Limitless Path

"Well, thanks, I think," she said, still frowning. "But I had another question, if you're done breaking my brain with all that stuff."

"Yeah, yeah, go ahead," he said, thumping a hand against his massive gut before taking another drink.

"Blood and I encountered a couple things yesterday, but there was a weird one I wanted to ask someone about," she said, and he just waved to indicate for her to continue. "There was a pit thing we're gonna go explore today, but the thing we found that was weird was this big archway. It was made of black metal with silver metal inlaid, and it had electricity or mana pulsing through it. When we got close it made this, like, energy ball thing in the middle and a dinosaur fell out. Any idea what that was about?"

"Yeah, it's a kind of old challenge arch from a long time ago," he replied. "Long and short of it, it operates a lot better where the mana's denser. Ya ain't likely to get much outta it until the mana on the planet's denser. Even then, probably won't be able to keep up with your leveling and skill-up speed; not unless ya build a big mana gathering formation 'round it. Would be a waste of resources, though, if yer askin' me."

"Well, the beast it dropped out was pretty tough, level twenty, and had a strong modifier. Would probably be useful for others," she said, tapping her chin a little as she thought about it.

"Well, not right now, but eventually," he answered, taking another deep pull from his tankard. "They're still lagging behind ya in terms of level and skills, and while they might not catch up to ya, they could catch up to the kind of power the gate sits at."

"Ya got anythin' else?" he asked as he frowned down at his tankard, seeming to have emptied it again.

"Nope, that's it," Beth said, hopping up as she took that for a dismissal.

"Don't get yerselves killed out there," Baelvyr concluded, thumping his huge gut before starting to mix another drink.

Beth threw her new backpack on as she made her way across the lounge, Blood trailing along behind her. The two made their way down the hall and out into the lobby, finding Tazeen and John both behind the front counter. She gave them a nod as the two passed, receiving a nod in return from Tazeen and no reaction from John, who was fully absorbed in a smart screen in front of him.

Out front, Beth hopped up on Blood's back, neither of them even able to notice the few dozen extra pounds the pack added. Blood took off southward, heading towards the pit they had found the day before. It took them somewhat less time today to get down there, as they weren't meandering at all to try to find new things but heading straight there.

The journey down was a little more eventful today, the two girls running into several roaming beasts as they made the trip. Beth discovered during the process of killing the first beast, a large and very angry gopher, that playing the part of wolf cavalry was a lot more difficult than she had assumed. Having decided not to dismount but instead to fight from Blood's back, she had difficulty from the very outset, elbowing her companion in the neck as she attempted to draw her sword.

The situation was a comedy of errors, all to kill a level twelve, and Beth eventually managed to ram her blade cleanly into the beast's throat as Blood body-checked it. She had almost caught one of Blood's ears with the swing just before and apologized profusely to the wolf as she cleaned the blood off her blade. The two encountered a number of other fairly low-level beasts on the way, and each time Beth hopped off Blood to either take care of them herself or let the wolf tear them apart.

When they eventually arrived at the pit, Beth checked the area before they headed down. Finding nothing unusual, including no beasts in the field today either, she pulled the backpack around and quickly found a lightstone before attaching it to her belt over the front of her right hip. She would have attached it to the chest of her armor, but the amount she moved her torso combined with the rather noticeable curves she was developing there would have made the lighting rather inconsistent.

The two descended the spiraling ramp again, making their way down with a brisk pace as they were fairly assured of their safety on the way down. They slowed when they reached the floor of the pit, aware of the loose rock and broken sections that would hamper their footing. Beth led the way, taking them over to the right tunnel first.

With a small puff of mana, injected with a tap of her finger, the lightstone began to emit a powerful beam of warm, slightly orangish-yellow light in front of them. The tunnel that they were standing at the entrance of angled slightly to their right and down and was generally quite straight. Beth was a little puzzled by the inconsistencies, the area they were in having such overall straight-cut precision in everything, yet the ground was fractured and strewn about with loose debris.

The stone was also a little odd, having a greenish black tinge to it, though Beth didn't really know much about rocks. Even though she wasn't some sort of trained geologist, she did know the greyish white of the stones of the local area, and the general look and texture of the stone nearby. She wasn't sure if the difference meant that the stone in the ground a little further south was different, or if the entire area here had been teleported or built by the Path as it dealt with the mana flooding Earth.

Making a note to herself to see if there was anything else unusual in the rock as they carried on, Beth began leading Blood down the tunnel. It was about seven feet high and just a little wider, meaning the girls would fill the space entirely if they tried to walk side-by-side. Blood elected to follow Beth without a comment, her large eyes flickering as she glanced around at the enclosed space.

The tunnel continued like this for some distance, the girls walking ten minutes or so before anything changed. The first change was the air getting a little cooler and damper as they walked, the tunnel still continuing on straight. A minute later, the tunnel started to curve further "right," based on their orientation when they entered, as well as slope more sharply downward. The new downward angle was steady, but the curve evened out after a couple minutes, the two finding themselves in another straight section.

There was a difference in this deeper tunnel, other than the cooler and damper air. They found a branching path after just over a minute of walking, Beth glancing back at Blood, who simply cocked her huge head to one side. Shrugging in response, Beth turned into the offshoot, curious to see if there was anything different in this side tunnel.

They walked for another minute until they found the tunnel opening into a small room. Strangely, this room had support beams and structures built into it, something that was giving Beth the impression that maybe this mine or base had been generated wholesale. It seemed as if it could be something similar to the goblin village, as having such long stretches of tunnel with no supports only to have supports in a single room didn't really make much sense. It was an area that gave the feel of being a mine, but a few of the details weren't really quite right, making it a little questionable.

Beth shook herself from her thoughts, inspecting the room they had just walked into, seeing that there really wasn't much other than the support beams. She did note a glimmer in the air almost immediately and found, upon closer inspection, that it was light from her stone reflecting from the glass of a small lamp hanging from the slightly higher ceiling of the room. Beth took a couple careful steps forward, arriving just in front of the lamp, which was hanging slightly above her head height. Looking up at it closely, she recognized something in the design immediately and quickly reached out a gauntleted finger to tap the bottom of it.

The lamp lit almost immediately, responding to the tiny thread of mana Beth had inserted by bathing the room in a bright, golden glow, though one that did flicker slightly. When another slight tap and thread of mana didn't make any noticeable change, she just had to assume it was a fault with the lamp, and not a lack of mana supply from her end.

What the lamp revealed was a nearly entirely empty room, save for two objects. Well, it was more accurate to say an object and a box. The object was what looked like an old pickaxe, the handle of a light toned wood, showing some cracks as if it was greatly aged. The tool exhibited the strangeness that other freshly "made" things had on a new world, the handle supposed to be aged, but the wood looking quite good other than the few small cracks. Even if the wood of the handle was old and worn, it would be a little strange to have a brand new, shiny and bright head on the pickaxe. Tapping it with a claw-tip finger and looking at it closely, Beth surmised that it was made of mana steel, and seemed to have just come from the forge.

Shrugging, she slung her pack around to her front to hang from one shoulder as she flipped it open and tossed the pickaxe inside. It might save her a few silvers if she needed to hammer through any rock. Or she could pawn if off to Jaq for a couple silvers, depending on how miserly he was feeling.

The other object in the room was the box, an old wooden crate made of some type of yellowish wood a little darker than the pickaxe handle. The crate was also a little odd, just in the fact that this was apparently supposed to be an "old" mine, but the crate looked almost brand new. Beth knelt as she examined it, tapping at the crate and trying to check to see if there were any weird runes or anything on or near it. Seeing and detecting nothing, she stood back up and grabbed the lid of the crate and pulled on it.

Beth put her boot against the side and pushed the crate, which was about two feet to a side, wedging it between her and the wall. Once the box was fairly firmly sandwich, she grabbed the edges of the lid with both hands and heaved, putting pressure both forward and down on it with her foot at the same time. The lid started to lift with a groaning, apparently being held in place with a decent handful of copper nails, and Beth redoubled her efforts.

With a mighty shriek, the crate slipped, as Beth's balance had changed as she pulled the lid up, changing the way she applied pressure to the box with her leg. The crate slid to the right and Beth staggered to the left, just catching herself on the wall of the room. She heard a bark that sounded suspiciously like laughter from the room entrance but, when she looked over, Blood was merely looking at her with a calm face.

"Why don't you bring those wolf paws over here and try it if you think it's so amusing?" Beth asked the large lupine with a frown as she gestured at the crate. Blood just tilted her head slightly, continuing to stare at Beth with a calm expression.

"Fine, but hold off on the comments from the back," she muttered before returning to the crate. She decided that kneeling might be a little better this time and crouched with her right knee pressed against the box. The lower angle didn't really prove too much of a difficulty, Beth's ridiculous STR stat of eighty-four meaning she could still rip the top of the crate off anyway.

When she finally got the box open, she was fairly disappointed with what she found. All that effort managed to yield a handful of pieces of copper ore and a coil of old rope. Beth didn't care about the rope nor even the ore, just leaving them for now. Depending on what else she found, she could either grab it later or come back on a different day to take the contents. She was sure Jaq would give her pennies for the stuff, so she deemed it worthwhile to look for something better first.

The two retraced their steps, moving back down the side tunnel until they came back to what Beth thought of as the main tunnel. They made a left out of the side tunnel to continue forward in the main tunnel. Pacing down the unlit tunnel for another few minutes, they found another branching tunnel, this time veering off to the right and downwards.

The two turned down this new passage, the light clipped to Beth's belt revealing nothing interesting or noteworthy. This passage appeared to be the same as the last, as it also let out into a moderate size room with very little in it, other than the lamp hanging from the ceiling. Beth walked forward and lit it, noting that it only took a tiny drop of mana to power it for some time.

The room only had one other thing in it, that being another pickaxe. She inspected it after she had lit the lamp, finding it almost identical to the one in her bag. Leaving the old tool where she had found it, she signaled to Blood to turn around, and the two again retraced their steps until they were back in the main tunnel.

Walking down the tunnel further brought them to an even deeper level underground. The walls, which had remained hardpacked dirt so far were now beginning to transition into stone, and the air had grown slightly damper. Beth wouldn't describe it as wet just yet, but there was definitely a humid content to it that wasn't exactly pleasant. It also smelled a little bit swampy now, though the smell of stone and dirt was still the most prevalent.

They found another side passage in short order after the transition to a deeper layer, the path branching out to the left again. They decided to explore this branch and were this time rewarded with some further branches. It appeared the tunnels were getting more complex as they went down, which Beth thought was somewhat backwards to how a mine should be, but they continued to explore, nonetheless.