Limitless Path

With a sigh, she stepped back out and around Blood, once again leading them back to the side tunnel and towards the next room. This one was a little larger than the standard uniform size, and also a little more annoying with two kobolds sitting on the remains of bedframes in the corners.

She took care of the beasts quickly, still not bothering with her sword. These had both been level fourteen and were fairly slow, allowing her to snap out two quick punches with her left hand to secure two kills. She shook her hand before wiping it on the tunic of one of the miners, frowning as she noted that she would have to thoroughly clean her gloves after this expedition. Satisfied with the rough job she had done of removing Kobold blood, she looked around the room to see if there was anything else of note.

Tapping a little mana into the lamp, she found that there was a small box along the back wall, equidistant between the two beds. Walking over, she knelt and tapped the top while inspecting it. Satisfied that there was nothing off that she could detect, she flipped the lid open to great disappointment. The inside had two coils of rope and a small chunk of mana copper ore that she wasn't convinced was of very high quality. All the same, it wouldn't take up that much space to throw a chunk half the size of her fist in the bag, so she grabbed the ore and left the old ropes.

Standing up and seeing that Blood also had no interest in the room, she returned outside and led the way to the next. They cleared three more rooms like this before coming to the end of this tunnel. The ending was not a final room, however, but a T-intersection, with tunnels traveling out to the right and left of where they stood at almost ninety-degree angles. She assumed it was more of that sloppiness to make it looked like a low-level kobold work\living area and tapped her chin as she looked between the two tunnels.

"Any ideas?" she said to the wolf as she looked.

Blood just gave both tunnels a look before shrugging. Beth just patted the big beast on the side before picking right and heading down that tunnel. It didn't take long for them to find one of the shorter branching tunnels leading to a room, and what followed was them clearing another group of rooms before finding an actual end to this section of tunnels.

Beth plonked down on one of the stools in the final room after lighting the lamp, shedding the backpack with a sigh as she leaned back against the table and looked back down the side tunnel. The room had a table with four stools and nothing else, nor did she or Blood find any hidden doors or tricks. She rummaged in the pack for a minute before pulling one of the canteens out, finding that it was already filled with water.

After slaking her thirst, she dug around for a moment before pulling out a pan from the pack and dumping a bunch of water in it. It seemed the canteen was either endless or contained a huge amount of water, as she mostly filled a large cooking pot before setting it on the table. Blood used this to drink her own fill, quickly lapping up most of the fresh water in the container before sitting to the side.

Beth dumped the little that was left in the pot out before giving it a quick rinse and setting it on the table to dry for a minute. She set the canteen on the table as well before reaching into the pack and pulling out the package of rations. She popped the end open quite easily with a pull from a few of her fingers and reached in to grab a bar. The packaging was a generic beige for the whole pack, but the individual bars were wrapped in a light blue material. Pulling one out, she inspected it, flipping it in her hands before finding some info on the back. It had a list of 'safe for consumption' and 'unsafe for consumption' species, and it appeared that both humans and wolves would fall into the safe category.

The individual bars were about six inches long and two inches wide and tall. She found that there was an easy tear piece at one end and proceeded to open the bar with a twist. The bar itself was a dark brown and had an oat-like smell with a hint of sweetness. She pulled the wrapper down a little bit and took a healthy bite, almost letting the food drop out of her mouth as she gaped in surprise.

With them being labeled as rations, she had assumed they would be fairly garbage, like a really bad nutrition bar that had sat around too long. It turned out her assumption couldn't be further from the truth, as the bar was like a very rich, moist bread. In combination with that, there was a swirl of what she assumed to be the fruit the bar description spoke of made into some kind of jam or paste. The taste and texture were both amazing, and she found herself licking the wrapper clean before she knew it.

"You've got to have one of these," she said to Blood, pulling out another bar and opening it fully. She set it on the table on the opened wrapper before pulling out a second bar for herself. She scarfed the second bar in an eye blink and pulled out a third when Blood bumped her. She realized the wolf had eaten the whole bar in two bites and wanted another.

All told, the two of them ate seven bars, with Beth demolishing four of them and Blood eating three. It was a good thing the pack was jammed full of the things, with two hundred plus of them inside. It looked like they had been packaged together and sealed by a machine, the way they were so tightly and precisely organized as well as how neat and even the outer packing was done. Beth made yet another mental note to ask Jaq about more stuff like this, as if the packages weren't too expensive, she might just live off the things entirely.

When they were ready, Beth repacked everything, folding up the wrappers for the bars and slipping the small wad into the large ration package. Once the canteen and pot were secured, she led the way back down the corridor, walking quickly all the way back to the T-intersection. They continued straight through, moving down the unexplored branch of the T.

It was back to room clearing here, Beth still taking care of all of the work, but it didn't bother either of them. Blood would have made a mess killing the Kobolds, and with there only being a couple at low level at most, it wasn't worth her getting blood and guts everywhere. The experience certainly wasn't worthwhile, either, killing enemies a dozen plus levels beneath them.

The loot was also fairly disappointing overall, considering the time they were investing. Not that Beth was going to complain about the little bag of gems, but spending hours in the dank mine while gaining no experience for a gold or two was seeming like a waste.

She had to stop and give herself a little shake. Maybe it was the dark and damp, or maybe it was something else building up, but she had to remind herself that she would normally be making a couple silver a day at best. This new influx of items was welcome, and she had already been aware a lot of adventuring was trudging around for long periods of time between short bursts of action. Living that experience was turning out a little differently, namely in just how boring the reality of it proved to be.

Having cleared out the second branch from the T-intersection fully during her musings and found jack all to show for it, the two made their way back to the main corridor. Beth led the way across at an angle, heading down the other branch of the previously discovered intersection. They walked for a long time this time before discovering anything, simply trudging along in the damp.

Just as she was starting to think that this was quite a long way to go without stumbling across one of the side paths leading to a little room, the hallway changed. It broadened out, increasing to twice the width and almost three times the height. She looked around suspiciously, Blood sniffing the air off to her side tentatively, unsure if the change in layout would come with any new dangers. After observing for a moment, she decided that there wasn't much for it but to continue onward.

It was only a few moments later when they stumbled upon the second change, that being a series of rooms opening directly onto the main path instead of having their own little tunnels. That wasn't the only thing different about these rooms, as Beth noted they were both larger and laid out differently. They were rectangular instead of cubic, and they seemed to be for a different purpose, as the furniture was different. The first room had a table to the right with several chairs around it, while across from that arrangement on the opposite wall were two bookshelves. The back of the room had a large, blockish desk of some type of grey and brown stone, with a large chair centered behind it facing towards her.

She was hopeful there would be something a little more interesting and, perhaps, more valuable in these rooms, but she wasn't liking what she was seeing from the start. The shelves were entirely empty, as was the table, and the desk didn't look much better. There were no beasts in the room that she could see, so she decided to give it a once over. The lamp in this room was back to the hanging from the ceiling variety, and she reached up as she walked over to the desk and tapped it. This unit was a little larger, providing a little more light, but took basically the same amount of mana to light.

The desk itself appeared to be a fairly standard design, having three drawers on each side and room in the middle for one's legs while working. Beth was careful when grabbing the first drawer by the little handle in the middle, but it appeared that there were no traps. She was a little disappointed by how straight-forward this place was so far, but she supposed it was a lot better than dodging arrows, spikes, and giant spinning blades.

The drawer grated a little as she pulled, needing a little extra force to open, which turned out to be more wasted effort. Closing it again, she opened the next, and the next, and then the next until she had gone through all six. Empty, empty, empty she growled in her head as she slammed the last with a bit much force. A bigger and better furnished room and there wasn't even a paperweight to brag about. Grumbling under her breath, she led Blood out of the room and across the large tunnel to a room on the opposite side, finding a similar layout.

The shelves and table proved empty once again, and she set about rooting through the drawers to see if this was another bust. She was pleasantly surprised, however, when the fourth drawer she checked, the topmost on the right, had something inside. And not just any old tat, but a little box made of a dark wood with neat hinges and a small, ornate gold clasp on the front. Beth picked the box up carefully and set it on the desk before checking to see if there was anything else in that drawer or the ones below it. Finding nothing else, she turned her attention to the little wooden box.

Reaching forward and flipping the little clasp with a finger, she opened the lid of the box with a tap to find only a single item. It was a thin chain and, after picking it up, she realized a little embarrassedly that it was a necklace. It was also made of a silver metal similar to the ring she had found earlier, with a small, glimmering ruby set into the chain itself. The gem was only maybe a quarter inch across, square-cut, and was towards the darker end of red rather than being a bit brighter. Once again, Beth was taking no chances with some weird curse nonsense, and simply dropped the necklace in her backpack near the ring.

Having found the only thing of value in the room, they moved on to the rest of the offices. Beth soon began to suspect it was the only thing of value in that whole area, as they didn't find anything else as they cleaned out the rest of the rooms. The offices stopped after half-a-dozen or so, but the tunnel continued on and so did they. It was a little strange, walking down what she had thought was a tunnel built to house offices but having nothing around them, but Beth simply kept her eyes peeled and continued on.

The passage eventually ended, this time in a large set of dark steel doors. They were about ten or so feet high, and each door was roughly four feet across. They were made of blackened steel and were plain faced except for a symbol of a pickaxe and hammer crossed over what looked like a diamond, this being engraved in the center of each of the doors. Beth walked up to the doors and tried to check them for anything that might be unusual, not that two massive steel doors weren't unusual in and of themselves. She gave up after a minute, not being particularly proficient with traps and once again lamenting not having any skill that worked on objects.

With a shrug, she moved back to the center of the doors and put one hand on each, the metal of her gauntlets making a slight scratching sound as she pressed them against the blackened steel. Stepping a little bit with her right foot, she leaned forward slightly and pushed against the doors, starting by firmly anchoring her legs against the ground and allowing the force to travel upwards as she tensed her muscles and shoved. The doors didn't move at first, but she pushed all the harder, letting out a deep grunt as she applied all her considerable strength to the task.