Limitless Path

Blood trotted forward to a distance fairly close to the first lion but still just outside its range of detection. Luckily the range at low levels that beasts could sense enemies at didn't seem to expand very far per level, though Beth had already read something about that not being true at higher levels in the basics book she had worked through. Beth used Identify on the lion to see what they had to deal with.

Level 14 Silvermane Lion

That didn't really tell Beth a whole lot, just what she had expected, in fact. The beasts were one level higher than the previous floor and they were some form of lion. Blood glanced over at her, Beth grinning a little at how the wolf was at eye-level with her, before trotting toward the lion. The beast responded fairly quickly, and Beth's thought of how sad it was to fight such pretty animals was quashed immediately, the beast charging Blood with a roar, a nearly demented snarl on its face.

Not a sight to preserve the beast's noble, beautiful disposition in Beth's mind. This was not just a wild animal but a beast, a creature pumped full of mana hellbent on killing anything that came near it. Beth observed as it closed with Blood that it appeared to be female, being small compared to the massive wolf, but still fully grown and lacking any kind of mane.

The lion appeared to be strong and agile, but like all other low leveled beasts was made almost mindless by the raw mana circulating in its body. As it neared Blood it leaped through the air, arms extending with claws gleaming, its jaws opened wide to display large, sharp fangs. Blood responded quickly, the more agile and nimble of the two despite her far larger size and mass. The wolf danced forward and to the right quickly before suddenly cutting back in to the left, leading with her shoulder, slamming into the lion near the apex of its leap. It wasn't quite perfectly timed, but it was still a powerful blow, Blood's shoulder smashing into the beast with a heavy thumping sound, like someone had just hit a sack of grain with a bat.

Beth had been watching the fight when suddenly she sensed that something wasn't right. She identified the issue instantly, her improved senses having been informing her of the near silent approach of another lion. She turned to face the stealthy predator right before it leaped, stepping forward to meet it while swinging her sword. She started without adding any extra oomph to the strike, wanting to test how tough the enemies were with a normal hit. The blade of her sword swept in from her right and hit the left side of the lion squarely in the center, Beth's high STR wounding the beast and sending it tumbling. She was less than relieved, however, as though she had done a decent amount of damage to the creature, this engagement of two at once right from the start did not bode well.

The lion recovered rather rapidly and started to quickly circle Beth, stalking her before charging her, attempting to attack from a slightly different angle. Beth was far too agile for a trick like this to do anything, and she rotated to keep the lioness directly in front of her, countering this charge with a step back and to the right. She used the angle and distance to bring her blade around against the beast's head and neck, hoping for a more serious injury than the somewhat moderate cut she had inflicted with the first swing. The lion actually attempted to twist in the air this time to avoid the strike, which was only partially successful, as the blade cut a shallow line in the beast's left shoulder.

The lion wasn't knocked tumbling again, instead landing fairly close to her, but Beth was still first to react after the quick exchange. She stepped forward immediately and thrust her blade at the lion, but the beast leapt to the side to avoid the hit. Beth continued the movement, however, stepping forward again a short distance with her left foot and swinging to the side with her outthrust blade. The lion moved again, but again Beth's speed and power were superior, the blade slashing open a shallow cut on the lion's left side, which was starting to become a little mangled at this point. It was far from lethal damage, but the pain and blood loss from multiple long wounds would certainly add up, distracting the opponent and further slowing them.

Beth took the moment the lion used to recover to look over at Blood, only to see her dancing between two lions. Beth frowned deeply, eyes narrowing as she looked back to her opponent. She leveled her sword but suddenly stepped to the left, twisting her body to the right and swinging the blade with quite a bit of strength. She caught a second lion mid-leap, knocking it out of the air, her blade smashing into its shoulder. The angle wasn't very good, and the strike left a fairly minor wound, slightly deep and not very long.

The more important aspect was the second lioness was sent tumbling away, giving Beth enough time to turn and intercept the first beast in the air, letting go of the hilt of her sword with her left hand and punching the creature straight in the face with a Crush empowered blow. Beth's slightly high STR of thirty-six coupled with her top-level copper skill showed their power here, the added momentum and weight of the enemy mid leap causing this almost casual punch to smash in the left side of the lioness' face. The beast was like a drunkard that had run headfirst into a steel pole, toppling backwards before trying unsteadily to get to its feet. It wasn't dead, but several of its teeth had broken, likely the bones in the left side of its face had cracked, and it actually seemed to have a black eye, the left eye swelling shut rapidly.

Fortunately for Beth and Blood, their stats and skills combined together were enough to be able to not just compete but even suppress the lions, as long as they were careful. The fight turned into not quite a marathon, as the lions constantly engaged the two girls as a group of at least four. Beth stuck to her fundamentals, avoiding attacks and gaining advantage through solid footwork and movement.

Beth had played video games for years and spent countless hours 'grinding,' as the term for constantly killing enemies to sharpen your character was called, but it was only now she was really starting to understand 'the grind.' The fight just went on and on, with the difficulty increasing as a fifth lion joined the attacking group. Fighting off an entire lion pride with just the two of them was arduous, but they persisted, eventually killing the full one hundred opponents.

Beth wasn't totally exhausted, but she was definitely tired and wounded after the protracted fight. The two moved away from their area of slaughter, finding somewhere to sit and rest, meditating and using their regenerative skills. Blood had gotten the worst of it over the course of a hundred kills, her sheer size working against even her high DEX through such a long fight. She did, however, minimize the damage to a non-life-threatening level, even as it became somewhat of a struggle close to the end.

The two rested for an hour, Beth taking the opportunity to quickly distribute their points after having hit level sixteen from that fight. She noted they had made a little less than half a silver from another hundred kills, Beth hoping more and more that there was a rather valuable reward from the dungeon completion. She also noted a level for each of them in their regeneration skills, getting hurt and healing being a rather effective way of leveling the skill. She checked their status screens after she was done.

Name

Elizabeth Anne Bell

Class

Brawler

Level

16

Strength

40

Dexterity

24

Endurance

30

Intelligence

14

Wisdom

14

Free Points

0

Titles

Silver Flame Empress Inheritor

Skills

Ancient World Gate[0]

Crush Copper[9]

Focused Meditation Copper[5]

Identify Copper[6]

Lordly Reconstruction Copper[6]

Monstrous Blow Copper[6]

Pain Tolerance Copper[8]

Swords Apprentice[5]

Unarmed Apprentice[4]

Wealth

3s 22c

Emblems

CRA Copper Badge

Bonds

Blood

Name

Blood

Race

Red Wolf Queen

Level

16

Strength

30

Dexterity

40

Endurance

36

Intelligence

16

Wisdom

16

Free Points

0

Titles

-

Skills

Meditation Copper[5]

Regeneration Copper[4]

Swift Copper[7]

Wealth

3s 1c

Now that they were fully rested, Beth led them in getting up and beginning to look around. This time Beth felt a little lost, spending a little time wandering around the area. Half an hour later she was ready to move on when she saw a small cave at the base of a little hillock. It was low enough that she and Blood had to crouch a little to make their way inside, but the passage opened into a little larger cavern after a dozen feet. While still somewhat low, the cavern was high enough for them to stand comfortably, as well as being fairly wide.

It appeared there was a hole or two in the ceiling, as the cave had a little bit of natural light alleviating the darkness. Beth and Blood looked around the area, Beth looking up at the ceiling as Blood sniffed around the floor. Blood caught Beth's attention with a bark, and she walked over to see what the wolf had found. It was slightly difficult to tell, but her increased level and her little eye mishap earlier had sharpened her vision, so Beth was able to see Blood had found some kind of ore. Looking around the area, the two of them found a number of different pieces, all of which Beth gathered up before taking the armload outside.

Beth put the ores down in a small clear area near the cave entrance and picked up one of the largest pieces to examine. It was a little bigger than one of her closed fists and had a definite silver luster to it. Beth wasn't really sure what it was, as she would have guessed silver before the introduction of the Path, but now it could be anything. Still, it was likely to be valuable either way, and now she was trying to figure out how they were going to carry it with them. In the end, she made the rather crude decision of trying to get some hide to hold them.

The next hour was a rather gross and disturbing experience, as Beth badly mangled skinning two lions with her greatsword before she could get a decent section of hide from a third. She cleaned it as best she could, still leaving a somewhat bloody and messy section by the end. She then sent Blood out to see if she could find anything, even slightly sturdier grass, that they could use as ties. The wolf came back nearly an hour later with some fairly thin but strong vines in her jaws, and Beth was able to very sloppily make what she hoped passed for a pack from the hide and vines. She placed the various ore pieces inside, enough that when melted together they would be a little more than half the size of her torso, and hefted the pack.

"Time to move on. Hopefully we can just drop it in the clear space by where the door puts us every time and not have it get messed up," she said to the wolf, who gave her a look as if to say, 'How could it possibly get any more messed up?'

"Well, everybody's a critic these days," Beth said as she walked up to the door to the next area, pushing it open as she had the previous. The two of them walked through the doorway and onto the next floor, ready for the next challenge. They emerged to an ideal vacation destination, white sandy beaches and crystal-clear blue ocean waves accentuated by small whitecaps. Ideal, that is, apart from the two suns in the sky, which Beth didn't remember from her last beach trip. That and the enormous, crab-like monsters wandering around all over the beach in an area around them.

Beth dropped her rather gross sack as soon as the doors had closed behind them and disappeared, absentmindedly wiping her hands on her pants with a slight frown. She looked at the beasts they had to square off against in the next fight, not very happy with yet another armored opponent. While she knew she could work on using Monstrous Blow to deal damage and work on her sword technique, she thought it might be a floor where she would have to end up using the heavy smashing power of her fists and feet to pull off a win without sustaining too much injury. She cast Identify on a somewhat nearby crab to check it.

Level 15 Crab

Well, she hadn't really expected much more, but that was pretty basic. Just like she dreamed of getting a storage ring, she was already dreaming of getting a much better version of Identify. She looked at the large red beast, seeming very similar to a crab on Earth, except it was now nearly four feet tall. The crabs, like all the beasts they had fought in this trial, wandered idly in a very small area around where they seemed to have been placed.

"Time to fight some crabs?" Beth asked Blood, arching an eyebrow. Blood looked back at her, then at the crabs, then at her again. It was as if she was saying 'Of course, what else are we going to be doing?'

Beth moved forward down the beach to the nearest crab, unsheathing her sword as she casually walked into its range of perception. The beast made a strange kind of hissing sound and charged her sideways, as crabs were liable to walk, scuttling close to her before trying to hit her with its large left claw. The beast was a little faster than Beth thought it would be but dodging it didn't really prove a problem. She assumed it was built more for defense and maybe attack, not really for agility. She easily sidestepped the swing, moving to her right, stepping toward the rear of the crab. It attempted to turn to follow her movement when it was suddenly stopped for a moment with a lurch.

Beth had swung her sword in a standard horizontal slash directly into the rear leg of the beast, hitting the joint in the middle of the appendage, which popped with a sharp crack like a gunshot. This had both staggered the crab and caused it to slow down, a leg already crippled. The rest of the fight went very similarly, whether it was Beth's decent stats or relatively high skill levels, the crab proved to be the easiest opponent yet.