The Paralytic Fungi screamed as it was covered in flames, the chest height mushroom being completely countered by Teresa. Their spores meant to paralyze prey were ineffectual on her due to <Facilitated Restoration> and <Purify> being stronger, and her fire scorched their flesh to cinders. Did mushrooms have flesh? Like, obviously not, but what was the word for it? Teresa couldn't just look it up, but what were mushrooms even made of?

"Dad, I want to-"

"Nope, not happening." Thomas said as he and his son stood back a distance while being protected by the rest of the party. Sarah and Teresa had both heard monsters coming while on the move, resulting in the party stopping to handle the threat. Teresa wreaked havoc amongst the Paralytic Fungi while everyone else picked off the stragglers and ensured the noncombatants were safe.

You Have Slain {Paralytic Fungi (F) [Attuned: Radiation] (lv 41)}

Experience Granted

Level Up!

Teresa had already been pretty close to another level, she certainly wasn't complaining about the free experience now. They were rather tanky for mushrooms, her <Embers> didn't actually incinerate them like it did to most monsters. That didn't mean she had any problem killing the fungi, but it certainly made her question why they were built the way they were. Maybe they also had a really high Strength and didn't get the chance to show it off. Perhaps they had an obscene amount of Endurance, whatever it was her Elemental Magic took care of the problem.

She made short work of the attackers, there weren't exactly a lot of them. It had only been a random group of roaming monsters after all, they were a good level but ultimately all they were capable of doing was giving Teresa another level up. They were even radiation attuned, which made her hopeful. As a matter of fact, this gave her an idea. She kept one alive, burning its lower body so it couldn't move.

"What are you doing, why are you torturing the thing?" Thomas asked, incredibly concerned. Teresa rolled her eyes, but realized that to someone who didn't get very far in the Tutorial this would be extremely out of place.

"I want to test something, they're radiation attuned. That means they have a Radioactive Portal we can destroy for points and loot." She replied as she activated <Monster Hunt>. Threads became visible all around her, drifting off into random directions. The Paralytic Fungi also had its own thread coming out from its body, but it didn't lead straight to Teresa. As a matter of fact, it went high into the air then randomly changed directions a few times before eventually leading to Teresa. The karmic threads didn't form a straight line between her and any monsters, but they did eventually connect the two.

This fungi's thread was incredibly dim, but it had no slack to it at all. Even if it didn't travel in a straight line, Teresa got the sense it was pulled impossibly tight. The only real way to describe how dense the thread was by comparing it to the threads of monsters she had encountered before. It was denser than the Monstrous Salamanders she had fought not too long ago, but lighter than the threads from the Mutated Slimes.

What she was looking for were threads similar to the thread from the fungi in front of her, which might let her track the mushroom's Portal. She was a great counter to the monster, so if the Portal was nearby it would be the perfect opportunity so long as it wasn't too far out of their way.

Unfortunately, there were no other threads that had the exact same properties. All of them were brighter, and all of them had way less tension on the thread. The only property some of the threads shared was density, forcing Teresa to make some educated guesses.

"I think I get the general gist of it." Teresa contemplated, deep in thought. "At least I have a guess. I think the luminosity of the threads relate to how many monsters there are, the density relates to their levels, and the tension on the thread relates to how close they are. The luminosity and the tension might also be the other way around though, but I'm not 100% sure yet."

"I think you might be right." Thomas added. "When I use <Familial Duty>, I only see two threads. One of them is pulled tight and eventually leads to Mathew here, and the other is rather loose and eventually leads to his brother, Gabriel. I still can't really see them all too well but Gabriel's is exceptionally bright. I need to level up my <Mana Control> to know more. I can only notice the extreme cases of what you're describing but it would line up with what I do see."

"So what's the plan then?" Sarah asked. "We gonna make a quick pitstop to kill some monsters? We've made good distance today, if I had to guess we've probably covered a couple hundred miles."

"That's a lot, isn't it?" Mathew asked. "What's that in kilometers again?"

"You know, if <Translate> can convert accents I don't get why it can't convert miles to kilometers or vice versa." Teresa said as she did the math in her head. There are 1609 meters in a mile, so 5 miles would be roughly 8 kilometers. If they ran somewhere around 200 miles then she would need to multiply that by about 40… "Like 300 or so kilometers, give or take a bunch since we're estimating."

"I feel like that's undershooting it." Preston said. "We've been on the move for what, twelve hours total not counting breaks? If we're going just 30 miles an hour, that's 360 miles."

"Has it been twelve hours? Feels more like ten." Jake said. "It'd be nice if we had a GPS or something."

"Map." Preston said assuredly. A moment passed and he shook his head. "Damn, I was hoping there was some System menu that we didn't know about. That would have been nice."

"Yeah, if only-" Teresa paused as her vision suddenly became just a little sharper. What the hell?

"You good man?" Preston asked, seeing the puzzled look on her face. Teresa tried to ignore the fact he seemed worried and shared a glance with Jake and Sarah, and instead she focused on what just happened.

"My stats all just went up by 1." Teresa said, confused as she looked at her status screen.

Status:

Name: Teresa

Race: Human (Earth)

Level: 44 (F) (1%)

Class: Jack Of All Trades lv 6 (F+) (40%)

Secondary Class: Scavenger lv 0 (F-) (93%)

HP: (837/837)

Stamina: (837/837)

Mana: (910/1205)

Strength: 56

Fortitude: 56

Endurance: 56

Vitality: 56

Agility: 56

Intelligence: 82

Wisdom: 78

Perception: 62

Unallocated Points: 0

<Skills> {

<Translate: lv 8 (56%)>

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

<Mana Control: lv 15 (13%)>

<Healing Touch: lv 14 (69%)>

<Facilitated Restoration: lv 16 (80%)

<Identify: lv 12 (68%)>

<Totem Of Life: lv 4 (15%)>

<Magic Wellspring: lv 14 (37%)>

<Embers: lv 15 (19%)>

<Dash: lv 15 (80%)>

<Intuitive Aim: lv 7 (33%)>

<Purify: lv 9 (17%)>

<Inventory: lv 15 (70%)>

<Appraise: lv 13 (41%)>

<Sturdy Outer Shell: lv 12 (5%)>

<Monster Hunt: lv 1 (94%)>

}

<Titles> {

<System Newcomer>

<Tutorial: Power Hungry>

<Tutorial: Full Completionist>

<Tutorial: Level Pioneer>

<Slayer 1>

<Tutorial: Boss Killer>

<Ambassador Of The Mall>

}

Why did that happen? It's not like she was complaining or anything, but she would prefer for random stat increases to be actually explained.

"Did you get a new title or something?" Preston asked.

"Nope, they all have the same names too." She replied.

"You do have the title from being an Ambassador or whatever, is that what did it?" Jake asked.

"No, that title doesn't give me any-" Teresa cut herself off again as she opened the description of the title.

<Ambassador Of The Mall>

You possess the authority and privileges granted to the Ambassador of The Mall.

+1 All Stats at city level 3.

No stat bonuses at current faction level.

"Damn never mind, that's exactly what did it. The Mall is level 3 now, I guess they've been busy." She said. Hang on, that wasn't always there. Teresa shared her screen to the rest of the party. "Why does it mention faction level now? What's that all about?"

"What are they doing back home?" Sarah asked, also bewildered.

"I wanna get free stat points, are there any more positions available?" Preston joked.

"If there's ever a jester title I'm sure they can give it to you yah absolute clown." Jake continued with a smile.

"Hey, I would absolutely be a court jester, no complaints here. Doubt it's actually a thing though."

"Shouldn't you guys be paying attention to that?" Thomas asked, pointing at the injured but still very much alive Paralytic Fungi. Teresa shrugged.

"Eh, it's fine, just got distracted for a minute. Alright, if what I'm guessing about the threads is correct, then I should look for a bright thread with a similar density." Teresa said as she focused back on using her Karmic Magic. There were a few threads that fit what she was looking for, though they had varying levels of luminosity. She figured if she was looking for a Portal she should try using the brightest one.

Mana wrapped around a particularly shiny thread with a density that matched the thread to the injured Paralytic Fungi. It yanked on the thread, and information on where it led intuitively entered Teresa's mind.

"Definitely not far from here, maybe a few miles. Do you guys want to check it out?" Teresa asked, looking forward to a nice fight that hopefully wouldn't involve absolute agony.

"Sounds good to me, but we'll need to stay back still." Jake said, nodding towards Mathew and Thomas. It would be a lot more fun if they would just agree to level up so they could get involved too, but apparently not everyone wanted to risk their lives fighting monsters. Teresa didn't get it, the feeling of a level up was addicting. Sure, sometimes it really sucked, but at least fighting monsters both granted and improved her superpowers. The idea of being powerful like that was nice, but actually being able to use magic and perform increasingly ridiculous physical feats was amazing.

"Got it, I'll go ahead then. I'm a strong counter to them anyways. Once we get the chance we need to fight as a party again, it'll be fun."

"Did you say it'd be fun?" Thomas asked.

"Yeah, you don't like using superpowers?"

"Not if I might die."

"Gotta take the bad with the good."

"I think the bad outweighs the good in this case, I can think of plenty of ways to have fun without risking my life." Thomas countered.

"Sure, but at least I get to do cool magic stuff. I bet I could do like, at least five backflips in one jump. Can you do at least five backflips in one jump?"

"Why would I want to do that?"

"Because it's awesome, that's why." Teresa shook her head as she activated <Dash>. Some people had a terrible taste in entertainment. She quickly finished off the Paralytic Fungi with <Embers> and took off at max speed, easily doubling the 30 miles per hour estimate Preston had given. She didn't have to wait on anybody or worry about taking a turn too sharp, if there was ever a time to let loose it was now.

Forget doubling their travel speed, she was probably tripling it, likely even more than that. Teresa wanted a speedometer or something so she could figure out exactly how fast she could go. Speedometers probably just measured how fast a wheel was spinning, but magic was real. Human speedometers could totally exist.

At her speed it barely took any time at all to arrive at her destination. Luckily, she had found exactly what she was looking for. Paralytic Fungi were swarming the place, to the point where there had to be at least a hundred. Teresa caught a glimpse of a Portal, and after using <Appraise> from a distance she was able to confirm it was level 45. It was one level higher than her, but so long as each of the monsters had similar builds to the ones she had encountered there would be no problem.

She took a moment to refresh all of her buffs and regenerate a bit of Mana before she made a move. If Teresa used her usual strategy of attacking, retreating to regenerate her resources, then attacking again she would have no problems. The issue was she needed to get better at managing her resources, and this was a decent enough chance to practice.

Teresa had to make the most of her <Magic Wellspring> skill. It granted her an increase to her Intelligence and Wisdom, which in turn improved the efficacy of her spells. If Teresa took <Retaliate> as a skill, it would likely behave in a very similar manner. It may not increase her stats temporarily, but it would improve her damage output. She needed to start using every advantage she could get.

Once her resources were topped off, it was time. She selected a mushroom close to her and ran at it, not using <Dash> as it wasn't necessary yet. The Paralytic Fungi heard her coming and started to turn around, but Teresa had the advantage. She used <Embers> at a low output to spray fire at the monster's eyes, damaging it but not killing the creature outright. A high pitched wail went out just as Teresa drew her sword from her <Inventory> and killed the monster with a horizontal strike just under the cap of the mushroom.

This got the attention of multiple Paralytic Fungi who turned their gaze on her, a massive field of spores radiating out of their bodies and flying towards her. They were able to paralyze and irradiate prey, but Teresa was the perfect counter for that. She had a tendency to use up a lot of her Mana in combat, but she had other resources to draw from that she had been admittedly underutilizing. She activated <Sturdy Outer Shell>, powering it with exclusively Stamina.

The Stamina solidified into a pale yellow material that coated her skin. It drastically slowed her movement down, but by no means did that make her slow. Teresa grabbed her knife from her <Inventory> and chucked it at another fungi, planting the blade in its face. Throwing a knife was pretty damn hard, but <Intuitive Aim> helped a lot at a low price.

She cut her way towards the injured fungi, splashing a small burst of <Embers> into the occasional monster and finishing them off with her sword. Spores collided with her <Sturdy Outer Shell> which absorbed a large portion of them. What didn't get blocked by her defensive skill was canceled out by <Facilitated Restoration>, which let her spread the cost of protection across both Stamina and Mana.

Mushrooms swung appendages coated in poison at her, but between their telegraphed movements and Teresa's reaction speed they were easy enough to avoid even with her reduced movement speed. She kept a balance between pushing forward and retreating, advancing to counter attack opponents who missed a strike while momentarily falling back as multiple tried to swarm her.

It fell into a rhythm that Teresa loved. Fighting was a conversation, where both sides repeatedly asked the other a question. If a mushroom does X, what will Teresa do? If Teresa does Y, how will the monsters react? There were right and wrong answers to these questions, and Teresa kept getting them correct.

She didn't get how Thomas couldn't enjoy something like this. As Teresa kicked the roots out from under a Paralytic Fungi and stabbed it through the stem, crippling it, she smiled.

Teresa was having a blast.

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