Teresa Of All Trades (Book 1 Complete)

"That way!" Thomas instructed, pointing in a general direction.

"Is that how you guys have been traveling this whole time?" Gabriel asked as he ran along, his face pale. He was struggling to keep up, let alone to converse with the group while running at what was likely his top speed. Teresa noted he was using <Dash> to keep up, but it should have been obvious that he had the skill. All light warriors started out with <Dash> and <One Armed Weaponry> after all. "Just 'go that way' for days on end?"

"Pretty much." Teresa confirmed as she ran down the road. It would take less than a minute to reach the exact position Thomas was sensing, but since their target was also moving it would likely get a little more complicated.

Teresa was hesitant to have Gabriel and Mathew come along. She had always thought Thomas' ideal of keeping Mathew entirely out of combat to be pretty stupid, but she was able to suck it up and deal with it. Mathew totally should be able to fight monsters with adult supervision, especially if he was travelling long distance through monster infested wastelands.

But she started to draw the line at combat against other humans. It just wasn't the same, not at all. Teresa could personally take on hundreds of low level monsters at once, hell she had been able to take on over a hundred Al-Mi'raj at a similar level to herself in one go. Against another fully sapient human being, that logic went out the window. Even with her title buffs, if her opponent was trained to fight against specifically other humans then she would almost certainly struggle. It was the same difference between playing the campaign of a video game and ranked competitive multiplayer, another thinking person with skills of their own could easily land a lethal blow with the right timing.

Gabriel was 16, which was still pretty damn young. Every 16 year old would like to think that's not as young as Teresa made it out to be, but the reality was they were definitely still too young to be fighting people to the death. Mathew was 14, even younger than that. Bringing them along had too much of a 'child soldier' vibe to it for Teresa's liking, Teresa wasn't planning on killing the trafficker if she could help it, they might have useful information, but she wouldn't hesitate to do so.

"Gabriel, I want you to stay back a bit, make sure nobody comes at us from behind. Mathew can stay with you, I'll toss you his crossbow." Teresa called out, having come up with a way to keep them out of the fight. If someone actually came from behind, then they would both be armed and capable of buying enough time for Teresa to turn around and assist them, especially with Gabriel's <Danger Sense>. It was a way for them to be legitimately useful without directly involving them in something they were far too young for. If she just told them to stay out of it because she said so, then they would never listen to her.

"Are you sure? We can help." Gabriel asked. Teresa felt Thomas tense up on her shoulder, but she had it handled.

"If someone comes from behind we're fucked, believe me this is important. If Mordecai or one of the other powerhouses in town comes by you'll be able to explain what's going on as an actual citizen of Arconette." Teresa replied. "If <Danger Sense> picks anything up, just scream and we'll hear you."

"Got it." Gabriel answered.

"We're close, they're moving slower than us!" Thomas informed the group. Teresa nodded to Gabriel and Sarah, who began to slow down. Sarah stopped just long enough to drop off Mathew before chasing after them again, her bow in hand. They were getting plenty of looks from passerbies, but some seemed already concerned before they even ran past. They were almost there.

"Around this corner to the right, hundred meters!" Thomas called out once more. As soon as Teresa and crew turned at the designated intersection, they immediately found their target.

There was a man in mage robes with a large blue duffle bag, which likely contained Marty's cousin. The man seemed to have heard them coming, as he was already facing the direction the party was approaching from. The duffle bag was on the floor, and the man had both palms raised towards Teresa. She set down Thomas and Marty quickly and activated <Identify> as the man spoke.

{Human (F) (lv 34)}

"Stay back!" The man yelled, redirecting one palm to face the duffle bag on the floor. The man knew they were coming, which implied a high Perception stat. He also had mage robes, which meant he certainly had a high Intelligence and Wisdom. Considering he was able to carry a human being while running he definitely would also have points in Strength and Agility, meaning Fortitude was his weakness. If Teresa tried to close the gap and attack, the man would have the reaction time required to burn that duffle bag to a crisp. "If you take one step closer-"

POW!

"-AH FUCK!" The man yelled as the hand facing the duffle bag sprayed a red mist, a bullet hole going straight through his wrist. Teresa used the momentary distraction to use <Dash> and charge the kidnapped. She smashed the butt of her handgun she had taken from her <Inventory> into the man's face, breaking his nose and whipping his head back.

He fell backwards, but Teresa wasn't done. Knocking someone unconscious wasn't that simple. She had seen plenty of people go down from a well placed punch while kickboxing, but Teresa wasn't positive the trafficker was out cold yet. She threw her free hand forward, wrapping it around the man's throat before squeezing. Teresa had to consciously limit the force she was outputting to avoid decapitating the man by accident, which would completely ruin a potential lead.

The kidnapper reached up to his neck in a daze, his palm glowing red. <Embers> shot into Teresa's forearm, but all she had to do was activate <Sturdy Outer Shell> and she was fine. A few seconds of this passed before the man went limp, completely unconscious.

"Did you just shoot him?" Thomas asked incredulously, his voice raised an octave.

"Well, yeah." Teresa answered. "Gun beats fireball."

"Holy shit." Marty muttered, looking more than a little shellshocked. Truth was, this was the perfect situation for Teresa to use her handgun. She wasn't sure how strong the kidnapper's spells were, so she wasn't confident speedblitzing him without Marty's cousin getting hurt. She might be able to use her own <Embers>, but not only would the trafficker have time to react and kill Jeremy, but it would also probably cause a lot of damage to the surrounding infrastructure.

There were also a lot of people in the city with skills of their own. If a crowd of low levels tried to get involved, that would cause too many problems. If she coordinated with Jake and got him to put a <Light Shield> between the kidnapper and the hostage, then she probably could have speedblitzed him. Still, there was no changing the fact Teresa had a gun, and she might as well use it at some point. She still had four bullets left, it was a good use of resources in her opinion.

Grabbing something out of her <Inventory> generally required Teresa to make a motion similar to pulling something out of a locker, but as she got used to the skill over time she had found there didn't need to be a big range of motion. Just moving her hand a couple inches forward and back was enough for the skill to work, at least for small objects.

"Go get Gabriel and Mathew." Teresa instructed no one in particular, figuring it didn't really matter who went to bring the two kids back. This went a lot quicker than she had been expecting, but she was glad it was as fast as it was. An honest fight between two decent level humans in the middle of a city could cause untold damage.

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"Is Jeremy okay?" Marty asked, cautiously approaching as Preston ran off to grab the teenagers. Teresa turned to the duffle bag and opened it, her eyes peeled looking for a trap. The bag opened without incident, and within was a man in his late twenties, unconscious and bound at the wrists and feet.

Teresa placed her hands on the man and used her signature healing spells, finding the man to have the same ailments Gabriel and Marty had been suffering from. A paralytic and an anesthetic, both were easy enough for Teresa to deal with. She used <Identify> and saw he was level 18, which she thought was respectable.

"That's him!" Marty yelled, running towards Teresa. She continued to heal Jeremy until he was mobile again, already used to the routine.

"He's alive and he seems fine, give it a few seconds and he'll be awake." Teresa told him, not particularly worried. On cue, Jeremy's eyes began flickering from one person to another as he gained consciousness.

"Holy shit, I don't know how strong you make those drinks Marty but I just teleported. I only had the one man, are you trying to kill me?" Jeremy asked as he sat up. "What was in that? I feel sober, was that some magic stuff or something?"

"You had one beer Jeremy, one very normal beer. You almost got kidnapped, someone drugged the place and took everyone." Marty informed him.

"What?"

"Were either of you related to anyone else in the restaurant?" Teresa asked, figuring they could catch Jeremy up to speed later. "Or do you know any of their families? We can still find them."

"Not really, I think Staci had a brother in Haven but we'd have to teleport there and back, by then who knows how far they will have taken her." Marty answered. Shit, that wasn't great. Now that Teresa thought about it, she may have played her cards poorly here. It wouldn't have been a bad idea to just quietly follow the kidnapper until he led them to something important. Unfortunately nobody in their party had any stealth skills, and she was pretty confident the man had heard them coming with a high Perception stat.

"Nice, you found him!" Gabriel exclaimed as he and Mathew returned with Preston. "That was really fast."

"Teresa doesn't like to waste time." Mathew told him, unsurprised.

"Let me heal this guy real quick, we don't want him dying on us." Teresa told everyone, moving towards the kidnapper.

"Are you sure that's a good idea? What if he gets back up?" Marty asked, but Teresa shrugged.

"He won't." She said as she did the bare minimum to fix the trafficker's wounds. She coagulated the blood around his wrist to prevent further bleeding, straightened his nose up a bit to keep him from choking to death while unconscious, then continued with the hard part.

"That sounds ominous- Jesus fuck!" Marty yelled as Teresa used <Embers> on the kidnapper's palms, using the spell with a low output just strong enough to render the man's hands unusable. A nasty smell filled the air as flesh burnt, and the kidnapper woke up just to scream for a moment before curling into a ball.

"He's not gonna be using any spells in the near future." Teresa announced, figuring she could always heal him later if need be.

"That was a little extreme dude, but I get it." Gabriel said, an uneasy look on his face. Maybe she should have waited a bit before bringing the teenagers back, she was kind of desensitized to this part.

"We had to do it a lot in the Tutorial, leaving a monster alive but injured would extend the timer between rounds. It's not too different from that." Teresa replied.

"I heard a lot of people tried that, my party didn't think of it in the moment. We got through the first stage in one go, but a lot of us didn't make it that far." Gabriel admitted.

"This is not the same at all, why would you do that in front of them?" Thomas asked, upset.

"Honestly that's my bad, I didn't really think about it too much until I did it. Sorry kids." Teresa apologized. "We don't like that kind of thing, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta-"

"Ambush!" Gabriel yelled, drawing his sword. Man, that <Danger Sense> was useful.

The sound of bodies hitting the ground rang out as multiple people fell unconscious. Sarah, Gabriel, Mathew, Thomas, and Marty were out cold already, a purple and yellow mist swirling through the group. Teresa used <Facilitated Restoration> on herself, then rapid fired it at her remaining party members to protect them against the poisonous mist.

Fuck, using her buffs on everybody had slipped her mind. She was so used to using her spells on everyone right before a battle, but the urgency of their situation and her needing to carry two people at once had made her completely forget about it. Two green balls of fire appeared over each hand as she prepared to launch a quick and dirty version of <Facilitated Restoration> at her unconscious party members, but a voice stopped her.

"Make a move, and they stop breathing." The voice said, as the mist only thickened. Mist was spreading all over the road and through the windows of nearby homes, likely leaving unconscious victims inside. "All I have to do is paralyze their diaphragm, and they'll suffocate."

The mist began to fill Teresa's lungs, but the poison struggled to do anything against her magic. She was used to constantly fighting off some nasty environment poisons, primarily radiation. This wasn't the exact same, but between her magic and her F+ race the mist had no effect on her. Similarly, Jake's high Fortitude combined with Teresa's magic was enough for him to still be fine, while Preston had reacted quickly and used <Dash> to get away from the mist.

What should she do? There were multiple people being directly affected by the paralytic mist. She could definitely save everyone in her party in time, but what about the people in the houses nearby? Could she do that while fighting someone like this?

"I want all of you to drop your weapons, raise your arms, and keep your palms facing backwards." The voice instructed. What was the game plan here? Teresa was trying to think tactically as fast as she could. The man had a time limit, he was making a scene. Any second now one of the powerhouses in the city would arrive, then it would be game over for him. If she could just buy enough time-

She heard a whistling sound to her right and instinctively activated <Sturdy Outer Shell>, just in time for several arrows to strike her in the side. They weren't enough to pierce her at all, but they still stung a bit.

The man wasn't going to leave them alive, the little talking he had done had also been to buy time for people to get into position. Teresa and her party were direct witnesses to what was happening in Arconette, and they had a prisoner who might also have vital information.

Shit, the prisoner. Teresa turned her head towards the unconscious man, and saw that Jake had it covered. A <Light Shield> had prevented an arrow from shooting the kidnapper in the head, and he stood with his shield ready. This wasn't good, there were too many people to protect.

A red wave of energy shot out from Jake as he used <Taunt>, which would make their opponents more likely to target him. Teresa wasn't positive how well that worked on human opponents, but it couldn't hurt.

Movement from down the road caught her eye, and she immediately used <Identify> on the tiny flash of a person she had seen.

{Human (F+) (lv 60)(MAX)}

If there had even been a sliver of doubt before, it was gone now. They were definitely against invaders, and they needed reinforcements. She heard her party begin to choke on the ground, giving her yet another problem to deal with.

<Facilitated Restoration> fired again and again as arrows were launched at the group. Thankfully, all of them were off target, which was likely due to Jake's <Taunt>. It wasn't enough to force them to attack him, but it was enough to throw their aim off when attacking someone else.

"They're good, cover them!" Teresa yelled while she charged up yet another <Facilitated Restoration>. The arrows suddenly stopped firing as Preston ran in their general direction, and Jake awkwardly dragged the unconscious kidnapper towards the rest of the party. Restoration Mana formed into a structure similar to an atom with a tiny nucleus and a lot of electrons. A tiny ball of the Restoration Mana had pillars branching out to support a dense outer shell encasing the nucleus, making the spell burn brighter.

Teresa fired her <Facilitated Restoration> straight up into the air, acting as essentially a flare gun that lit up a decent chunk of the city. She immediately went back to spamming her spell, using her buff on the kidnapper before running to the nearest home. She listened for choking as she broke open the door and searched the house, finding a woman on the ground going pale. She fired her healing spell at the girl before moving on to the next building, trying to move as quickly as possible.

BAM!

A gunshot echoed through the neighborhood, and the mist began to recede on its own.

Reinforcements had arrived.