Type: Karmic Magic
Your strong desire to reunite with your family has caused your Soul to strengthen the karmic bonds between you and your immediate family members whom you have the strongest karmic bonds with. You may pull on these karmic bonds to get a sense for your family.
“I had other options.” Madeline said unsteadily. “Some skills that could have really helped with killing the Clubbers. But I wanted to know if my daughter was safe. Once I get out of this Tutorial, I need to find her, I need to find my Mackenzie. Then, barely even a minute after I chose
“No.” Jake interjected. “I’m the tank for the party, I’m the one who’s supposed to be taking the hits. If I hadn’t relied so heavily on my
“Had I fought more with the team, then this could have been avoided.” Preston said quietly, eyes looking down.
“It’s everyone’s fault.” Teresa whispered, her voice now just barely repaired enough to speak consistently. “Everyone could have done something. Preston and I both could have fought alongside the team, Jake could have distracted better, and Madeline could have picked a different skill.”
Teresa cleared her throat, taking a deep breath before she continued.
“And Sarah could have avoided the attack better.” She admitted. This got her a few glares, but she didn’t back down. As cold as it was, it was true. Sarah had been tied for second highest Agility at the start of the wave with Teresa, she probably just hadn’t expected an attack to come her way and hesitated too long. “All of us messed up or could have done better, but none of us are soldiers. We can’t expect perfection from our fighting, but we can still improve. Sarah isn’t dead yet, and it looks like there’s two more quests after the waves, or at least two more parts to the same quest. We get stronger, we help her when we leave the Tutorial. That’s all there is to it.”
“As soon as I got my
Teresa nodded.
“Of course, I wouldn’t expect anything else.” Teresa replied. “We all have people to worry about, and I don’t think anyone should give their lives to maybe save Sarah. Though if you do leave the Tutorial, please don’t take the staff with you. I might need it.”
Madeline nodded in return, and it seemed the party had come to an understanding. They would stay in the Tutorial for now, and do their best to get stronger for Sarah while minimizing the risks to their own lives.
Of course, Teresa had no intention of leaving the Tutorial until she was strong enough, but she wasn’t going to tell her party that. She had already come to terms with her potential death, and this made things easier. Better to hear someone you knew died from the Tutorial and not suicide, or at least Teresa thought so.
The interior of the room was still expanded, making it far larger than the lobby of the Statue of Liberty would typically be. The room had expanded at the beginning of the fourth wave, and the ceiling was still gone. Teresa noted to herself once again how this made no sense, as the Statue of Liberty was supposed to be right above the lobby, but what did she know about magically altered national monuments? Sure, the Statue of Liberty was on top of the pedestal in which the lobby resided, but the monument was also supposed to be on an island. Not the middle of a desert.
She continued to heal herself slowly, her recovery only limited by her Mana. Even with her current struggles, she did not regret putting her unallocated points into Agility. She may be out of Mana now, but she had leveled up in the last wave. Next time, Teresa would have much more Mana to use on healing.
Despite their agreement to go for another wave, everyone seemed lost and unsure of what to do. They didn’t know if the room was going to shrink back to a normal size after the last Clubber was killed. If it did shrink, they had the issue of predicting how that would interact with anything they set up. If they repaired the spike wall of mosquito legs and deer corpses, how large would it need to be? If they made it too small and the room shrank back to normal, monsters would be able to just go around the side of the wall. If they made it too big and the room shrank in on the spike wall, then who knew what would happen.
Maybe it would crush the perimeter of the wall, scrunching everything together and making the spikes far more dense. Maybe the room wouldn’t shrink back to normal at all, and the spike wall would be completely useless. There were a lot of possibilities of things that could go wrong, not to mention the horrible condition of the room.
Previously, the room had two balconies spanning opposite sides of the lobby that Madeline and Sarah had attacked from. Now, one of the balconies was turned into rubble that had made the ground far less even. Additionally, there were multiple craters and piles of debris from the Clubbers’ head smashes. This made the environment far less easy to navigate for the party in combat, and the odds of tripping had significantly increased.
It would totally suck to die in the Tutorial because someone slipped on a random rock.
After some more discussion, the party came to the consensus that the lobby was a lost cause. It had served them well in the previous waves, but it was no longer suitable to their needs. They considered using the gift shop as a defensive position, but it was too cramped to fight in. Swinging an axe or a sword around in the middle of a gift shop would be incredibly difficult, and they would likely get overrun immediately.
There was also a bookstore, a cafe, and the information center. However, all of these locations had the same issue of being either too small or too cramped. Sarah had mentioned earlier that there was a museum inside of the pedestal, however the doors that led deeper into the pedestal from the lobby were still locked. Jake and Preston both attempted to force it open using their increased Strength, however the doors did not even budge when ramming into it at full speed with a shield.
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Teresa had finally finished healing herself when the last remaining Clubber woke up, and began to scream with its terrifyingly human voice. It slammed its head against the ground repeatedly, trying desperately to move. The loud noise and occasional flying rock made it difficult to think clearly for the half of the party that didn’t have boosted mental stats, and regardless of one’s mental stats no one had the Perception to hear anyone else clearly with the screaming and thrashing.
The party went outside, putting distance between them and the Clubber. Upon leaving the lobby, everyone turned back to see how it looked from the outside only to be completely flabbergasted.
From the front of the entrance, the doorway had increased in size to look like a giant portal to the expanded lobby. Looking at the pedestal from any other angle made it seem completely normal, as if there wasn’t a super-sized lobby held within. Teresa made a note to herself that once she got out of the Tutorial, she wanted to figure out how that worked. If she could learn freaking space magic, that would be awesome.
For now, she still had other priorities. The party continued to discuss other options of what to do in the next wave, and they ultimately narrowed it down to a few choices.
They had agreed that their best bet would be to climb one of the buildings and hold out on the roof. At first, they had all thought about climbing the side of the pedestal holding up the Statue of Liberty. It was quite literally shaped like a fortress, however it had problems of its own.
Preston had climbed up the side using his increased Agility, and found that the pedestal would be great to fight on. The party had fashioned a rope out of shirts looted from the gift shop with the words “I Survived The Statue Of Liberty” printed on them in various fonts and designs. As soon as Teresa and Madeline had climbed up the side using the rope, they both felt something was off.
They shared a look as Jake attempted to climb the shirt-rope, only for it to come undone due to the weight of his armor. Preston and Jake began discussing taking off his armor and hauling it up once piece at a time, but Teresa and Madeline vetoed the idea.
It wasn’t that the pedestal was a bad position or that getting Jake’s armor up the side of a building was too difficult. They had already gone over the plan to bring his armor up one piece at a time if the rope couldn’t hold his weight. There was a much, much bigger problem that made the top of the pedestal an awful option.
It was constantly absorbing their Mana.
There was a metric shitload of Mana coursing through the concrete, so much that Teresa couldn’t make heads or tails of its purpose. If she had to wager a guess, it probably had something to do with the lobby being far larger than what the dimensions of the building should allow, though Teresa couldn’t be sure. She didn’t exactly have a lot of insight on how space magic would work, but there sure was a lot of Mana coursing through the roof of the pedestal.
The concrete acted like a vacuum that absorbed all of the Mana above the pedestal, including the Mana within their bodies. After pointing it out, everyone who had made it to the top of the pedestal opened their status screens. Sure enough, everyone’s Mana was rapidly depleting. If they tried to fight on top of the pedestal, they would have to do it without any Mana at all. That would mean none of Teresa or Madeline’s skills would work. Only Jake and Preston’s weapon mastery skills would work, that being their
That would mean no heals from Teresa, no
The party climbed back down the side of the pedestal, Preston managing to untie the rope and scale the side on his own. There were three buildings remaining that they could climb. There was the information center, the gift shop, and the building that contained both the cafe and the bookstore.
Ultimately, they decided to stay on top of the information center. The roof had the simplest, flattest shape to it while being a reasonable size to defend. The other rooftops seemed like they would be harder to defend if something began crawling up the side. If the interiors of these buildings had been too small, the rooftops were too big. The entire benefit of staying on a rooftop was that they could attack a monster as it climbed, but if the perimeter of the rooftop was too big they could get overwhelmed.
The information center rooftop was rectangular and flat, while also being sturdy enough for the party to not risk falling through. If the next wave of monsters were particularly good at demolition like the Clubbers had been, they would have a problem. However, that was a risk they had to be willing to take. The only other option was to stand in the plaza out in the open, where they could be swarmed from all sides.
Teresa had noticed more than a few glances being shot her way since the last wave, though she couldn’t blame them for it. She held a lot of responsibility now, as she was the only chance the party had at saving Sarah. They had all even agreed that if possible, they should make sure Teresa gets the most experience. This hadn’t been her idea, as she actually felt that sharing the experience as a party would be more beneficial, but everyone else dismissed this.
They weren’t planning on beating the Tutorial after all, just getting Teresa strong enough to heal Sarah. However, Teresa knew better. She had seen the condition Sarah was in better than anyone, and she knew she was a long ways away from being able to help her. There was a solid chance that if Teresa wanted to be strong enough to heal Sarah, she would have to see this through to the very end of the Tutorial.
The party made their usual rounds of preparation, with some modifications. Normally, both Madeline and Teresa would use their Mana to repair everyone’s equipment. Now, they took the extra time to ensure Teresa was the only one doing this. Repairing equipment with Mana didn’t provide any experience for increasing your personal level, but it gave her practice that benefitted her
They also agreed that they should take a much longer break between waves this time around. The last Clubber could barely move, and just thrashed about still in the lobby. Teresa had managed to level up her
Last time it had been simple curiosity on the mechanics of Mana that had led Teresa to leveling up a skill, and now it would be determination to save someone’s life. They didn’t have an infinite amount of time for her to practice, as there was only so much food in the gift shop and the cafe that wouldn’t go bad soon. There was frozen food as well, but Teresa had to think past the next wave.
According to the questline, this would be the fifth and final wave. Afterwards, there would be two more quests, and if the Tutorial followed the same rules of progression as most video games the next quests would each be harder.
Between the four of them, they had enough food for roughly 60 days. Teresa said roughly, as they weren’t entirely positive on how to ration food. A lot of the meals in the cafe didn’t have any nutrition facts on them, but there were a lot of burgers, chicken fingers, fish and chips, and pizzas. While Teresa certainly wasn’t complaining about the options, she was certain she would need to use her healing magic on everyone’s stomachs in the long term. At least it would be good practice.
After some more discussion and planning, the party decided they would spend at least two weeks practicing their skills. This was something everyone could benefit from, even if no one would gain any personal levels from it. Once the two weeks were up, they would decide if they should continue with training their skills or move onto the next wave.
They would each take turns watching the last Clubber for eight hours at a time, minus Teresa. She would occasionally check in on it to make sure it wasn’t at risk of dying anytime soon, but Teresa’s healing skills were the only reason that the party hadn’t already left the Tutorial.
Teresa was going to train the ever living shit out of her skills.