“...and that’s the plan.” Everyone in Teresa’s party was awake, nobody was sleeping all too great. They had decided they were all going to go back to The Mall for a bit via teleportation while waiting for the rest of the army to get back. It was going to be expensive, but they had the money for it. Additionally, this would assist with their long term goals.
Randall was going to use
Once they used Randall’s skill on everyone while in Arconette, they’d then teleport to The Mall and repeat the process.
“Oh, one more thing.” Teresa said, remembering something. “Sarah, I’m not entirely positive on this, but I think someone is tracking you.”
“What?”
“My dad started tracking me while we were fighting the Completionists. I managed to grab onto the ‘thread’ and pull back, but in that moment I saw a thread attached to you as well. I’m not sure if that means anything or not, but I thought you should know now that we aren’t in the middle of combat anymore.” Teresa explained.
“Well, I’ll try to hope that’s good news. Let’s get this started then, who wants to go first?” Sarah asked. Everyone was silent for a moment. While this was exactly what they had been working towards with Thomas, now that they were faced with it reality was sinking in. If Randall couldn’t detect someone, that likely meant they were dead. Maybe it’d have something to do with them being on the other planet while not being directly related to Randall himself, but one way or another someone was likely to get some bad news from this.
“I’ll go first.” Jake decided, stepping up. “I’ll be the quickest anyways, I’ve only got my mom. I’d like to find my grandpa too, but I get that it’s not what we agreed upon.”
“Alright, let’s give it a shot.” Randall said, placing a hand on Jake’s shoulder. From Teresa’s perspective, nothing really happened. Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one to feel nothing.
“So what am I supposed to do? Should I be feeling something?” Jake asked.
“Uh, I don’t know, I’m not getting anything either. Are you thinking of her?” Randall asked.
“Yeah, I definitely am. Maybe you need to know about her a bit? Her name is Shizuko, though she’s only a quarter Japanese or something like that. Black hair, brown eyes, pretty tall, like around five foot ten…” Jake continued to describe his mother, but nothing happened.
“I’m sorry, but I’m still not getting anything.” Randall said, looking worried.
“Maybe it doesn’t work on other people after all then, like if I think about my grandpa then- oh.” Jake paused, a look of despair crossing his face. Randall looked the same way. “He’s alive.”
“650 to 1900 miles south, maybe southeast.” Randall informed, his skill working as intended as he took his hand off Jake’s shoulder.
“If it worked that fast with him, then that means…” Jake’s voice trailed off, everyone understanding what that meant for Jake’s mom.
“I’m so sorry. Is there anyone else you want me to look for?” Randall asked. They had agreed immediate family members only, but given the circumstances nobody was going to say he couldn’t check on anyone else.
“No, it was just my mom and I.” Jake’s voice was low, nobody knew what to say. Trying to provide any reason that it might be something other than death would be hollow. The most likely result was that Jake had no immediate family left.
“We’ll go see your grandpa, he’s close enough.” Preston comforted, nobody objecting to this. Jake just nodded and stepped aside.
“You want to go next?” Randall asked, looking at Preston.
“Sure, let’s get this over with.”
They repeated the process, and found that both of Preston’s parents were still alive. His dad wasn’t overwhelmingly far, they had gotten worse numbers when trying to find Gabriel with Thomas. His mother, however, was not on the same planet.
The fact Randall could detect Preston’s mom even though she was on another planet pretty much confirmed Jake’s mom was dead. Maybe there was something blocking Randall from tracking her, but that was a far off notion that nobody dared to voice. It was incredibly unlikely, and trying to pursue that train of thought would just be a cruel source of false hope.
Preston’s dad was southeast of Arconette, so the current path would likely take them to see Jake’s grandfather then head straight to Preston’s father from there. They just had to see how Sarah’s situation was looking first to decide their final route.
“We’ll start with my parents and then my sister.” Sarah said as Randall placed his hand on her shoulder.
“Alright, I’m down to about half of my Mana so we should be good for them, then we can start looking at extended families for everyone.” Randall said as they repeated the process. “Who are you thinking of right now?”
“My mom.” Sarah said, as her eyes suddenly went wide. “Thank fuck.”
“Other planet.” Randall said, getting a mixed response from Sarah.
“Well, at least she’s alive. Now my dad.”
They did it again, and once more Sarah’s dad was alive on the other planet.
“They’re both there? Damn, alright. I guess we’re going to have to figure out long distance calls or something. Now that just leaves Sasha-”
“Shit!” Randall exclaimed, gripping onto Sarah’s shoulder tightly as he went pale.
“Dad you alright?” Teresa asked, immediately activating
After several seconds, Randall let go of Sarah while gasping for breath.
“I’m okay, I’m okay.” Randall said, holding up a hand as if to say give me a second.
“I sensed she’s still alive, but what happened?” Sarah asked.
“It drained all of my Mana.” Randall explained. “Something similar happened with Teresa once, but not nearly that extreme. I think your sister sensed we were tracking her and pulled back on the thread to track us. Completely forced the Mana out of my Soul and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”
“That happened with me?” Teresa asked, thinking about how she had caught Randall tracking her and pulled back on a karmic thread once.
“Not like that, when you did it I lost extra Mana, but not all of it.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“So does that mean Sasha has a karmic skill of some sort?” Sarah asked.
“Probably, yeah. She’s 4,156 miles and 460 feet exactly that way, roughly east.” Randall said.
“That’s pretty precise, there’s not a range on that?” Teresa asked.
“At first yeah, then I got an exact distance, then that distance started shrinking.” Randall explained. “I don’t know what to tell you, that’s never happened before.”
“So then maybe she’s the one who’s been tracking me.” Sarah said, curious.
“So it looks like we’ll start by heading south, southeast to Jake’s grandpa. Then we’ll go from there to Preston’s dad, then try to meet up with Sarah’s sister.” Teresa said, laying out the plan. “The Mall is north of Arconette, right? So I’m not sure how much using
“Did Saylee mention where any of the other cities were? Maybe we can work out an agreement and just teleport straight to some of these places.” Sarah said.
“That might save us some time, though the distances aren’t too bad this time. Sasha is pretty far, but if she’s moving towards us and we can teleport some of the distance then we can do this pretty quickly. If we really rush, we can make it to Jake’s grandpa in a day or three.” Teresa said. “It’d depend on the terrain, but if we can run 60 miles an hour pretty comfortably, then best case scenario we make it there in just 11 to 32 hours of traveling. Not to mention, teleporting might be possible.”
“If you think about it, we might be able to get around the planet pretty easily.” Preston said. “Every city has probably met at least one we haven’t. It’s like the six degrees of separation thing.”
“The what?” Teresa asked.
“It’s the idea that everyone knows everyone else through like, six social connections at most. I don’t know if that’s how many it actually is or if it’s even true, but theoretically you’re just six connections away from anyone. If your friend is connection one, and their friend is connection two, then their friend is connection three, and so on. With that logic, if you were really dedicated you could even meet Obama or something.” Preston explained.
“Why Obama?” Jake asked.
“I don’t know, he was just the first person who came to mind. You guys think he’s still alive?”
“We’re getting side tracked, but you’re saying we’ll meet everyone by other cities branching out and meeting people as well?” Teresa asked.
“Pretty much. The real question is how that’ll work with the alien settlements. So long as humans don’t start problems with other species, we’ll probably be able to teleport just about anywhere on the planet.” Preston said optimistically. Everyone looked awkwardly at each other for a moment, prompting Preston to sigh. “Okay, we’re totally gonna have racial problems with aliens aren’t we? Who knew racism would be what stops us from developing a planet-wide teleportation network.”
“Now that you point that out, I’m surprised everyone in Arconette is human.” Randall said.
“Well, they aren’t exactly big fans of alien life here. There’s a bunch at The Mall, I’ll introduce you later.” Teresa said. “We all good to go back to The Mall? Remember, first thing we’re doing is seeing Mathew and Gabriel.”
Everyone nodded in agreement, and they set off towards Arconette’s City Monolith. They were splurging quite a bit on this trip, it cost Teresa $2,701.21 going one way. To be fair, it was several thousand miles being traversed in an instant while carrying the Elephant’s Foot in her
It was strange to think about how little time had actually passed since the System became a part of Teresa’s life. Currently, Teresa could make well over $100 a day, closer to $200 by hunting monsters. It may not sound like a lot or anything, but a System dollar was far more valuable than an American dollar, and she would only make more as she got stronger. She was able to eat a full meal at Marty’s for $5. It wasn’t exactly as great as a pre-System restaurant or anything, but as far as apocalypse food went it was pretty solid.
Was Teresa rich? Shit, maybe she was. She wasn’t used to that. What do people do once they get a lot of money? Buy a boat maybe? Should she be preparing for retirement or something? Did the System have a 401k or anything along those lines?
Teresa shook her head as she interfaced with the System, proceeding to teleport to The Mall. She was just trying to distract herself with random trains of thought again to keep from thinking about the conversation she was about to have.
FWOOMP
She was standing on a softer patch of moss and grass, in a clearing surrounded by forest, tents, and even a couple longhouses. Her party members began to appear around her, and a familiar voice greeted her.
“Welcome back!” William said, the elderly man walking towards them. It wasn’t lost on Teresa that he was moving surprisingly well for a guy his age.
{Human (F-) (lv 5)}
“You've been killing monsters?” Teresa asked, very surprised.
“Just the minimum required, we’re starting a program that’s still in its early stages.” William explained. “I was iffy about it at first, but now I can see the appeal behind it.”
“I definitely want to talk about that more later, we’re looking for Mathew and Gabriel.” Teresa said. William looked at the group for a moment, then sighed.
“I see. I’ll show you to them.”
William led the way to one of the longhouses, constructed out of logs, fiber, and what looked like clay in between several of the logs. It was definitely amateur, but Teresa figured that what was most important is that it worked. Albino Gorillas were working alongside humans constructing another structure not too far away, and Teresa noticed several stakes in the ground all over marking something. Were they planning everything out for the long run? That was smart.
They entered a longhouse, finding a long hallway with a fireplace in the center. There were several rooms attached to either side of the hall made with thin walls, making Teresa think of a particularly wide hotel hallway. There was a lot of clay around the fireplace, forming a chimney leading up to the roof to ventilate smoke. There also was what looked like a square barrel full of water right next to it, likely for emergencies. There weren’t proper doors, it looked like they just took apart the front of several tents to make entrances to each room that could be opened with a zipper.
“Teresa!” Mathew yelled, seeing them approach. It looked like he had been pacing by the fire. Gabriel had been seated beside it as well but stood up as soon as he heard Teresa come in.
“Hey.” Teresa said, her voice softer than normal. The two caught onto this immediately, and their eyes looked at everyone accompanying her.
“Did they find him?” Gabriel asked, both he and his brother now frozen in place. They looked stiff as a board, even their breathing barely moved them.
“We should go somewhere private.” Teresa said, prompting them both to deflate a bit.
“So he’s dead then.” Mathew said, still steadily matching Teresa’s gaze.
“I’m sorry, but yes. We did everything we could, we found him earlier today. I’m sorry kiddo.”
Everything went silent for a moment as both of the kids processed this. Sarah stepped forward to say something, but Mathew started speaking first.
“Damn it, why wouldn’t he fucking listen to us?” He said quietly, rage mixed with sorrow in his voice. “Maybe if we trained sooner, he could have gotten away like we did.”
Teresa was surprised at this reaction, though tried not to show anything on her face. She racked her brain for what to say, even briefly using her stats to perceive time slower, but nothing good came to mind.
“You know who did it?” Gabriel asked, also angry.
“Yes, it was a Completionist by the name of Angelo di Marino.” Teresa answered, seeing where this was going.
“Did you get him?” Gabriel asked.
“I’m sorry, but he fled Arconette and hasn’t been seen. He attacked us in the Contaminated Zone, but I haven’t seen him with my own eyes.” Teresa answered.
“So he’s alive.” Mathew said.
“Yes, I’m sorry-”
“Good. I want to be the one who kills him.”
“Mathew, it’s not that simple.” Sarah interjected. “Right now, he’s at least level 60, he has the title boosts from the Tutorial, and there are three more just like him in his party. I can’t begin to understand how you’re feeling, but he can be anywhere. Doing anything rash will result in your death.”
“That’s fine, it gives us time to get stronger ourselves.” Gabriel said. “Completionist or not, we’re going to kill him.”
A dog entered the longhouse during this discussion, walking past Teresa and approaching Mathew and Gabriel. Mijo sat down next to the two angry teenagers, looking between them. Everything paused for a moment as the two looked at the dog, staring intently.
“That’s a good idea.” Mathew said after a few moments. “We’re gonna walk the dog. I got my crossbow, I'm ready.”
“I’m ready too. Let’s go.” Gabriel said, turning to follow Mijo outside.
“What?” Sarah blurted, everyone in the party confused at this turn of events.
“Thanks for letting us know. If you hear anything else, tell us.” Mathew said before exiting the building with his brother and Mijo.
“If they’re with Mijo they’ll be fine.” William said, getting everyone’s attention. “You’ve been gone a while, let’s go get the others and catch you all up to speed.”