Hundreds of high level monsters flooded the area, drowning the core of the Contaminated Zone with noise. Interestingly enough, some types of monsters were attacking everything that moved while others were much more cooperative to monsters of different species.

Teresa spotted Failinis, Decayed Echidnas, and Paralytic Fungi amongst the monsters she recognized, while others were brand new. Cactal Tumbleweed, Ethereal Snow Elementals, and Grayed Trolls were also included in the crowd. Really what surprised Teresa the most was just how many monsters had been nearby.

The Paralytic Fungi were being attacked by other monsters whenever they got too close, while Grayed Trolls seemed content snatching up and eating anything that seemed close to a mammal. Having multiple monster variations in one place could only result in chaos, but thankfully Teresa wasn't the one who would have to deal with that.

Monsters continued moving towards the monster lure that had been thrown inside the concrete building. They began to climb the artificial hill, some even going into the blown access tunnel. Teresa was starting to worry that they had been concerned about traps for nothing when one finally went off.

Flaming oil shot out from beneath the rocks, coating multiple monsters in a green fire. It went straight through the Ethereal Snow Elementals, the fire itself not harming them so much as the heated gasses that came with it.

Something similar to a sprinkler system began spraying out water across the hill, making the oil fire even worse. With her Perception, Teresa was able to see the water boil into steam almost immediately upon making contact with the flames, creating even more gasses that could probably melt a person's flesh off down to their bones.

The Paralytic Fungi, Cactal Tumbleweed, and Ethereal Snow Golems on the hill were wiped out in seconds. The Failinis were incredibly quick, and began to sprint along the side of the hill to avoid multiple traps that continued to activate. Their biggest downfall were pit traps, as some began to fall through what looked like solid ground. Teresa couldn't see what was in those pit traps, but nothing was coming back out of them.

Some of the Decayed Echidnas burrowed into the ground, their spines still sticking out from the rock as flaming oil passed over them. Since the ground was made up of mostly porous rock, the hot oil sank down and cooked the buried monsters anyways. The ones who survived had actually clung to the Grayed Trolls, who were completely fine with being covered in what they likely considered food.

The Trolls were tanking the heat, the fire doing almost nothing to them. A few Echidnas dropped dead from the steam, though most seemed able to deal with the gasses while on the Trolls.

Elsewhere, flaming oil began to pour out of the hill even though there was nothing alive in that area. Traps began activating randomly, in some places turrets lifted out of the ground and began to fire at anything that moved. Bullets ricocheted off the trolls, who seemed extremely focused on Fortitude.

The only monsters to make it to the top of the hill were the Trolls, Echidnas, and a few Failinis that managed to speed past the traps. They poured over the top of the hill, swarming into whatever lay beyond. The sound of gunfire rang out as an unseen battle took place just out of sight.

Teresa looked at her party, seeing everyone focused on recovery. The temptation to try and use the chaos to their advantage was definitely present in Teresa's mind, but she didn't want to put them in a situation they couldn't back out of. The access tunnel had been invaded by monsters of multiple types, and havoc was already being unleashed.

"Don't do it." Her dad whispered, placing a hand on Teresa's shoulder.

"What?"

"Let it play out, we need to be patient." He continued. To be fair, Teresa had totally been thinking about pushing in, but she had long since developed the self restraint to avoid acting on impulse. Still, being told not to do something she already wasn't going to do just made her want to do it more.

Nope, she was gonna play it safe. She refreshed <Facilitated Restoration> on her party once more, as her Restoration Mana was working overtime to deal with the increased radiation.

The sound of machinery began to grow closer, coming from the opposite direction of the hill. It worked. Their distraction worked, at least it sounded like it did. It was tricky trying to discern what direction the sound of machinery was coming from while hiding within a cave, but it seemed to be coming from the same direction they had traveled.

They continued waiting within the cave for several more minutes, at which point they spotted the Avatars. Mechanized vehicles drove steadily over the uneven terrain, as hundreds of Avatars crossed over the terrain and climbed the hill, following peculiar paths that avoided activating any traps.

There were a lot less than Teresa remembered, some of them had scorch marks along their frame. Ezio had likely reunited with the army, which was extremely relieving. They needed to regroup, the whole point of bringing so many people was that a single party couldn't destroy Chernobyl by themselves, otherwise Ezio already would have.

Unfortunately, the party's movements were temporarily restricted. The exterior of the cave was swarming with Avatars as they could only cross over the hill in single file lines that were not time efficient at all. Some even entered the access tunnel, firing at the monsters within. There were Avatars just meters away from the entrance of the cave they chose to hide in, which forced them to temporarily retreat deeper into the ground.

Teresa was hesitant to travel too deep into any of the cave systems, as none of them had been thoroughly explored yet. They had once seen swarms of high level dinosaurs pour out from a cave system along the edge of the Contaminated Zone, she didn't particularly want to walk into a nest of monsters, at least not at the moment.

The battle lasted for roughly an hour, during that time everyone in the party received a notification from the System.

Assembly Station Damaged!

500 Points Awarded

The Avatars had finally moved away from the cave, giving them the chance to make a run for it. Sarah, Teresa, and her dad approached the entrance first as they had the highest Perception stats amongst the party.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Peeking out, the coast seemed clear. The battle had ended, and Avatars Teresa had never seen before were working on the artificial hill. While most Avatars functioned as a mechanized vehicle with turrets, these seemed far more humanoid. They were still made of metal, though they had four arms and reminded Teresa of the Albino Gorillas.

The humanoid Avatars held various tools that seemed valuable, as she knew firsthand how the lack of tools had impacted The Mall. Wireless electric tools heated up and reforged the metal along the blown access tunnel, while others began attaching what looked like plows to the front of several mechanized Avatars.

"You think we should take those out?" Sarah asked, looking at the same thing as Teresa. "Destroying those worker robots might slow down the production of regular Avatars."

"I don't know." Teresa admitted, still thinking. It was really dumb to think about, but was it okay for them to destroy the humanoid Avatars? Was each Avatars a separate sentient entity? If so, then this would be very similar to targeting civilians in a war. Then again, Teresa doubted that logic would hold up under scrutiny. The real issue she should think about was whether it was worth giving away their position, or if they should just silently retreat to fight another day.

"I think we should take at least a few out, when in Rome you know?" Sarah continued. "Our issue with Chernobyl is its growth, right? We can't keep up with it, but if we took out a few of those guys I'm sure we'd buy ourselves at least a little bit of time."

"It'd be risky." Teresa's dad warned, seeming to be against the idea.

"Everything we've done is risky, that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it."

"We've already done a lot here, I think we should leave and end it on a good note. Regroup with your army and live to fight another day. Any impact we could make now would be minimal."

"I think we should talk it over with everyone." Teresa said, getting both sides of the argument. Jake and Preston still hadn't said their thoughts on the matter, and she wanted to hear the opinions of all her party members.

"I think your dad is right." Jake said. "We can attack, sure, but that wouldn't make a big difference. It'd be a big risk for very little reward. We might not be able to retreat to meet up with everyone else again without leading a wave of Avatars right to them."

"Hear me out though, what if we don't retreat?" Preston asked. "If we keep doing hit and run attacks on these guys, taking just a few out and hiding before they locate us, we can make our distraction last a lot longer. Avatars won't be able to leave this place because doing so would allow us to attack it again. We don't need to meet up with the army yet, we can keep buying more time."

"Are you sure we could manage that?" Teresa asked. "How's everyone's resources? I don't think anyone is in perfect condition yet, I don't want us to do too much only to screw ourselves over in the process."

"Do you think we should retreat?" Sarah asked earnestly. "If that's what you're thinking I'm not entirely against it."

"You switched up on that plan pretty fast." Randall said.

"I have a lot of faith in Teresa's judgement in situations like this, even if I don't necessarily agree with her."

"I'm not leaning one way or the other yet, I want to think it through before I form an opinion." Teresa said honestly. "I used to jump at the first okay idea that crossed my mind, and it resulted in me running around half-assing a lot of stuff. I think we could do a lot of good here attacking on and off, but I also think we should coordinate with Nikolas and Ezio. We've seen the traps, we have information they could use."

"That's a good point." Preston said. "They should hear about this, it's just difficult ignoring an opportunity right in front of us."

"Nothing of this nature has been mentioned in any of the meetings, I don't think they know about this." Jake added. "If they arrive somewhere else along the hill, they might advance into burning oil. We should find them, come up with a plan together, and launch a coordinated strike instead of something this improvised."

"What if the Avatars mobilize again?" Sarah asked. "From the look of it, they just came back from a fight with the army, they aren't going to be in good condition either. There are safer alternatives to attacking ourselves, Teresa has <Monster Hunt>. She can get more monsters here even without another lure. If we retreat, the Avatars just might be able to find the army before we do."

"We need to put some more trust in our allies, they should have recovered enough by now. With them we'd be able to handle another swarm of Avatars, Teresa already took care of the drones." Jake countered.

"No I didn't?" Teresa said. "I took out two of those containers, but there are still a lot more drones for sure. Remember how many were destroyed by that lightning wand on the first day? I think the containers were just there for the drones to reload, they could always be equipped with those missiles again."

"Then that's even more reason why we should retreat. With <Suffocate>, you're able to destroy those drones and protect everyone else. We have critical information and skills that could benefit the others. I get that having a train of Avatars follow us around would likely give the army some time, but I think we can accomplish more if we work with other people." Jake continued.

"By the time we return here, a lot of the damage to the hill might already be repaired." Sarah said.

"We'll have more people to siege it with. We may have damaged a facility, but for all we know there are twenty more factories behind that hill building even more Avatars. We won't be the only ones to have gotten a monster lure, and even if that strategy doesn't work a second time we'll have a lot more people with us to come up with a plan."

"I think I'm in favor of the plan to regroup." Teresa said after some thought. "Attacking now is tempting, very tempting, and that's probably what I would have done if I was in this situation a few weeks ago. Just damaging a building we can't even see properly gave us a bunch of points in our quest screens, but we don't know what those points do anyways. Jake is right, we don't know what's beyond that hill and it seems to stretch pretty far. I think our best bet is a coordinated strike, trying to do more now would be too much."

"Alright, then we retreat." Sarah said, causing a strangely concerned look to cross Randall's face. "We'll head back and find them. We need to be quick and we need to be quiet. Preston's got Jake and Teresa's got her dad, I'll keep my bow out and ready if something goes wrong."

"Got it." Teresa said, approaching her dad. "Ready for another piggyback ride?"

"Yeah, I'm ready." He said, his voice still sounding worried.

"Are you good?"

"I'll tell you later, it's not important right now."

"Got it."

Within moments the party was ready to leave. They snuck out of the cave and began sprinting south, towards where the army had last been seen. Finding them would be difficult, but Teresa had a general idea of how to do so. They would find the spot where the battle between the army and the Completionists had taken place, then follow the trail of bodies. It was morbid, but the Contaminated Zone was huge. If they ran around blindly, who knew how long it would take to find their allies.

Teresa gradually picked up speed, hitting her max after roughly ten seconds. Her dad didn't have the Fortitude to handle the acceleration that <Dash> could provide, though she had plenty of experience carrying fragile people from Mathew and Thomas.

She wondered how they were doing in Arconette. The operation had already gone on longer than expected, were they worried? Hopefully Thomas was still training, though she doubted Mathew and Gabriel would have let him give up. She wasn't even sure if Thomas needed to train anymore now that they had found her dad, who also had <Familial Duty> and was already at a higher level. Still, a bit of monster hunting would be good for the guy anyways, it was the smart move. Things may not have worked out as planned, but she was glad they at least helped him reunite with his kids.

Now, they were doing what Teresa hoped was a smart move themselves. It was time to find the army again.

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