Limitless Path

Kim turned and headed back to her room, and Beth headed down the stairs as well. A minute later her father joined her and Zack in the living room.

"Rachel's still talking with her. Luckily, we have a spare window from when we had them replaced two years ago. Anyway, do you need anything else after all that excitement Zack?" her father said.

"No. I'm going to try to get as many people as I can to level one by end-of-day. Also, that idea for reinforcing the fences and building a wall is good. Get a full plan together and we can start working on that in a couple days. Let me know if you need anything else," Zack said, getting up from the armchair he was in and waving as he headed out of the Bell house.

"What about you, oh warrior queen?" Beth's father asked her with a small smile.

"I want to fight more but I'm crazy tired. I think using Crush so much really drained my energy. I don't want to sleep yet, but I'll rest and see how quickly my energy comes back without sleeping," she replied.

"Remember not to push yourself too hard. Getting too tired to fight while surrounded by enemies would be rather bad," her father commented.

"I got it, thanks," she replied, getting up from the couch and heading up the stairs.

Once she was ensconced in her room again, she sat at her desk and woke up her computer. After logging in, she got on the web again and checked what people were saying about this new world. Most of the day had passed in the Americas and it was now evening, and people throughout those time zones had made good use of the daylight hours to investigate.

Beth searched through new postings, seeing a good bit of useful information. It looked like her idle speculation was correct, as people had found what seemed like both dungeons and objects spawning monsters. The number was not very high, but Beth knew the introduction to the Path would gradually increase mana density and opportunities in the world.

It seemed like there were a large number of posts related to gaining classes. Many people talked about Young Warrior and Young Mage, but there were several other extremely common classes. There were quite a few soldier-related classes, as well as a number of slightly rarer but still somewhat common mage classes. Some people had also actively engaged in combat for some time, and it seemed the experience curve to level was slightly steep but was also mitigated by fighting stronger enemies. If Beth had continued through the special dungeon her skill had summoned fighting level two or even higher ants, she likely would have made better progress towards or even achieved level three.

She knew that expending her mana put her in a bad spot though, as her WIS was still well within a normal mortal's. This meant, while she didn't use very much mana on something like Crush, she also regenerated mana quite slowly. It looked like many people found similar data in combat on this first day, as it seemed it took hours for somebody to regenerate from one-quarter mana back to full.

Beth knew it would still take a little time to fill her mana, so she booted up one of her favorite games, an MMO, and started crafting. Putting on some music, she whiled away a few hours just playing. It was a little strange, now that the world had become like a game, but it was still a good time sink.

Eventually, Beth got up and stretched. She moved to her bedroom door and, opening it, went out and down to the kitchen. Her father was still in the living room, the light turned on, typing away at his laptop. She simply glanced to the left as she passed the junction in the hall that led to the front door before she proceeded into the kitchen, where she began taking out several ingredients from the fridge. She made two massive sandwiches filled with vegetables, meat, and mayo and mustard. She grabbed a sports drink and headed to the living room, where she briefly stuck her head in.

"Hey dad, I'm going to sleep after I eat and shower," she told her father.

He glanced up at her and said, "Alright, sweetie. Don't stay up too late, we've got a lot of work coming up and your strength will really help."

"OK dad," she said before darting up the stairs back to her room.

Beth's resting earlier had fully restored her and now she had a plan. She wolfed down the huge sandwiches quickly, totally draining the sports drink as well. She then locked her bedroom door, after which she proceeded to summon another dirt gate leading to the land of ants. As soon as the gate was formed, she stepped through.

As the brief moment of darkness passed, she found herself on the same grass plain. She looked around, confirming everything was the same. Short grass of a dark green, cloudless blue sky, and a distant but bright yellow-looking sun. After verifying it seemed to be the same place, she looked around to see if there were any ants nearby. She almost immediately spotted an ant in the same position as the first one from the first time she had summoned the gate.

She guessed that this meant her un-summoning the gate earlier in the day had reset it, but it was only a guess at this point. She would have to do more tests with the gate to start to understand some of its limits; all of which might change as it appeared the skill that made the gate could level up. She focused on the ant as she slowly started walking toward it and noticed something a little strange.

The ant was not, in fact, the same ant she had killed the first time she used the gate. It was just slightly larger and slightly darker in color. She paused and tried to use Identify.

Common Ant Level 2

It confirmed what she had already guessed; the ants starting near the gate seemed to be her level. This meant the gate seemingly would not fall off in terms of usefulness, even at skill level zero, over time. If it also followed the same pattern as last time, that would mean there would also be higher level ants farther out from the gate.

Beth clenched her fist, a grin spreading across her face. She had hoped to be able to jog out from the gate area and find a couple more level two ants to help boost her towards level three, but she might be able to even kill some level three ants tonight before she went to bed. She looked around to make sure there wasn't another ant nearby and started swiftly moving toward the level two ant.

The ant again noticed her from a little further away and moved at her a little faster. She knew the ant's slightly higher speed could prove some trouble, but she had leveled and gained both STR and DEX since the last time she fought a level two. She was confident in her ability to kill the ant, but still remained cautious. Who knew; if she died in here, would the gate disappear and nobody ever hear from her again?

As she closed with the ant, she prepared to try something new. When she was a couple steps away, she started charging her left leg with Crush. She took a step forward onto her left leg, then a quick step to the side of the ant on her right leg. As she planted her right foot, she swung her hips to the right, scything her left leg forward. The ant, while being slightly faster at level two, still had only a fraction of a second to react, far too little time for such a simple creature to take advantage of.

Beth was not, however, aiming for the ant's head. Even empowered with Crush, it didn't seem like a very good idea to kick the ant in its even sharper mandibles. Instead, she was going for a classic low kick to sweep the legs. Her low kick was a little different as, instead of sweeping her opponents legs out from under them, she practically obliterated them. The first and middle left leg of the ant were smashed into a gooey pulp by Beth's empowered kick.

The ant spun to its left from the force, flopping on its abdomen now that it was missing two of the three legs it needed on its left side to even stand. As the ant just started to flail, Beth empowered her right fist and twisted back from her kick, planting her left leg as she twisted her hips and shoulders to the left. She slammed the empowered fist down practically right between the ant's big eyes, watching as the front top of the ant's head caved in.

Common Ant level 2 slain.

Beth took a glance around to again verify no ants were nearby or attracted by the first ant's death, and then looked down at the corpse with a nod. This was a better fight than the first level two ant, at least in her opinion, and showed the value of stats and skill levels. Being able to easily outmaneuver the ant as well as having the raw strength to simply pulverize any part of its body in one strike made this pretty easy. She estimated that the two empowered strikes had taken around one-sixteenth of her mana from her mana reservoir in total. That meant a max of sixteen ants she could kill this way, but she wouldn't want to take the chance of running out, or even very low. Usually in stories people got exhausted, headaches, or even passed out from mana depletion. She didn't want to pass out in a dungeon-like area and become some lame low-level ants' snack.

She decided to try much the same thing as last time she was here, but with a strategy in mind. Last time she had been a little aimless, just taking in the wonder of having a dungeon all to herself and happy to kill ants. This time, she decided she would head straight away from the gate and try to quickly get to an area with level three or higher ants. Having decided, she walked back to in front of the gate and set out directly away from the opening. Luckily, it would be somewhat easy to keep track of her movements, as her walking pressed the grass down and disturbed it, leaving a clear trail.

She also took note of the temperature and air. It seemed to be somewhat warm, but not even at the level it could rise to in the summers where she lived. The air hadn’t killed her so far, and without any more advanced equipment or skills, she would just have to assume it was fine to breathe. She did remember something about some common gases like Carbon Dioxide being too high in concentration causing lethargy and confusion. She just resolved to keep alert if her condition deteriorated over time. She wasn’t quite as worried about it in this place, as she had a feel it might be safely controlled by the gate power, but she would have to add it to her growing list of mental notes, to remember places she explored could have odd atmospheres.

Beth moved forward, making sure to keep track of what was around her, as she didn't want to be mobbed by ants she didn't notice. It only took a minute for her to run into another ant, this one almost directly in front of her. She decided to eschew any fanciness, and simply charged the ant. It responded the same as the other ants, and with her new DEX and STR, she was now able to pull the same maneuver as with the level one ants, stepping at an angle and smashing the top of the ant's head in.

Common Ant level 2 slain.

One strike, she thought, nice. Won't have to waste energy on level twos.

She also felt like it was granting her more experience for killing the level two ants, something that only increased her excitement. She continued on, not seeing any more ants for almost two minutes, until she found a group of two. It seemed like there was a very simple pattern. Individual ants in an area around the gate, then a ring with small groups, then level three ants. Beth approached the group and used Identify on the ants.

Common Ant level 2

Common Ant level 2

Two level two ants were going to be a bit of a tougher challenge, but she believed in the power of Crush. She maneuvered around them, lashing out with several kicks to unbalance them and crack their legs before going in for a more powerful punch to the side of the head of the first, cracking it badly enough that she got the kill notification. It was only two more punches after that before the second ant was also lying dead on the ground.

She continued on from there, hunting several more level twos and a few level threes, getting her Crush up another two levels in the process. It seemed her concentration on the skill, not only using it to damage key areas, but focusing on just how much mana she was using, helped her get it through those early levels quickly. She continued through a few more ants, killing the last solo level three and getting a pleasant surprise once it was dead and she reviewed her messages.

Common Ant level 3 slain.

Unarmed Apprentice[1] acquired.

Beth marveled at the level in Unarmed. Getting it had taken quite a lot more work than Crush required to level, but it was definitely worth it. Even though it was very slight, she seemed to feel more comfortable in her body, and also seemed to understand how best to kick and punch just a little bit more.

It seemed that while she could bull through levels in Crush just by using it, at least in copper ranks, Unarmed demanded a little more understanding to level. She was sure the way she varied fighting the ants contributed. Also, maybe her use of and increased variance with Crush contributed a little bit. Still, with there being ten levels to each tier, it looked like just getting Unarmed to journeymen would be…well…quite a journey.

Beth took stock of her surroundings, seeing no ants in the immediate vicinity, and pulled out her cell phone to check. She had entered the gate right before 9:00 PM and it currently displayed 9:50 PM on her phone's screen. This meant she had been in the instance around twenty-five real minutes or so. She planned on going until she was fairly tired or until it was after 11:00 PM. She felt like she had used maybe just under a third of her mana reserves from the reservoir in her torso, but fifty minutes was too little for any serious regen to happen.