Overkill wasn't extreme enough to describe what had happened to those poor Decayed Echidnas. There were multiple reasons that Portal had been chosen for a meetup spot, and one of those reasons was it made for perfect practice.

The Decayed Echidnas were capable of firing a volley of quills that regenerated on their bodies, which were meant to emulate the projectiles fired by the Avatars of Cher. They weren't nearly as fast or deadly, but it gave the group some practice. It also heavily pissed off one man from The Mall who had once worked in a zoo. Apparently echidnas weren't actually able to eject their spines like a projectile, to the surprise of no one. Rather, he was upset that porcupines actually could dislodge their own quills far easier than an echidna, although they wouldn't be projectiles it would still make more sense for the monsters to be Decayed Porcupines. It didn't really matter in the end, they all got obliterated.

For handling incoming missiles, the strategy was pretty simple. <Light Shield> was a common skill amongst tanks the same way <Facilitated Restoration> was common among healers, placing a wall of light to block projectiles was perfect for what they would be going up against.

After the initial volley of incoming projectiles, it would be the rangers' turn to fire back. At an equal level, a bow had more range than most spells from a mage. As a result, the rangers would be the first to return fire on their opponents.

In the meantime, the attack force would methodically advance, with tanks taking turns using their <Light Shield> to ensure there was always a barrier between them and their opponents, even with the skill cooldown.

Once they were in range, the archers would cease fire and focus on any flying opponents while the mages took over assaulting the ground forces from range. Most mages wound up going down an elemental route of some sort. Some could shoot boulders or batches of rock like bullets, others could use water as a consistent high pressure stream that could slice through a person, some used nigh invisible cuts of air that didn't do a lot of damage but was incredibly difficult to see coming, and of course everyone had <Embers>.

When the force got close enough to the enemy, the light warrior type classes would take over. Against metal robots, there was only so much arrows and spells could do. It would be nice if they could electrocute the machines and break them easily with some lightning, but unfortunately electricity based skills were far too weak. Instead, warriors with melee weapons stood the best chance of destroying a tank, as they could use blunt weapons or even fit blades into joints that would be hard to shoot from a distance.

Lastly, the healers were spread out through the army. Healer classes generally gravitated towards either healing, obviously, or buffing allies. Really it was just their job to stay alive and to keep others that way too.

There were a few outliers that had their own thing going on. Teresa, for example, could fill pretty much any role needed. Ezio could use his super <Embers> to launch a devastating attack, however there was some sort of limit on how many times he could use it that Teresa didn't know the details about. Lastly, there was Jim.

Jim was a professional bodybuilder pre-System, and now he was a Completionist. When the Tutorial began, he actually chose the healer class. According to Jim, there was a limit to how much muscular hypertrophy someone could realistically go through. Working out for eight hours a day would have worse results than just a one to two hour workout a couple times a week, rest was an incredibly important factor in bodybuilding. You had to wait for your muscles to recover before working out again.

He was hoping to overcome that with Restoration Magic, skipping the rest period all athletes needed. He also became a big fan of aura skills, something Teresa had never gone for herself. They prevented someone from using any skills that required Mana, but they constantly emitted a buff of some sort. Since Jim only went down the magic route for more gains, he wasn't all that interested in developing it further. He took a few aura skills that could buff everyone nearby, and when his class got upgraded after beating the Tutorial he earned the ability to use two auras at once.

Jim's specialities were in healing, buffing, and punching the shit out of stuff. Teresa could appreciate that. The only reason Teresa really took note of it was because his capabilities were the most similar to her own, fitting into multiple classes. He may not be quite as versatile, but it was nice to see she wasn't the only one who branched out from what would be expected of a starting class.

Not that she got to see him punch anything. She also didn't get to see any of the mages use their spells. The light warriors never got a chance to shine either during the brief proof of concept exercise against the Decayed Echidnas.

It turns out, having several ranger type classes fire into a crowd of monsters results in a lot of dead monsters. With multiple arrows being affected by skills like <Collateral>, <Explosive Impact>, <Ricochet>, and <Cluster Shot>, the poor level 37 Portal was cleared out in seconds. That was three hours ago, but the sea of arrows that slaughtered those creatures was still stuck in Teresa's mind.

She had spent most of her time running around using <Facilitated Restoration> on as many people as she could. Others could do it too of course, but amongst the current group of sixty people Teresa's was the best suited to the environment. There were some healers whose <Facilitated Restoration> could theoretically last longer in perfect conditions or could heal faster, but Teresa's in particular had been honed to combat the Contaminated Zone the most. Not many could say they spent a full week submerged in radiation with no breaks.

Since she was in charge of radiation protection for now, Teresa had been given multiple pieces of equipment to help with regenerating Mana. Other healers had given her their Mana recharging staffs from the Tutorial that had been upgraded with tokens and leveled beyond her own staff, meaning she was walking around with a fancy walking stick in both hands. Someone else also had a bracelet that gradually improved Mana recovery the same way Teresa's pants could improve her Stamina recovery, which Teresa was now wearing too.

It was expected that she would give it all back once she was no longer using them of course, but she was pretty happy with how things were going. This was giving her a lot of experience for her healing skill. Everyone already had <Facilitated Restoration> activated in one way or another, Teresa just needed to overwrite the inferior buffs with her own. This really was perfect as far she was concerned, it gave her something to do and helped keep her mind off things.

Currently her healing buff could last for about 12 to 14 hours, depending on how much it was being used. If someone entered combat and got hurt, that duration would shrink drastically as its Restoration Mana got consumed to heal injuries. It also took about 6 hours to apply the buff to everyone, meaning she had about 6 hours off healing duty before she needed to start applying buffs again. By the time she would get through the buffs again, 18 hours would have passed from when she started and she would be able to go to sleep without taking any shifts keeping an eye out at night. If she started the second wave of buffs a bit early, then her entire day to day schedule was filled until they encountered resistance.

Her ability to regenerate Mana was also improving, using help from multiple tools and also from just improving on her own. Applying sixty buffs only took as long as it did because of her Mana consumption and regeneration speed, otherwise she could knock it out in no time.

"Do you hear that?" Sarah asked while Teresa was on her break. She paused, straining her ears.

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"I… think so? Something's buzzing." Teresa replied as she tried to locate the source of the sound with her eyes. It came from above, which could only mean one thing. "DRONES!"

"Directly above us! Shield cycle now!" Ezio yelled as several Completionists began to hear the same thing. Multiple translucent barriers appeared overhead as tanks began to use <Light Shield> in groups.

A chunk of metal slammed into a barrier as it fell from the sky, smashing both itself and the skill. The object crashed to the ground in a misshapen form, thankfully not crushing anyone underneath.

"Stay back! They're bombs!" A woman close to the impact yelled. Teresa braced for an explosion, but it never came.

More bombs began to rain down from above, smashing into the shields protecting the group. Most of them became disfigured and bounced off the barriers, but a few stray shots that missed the target completely landed nearby.

Explosions erupted around the army where the bombs hit the ground unabated. No one was hit yet thanks to the shields, but it was only a matter of time before one slipped through.

"Can you see the drones?" Teresa asked as she squinted at the sky, trying to spot the drones.

"They're in the fucking clouds!" Sarah answered incredulously, eyes wide. "I can't shoot something that high up!"

"I'm gonna find Ezio and Nikolas, see what the plan is." Teresa said as she looked around. Last time she had come under attack by drones, they had used small missiles and flew maybe 40 feet off the ground. This was different, this was something they hadn't prepared for.

She spotted Ezio and Nikolas already talking to each other in hushed tones, and Teresa could vaguely get the gist that they were unsure as well. Regardless, she ran over to them as bombs continued to rain down.

"What's the game plan?" Teresa asked as soon as she got close.

"The plan is to hold out, we don't have a method to fight back." Ezio answered. "They'll run out of bombs sooner or later, it's all we can do to hold out right now."

"How do we know the bombs aren't coming from a skill? The drones might just be spawning them in over our heads!" Teresa countered, not a very big fan of the plan.

"It's possible but unlikely, none of the Avatars we've encountered are above level 80. I doubt that there's a skill at that level that spawns unlimited bombs." Ezio replied.

"You have a skill that is basically a recharging bomb, what do you mean?" Teresa asked, but she could kind of see his point. There was a bit of a difference between summoning an explosion from your hands and summoning a deployable explosive. "Never mind, we still have to do something."

"I'm trying over here but you try shooting something out of the sky with this thing!" Mordecai yelled as he fired his rifle in the air, targeting something Teresa couldn't quite see. "I'm not sure this has the range I need!"

"More Avatars are coming in from the north!" A man yelled, one of the ranger types from Arconette. "Ground units!"

Teresa, Nikolas, and Ezio all shared a look as they were all well aware of how bad the situation was. The tanks were busy protecting them from above, if a bunch of robots began to open fire from ground level then the entire army would be obliterated. Even if Ezio used his <Embers>, that required a direct line of sight and might not eliminate all of them. Gunfire would target their weak, and it would be inevitable that they would have casualties.

"We need a way to obscure their vision, does anyone have spells to control smoke?" Nikolas asked, but Ezio shook his head.

"Not on a large enough scale."

"I have an idea." Teresa said. "How many mages have skills that can affect the wind?"

"I don't know the exact number but at least six Completionists." Ezio answered.

"We've got a few as well, though their combined abilities might not match Arconette's." Nikolas added.

"Just make it really windy! Blow the bombs towards the Avatars on the ground!" Teresa exclaimed, proposing what she knew was a stupidly simple idea. "We got a guy that has <Adhesion>, it'll make the ground sticky and slow the Avatars down while you get that going!"

"It'll be a gamble but we can try it." Nikolas said, immediately turning to give orders to a few people from The Mall. Teresa turned to go find Noah from Theo's party, but Ezio grabbed her arm.

"How much range does <Adhesion> have?" He asked.

"I'm not sure."

"Then I'll come with, you might need to get close." Ezio offered, nodding before releasing Teresa. She nodded back and continued to scan the crowd until she found who she was looking for.

"Noah!" She yelled as she approached Theo's party with Ezio in tow. "We need your <Adhesion>!"

"Got it, where do you want me to use it?" He asked as Theo kept his attention skyward.

"How much range have you got?"

"Maybe a hundred meters or so?"

"Then we're gonna have to run a bit, hop on." Teresa said, turning around and preparing to give Noah a piggyback ride.

"Aw man, this is always so uncomfortable." Noah complained as Teresa lifted him up. She didn't waste any time, and immediately began to run out from the group.

Directly north of the army was a cluster of hills that the Avatars would be approaching from. They couldn't let them get a clear line of sight on the army or they would begin to suffer horrific casualties, the entire operation would probably get scrapped as a catastrophic failure. The three of them just had to stop that from happening. No pressure or anything.

"You're going to need to cover as much of the hill as you can with your skill, just enough to slow them down. Our goal is to buy time, it should only take a few seconds before the mages get organized." Teresa explained.

"Why not just let the mages do their thing and skip this?" Ezio asked. "This seems unnecessary."

"Even if we get the drones to start bombing the robots, it won't get all of them. They'll reposition the drones to account for the wind, and we'll be just as screwed. We need to buy time so we can reposition ourselves as well, then we can pick them off slowly until either the bombs run out or there are no more ground troops targeting us." Teresa continued. She abruptly came to a stop and grabbed Ezio, yanking him to the side as she activated <Dash> to change directions.

Both Noah and Ezio yelled as an explosion blasted a crater in the ground right along their original trajectory. Their yelling was most likely a result of Teresa breaking one of Noah's ribs and dislocating Ezio's arm from the shift, but it was better to feel pain than to die.

"Are the mages already organized?" Teresa wondered. That would be pretty damn fast. While it was true all they had to do was activate a bunch of spells at the same time, not everyone's skills were directly affecting the wind. Some of them would have to get creative with how their skills impacted the air in order to redirect the bombs, and they would also have to tinker with the strength of the wind to redirect the bombs to redirect them as far as what was needed.

Another explosion blasted nearby, then a third. What the hell?

"They stopped dropping bombs on the army, the drones are targeting us!" Ezio yelled as they came under fire from above. It was true, the bombardment on the army had ceased entirely.

"What the fuck man?" Teresa screamed as she slowed down. She was going to need to change directions a lot more if they were being targeted, she wasn't trying to torture Noah and Ezio in the process.

"Maybe Chernobyl just really hates you dude." Noah groaned as Teresa's <Healing Touch> and <Facilitated Restoration> fixed his ribs.

"Then Chernobyl is a fucking asshole!" Teresa said as she maneuvered Ezio and Noah out of the way of another bomb.

Hang on, she could make this work. If the drones were targeting her, Noah, and Ezio for some reason then she might be able to lead them away.

"Noah, I'm so sorry man." Teresa apologized as she wrapped an arm around Ezio.

"For what?" Noah asked as Teresa activated <Dash> again.

It turned out they might not need wind to bomb the robots.

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