Even with reinforcements on their way, Teresa still needed to survive her current predicament. She refreshed <Facilitated Restoration> on herself as it was already running low, then drew her boomerang from her <Inventory>. She had charged it with <Embers> a long while ago, and thankfully it remained charged after not using it and leaving it in her Soul. Her goal was to use as few resources as possible, using <Monster Hunt> like that had almost completely drained her Mana reserves. She had just under 350 Mana remaining, about a third of her full capacity.

<Sturdy Outer Shell> was working wonders at letting her tank the damage. It added an extra layer for the radiation to burrow through, slowing it down and weakening it enough for <Facilitated Restoration> to neutralize. Unfortunately it was extremely Mana hungry, but thankfully it didn't run on only Mana. She canceled the skill and reactivated it using exclusively Stamina. It helped with conserving her Mana a lot, but it also meant Teresa couldn't prioritize certain parts of her body anymore with the skill. She only had <Mana Control>, nothing for controlling Stamina.

She was beginning to notice an issue with her current build. She kept getting new skills and abilities that were great and all, but she only had so much Mana and Stamina. It meant she did great in short confrontations and situations that could be solved quickly or with hit and run strategies, but when she was forced into a drawn out battle like this she was shit out of luck.

Teresa pulled her shield out of her <Inventory> to help protect herself, but it very quickly began to crack after just a few hits. The shield was from the Tutorial, something she had picked up from skeletons. It wasn't able to handle being shot by level 50s. While the main threat of the projectiles was the radiation infused into them, they were also traveling incredibly fast. They packed a lot of force behind them, and soon Teresa's shield would be nothing but splinters.

It was fine, she could sacrifice the shield for a few more seconds of safety. Give it enough time and she could probably get another. As a matter of fact, she was kind of regretting not grabbing an extra before leaving. Maybe one of those stores in the settlement would let her buy another shield someday, but for now this was what she was working with.

Teresa kept her back to a tree to cut off more angles of attack, if escape wasn't an option and fighting back would just speed up her demise then she needed to reduce just how much damage she was taking. She considered using <Dash> to try and dodge the endless barrage of attacks, but that would likely result in a higher resource consumption. Plus, there was no way she would be able to avoid everything.

There were about sixty slimes each with the ability to fire a deadly projectile. They seemed to prefer keeping their distance, but they didn't budge at the threat of melee combat. This meant they weren't closing in on her, but they were still entirely able to trap her with slimes on all sides. The trees were all coated in a nasty green fluid that would burn through Teresa's climbing gloves, and it seemed the slimes themselves were made of something similar.

Due to the logistics of having multiple large creatures trying to fire at a small target without hitting each other, only about fifteen slimes were actually firing projectiles at her accurately. Many tried to lob a projectile over their slime allies, but their attacks rarely came close. All around her the ground was being covered in the radioactive substance, multiple projectiles were actually hitting other slimes. Unfortunately it seemed they didn't take any damage from their own attacks, but Teresa was still hunkered down behind her shield.

Was it even worth surviving this? Even if she did, would things get any better? Before the System Teresa had wanted to kill herself because of how bleak she believed her future was, but looking at how things were now she was in the same situation. So what, she should just keep pushing on, going farther on some adventure only to find out half her family was probably dead? Even then, there was the situation with the multiverse-

Enough of that. This was not the time to spiral, she had bigger issues.

Before her shield completely fell apart, Teresa threw her boomerang in front of her at no target in particular. She repositioned herself to the opposite side of the tree trunk and activated the boomerang's ability, causing a large burst of flames to shoot out like a small explosion directly in the slime's line of sight. As soon as she didn't have to worry about her own spell hitting her, she moved again back to her original position on the tree and caught the boomerang as it returned.

This didn't accomplish much, but it seemed to block their field of view for just a few moments. Did slimes see with vision or did they use some sort of echolocation? They were just large green blobs of goo, it's not like they had eyes or discernible features at all. Regardless, she had earned herself a few more seconds without expending significant resources. She put her boomerang back in her <Inventory>. There was something else she had stored away in there too, but there was simply no safe way to use it.

Her shield cracked apart as it finally gave out, leaving her with nothing but a splintered board in her hand. She thought quickly, deciding the most important thing to protect was her head. She could heal the rest of her body if it got infused with radiation, but she had already seen firsthand how risky and difficult it was to fix brain damage. Teresa lifted her arms in front of her as she stood in an orthodox boxing stance, both hands by her mouth.

When a projectile came for her body, she simply tanked it. <Sturdy Outer Shell> took most of the damage, but a decent chunk of it was starting to get through. Teresa could feel her Restoration Mana from <Facilitated Restoration> trying to eliminate the radiation and cancerous cells while spread throughout her whole body, but if she kept that up for too long her spell would expire too quickly. She focused on moving her Restoration Mana to the important parts of her body, such as her organs and head. She could feel blisters forming all over her skin as she did this, but it would take a while for that to kill her. Teresa was essentially keeping herself on life support, focused only on her vital functions.

She still dodged the occasional attack where she could, sidestepping and leaning out of the way of several projectiles. It just wasn't feasible to dodge all of them. Sometimes an attack would almost hit her in the face, and she had to block with her hands. Other times she could slip under a projectile or two, but would still get hit in the side or in the legs. She didn't want any specific part of her body to get hit too much, so she alternated between protecting her head with the back of her hands and her shoulders, rolling them up to block the occasional strike.

She changed to a southpaw stance, changing the distribution of attacks she was receiving. Teresa would have laughed thinking about how she was practically a rotisserie chicken if not for the fact her entire body was in agony. It was starting to become something she was used to, the pain was still very much present but she could almost disassociate in a manner where she still focused on the fight without really thinking about her condition. Probably not great, but surely it was fine.

Some of the slimes started to move in, getting closer to their target likely with the goal to eat her. How lovely, another issue she needed to figure out because why not?

A shimmering barrier of light appeared in front of her, blocking several attacks before breaking. It gave Teresa just a few seconds of reprieve, but her heart sank when she realized that the wrong reinforcements had arrived. Her party was in no way prepared to handle this.

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All of the slimes froze for a second at the sound of an arrow colliding with what sounded like stone, pausing their siege on Teresa. An arrow had smashed into the Portal, causing only superficial damage but still getting the attention of every slime in the encampment.

A cut of white air slashed into the Portal from a completely different angle, doing almost no damage but still irritating the slimes enough to make them lose focus on Teresa. This gave her the chance to pull out her Mana recharging staff to start replenishing her resources just a little bit faster while she was safe.

This might be bad, how was she going to keep them safe from the radiation? The slimes? The projectiles? Thomas and Mathew had to be nearby too, they were going to be screwed.

Regardless, the momentary pause might just be what was needed. She charged up shotgun <Embers> and blasted apart a large chunk of the tree trunk behind her. This removed the bark covered in radioactive goop via explosive force, allowing her to climb to safety. She hadn't been able to escape since the trees had been constantly covered in radioactive waste that scorched the palms of her gloves, preventing her from sticking to the surface. It also made the bark way too weak to hold her weight, but now that the attacks had ceased she could actually do something.

She scrambled up the tree, blasting chunks of radioactive waste away as she climbed. Within seconds she was out of range of the slimes on the ground, but it wasn't over. They still needed to escape, and the slimes were converging on Sarah and Preston.

A red wave of energy blanketed the area from Jake's <Taunt>, making the slimes hesitate even more. Some of them began firing in the general direction of Sarah, some at Preston, and some at Jake. Everybody seemed to be spread out to split up the attention of the slimes, but by tracking where her party was attacking from it appeared they were converging at a point in the woods.

Teresa jumped from her vantage point to clear the slimes, going over them entirely to get away. She activated <Healing Touch>, <Purify> and <Dash> as she ran, focusing on her legs. It was wonky trying to do all of this while holding onto her staff, but she didn't need to actually touch the specific part of her body that was injured. Just pressing the edge of her palms to her hip was enough to get the Restoration Mana looping back into herself, making her magic go through its anti-cancer wombo combo.

An earth shattering roar shook the forest, making Teresa's ears start ringing. The reinforcements she had been actually expecting had arrived, and if they were strong enough to detect Teresa's Karmic Magic then they had yet another distraction to play to their advantage.

Teresa spotted Preston and Sarah who already met up, and heard Jake running towards them as well.

"Holy shit Teresa are you okay?" Sarah asked.

"Dude you look like Deadpool." Preston blurted, concerned.

"I'll be fine, don't worry about it." Teresa answered as she continued using her spells.

"Why the fuck is there a dinosaur here?" Jake yelled as he got close.

"That's just Teresa." Preston told him, but Jake shook his head.

"No, there's a literal fucking dinosaur!" Another roar sounded out, coming from near the Portal. Teresa glimpsed a large grey figure wreaking havoc amongst the slimes, smashing them into the ground and clawing them apart.

{Spinosaurus (F) (lv 75)}

Several kill notifications from assists on the slimes filled Teresa's feed, giving her a very nice amount of experience.

"Where's Thomas and Mathew? We need to grab them and run!" Teresa said.

"Half a mile away or so, they should be fine." Sarah responded, getting the memo and already taking off. "Between you and them, we didn't even have to think about choosing you, but really they should be fine on their own for a few minutes."

"Maybe if they'd actually level up we wouldn't have to worry about it so much." Preston grumbled.

"It's stupid but it's still Thomas' choice, nothing we can do about it." Teresa said as they all ran away.

"If Thomas doesn't want to see combat, then that's how it is." Sarah agreed.

"I'm surprised you aren't more opposed to it." Preston told her.

"I'm extremely opposed to it, but I'm doing what I can." Sarah responded.

"Is nobody concerned about the fucking dinosaur? Why do we have dinosaurs now?" Jake yelled, being far more concerned than anyone else. "Like I get the rest of the monsters, but we're doing dinosaurs now? Really?"

"You got a problem with dinosaurs man?" Preston asked. "Last I checked that kind fella just gave us the perfect getaway."

"I don't have a problem with dinosaurs, I have a problem with what that means. Is it from a Portal somewhere or are they just walking around like the Albino Gorillas? Are there other prehistoric creatures roaming around, like Meganeura or something?"

"What the hell is a Meganeura?"

"Like a giant flying insect. What about Arthropleura, those were supersized millipedes."

"Okay I see why you're concerned now."

"The Spinosaur was level 75, so yeah we should definitely be worried." Teresa admitted. "Hopefully the slimes kill it."

"It was level fucking what?" Jake asked, but their conversation was cut short as they spotted Mathew and Thomas.

"What was that roar we heard?" Thomas asked, worried.

"Massive dinosaur, no time to talk let's go!" Sarah said, scooping Mathew up and continuing on. Preston grabbed Thomas and they continued to run for their lives, with Thomas wide eyed looking at Teresa.

"What happened to you?"

"Radioactive slimes." Teresa answered deadpan. That about covered it.

They probably didn't need to run as far as they did, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Teresa was dangerously low on HP, but her healing spells were coming in clutch. She got through the worst of her injuries before she ran out of Mana, leaving several tumors and burns along her upper body. Once they finally stopped, she excused herself to vomit in private. This fucking sucked.

Teresa glanced through her notifications and smiled when she realized she had actually leveled up from the encounter, so it wasn't all that bad. She was already close to level 44 too, she was 90% of the way there. She wasn't sure if she got the assists because she did a lot of damage to some of the slimes or if it was because she tanked a lot of the damage and functioned as a distraction for a while. Maybe it was a combination of the two.

"You alive?" Sarah asked as she got closer, coming to check on Teresa.

"Yeah, give me like two hours and I'll be fine again." Teresa answered, still trying to regenerate her Mana faster. Environmental Mana was all over, with <Mana Control> Teresa was able to absorb it to make it her own and replenish her Mana pool.

"We're thinking we might have to go around the radiation, I'm not sure we're strong enough to push straight through it." Sarah admitted.

"You know, I was thinking the same thing earlier. Level 50s on the outskirts doesn't exactly seem inviting, we might be out of our league here. That's not even accounting for Mathew and Thomas."

"Yeah, Thomas would probably have a lot of problems."

"And Mathew, he's level 0."

"For now."

"What do you mean 'for now' Sarah?" Teresa asked.

"I mean he's a teenager and we have video game stats. If anyone's going to be pestering Thomas about getting some levels the most, it's gonna be him."

"I guess, but that doesn't mean-" Teresa stopped talking as a notification appeared in front of her. Sarah seemed to be looking at a screen of her own that wasn't visible to Teresa. "Did you get that too?"

"Yeah, I got it."

The System had just given them a quest.

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