Limitless Path

The two were quiet then for a minute, working on finishing everything they had prepped for breakfast. Blood had been paying attention to the conversation herself, if her right ear twitching towards the two when they were speaking was any indication. The three were done in another couple minutes, even Sabs eating at a rapid pace and packing the food away despite her small size. The two possessed of opposable thumbs cleaned everything up before taking turns in the bathroom, Beth unbothered if Sabs was in the room while she was doing something, but the older girl was too shy to share the room for anything but tooth brushing.

They had gotten dressed after getting cleaned and prepped, throwing on their armor and weapons before heading out of the room. Beth always did a check to make sure she had the key, shouldering her pack as she stepped out the door last. She made sure the door was shut with a firm click before walking behind the others down the hall and to the elevators.

They rode up into the arena area proper, moving through the first floor until they came to the areas adjoining the front building. They bypassed the lounge today, it still being early and the plan being for them to check around their houses first thing. They walked through the lobby, getting a stoic nod from Tazeen, the only one present at the front desk that morning.

They descended the few steps to the walkway, Beth stretching with her arms in the air before turning and grabbing Sabs by the waist. She easily lifted the protesting girl onto Blood's back, hopping up behind her in a smooth motion before wrapping an arm around Sabs' waist and grabbing hold of Blood's mane with the other hand. Blood took off, running at first to make sure the two were settled evenly before kicking on Swift, rocketing away from the CRA Hall and towards their neighborhood.

It was only a handful of minutes before they were pulling up at the Bell household, the girls dismounted before the three headed inside. It was late enough that Beth's sisters were both up and about, finishing their own breakfast as they readied themselves for the day ahead. The group of five circled up in the kitchen as the two finished eating, little discussion happening yet. When they were all ready, they headed out for the ant dungeon first, chatting on the way up.

"I was talking with Beth about finding somewhere better to level," Sabs started.

"Oh, thank god," Soph groaned. "I cannot wait to be done with this dirty, dark, smelly hole in the ground."

"So, I have bad news and worse news," Beth interjected with a nasty grin, causing Soph to groan even louder. "The only other place I've found so far is underground. Far underground."

"I hate this shit so much," Soph pouted, stamping her foot as they walked through the small field between the woodlot and the copse.

"Life sucks," Beth replied with a cavalier shrug. "The other great news is that the enemies are either level fourteen, or level twenty plus."

"I don't know if we're quite ready for that," Kim commented, gripping the hilt of her sword reflexively as she frowned.

"Maybe, maybe not," Beth answered with a non-committal gesture of her hand. "I think you should try it, with Blood and I standing guard. It would be good to push yourselves a little, and if you can handle the twenties and twenty-ones, you could get a little serious power leveling in."

"We'll do it," Kim replied with a firm nod, surprising the other girls. "Navere has said I can't be happy with just doing well, I have to try to surpass my limits. I've thought about it quite a bit, and I'm starting to agree with him. The ants and wolves that are wandering up to the neighborhood and attacking it are already level six or seven, so it's not getting any better. I don't want to fall behind or worse, stay average."

"Good to see your competitive spirit is back in action," Beth said while giving Kim a thumbs-up.

"I'm surrounded by fools and barbarians," Soph whined with a sigh, rubbing at her temples as they came upon the ant dungeon.

"You'll have to join the crowd, Soph," Beth replied with a shake of her head. "If you want to keep learning about magic and studying, you'll need to grow stronger. You'll also need money, not just to pay for things like food once you're an adult, but you might want to buy things like rare books to study. Shit's not free."

"I could always use my brains to actually earn money," she replied with a huff.

"Right, because a low-level with no experience and knowledge is going to get a job paying more than a few coppers so easily," Beth shot back with an eyeroll. "Also, like I just mentioned, if you want to actually practice your magic, you need levels. Can't get around that, no matter how you try."

"I'm sure there's a way to not have to do…this," Soph gestured around at the inside of the nest as they approached the first room, "and still be able to grow my magic."

"I'm sure there are ways," Beth agreed amiably as they entered the first room, "and, I'm sure they're very expensive. Maybe even into the mithril in price."

"What's mithril," Sabs asked as she neatly dismembered an ant, her training with John clearly continuing to pay dividends. Not that the first ants they encountered were particularly strong in comparison to the group even without Beth and Blood, but the technique and skill displayed was still impressive.

"A mystical metal that is now a reality, usually used by dwarves to make impressive weapons and armor," Soph replied instantly, reeling it off as if by rote.

"Yeah, there's that, but it's also a level of coin," Beth replied with a nod, lifting the middle of the three ants in the room off the ground and casually tearing it in half with a twist of her wrists and elbows. "It's the next unit above diamond, meaning one mithril coin is the same as ten thousand platinum, or one million gold."

"You are such an ass sometimes," Soph muttered, having already pieced together that Beth had been saying other methods of her increasing her magic without leveling were well out of their price range.

The group bickered good naturedly as they moved through the ant dungeon, Beth and Blood's participation causing the clear to take only a few minutes and significantly lowering the danger. The group was already a little over-leveled for this, so missing out on a little experience due to the high-leveled girls' involvement didn't really matter. They backed out of the ant dungeon and hurried down to the wolf dungeon, eager to get this done for the day and move on to other things.

"So, when do you want to head to this mysterious underground area?" Kim asked Beth as they trotted across the field south of the development, killing a couple weak wolves as they went.

"I was saying to Sabs, but let's give it a few days," Beth replied. "There's a dungeon down there that's larger than these, at least from what the description says, and it's at the end of an area that had enemies in the high twenties present. I want to scout that place out with Blood before anything else, and once we have the full lay of the land, then we can bring you guys down there."

"Any idea how long it'll take, exactly?" Sabs asked as they entered the Wolf Breeding Ground.

"Not really, but hopefully not more than two days. The dungeon's supposed to be up to a few miles in size, and I don't know how strong the enemies are. If they're pretty tough, Blood and I might have to take it slow. If they're too strong we'll be back pretty quick, but then we need to come up with some kind of plan to get up to the level where we could do it." Beth replied, not mentioning her unique power to the other girls. She still wanted the assumption to be that her and Blood jumping in levels was from their little jaunts out to explore, not from some special dungeon ability.

"Alright, we'll circle back in a few days then," Kim nodded as they entered the first room, needing just a little more focus for the faster wolves. "Just check back with us when you know more."

"That's the plan," Beth replied, punching a low-level wolf so hard it basically turned into a pink mist. She side-stepped the gore cloud and continued forward, easily dealing with the other 'high-level' of the room in a single strike. She had started to use Swift a little and remembered to mention it to the other two. "Oh yeah, Blood and I found a skill crystal for Swift, if either of you want to use it. It'll need another day or two to reset, since Sabs and I both used it the day before last."

"What is it, a speed-type skill?" asked Kim.

"Yeah, Blood learned it naturally," Beth answered with a nod as they started on the second room. "It's a movement skill, and basically just applies some mana to your body so you can move it faster. It's nice, but I don't think it's a super rare skill or anything."

"Yeah, how can you tell? About how…I'm not sure how to say, 'rare,'….a skill is?" Kim asked.

"I don't rightly know," Beth answered with a frown, stopping just before the third room to tap her chin and think. "I know there are skills that are better, and I think Baelvyr said something similar, but I don't know how you can tell."

"I know this," Soph cut in, stick her nose up in the air as she flaunted her knowledge.

"OK, princess, let's hear it," Beth replied with an eyeroll.

"We can't see it yet because we don't have an appropriate skill, but all skills have tiers," Soph explained. "That's tiers as in T-I-E-R-S, not as in crying."

"Gotcha," Beth grunted as she pulped two wolves almost simultaneously while using Swift.

"I don't know how many tiers there are, exactly, but a lot of skills we have are probably tier one," Soph continued her explanation. "Identify, for example, is tier one. Lyrissa told me about her skill that flat out took the place of Identify for her, and it's a tier three skill."

"Are higher tiered skills just stronger?" asked Sabs as they finished and started towards the boss room.

"Generally, yes," Soph answered, flaunting less as she really warmed up to the discussion. "There are some exceptions, probably more than I know, but a higher tier is usually just flat out stronger than a lower tier. It also limits your growth to an extent."

"What do you mean by that?" Beth asked with a frown.

"Not like you don't grow as well with a lower tier or something, I probably said that wrong," Soph answered with raised hands, making a placating gesture. "What you might not know is that tier one skills can't grow beyond gold rank for the vast majority of them."

"Wait, so all of our skills will get stuck at gold?" Kim questioned as they engaged the boss room, Beth too busy demolishing the boss and its two companions to keep participating for a moment.

"Only most tier one skills, like Identify," Soph explained calmly, "And besides, gold rank is still really strong and a long time away for all of our skills."

"That still sucks," grumbled Kim as she dismantled a level twelve with a series of rapid slashes.

"Well, evolving the skill or merging it with another to get it to tier two opens it up to at least diamond, if not further," Soph answered, holding just her right hand up, palm out. As the three lowest leveled wolves in the room closed on her, three separate bolts of lightning shot from her palm and blasted the three beasts in unison, killing them instantly. "Tier two goes to at least diamond, and tier three and up I'm not sure even has a limit."

"So, how can we see the tiers again? You lost me a little." Beth asked, eliciting a deep sigh from Soph.

"You either need a better version of Identify or some other skill that has the ability to view more detailed information," Soph answered with a little bit of a petulant groan laced into her voice. "There's also information in the library and on the Net about it, since the same-named skill doesn't differ between people. Identify is always a tier one and, if it's not, then it's not Identify but some other skill. You can't get a tier two Identify without it becoming even slightly differently named, like Monarch's Identify or something."

"What the hell is Monarch's Identify?" asked Kim with a narrowing of her eyes and a little frown, both directed at Soph.

"It's a higher tier version of Identify that evolves directly from it," Soph answered with a smirk, lording her greater knowledge over the others. They had finished the dungeon during the conversation, and were now making their back out and towards the CRA Hall.

The group made their way to the CRA Hall fairly rapidly, entering through the front once they arrived. The other girls proceeded to head back into the further recesses while Beth and Blood stopped at the counter. Tazeen was still the only one on duty, and gave the two a nod as they stepped up.

"Hey, can I extend my room by a lot?" Beth asked.

"Of course. Just allow me to sync your key and pay the appropriate amount," Tazeen replied in his typical calm manner. Beth set her key on the counter alongside a gold coin, Tazeen making the coin disappear immediately before adjusting her key with a slight beep. He handed the key back with a slight nod, which Beth returned with a quick "Thanks."

She and Blood turned and headed back out, Beth already determined to check out the labyrinth without further delay. She declined hopping on Blood's back, the wolf giving her a bit of a look as they started trotting southward. She just grinned at her companion, chuckling at the amount of expressiveness Blood could manage with a lupine face.

"I want to level Swift as we go, so let's just run," Beth explained to her massive bond, getting a nod and a loud bark in response. They took off, Beth simply using the skill to increase the speed at which she was pumping her legs.