The escape from Nouarosso went as smoothly as could be expected after they exited the tunnels. The majority of the elites from the city would be still out hunting monsters and gaining levels, meaning Teresa just had to avoid any nearby Portals she could sense with
Despite being in a mountain, the terrain around Nouarosso was pretty flat and open, with dark compacted soil and sediments. It meant they were pretty exposed, but it also meant that Teresa or Sarah could spot others easily as well.
Thankfully, they had no encounters with people. It was strange being on flat open land, especially with increased Perception and with the size of the planet. The world was huge, which meant the horizon was farther away. The curve of the planet was gradual due to its large size, meaning they could see much farther than if they were on flat ground on Earth.
Even with insane eyesight, Teresa couldn’t see forever into the distance. It wasn’t that stuff hid behind the horizon, rather that things were so far away she still couldn’t make out any details past a certain point. There was also the occasional, slight change in the terrain's height that also blocked off some things even with relatively flat ground, but over such a massive area the ground couldn’t be perfectly level.
In one direction, she could see the mountain. In the other, the massive above ground coral reef larger than many pre-System forests. In between, an almost endless expanse of flat ground with an occasional mountain that peaked into the clouds.
As a matter of fact, it was highly likely that Teresa’s eyes passed over several people from Nouarosso that were just so far away she didn’t notice. There was flat ground for at least 50 miles before the horizon finally broke her line of sight, and that was in both directions. It was like there was a straight strip of the terrain with an occasional mountain that were all more or less lined up.
“We have to talk.” Randall said, disturbing the silence.
“You’re right, where are we going next?” Teresa asked. “Check how far Sasha is from us now, she’s the last one we need to find. We’ll also need to drop off Benjamin and teleport him back to The Mall.”
“Actually about that.” Preston said, raising a hand. “I need to talk with you about that, dad. We didn’t really get the chance to explain much to you at all, and we need to talk about what’s going on in Nouarosso. First and foremost though, I don’t feel comfortable with you being level 0. You need to get at least a few levels.”
Teresa wasn’t entirely positive that should be his first priority in his condition, but surprisingly Benjamin agreed wholeheartedly.
“You’re right, I don’t want to stay like this.” Benjamin said, glancing at each person in the party. “As I am now, I’m weak. No two ways about it. At first, I thought maybe things weren’t so bad. Maybe not perfect, or even peachy, but the apocalypse could be a whole lot worse you know? At least we aren’t in a nuclear winter. Then when the healers went missing, and we weren’t allowed to leave, I realized I was wrong. I don’t know where they came from, but Nouarosso kept getting more people. More people to do more work, but not enough housing. We had to cycle houses, I got the house for 12 hours a day and someone else had it for the other 12. Still, I told myself it’s the apocalypse, I shouldn’t complain. Then there were the monsters in those caves…”
Benjamin paused for a moment, nobody wanted to interrupt the man.
“Every now and then, a tunnel would have a Portal spawn. Even if the powerful considered them weak, they were often stronger than a fully grown man. They had weapons, and we had mining equipment. Digging all day, you’re not in peak condition. They’d clear the tunnels out of monsters whenever they showed up, but we normally found out there was something in there the hard way. Some died, some needed to be healed. The more debt you were put in, the larger the payments. If you missed one, they could cut your Endurance in half at night and make it harder to breathe. Whatever stat they deemed most annoying, cut in half when you’re not working. Even after I saw a man get burned as an example, I still kept telling myself it wasn’t as bad as it could be. Not until I saw my son cut a man’s arm off and stab him did I realize I was wrong. If my boy has to do that, this is that bad. I need to get stronger, I don’t think I could live with myself if I didn’t.”
Preston and his dad just nodded at each other, and eventually hugged it out after a few moments. It was tragic, but Benjamin had the right attitude. He needed to get stronger. Everyone did.
She was also fully aware her dad was still looking at her and hadn’t checked on Sasha’s location yet.
“We need to talk about what you did in there.” Randall said, still looking at Teresa.
“Alright, go on.” Teresa replied, matching his gaze.
“You murdered them.” Randall said, sounding sad more than anything. “I know I already talked about this, but you attacked them first. You didn’t discuss this with any of us beforehand, you went straight to killing them.”
“Yes, yes I did.” Teresa replied, waiting for him to continue. A couple seconds passed, and Teresa realized that was it. “... go on?”
“What do you mean ‘go on’? You don’t see anything wrong with this?”
“We’ve killed plenty of people before.” Teresa said confidently. “You’ve killed people, or at least helped kill them.”
“In self defense, they always attacked first. That assassin guy? He was going to kill you. The people in New Haven? Same deal. This time, you struck first. You can’t just go straight to killing people. You brought us into it too.”
“We all had the chance to stop that.” Teresa said, confused. “You know, when we were signalling each other.”
“When we were what?”
“You know, like when you scratched your nose.
“I’m so lost here.”
Teresa was also a bit confused. When they had been walking to meet Jeffrey, they had all subtly signalled each other that they were about to start a fight. It wasn’t planned, it’s not as if they had signals for every scenario or something crazy, but it was just an improvised series of signals.
They all had a few ticks before they started fighting. Teresa had a tendency to slightly change her posture when walking to a Portal. She had repeated that without thinking, and Sarah had caught onto it. In return, Sarah had positioned her arms to rest with her hands slightly closer to her weapons. Preston and Jake then caught on, and did something similar. Jake deflated a bit and clenched his hands briefly, then Preston started slowly flicking his wrist in various directions to stretch it.
These were all extremely minor things they just had a habit of doing sometimes before a fight. Something nobody really thought about. It was due to their time spent fighting together that they had managed to completely improvise a subtle signal that could be passed off as normal fidgeting or just changing resting positions.
When they had looked at Randall, her dad, he had scratched his nose. She thought that was his signal, but now that Teresa thought about it he may have just had an itchy nose. Randall wasn’t clued into any of this at all, meaning he. Benjamin, and Saylee had all been caught by surprise.
“We all signalled each other that we were about to fight.” Teresa explained. “Small stuff, like stretching hands or positioning your arms casually while also being ready to quickly grab your weapon.”
“How was I supposed to know that? I’m not psychic!” Randall exclaimed, exasperated. “How long has that been a thing? I wasn’t told of it!”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“We made it up on the spot…” Teresa confessed, trying not to smile. She had to admit, she found the situation a little bit funny if she looked past the morbid bits. “Sorry about that.”
“Still, you shouldn’t be going straight to murder.” Randall said, upset.
“What would you have had me do instead?” Teresa asked as the conversation turned serious again.
“Not kill people?” Randall replied. “At least, not be the one to initiate like that.”
“Should I have just talked to them first? Told them ‘hey, stop using the System to abuse and enslave people.’ Think they would have listened to me?”
“You can at least act like it was a hard decision.” Randall said. “Some of those people might not have been in on it, you know? Some of those guards we killed, maybe they were opposed to the whole thing. Maybe they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, doing what they needed to in order to survive.”
“So they team up with a bunch of slavers? Work for them? Benefit them?” Teresa asked.
“One person isn’t always capable of changing large scale systems like that. Do you know how many people you killed?”
“I’m not sure actually, I can check my notifications-”
“No, that’s what I mean. You just killed more people than you bothered to count. At least a few of them had to have been strongly against the abuse. Sometimes the best you can do is try to make things a little less bad, and sometimes you have to do that from the inside.”
“So because some of them were nice to their slaves they get to live?”
“You know that’s not what I mean.” Randall responded. “Let me put it this way. If all the people opposed to slavery quit working for Nouarosso, then the only people who would be left would be in favor of it.”
“If they were opposed to it then they wouldn’t have been in our way.” Teresa countered.
“Maybe we could have enforced change from within. We could have had a careful plan, ensured better treatment of the people while killing less.”
“No, that would be worse. Much worse.” Teresa said. “Their government would deliberately be slow. Slow as possible. Every day it would drag on would be another day potentially hundreds of thousands are in slavery. We’d need to make deal after deal, so many concessions that Nouarosso’s government would make out like bandits. I know because we’ve seen it. While we were fighting Chernobyl, the government of Arconette spent that entire time arguing about privacy rights regarding status screens and race to prove you’re an Earth human. Why? Because if they were any quicker, less people would be trafficked, that’s what I bet. They can’t pose a genuine threat to their traffickers because they’re hostages. If that hadn’t been the case, and if they had their shit together, Thomas would still be alive.”
“I know, I’m sorry but-”
“No, I’m not done. We can’t negotiate with these kinds of people. They are willing to enslave other people, they believe they can get away with it. If we’re too soft with this, too gentle, things will get worse. In Arconette, we had what, twenty Completionists attack us because of their political landscape? That’s dangerous. Their beliefs are dangerous. Their opinions are dangerous, and they directly harm others. They risk countless lives, everyone on this planet could have died if we didn’t take out Chernobyl. Had Arconette dealt with them before we left, so many more people would have been alive. We would have dealt with Chernobyl sooner. Maybe our casualties could have even been in the single digits. Jim, Liam, Leo, they could all be alive too if Arconette had their shit together.” Teresa finished.
“What do you mean ‘had Arconette dealt with them?’” Randall asked.
“I mean they could have done something about it.” Teresa said. “Kill them, convince them, maim them, whatever. They all wound up dead anyways. Hell, Ezio could have just cut their arms off and locked those idiots in a cell until he became so powerful there was no chance they could stand up to him, until they were so far behind they wouldn’t be able to stand up to anyone.”
“That’s more than a little extreme Teresa.” Randall said with concern.
“Then give me an alternative.” Teresa demanded. “Every single day, all around the world, atrocities are happening that I can’t do anything about. Here, in Nouarosso, people are being tortured. They’re being enslaved. Kept from their families. Every day we delay, it carries on for another day. Every day, they live in slavery. Every day, someone else could be killed in there, someone who will be gone forever. If I have to choose between killing a shitload of slavers in a war quickly, or negotiating peacefully while innocent people die in the background, then I’ll gladly kill whoever I need to. If you have an alternative, give it to me. Please. I would be happy to hear another option, one that works better. Because even now, I’m thinking that I need to hurry up and get some levels so I can go back there as soon as possible and knock some heads off.”
“Teresa…” Randall started again. He looked at her with concern and something else that she couldn’t read. “I don’t think I really understood how stressed you were, and I’m sorry for that. Logically I know it hasn’t been that long since the System came around, but you’ve changed a lot and not all of it’s good. Sometimes you seem like the same person, and sometimes you’re the complete opposite. I think it might be good for you to see someone and talk to them, you know? You shouldn’t have to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, you don’t need to be responsible for righting the world’s wrongs. I’m not saying that you didn’t handle this the best you could have, maybe I’m wrong and killing them was the best we could do. It’s that I’m scared you’re going to push the line more and more. When I look at you, I see my daughter. I see the girl who’d make up games to play with Sam in the back yard when you were little. If someone has to do it, I don’t want it to be you, and I think this has all taken a toll on you.”
Teresa’s brain completely short circuited. Was he suggesting… therapy? Was he joking? Teresa knew she probably should get therapy, but that wasn’t what was getting to her. She had been depressed for years. The first time she thought about killing herself, she was in third grade. Not once had her family recommended therapy.
Only now, now that Teresa felt like she had her shit together more than ever, did he recommend it? She wasn’t perfect, she knew that much. She was aware she was getting more violent, and Teresa had a tendency to belittle her own accomplishments by comparing her capabilities to those who outshone her, but that was still an overall improvement. At least she didn’t want to kill herself anymore.
The fact that only now he was recommending therapy was… sure something. Teresa wasn’t sure if she was sad, happy, amused, or just pissed off about it. How could he go for over a decade not noticing there was anything wrong, then suddenly start becoming perceptive once things were turning up for her? Maybe her definition of ‘turning up,’ was pretty bad, but the bar was low.
By the time he recommended it, she had already made up her mind to get therapy. His recommendation amounted to nothing, as he took too damn long. It was like being told to wash the dishes as a kid when you were already going to, There was a lot of pent up emotion there that Teresa didn’t realize she had. Frustration, loneliness, spite, rage, that nobody noticed something was wrong.
She shook her head, trying to get her thoughts back together. Maybe someone should have noticed something sooner, but it’s not as if she could say she had been open with her emotions in the first place either. Her family weren’t psychics, made plenty clear by her dad scratching his nose completely oblivious to what was going on in Nouarosso.
It was complicated. It was all too damn fucking complicated. So much so, that Teresa did the healthy thing and shoved it all deep down, pile it all away in a place that will one day come back in the form of rage. Okay, she wasn’t actually going to do that, but still, she wasn’t going to say or do anything based on her emotions when she wasn’t even sure what she was feeling, or if those feelings were valid in the first place.
Instead, she’d focus on the logical things. The things she could understand.
“We should talk about where we’re going next, then the fight, make sure there’s nothing we missed and we all take something away from it.” Teresa said, changing the subject. “Are we bringing Benjamin to Stormwreck to teleport or what?”
“I’d prefer to come with you guys.” Benjamin said. “I haven’t seen my son in a while, and I want to get stronger. If I’ll be in the way then do whatever is most convenient, but if possible I’d like to come along.”
“If it’s fine with everyone else I don’t see much of a problem.” Teresa said, figuring Preston could just carry his dad. It would be slower at first, but he could fight with Saylee against really weak monsters. “So we’ll head straight to Sasha then. Let’s start tracking her, Stormwreck wasn’t able to teleport us any closer to her if I remember right, so we’ll be going on foot.”
As she said this, Randall was still looking at her with emotions Teresa didn’t try to read, as she didn’t have the capacity for it right now. He definitely wasn’t happy with the forced change of subject, but Teresa didn’t want to react to that yet. Instead, she focused on the fight, and began to share where she could have improved. She also still had several bodies in her
“Personally, I hesitated to use my sword too long against the fire mage. Fighting against people, my go to response is to just use my hands since I’m more familiar with it. I know I just got