Limitless Path

Once they were all fed and watered and the kitchen was relatively clean again, they geared up and headed for the ant nest. The path was one they were quite familiar with by this point, and they cut right for the dungeon, entirely ignoring any ants or other beasts that didn't directly attack them. They made good time and were up and into the dungeon in short order.

They tore through the first three floors of the dungeon with little appreciable resistance, mowing down the ants like a hot knife through butter. They only slowed down when they hit the fourth floor, taking more caution as they squared off against enemies around their level. The improvements the other girls had made and were still undergoing proved too much for the ants, as even the boss didn't require Beth's assistance.

Once they were done there, they immediately moved on to the next dungeon, heading south to the wolves' territory. They only needed a handful of minutes to make it to the wolf dungeon, only getting attacked by a handful of wolves as they made their way across the fields. These being wolves between the levels of three and five, they posed no challenge at all for the group, Kim or Sabs able to easily dispatch them.

Once they were in the wolf dungeon, they blazed through the entire thing in near-record time. Beth helped with the boss in the final room again, the wolf boss still posing a little too much of a challenge with its high level for the lower leveled girls to comfortably handle. Having made quick work of the morning's clearing of the dungeons, the group immediately headed over to the CRA Hall.

There was nobody in the lobby today other than Tazeen, and the girls made their way back to the lounge. They split off from there for their individual lessons with their instructors, with Beth heading down to the forge with Elana to continue creating nails. Elana supervised for the first few hours, then left Beth alone for the afternoon to continue the monotonous task on her own.

She was forging nails, examining them, comparing them to Elana's nail, and thinking about the entire process. She was definitely learning a ton just from the act of forging nail after nail, benefiting a great deal from all the thought she was putting into what she was doing and how she was doing it. Still, it was a long and slow process, and she certainly wasn't going to be a Master Blacksmith any time soon.

She spent most of the day forging nails, but stopped before it was too late, as she intended to repeat yesterday's pattern. That is, she intended to work on her combat skills for several hours, this time able to spend more time on it as she wasn't planning on heading home that day. She made her way up to the main area of the arena after she had packed up the forge for the day, putting back on all the equipment she had shed to work the hot forge.

She selected her most hated yet favorite opponent once again, hoping to use his combination of skill and speed, vastly superior to her own, to push herself all the way to Journeyman. She focused today on ways to attack despite his massive advantages, pushing herself to look for opportunities that might not be perfect, but even ones where she took a serious hit in exchange for getting in a strike of her own felt like a win at this point. Little did Beth know, considering how focused she was on the match, that she was not alone in the arena.

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Navere and Kim had followed somewhat of a similar pattern to what Beth and Baelvyr had done at the start, with the main difference being Navere's more hands-on approach. He didn't have Kim spend time with a training program or shadow dummy at first, but instead stood opposite her himself as he walked her through various footwork movements. As they progressed over the first number of days, he began adding in swings of the sword to work through while stepping.

Just the footwork alone had improved Kim's battle capability tremendously over those first few days, and the addition of basic sword strikes continued to elevate her skill. Moving through Apprentice of a weapon skill was not particularly difficult, not before the last two to three levels, and the coaching of a seasoned and highly skilled warrior like Navere allowed Kim to make steady progress in a short amount of time. It was a little boring and monotonous, something she eventually complained about to Navere.

"When can we move on to something else?" she asked him, a little frustrated that she was just mirroring his steps and swings. "This is fine and all, but I want to actually fight."

"Fighting, is it?" Navere asked calmly. He stopped and sheathed his blade, indicating for Kim to do the same.

"Follow," he then commanded, and turned and left the training room under the arena that they had been using.

Kim was intrigued, mimicking her instructor in sheathing her sword before moving to follow him out of the room. She trailed behind him as he made his way to one of the sets of elevators within the complex. She joined him in the elevator at his signal, already having gotten somewhat used to how taciturn the senior member was in general. He gave precise and detailed feedback during her training, but if there was a way to use even fewer words to deliver his point concisely, he would find it.

They ascended to the ground floor using the elevator before walking over to a stairway that led into the viewing galleries. Navere scanned his pass to enter a doorway which, it turned out, led into a small viewing room. The room was fairly narrow, with eight comfortable chairs set up in four pairs in a line. Each set of chairs had a small table in between, and all eight faced a large window that took up almost all of the wall facing the arena floor.

Navere indicated for her to sit and then took a seat himself. Kim had picked a middle seat, and her instructor had taken the seat that was its companion. The pairs of chairs faced slightly toward each other, and Kim glanced questioningly at her trainer before looking out at the arena floor.

"What exactly are we doing here?" she asked.

"Watch," Navere said calmly, gesturing out to the floor.

"Watch what?" she asked. But in a moment, she realized she hadn't really needed to ask, as movement down on the floor of the arena below them caught her eye. When she looked down at the section of the arena right in front of them, she saw to her surprise that Beth was out on the floor. "What's she doing down there? We don't have anybody to fight in the arena yet."

Navere merely made a small gesture with his right hand while a small smirk appeared on his face. Kim looked on as Beth squared off with a man in a section of the floor that was outlined with a shiny material. "Who's that? Doesn't look like one of the instructors. Are there others here I haven't met?"

"He is not an instructor. He is a CRA member and an arena participant," Navere replied evenly.

"How is she fighting an arena participant? I don't get it," Kim replied, frowning as her eyebrows lowered.

"It is a training option. Watch," he replied.

Kim focused on Beth as a new match began, watching as she charged across the arena towards the opponent. When she was close, she stopped with a jerk, looking like she had just smashed into an invisible wall, all of her momentum shed in a second. It was good that she had, as the opponent swung his longsword horizontally in a blindingly swift strike. Beth swung her own sword up after she stopped in instant, slapping against the opponent's sword enough to push it off course and avoid the strike.

The swordsman's riposte seemed to happen in almost the same moment to Kim, Beth somehow knowing to move her blade up from where she had finished her swing, her sword stretching out sideways from in front of her across her left side. In the next moment both of the fighters swung again, their blades slamming into each other right in front of them. Beth seemed to win the exchange, her sword knocking the opponent's blade away with great force, but his blade was suddenly back in between them, slashing Beth's arm open.

"How did he do that? I don't understand how he was hit so hard by Beth but still slashed her. Is it some kind of ability?" Kim asked.

"No. His DEX is far higher. His skill level is also higher. He met her powerful swing with a weak one, using the force to swing his sword in a wide backswing at a very high speed. Beth is far slower and clumsier; she was unable to reposition in time to fully block the second strike, which was the true strike all along," Navere replied.

Kim returned her attention to the arena after his explanation, watching her sister struggle with the more skilled opponent. They went back and forth several more time before Beth took another slash to the arm, but this time she returned with a headbutt and punch combo, knocking the man back. It seemed like it wasn't as effective as Kim had hoped, as the man almost immediately returned with a vicious series of short, sharp slashes.

Beth defended herself as best she could, but Kim could tell that it was becoming increasingly difficult. 'I wonder if it's the wound on her arm. That asshole should just fight her fairly,' she grumbled in her head, watching another quick exchange of blows. It seemed Beth was poised to get a good strike in with her blade before everything suddenly went pear-shaped. The opponent cut Beth's swing off as he just started with a powerful circular swing of his own, knocking her sword out of the way. He must have predicted the exact timing and angle of her swing, as his strike perfectly opened up Beth for his follow-up thrust, his blade effortlessly slicing through Beth's neck.

"BETH!" Kim screamed, leaping out of her chair. She found herself unable to move, however, as Navere gripped her shoulder in a hand like a steel vise. "Let me go! I have to help her!"

"Watch," he commanded calmly.

"What do you-" Kim started before he forcefully turned to her look back out the window, whereupon she saw Beth stand up, still clutching at her throat, and start moving back towards her starting point. She let go of her neck after another two seconds, and Kim saw that the skin was whole and entirely undamaged.

"The arena has systems that will revert damage to participants and their equipment at round end, including deathblows," Navere explained in his deep, calm voice.

"I-I see," Kim said, dropping bonelessly into the chair behind her. "You could have warned me beforehand."

"It would have lessened the impact," he replied.

"I guess," Kim said, frowning slightly while biting the edge of her lip. "Is this what you wanted to show me?"

"Not all of it. Watch," he answered.

So, she watched, looking on as her sister fought the mysterious swordsman again, and again, and yet again. The result was always the same, Beth often managed to get a little minor damage or inflict a moderate wound on the man before he killed her with a swift, decisive blow. She couldn't really imagine what it was like, shuddering at the thought of fighting someone so strong only to die, over and over. She knew she couldn't do something like that, just the thought causing her to break out in a cold sweat.

"This is what I wanted to show you," Navere said calmly. "This is what you have to look forward to, not just in training, but in the future. Opponents like this, battles like this, training like this. It is not always wise to long for what you are not yet ready to grasp."

He then stood and moved around the chairs, opening the door as he got close. Kim took a last look at Beth with a slight frown on her face, watching as her sister started yet another round. 'I don't know if I can be what you are, sister, but I can try.'

The two moved out of the viewing room and headed down the hallway to the stairs. They walked in silence back to the elevator before heading down to the third basement floor, where they were using a training room Navere preferred. Kim took her place without a word, drawing her blade and facing off against her instructor, ready to continue learning all she could.

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Beth, entirely unaware of her sister's impromptu spectating of her bouts, continued facing off against the swordsman for hours. She felt a little frustrated that it was such slow going, but then again, she couldn’t really expect it to be like a game, where everything was sped up so it didn’t take years to beat. Even with game-like mechanics, this was reality, and the path to mastery of a skill would be long and arduous.

Despite her frustrations, she was improving as she trained, if ever so slightly. She had to just put her head down and train to see results as, even if she wandered around and found something like another Endless Trial, she would still only reap minimal gains at her level. She wasn't at the point yet where she was stuck with no way to progress her weapon skills, so fighting in the arena was just as good if not better than anything else she could do. Other opportunities would be great for increasing her stats or overall level, or gathering riches and treasures, but she didn't really need a new challenge to hone her weapon mastery. Steady, hard work would yield its own reward in this endeavor.

Beth fought into the early part of the night, not having to worry about getting home at a reasonable hour. She finally called it quits a little over an hour before midnight, thoroughly exhausted from the long day of difficult work. Blood had appeared at some point in the evening, likely either bored of whatever else she was doing, or having been left behind by the other girls as they returned home for the evening. The two made their way down to Beth's rented room after she closed down the dueling stage, ready for a shower and dinner.

They wound up taking care of those in that order, showering first before Beth took care of dinner for both of them. She watched a little on the screen in the room while she ate, but she was just too tired to stay up any longer. She retreated to the bedroom as soon as she had cleaned the remnants of dinner, followed closely by Blood. The two settled down on the bed and, at least in Beth's case, were asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillows.

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