“Are you Amish by any chance?” Teresa asked. “Sorry if that’s a rude thing to say or something.”
“Not rude at all, and yes I am.” Eli replied.
“Cool, haven’t met an Amish person before.”
Teresa and Eli proceeded to talk a bit about the Amish, as Teresa herself didn’t actually know pretty much anything about them. She knew they didn’t like technology or something, but that was about it. For all she knew they flew south for the winter.
Turns out Amish people are very religious, and that hadn’t changed with the System. Yes, it was completely unexpected, but from Eli’s perspective that was no reason to assume their God hadn’t had a part in all of this. Rather than falter, their faith just adapted to the circumstances. Besides, a lot of Amish people had some exposure to the modern world, though Eli himself was very firm in his beliefs.
Eventually, the question got looped back to Teresa.
“How about you, do you belong to a church or have faith?” Eli eventually asked, putting Teresa on the spot.
“I mean, not really I guess?” Teresa responded. “To be honest, I just don’t know, and religion hasn’t really been a big part of my life at all.”
That was truthful. Really, Teresa had never been particularly religious. She had been curious, because who wasn’t curious about what happened after dying? The thing was, she just simply didn’t know enough to subscribe to any particular faith. If she spent the rest of her life trying to figure out which religion she thought was ‘correct,’ she’d eventually die still not knowing.
So it was just one of those things that she didn’t bother too much with. Did that make her an atheist? No clue. Agnostic? Also no clue. Someone being religious didn’t really impact much in Teresa’s eyes, so long as they were a decent person that was good enough to her.
It probably didn’t help that she had literally met a god before, and he had been kind of a dick intent on harvesting their universe for scraps. Still, even with the System religion was sticking around. Not too surprising to her, and if anything good for Eli for keeping his faith.
They still shot the shit, talking quietly about Eli’s faith. They didn’t want to be loud and disturb Jake and his grandpa inside. It wasn’t anything Teresa was going to subscribe to and it certainly wasn’t enough for her to suddenly become religious, but like it or not religion was a large part of society. Eli seemed like an okay enough guy, no harm in hearing him talk about something he clearly enjoyed. Plus, he made no effort to ‘convert’ Teresa, so that was a nice bonus.
Eventually, the door to the cabin opened and Jake approached the group.
“We’re gonna spend some time together. I know we were going to have a meeting with some government officials or whatnot but you guys can go ahead since we’re going to be awhile.” Jake told them.
“Alright, no worries Jake. We got it covered, it’ll just be another boring meeting anyway. We’ll catch you up later if anything interesting happens.” Teresa reassured Jake as they parted ways temporarily.
“So where exactly are we going?” Sarah asked.
“To introduce ourselves to the local government.” Saylee answered.
“Okay, but like, where exactly are we doing that?” Sarah asked again. The group was silent for a moment as they realized they had no idea where to actually go. New Haven was a sizable city after all.
“If you’re looking to meet with Peter then I can show you to the city hall.” Eli told them, making everyone feel a little relieved they weren’t completely lost.
“To be clear, is Peter the name of the Leader of this place, is he like the Lead Developer, an Ambassador…” Teresa asked, hoping for a little clarification since they were doing this with pretty much no preparations.
“He’s the Elder I suppose, so Leader sounds right.” Eli confirmed, and he began to lead the way.
Knowing a portion of the population was Amish cleared a lot of things up as they walked through the city. They had a lot of simple tools that people would otherwise take for granted, and overall New Haven seemed like a fully functioning society.
Aside from their levels. That was pretty bad. Teresa was still using
Of all the places they had visited so far, New Haven had the lowest average level. It was also the most functional from a purely societal perspective, as it appeared most everyday commodities were accounted for. They had working bathrooms in each cabin that led to an exterior tank. Occasionally she saw a few people detaching the tanks, lifting them onto a wagon, and then carting them away while someone else would replace the tank with a new one.
Those were some of the few people Teresa saw with any levels, and even then they were around level 4. It was just enough to make them pretty strong for a normal human, though still a level below the minimum in The Mall. Even then, oftentimes those working on replacing tanks were just groups of level 0s coming together and lifting heavy objects as groups.
Teresa considered that if they got a few levels under their belts, New Haven could be quite the powerhouse in terms of development. After using
They eventually arrived at a larger building that functioned as the city hall. Of each of the city halls they had visited from various places, this one seemed to look the most like an actual government building and not just another house. If Zackery was looking for labor for his sewer project, perhaps he should just ask his neighbors.
Teresa kept using
Eli led them inside and spoke with an actual receptionist, sitting at a desk in the entrance lobby. They really had their shit figured out when it came to non-System related stuff for someone to be working as a receptionist this early in the apocalypse.
“These folk here are from another city and they were looking to discuss some business with Peter, you know when he’ll be available?” Eli asked.
“I’ll go check real quick and ask, I’ll be right back.” The receptionist left through a door, leaving the group in the lobby with another receptionist. The last time Teresa had seen something this professional was at the Guild in Arconette, but even then they had just been operating out of a residential building. After a minute, the receptionist came back. “He’s able to see you now.”
“Perfect.” Saylee said, smiling. They were then led deeper into the building, though Eli stayed behind in the lobby. That was fair, he wasn’t really all that involved with this. Teresa would buy the guy dinner or something as a thank you later.
They entered a longer hall with a swivel chair in front of the City Monolith, a man in his 60s sitting there. There were four armed guards in the room, and two walkways with curtains lining either side of the hall connected to what was likely the second floor of the building. Immediately Teresa saw a massive problem.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“Welcome to New Haven!” The seated man said, the highest level person Teresa had seen so far. Level 68. The fact he was lower level than Teresa just confirmed to her that the city had a low average level. “My name’s Peter, I hear you all are from another city. I don’t believe we’ve met yet, though it’s always great to see others are still around in these times.”
Saylee looked at Teresa for confirmation that they could survive a fight, but Teresa didn’t even look back at her. Instead, Teresa stepped forward and introduced herself first.
“My name is Rebecca Flynn, an Ambassador from Sanctuary.” Teresa introduced herself, completely lying. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Tell me Rebecca, what brings you here today?” Peter asked.
“We’re just here to make introductions to make ourselves known. We’re hoping to share some information if possible.” Teresa continued, avoiding the topic of teleportation.
“I understand, though I’m not sure how much we can help you there. We’re still figuring a lot of things out ourselves here, though with everything considered it’s going much better than expected.” Peter replied.
“We saw your farmlands and I couldn’t help but think about how we recently became aware of a branch of skills that may assist in agriculture.” Teresa was really making this up as she went, trying to mix truth in with the lies. She did know of a few skills that might relate to agriculture thanks to the rewards shop after defeating Cher, though that definitely wasn’t why they were here originally.
“I see, that could certainly prove helpful to us.” Peter told her. “Where is Sanctuary, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“We would prefer for our location to remain undisclosed at this time, if that is acceptable.” Teresa answered.
“I understand the need for caution, though wouldn’t it be better for us to engage in trade if we were both aware of each other?”
“That can be arranged down the line, however I was strictly ordered not to spread knowledge of our exact whereabouts.” Teresa’s Stamina was dropping as she focused on speeding up her Perception. It was something she learned to do in Chernobyl. Technically, Teresa always was able to think significantly faster than any normal human without any effort at all, but a second still felt like a normal second to her. She could just think really fast during that second and process information incredibly quickly without feeling rushed to do so.
What she was doing was aligning her mind and her body to both operate at the same speeds, which was easier for her to do thanks to her balanced stats. In the end it didn’t make much of a difference for thinking speed, since as a second stretched to feel longer her mind and body ‘slowed’ a bit to match. In other words, she was able to move and think at almost the same speed in real time, but each second just felt longer.
There was a bit of a bonus there, she was able to think and move a little bit faster doing this, but it was particularly useful for thinking of something creative that typically required more time rather than just thinking fast. In this case, she was using it to come up with believable lies at five times normal speed.
“I understand then, orders are orders.” Peter sighed. “So what of these skills you know about?”
“Right, you see, we’ve come to be aware of skills such as
She pulled her sword out of her
Sarah drew her own bow and fired back, shooting the attacker in the shoulder while using
There were still five others in the room, four guards and Peter. Two of the guards just looked shocked at what happened, while the other two began drawing their own weapons.
They didn’t get to. Preston used
Unfortunately for him, Teresa had fought far worse than him. She used
Teresa hit both of them over the head with her sword, not wanting to do too much damage since she wasn’t sure who was involved. When she had first entered the room, she had used
The hall had two walkways suspended in the air, and Teresa had spotted a woman up there acting inconspicuous. Teresa had of course used
{Human (F-) (lv 60)(MAX)}
She had a level cap. The only people they had met with level caps so far were traffickers from other universes. That made the situation extremely dangerous. Either Peter and New Haven were directly involved with trafficking in some way, or there were traffickers operating right under their noses monitoring the entire situation.
Considering Peter and two of the guards had immediately joined in attacking Teresa and her group after they had clearly just defended themselves, Teresa knew they were in on it. As for the other two guards who hesitated, there was a chance they were just two people doing their jobs in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That, or they were just new to it all and hadn’t fought people before, because hesitation meant death.
Peter wasn’t in good shape after a single hit from Teresa, even if she was trying to be nonlethal. She could heal him up if they needed information anyways, though the fight didn’t seem over.
Despite his injuries, Peter swung his sword and sent an
An arrow planted itself in Peter’s shoulder - Sarah was really good at targeting shoulders apparently - and Preston ran forward and sliced the man’s hand off with his own sword.
As the fight looked like it was already over, a metal object bounced on the floor. Teresa looked over to see the attacker from the second floor had just thrown down what looked like a grenade, no wait. That was a fucking grenade!
“Grenade!” Teresa yelled, kicking the grenade away from the group. She covered Saylee as best as she could while the rest of the party was fast enough to take cover on their own. It blew up as Teresa was activating
Despite tanking the blunt of the force, Teresa was mostly fine as the impact went through her sword shield. She and Saylee still got launched backwards, though a quick
Teresa still heard footsteps as the multiversal attacker was still alive, and she blasted shotgun
In the brief moment before the spell activated, Teresa took in her surroundings. The guards all seemed to have died from the explosion, Preston had managed to get away in time, Sarah and Randall were in rough shape themselves, and Peter was somehow still alive while the heavily bleeding invader was running towards him. Peter had pulled out a grenade of his own from his
She blasted her shotgun
You Have Slain {Human (F-) (lv 60)(MAX)}
Experience Granted
You Have Slain {Human (F+) (lv 68)}
Experience Granted
Leader of New Haven killed!
New Haven conquered!
The Mall Leveled Up!
You have been appointed Leader of New Haven under jurisdiction of [The Mall]!
Well fuck.