Marty dropped a tray or something at first, but it lasted just a little too long. Too many things fell, unless Marty was trying some superhuman balancing act. One of my skills, <Danger Sense>, activated when I got close to the door. We normally use it to get a second of warning time for ambushes, but it's normally not strong enough to alert me by just thinking about doing something. Whoever was in the restaurant was dangerous enough for my skill to activate early."

"Whoever? What makes you say that?" Mordecai probed.

"Well I stopped and didn't move, trying to stay quiet. The sink was still dripping and I was contemplating turning it off when I heard someone talking. There were a few voices, but they didn't say much at first. Just stuff like 'got it,' or a grunt. It sounded like they were picking things up and carrying them out of the restaurant, though I can't tell how many people there were. Eventually one of them told everybody to stop and that they needed to go, something in the restaurant was being tracked. I heard that and thought I might be able to slow them down, so I opened the door ready for a fight. Instead a pink and yellow mist began flooding the bathroom, and my <Danger Sense> went off again. I closed the door almost immediately, but something sweet filled my nose and I went down." Gabriel explained, rubbing his temples with his hands. "Marty, do you remember anything?"

"A little, it's coming back to me." The bartender said. "My Wisdom should be high enough to remember it all, but it's still blurry. I think I remember the surfer guy fainting right before me, but that's it."

"Same. I think they might have taken everybody, oh shit. I know there have been rumors about people going missing, is this what's going on?" Gabriel asked, but Mordecai didn't answer him. Instead, he began giving out orders.

"Axton, go back to the town hall and tell them what's going on. We need everybody on the road looking for anyone transporting cargo. They might have a wagon or another vehicle, or there might be multiple of these traffickers carrying suspicious cargo by hand. Check the streets, check the sewers, check everywhere. Nobody goes in or out of the city until we give the all clear." Moredecai instructed, to which Axton nodded. Axton ran out the door at a speed that would give Preston pause, completely shattering the exit.

"Come on man, did he have to do that?" Marty asked, but nobody paid him any mind.

"We can help, where do you want us?" Teresa asked, ready for action.

"I want you here, don't you leave this building." Mordecai said as he got ready to leave. "I have the highest Perception in the city, I need to get to a vantage point. I can't have you running through the city on your own right now, if you leave this restaurant without an escort I will personally put a bullet in your head."

"Oh god, they took Jeremy." Marty said despairingly as he looked around. "What am I going to tell his mother?"

"Stay here." Mordecai reiterated as he left, running out of the restaurant leaving Teresa and crew behind. Well, shit. There was something big going on but Teresa wasn't in a position to help, honestly she could see the reasoning behind Mordecai wanting her to stay here. Like it or not, Teresa was a walking weapon of mass destruction. Seeing Axton completely shatter the door reminded her of something, all of the buildings in Arconette were built pre-System. Teresa had hit level 50 against the robots, and had multiple stats that were at 71, including her Strength.

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If Teresa wanted to, she could probably demolish buildings with her bare hands. Shotgun <Embers> couldn't start a fire that would persist, but she wouldn't be surprised if it could burn through homes in seconds. Having Teresa in the city was like having a tank from a foreign nation driving through the streets completely unsupervised. Teresa had thought Thomas' spiel about the social aspects of becoming powerful to be a bit extra, but now she was very much witnessing it firsthand.

"I'm sure they'll find him Marty, look who's on it." Gabriel reassured before turning to look at his family. He frowned, confused. "Wait, how did you guys get here? You're so… low level. Mathew I could understand, but even he is two levels above you."

"We got a party to escort us, I made a deal with them that I would help them with <Familial Duty> after we found you." Thomas explained, but Gabriel still seemed confused.

"Okay, but why are you level 4? That's insanely dangerous, it's been two whole weeks since the Tutorial. You must have gotten lucky, if you guys came here from the north you would have run into the Contaminated Zone. I've heard that Chernobyl spawned there and it has a bunch of golems running around with machine guns. I'm not sure how much of that is true, I mean it sounds pretty fake, but the Contaminated Zone itself is definitely real. It's a radioactive wasteland, if you had gotten unlucky and wandered in there you would be dead by now. You need to get some levels, staying weak and traveling is riskier than fighting a few monsters." Gabriel warned. "What city did you guys come from? Stormwreck? New London? Haven? I've heard rumors that there's a city to the west we aren't on good terms with, did you come from there? That would explain your level considering what I've heard-"

"We came from the north." Thomas said, a strange expression beginning to show on his face. "We crossed through the Contaminated Zone."

"What is wrong with you?" Gabriel asked incredulously. "You took Mathew through the fucking Contaminated Zone at this level? He could have died!"

"Hang on, aren't you glad we're here?"

"Of course I'm glad you're here, but what were you thinking? How are you alive?"

"Teresa's magic can cure cancer." Mathew said bluntly, gauging his brother's face for a reaction.

"I figured you were probably some big shot, I can't see your level." Gabriel admitted, looking at Teresa.

"You have <Identify>?" Teresa asked, a little surprised herself that a 16 year old had made it through the first stage of the Tutorial.

"Yeah, but that's the only one of the utilities I've got." Gabriel answered. "We've got cancer cured here too, but it's slow and expensive. A few doctors became healers and when working together they can get rid of it, though they're too low level to do it quickly. People who choose healer have a tendency to avoid combat, there's not a lot of healers with the stats to keep someone alive in the Contaminated Zone, let alone a whole party of people."

Teresa used <Identify> herself and checked the teenager's level, and was shocked to see he was level 23. It wasn't insane, there had been a party of people at The Mall that had all been in the 30s when Teresa left, but considering the circumstances it was incredibly impressive.

"What level is he?" Thomas asked, spotting that Teresa was looking at something he couldn't see.

"I'm level 23, why are you asking her?" Gabriel asked.

"How? You're just a kid, you shouldn't-"

"You're so overprotective, it really wasn't that bad. I'm 16 years old, not 4. There have been some close calls, sure, but who hasn't had a near death experience yet by this point? We just form large parties here so if one person becomes incapacitated there's someone to take their place, with the standard group of only five then just one casualty can cause a cascading effect. Haven't you learned about this from wherever you're from? Have you not been a part of any large parties?"

"We don't really have that where we're from." Thomas said, but Sarah snorted.

"Yeah we did, there were plenty of large parties. I think our party was probably the smallest active party in the whole settlement." Sarah clarified. "We didn't have the same numbers as Arconette, but the concept was definitely there. What do you think we were doing before we joined up with Teresa again? For the first few days all we did was hunt in large parties."

"Plus there's the experience efficiency theory that supports hunting in groups as well, really I can't understand why you haven't done it." Gabriel added.

"That one is new to us, what's that?" Teresa asked.

"It's not confirmed yet, but we're pretty sure there's a major difference between hunting as a group versus hunting by yourself. It's individualistic and group priority. I get that experience is all percentage based, but let's pretend for a second that everybody has an invisible experience bar that gets filled up with points exactly the way you would normally see in a video game. You kill a monster, you get 100 points closer to a level up. If you're hunting on your own, you'll get all of these experience points yourself, making it faster from an individual's perspective. If you're hunting in a group, the experience will get split up, slowing down your individual leveling speed. However, the experience won't be split evenly, and more experience will be generated. For example, instead of 100 points going to one person, two people might get 60 experience points. From an individual's perspective, hunting alone is faster. If you consider things from a group's perspective, then hunting together is faster." Gabriel explained.

"How did you figure all of this out?" Thomas asked, surprised. Teresa didn't blame him, that was shockingly detailed information for a teenager to possess.

"The Guild did some experiments with low level monsters and low level people. The Guild is like the union for monster hunters in the city." Gabriel elaborated. "How do you guys not know this? Knowledge like this has been pretty commonplace regardless of where you're from."

"Our settlements had a drastically different population." Teresa said, hesitant to give too many details.

"I can't believe we came all this way just to find you in a bar." Mathew teased.

"It's one of the only places in town with eggs! I felt like having scrambled eggs so I came here."

"You wanted scrambled eggs? It's the afternoon, that's a breakfast food."

"I was in the mood for it, I didn't know you were so judgmental about eggs."

"I'm not judging, I'm just shaping my opinion of you."

"That's literally the definition of judging."

"I don't know what you're talking about. Eggs are a breakfast food. Don't blame me, I don't make the rules, I just come up with them in my head." Mathew joked, making the mood a little lighter.

Well, lighter for everyone except Marty.

"Have they ever found someone who's gone missing? Jeremy was just stopping by with a delivery, he didn't deserve any of this." Marty muttered to himself, inaudible to anyone who didn't have exceptional Perception.

"Who's Jeremy?" Teresa asked, realizing this was not the time or place for joking around.

"He's my cousin, he has <Inventory> so he was bringing me more eggs." Marty explained. "He had just gotten here when I was with a customer, they must have taken him too."

"His aunt got a class that involves domesticating wildlife." Gabriel said. "Tammy has a coop of some animal that lays eggs, they keep the details secret. Like I said, they're one of the only people with eggs."

"You said Jeremy was your cousin?" Teresa asked, an idea forming in her mind.

"Yeah, what of it?" Marty questioned. Teresa turned to Thomas, placed her hand on his shoulder and practically dragged him towards the bartender.

"Use it." Teresa said, staring intensely at Thomas.

"But it's never worked with someone else before, I'm not at that point yet." Thomas replied.

"If Jeremy was just taken that means he's still nearby. Unless they have something to block Karmic Magic, then this should be way easier than tracking any of our families. You were able to find Gabriel, so we know they can't block it entirely. Try it."

"If you find him, I'll come with." Gabriel declared, the rest of Teresa's party all seemingly in agreement.

"We were told not to leave-" Thomas began, but Marty cut him off.

"If it works I'll come too, you're talking about <Familial Duty> right? You'll need to track him a few times as they move, take me so you can keep using it." Marty said.

"You guys are putting me under a lot of pressure-"

"Fucking hell, stop yapping and try it!" Teresa yelled. Somebody's life was on the line and they had already wasted enough time.

"Okay, okay, I'll try." Thomas said as he placed his hands on Marty's shoulders. He took a few deep breaths, his eyes focused on something nobody else could see. A few seconds passed in complete silence as sweat formed on Thomas' brow. It had only been a few moments, but it felt like an eternity.

"Holy shit! I found him!" Thomas exclaimed. Wasting no time, Teresa slumped Thomas over one shoulder and Marty over the other.

"Then let's go."