"-did <Translate> pick that one up for you or do you want a demonstration?"

Teresa absentmindedly wondered if Sarah would be a good screenwriter for the Terrifier movies.

"Hang on Sarah, we have to think this through!" Preston continued, still keeping Sarah from literally torturing the man. Teresa herself had now recovered enough to actually use <Healing Touch> on herself, drastically boosting her recuperation.

"What, you think we should just forgive and forget?" Sarah retaliated, but Preston shook his head.

"I'm saying we should stop and think, at least for a few seconds before we go straight to torture." Preston told her.

"But Teresa-"

"I'm alright, thank you. Don't worry, this one time I got drop kicked by the Statue of Liberty and broke most of the bones in my body, this time I just wasn't given any breathing room. Really, getting punched and stabbed isn't too bad." Teresa told her.

"Getting punched and stabbed isn't too bad? Teresa, are you kidding me? That's like, pretty fucking bad." Sarah responded, wide eyed.

"I mean, I could have lost a limb, pretty sure I can't grow those back. Don't get me wrong, whole experience totally sucked, but it could have been worse." Teresa replied. "Though I do want to know what the hell is going on, these weren't some random murderhobos or something. One of them literally used gravity magic."

"Who the hell has gravity magic already?" Preston asked, eyes wide. "Like, if you told me a few years from now gravity magic was a thing people could do, I would at least get that. But this is still day one! It literally has not been 24 hours since the Tutorial!"

"His level is really weird too." Chloe the ranger said, using her own <Identify>. "Why does it say MAX next to his level? Is there a level limit we don't know about?"

"His race is F+ as well, I haven't seen that before." Leo the healer said. "Saw a monster with that once, but never a person."

"We have a lot of questions we need answered, and we need to think about how badly we actually want them answered." Jake said. "Psychopath or not, this guy is still a human being. Can we really just torture him?"

"Yes." Sarah said deadpan and without hesitation.

"Hang on Sarah holy shit man." Preston interjected, no longer needing to keep her restrained. "I kinda get it, but you're being a little too eager for this. Jake's right, we need to think about this more."

The man in question was still laying on the ground, Teresa wasn't even sure why. She hadn't seen anything happen to the man's legs. Preston had stabbed him through the arm and his head had been burnt pretty badly by Noah, but was that really enough to keep him down?

"Hang on, why isn't he getting up? Like, what's stopping him from doing that right now? Is he even properly immobilized?" Teresa asked, not taking her eyes off the man.

"Don't worry, I've got <Adhesion> applied to the ground underneath him, as long as I have Mana we're good." Noah said, mentioning a spell Teresa hadn't heard of before. "Back when you saved us from that Giant Salamander, I was trying to figure out what was going on with the ground that was making us sink. I'm pretty sure it was two spells being used simultaneously, and this was one of them."

"You got a skill option from analyzing a monster's spell?" Teresa asked. "You know what, we can talk about that later. We have a wannabe assassin superglued to the floor, I feel like that takes precedence. They had weird weapons on them, they didn't look like Tutorial equipment."

"I mean, you have some stuff on that doesn't look like Tutorial equipment, maybe they looted it in the Tutorial?" Jake said, throwing the option out there.

"Maybe, but nothing they had looked like Tutorial gear. Even after beating the Tutorial, I still have my healer robes on, there's no way all of them got enough gear to completely replace their starter gear." Teresa countered. "Plus there was the invisible guy, he didn't seem to fit into any of the standard classes. Light warrior, maybe, but he was only level 15. He definitely had a new class, but there's no way he already got some advanced skills from it at his level."

"That is really weird, did they figure something out that we don't know?" Noah asked. "Like, some sort of System easter egg or min maxing strategy?"

"If that's the case, it's definitely not worth it. They got capped at level 15, that's terrible. Give it a few months and they'll be stuck as the weakest members of society." Preston said. "Their skillset was also really weird, how did three of them have that weird bolt conjuration?"

"Bolt?" Teresa asked.

"Like an arrow but for a crossbow." Preston told her.

"Oh yeah, I was just calling them arrows in my head."

"Modern crossbows can actually use arrows, but I never used them very much." Sarah added. "I don't think he's just going to tell us everything we want to know, look at him. I don't think I've seen a single emotion on his face this entire time."

It was true, the last part at least. Just like the rest of the death squad, the tank on the ground was completely stone faced. Teresa recalled just how little any of them had reacted to pain, which led her to her next conclusion.

"I don't think torturing him is the move." Teresa said, making her stance clear. "There's the whole moral argument about it, but even ignoring that I don't think he's going to say anything. I melted a woman's leg off and she barely even reacted. I stabbed a guy repeatedly and I didn't get a single grunt of pain out of him. Whatever's going on with them, I don't think that's how we get our answers."

Everyone went silent for a few moments, until Jake said something that they really needed to consider.

"So… what do we do with him?" Jake asked. Nobody answered right away, as they all realized the problem. They couldn't just throw this guy in prison, they didn't have a prison. Even if they did, he had superpowers. Sure, you could call it stats or skills, but at the end of the day this man was superhuman. If they put him in the most secure prison on Earth, he could probably still break out if he wasn't being constantly monitored. It would turn into a cycle of attempted jailbreaks until someone was eventually forced to kill him.

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"I don't know, is there a way we can restrain him?" Sarah asked, surprising a few people.

"Weren't you just saying we should torture him?" Chloe questioned.

"Yeah, torture, not execute. Getting information out of him could save lives, but killing him? Well, it would be convenient and all but I think keeping him alive could provide the most utility. We could use him as a hostage if there's more out there maybe?"

"You have a weird sense of morality."

"Why thank you."

"Let's check the bodies and see if they had anything." Teresa said. "If they wanted to kill me, they would have. That means they were planning on taking me alive, so they probably have something along those lines. Magic handcuffs or something maybe?"

"Well, I've got <Appraise> so I guess I can take a look at their stuff." Noah said.

"Same, let's get looking." Teresa and Noah began going through every single item the attackers had on them. She started with their armor and clothing, and to her surprise none of it was enchanted beyond minor durability enhancements. Literally, it said "minor durability enhancement."

<Leather Ranger Armor (Common) (F): lv 15(MAX)> Materials: ??? Leather, Composite Fiber

Enchantments: Minor durability enhancement.

Even the Tutorial starter gear was better than this, it made no sense. Sure, a minor durability enhancement might come into use, but these people clearly had no qualms about killing. Why not kill a bunch of parties and take their tank's armor if that was what they were after?

The weapons were unremarkable in the exact same way. Boots, club, crossbows, shields, everything had the same barebones enchantment. Why? They also only brought the three real bolts with them, all of which had been drenched in poison. Shouldn't they have brought more?

"Do you think one of them had <Inventory> maybe?" Theo asked, bringing up a good point.

"Shit, maybe. I don't really know how that would work, if they have <Inventory> do all of their items just drop or do we have to actually do something?" Teresa asked. She placed her hand on a corpse and activated her own <Inventory>, but found nothing happened. Well, it was worth a shot.

"Test it on all of them, you never know." Preston proposed. Teresa went around from corpse to corpse using <Inventory>, but nothing was happening.

"Yeah, I don't think that's how it works- oh fuck, never mind that's exactly how it works." Teresa had used <Inventory> on another dead body, and suddenly felt she had access to a second storage space. It was smaller than her own, and it only had one item in it. That brought up its own questions, since <Inventory> kept things in the Soul. Did dead bodies have Souls? Another question to add to the list of things she might never get an answer to.

The item was something that closely resembled a full body straitjacket.

<True Restrictive Garment (Very Rare) (F+): lv 99 (MAX)> Materials: Cloth

Enchantments: Restricts movement, Mana flow, and skill use within an individual. Self repair. Self cleaning. Sensory manipulation. Major durability enhancement.

"Holy shit, this thing is level 99." Teresa said, absolutely flabbergasted. That was the highest level she had ever seen, was this what they were going to use to keep her hostage? That reminded her, the reason they even seemed to go after her. "Before I forget, can you steal someone's Soul?"

"What?" Preston asked, everyone looking confused. Teresa explained how the only thing she had managed to hear with her <Translate> skill was Royal Soul, which made her think this was the modern day equivalent of kidney stealing. Was she supposed to wake up tomorrow in an ice bath with no Soul? How did that even work?

"I don't think so? I mean, that sounds pretty extreme. I guess I don't know enough about Souls." Preston said, deep in thought. "If you are your Soul, then wouldn't that just be the same as stealing you from your body? Hell, what even is a Soul? Up to this point I've just been going off what religion thinks about Souls, for all we know Souls aren't even really Souls in the way we imagine them."

"Yeah, I think there's a lot there we don't know yet. <Inventory> stores stuff in the Soul, so how did a dead body have a Soul? Unless…" Teresa grabbed her kitchen knife and approached the corpse she had looted the straitjacket from. She held the sharp end of the blade over the corpse's chest. "Trust me, I'm actually doing something here. I'm not just about to dissect this guy for no reason."

"You're about to what that guy?" Amelia asked. Teresa cut the knife down into the body's chest, opening up the area that the Soul typically occupied. It normally covered the entire torso and a part of the head, having a weird form that felt like a single object despite being separated into two different spaces. It didn't take long for Teresa to find what she was looking for.

<Corrupted Mana Crystal (F) lv 15 (MAX)>

Type: Material

Can be used in random quality enchantments and magical crafts. Warning: Using this material will draw the System's ire.

"So no human core. When a monster dies, it normally has a core. The description of those says that they're left by a departing monster's Soul, but some creatures don't have a core. That Salamander only had a Mana Crystal, along with anything else that resembled more of an animal than a monster." Teresa explained. "I think there's some sort of distinction between monsters and everything else, and rather than leaving behind a Monster Core we just leave a Mana Crystal. I think that's where his <Inventory> went."

"Why is it corrupted? I've never seen an item that has a warning on it." Noah mentioned. "And why can we scan everything? That garment was level 99, I feel like a low level <Appraise> shouldn't be able to work on something like that."

"We should put it on this guy before he finds a way to get back up." Sarah said, gesturing to the man on the ground. "I don't really want to be the one to do it though, I won't lie."

"We've got it." Preston said, as a few of the guys from the group approached the incapacitated man. Everyone else turned away and continued their conversation as audible struggling was heard behind them.

"Where are we going to keep him? I don't really like the idea of this guy being in the same camp as a bunch of kids." Sarah asked.

"Maybe Simon could dig a hole for him or something, the drill was a bust so I doubt we're going to be able to get a well." Teresa replied. "Shit, now we're going to have to worry about water again. I guess I can go get a bunch from the swamp tomorrow, but I think we should clean it before we try to actually drink it."

"I've got a pretty solid Fortitude, I can try it- shit hold still damnit!" Theo offered from behind them.

"I've got <Purify> in case you get sick, so as long as you're offering we can try it." Teresa told him, holding him to his promise. That was another issue that this whole debacle had caused, she didn't have a functional poison staff anymore. She put it in her <Inventory> in case she found someone who could fix it one day, but she doubted it. By that point, odds are the staff would be obsolete. It was still a memento from the Tutorial though, she wasn't going to just get rid of it because it didn't work anymore.

After a few minutes of struggling, the strange man was finally put in the straightjacket of doom. Unfortunately, the garment was really good at restricting movement, so Teresa was going to have to carry him. She couldn't really give him a piggyback ride, so she just carried him like a princess as they began making their way back to the settlement.

They had the beginnings of a plan. They were going to have to take turns keeping watch over the man until Simon dug a hole for him, which might take quite a while. Teresa was tired, everyone was. It had been a long day, and it just kept getting longer. They couldn't even bring the man into the camp out of concern for public safety either, so they needed to make a prison nearby in the woods.

There were a lot of logistical problems to that. For one, someone capable needed to stand guard. For two, he might have more allies in the forest somewhere waiting to strike. That meant he would actually need multiple guards who were capable, around the clock until they figured out a better way to handle the situation.

This was going to be such a pain in the ass.

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