Limitless Path

Her prediction proved accurate, as they hit forty-one after the fourth room, Beth estimating that they were maybe a third of the way through the dungeon. The room had taken some time, as the singular overseer had been level forty-three, and all the tougher for it. Beth was dumping a decent chunk of Blood's free points in STR, doing the same for her two free points for a few levels. She wanted to really boost their damage, keeping in mind that her two offensive skills and Blood's singular offensive skill both scaled heavily off STR, amplifying the effect of the stat. A copper[9] level Crush executed with two hundred STR would be far more destructive, particularly to hardened targets, than one performed with only one hundred STR.

With a roll of her shoulders and a twist of her neck, Beth was ready for more. They moved on to the next room, this one a mix of two forty-twos and two forty-threes, the new points in STR helping their damage keep pace with the enemies' toughness. The room was only slightly more difficult to clear than what they had been dealing with so far, another point in more STR points' favor, and they did a typical quick scan for any loot before moving on. Beth noted as they headed down the next tunnel that they were at least making a few silver out of this, considering the increased drop rate of copper coins, but pondering on how they had to get to the forties to get that level of income, it showed just how rare coins could be.

The next room they entered presented them with three forty-threes. After clearing the beasts in a clean but slightly slow fight, they again scanned the room for loot. Beth noted a weird pillar in the middle of the room, but didn't really want to engage with it before they scouted the area around, especially now that beasts had started roaming. When she moved to the next doorway, she found there was no tunnel, just another room immediately adjoining the one they were currently in. Suspicious, she moved to the other doorway, apart from the one they had used to enter, peering in to find the same thing. Even more suspicious, both rooms had pillars within them.

Beth made an executive decision, moving into the leftmost room with Blood hot on her heels. They cleared this room, Beth noting the pillar looked identical to the one in the first room, before she checked the only other doorway leading out from this second room. Just as she had suspected, this doorway led into a third room, again hosting a strange pillar that came up to Beth's chest, and again there was only one other doorway.

The two girls moved through room after room this way, Beth noting that the pillar in the third room appeared slightly different. Eventually, they made their way through eight rooms in total, Beth feeling like the experience for clearing that many level forty-three enemies had done a good bit to take them towards forty-two. She moved to the center of the first room and examined the pillar, noting an empty slot at the top. When she lifted her left hand and flipped the lever near the top of the pillar, there was a whirring clunk that echoed through the nearby rooms. Accompanying the noise, a little emblem rose up and slotted into a space at the top of the pillar.

"Fuck," Beth cursed, looking over to Blood who just looked back at her. "I think I know what this is, and I always hate these."

She led the way into the second room of the loop of rooms, noting that there was an emblem in the top of the pillar in this room. She gave Blood a little wave and led the way into the third room, noting the emblem was still in the top of this pillar, the difference that she had spotted in their earlier clearing of the rooms.

"Shit, it is," she grumbled.

'It is what, sister?' Blood asked in some confusion.

"Some games I've played had stuff like this," Beth explained. "It's a puzzle where you toggle the levers and the emblems move into place. The only problem is, the lever causes the emblems to move on adjacent pillars, and the emblems can be 'turned off' by the levers as well. So, you have to figure out a pattern of how to pull the levers to get all the emblems up, or maybe down, at the same time. It tests how well you can think ahead, because if you just pull levers randomly, there's a very low chance of solving it. You need to plan multiple steps in advance to guaranteed solve it without messing anything up."

'Sounds fun,' Blood replied with a lupine grin.

"Sounds tedious," Beth retorted with an eyeroll.

The two set to work, Beth assuming the emblems needed to be displayed to solve the puzzle. The first thing to do was to scout all eight rooms in the loop, giving them a picture of the state of all eight pillars. During the scout they made note of a sealed door in the fifth room, something Beth had seen earlier but ignored in favor of clearing all the tightly packed rooms. The two tried opening the door through various means, but it was clearly locked, seeming to be what the puzzle was blocking off.

Beth had never been particularly good at this type of puzzle. She remembered Soph had a puzzle that was like this but was a cube, where each side had multiple lights you could push to affect that light and the adjacent ones. The cube needed all lights lit to be solved, and Beth would struggle for half an hour to do a level Soph could do in less than five minutes. Unfortunately, the little stuck-up genius was absent this expedition, meaning Beth and Blood would have to slog through it.

Well, they would have had to slog through it if it was just Beth working the problem, but Blood seemed to vibe on the same wavelength as Soph in more ways than one. Or maybe it was all the extra points in INT and WIS Beth had given Blood, but either way, the wolf seemed to fairly easily intuit the puzzle after it had been explained. Following Blood's guidance, Beth solved the puzzle by undoing room one, then moving back and forth through a series of lever pulls at the wolf's direction. The only reason it took a little over ten minutes was the size of the rooms and the need to backtrack between a few rooms to re-flip switches.

At the last switch flip, there was a more impressive *thunk* sound, and Beth could faintly hear a grating noise from two rooms over. It appeared that all emblems up was the solution they had needed, and the locked door was both unlocked and automatically moving out of their path. The two quickly trotted over to the room to find an open tunnel greeting them, no new room on the other side. This was apparently a bar blocking the later part of the dungeon and not, as Beth had secretly hoped, a wondrous treasure vault.

"Good work, girl," Beth said while giving Blood plenty of scratches. "That would have taken me an hour to figure out."

'Behind the ears, sister,' Blood rumbled, growling as Beth got a particularly good spot.

After a little more scratching, Beth straightened up and gave Blood a thump, proceeding down the tunnel they had just opened. Whether it was the noise from the door, or some kind of scripted thing the dungeon did, or just random chance, they ran into a messy fight in the hallway. Five level forty-threes in tight confines was a challenge, but the space also worked against the beasts, as Beth could easily hold her own against two tightly jammed-in kobolds without assistance.

The fights and dungeon proceeded from there, with them encountering more wandering kobolds while they navigated between rooms. They moved forward both through the maze and through their levels, gaining another level four or so hours after the chief overseer fight. Four hours of near-constant fighting was, however, rather tiring, and being stuck underground for many, many hours did nothing to liven them up.

What was also unfortunate was the cold getting much more oppressive. Beth had the ring and multiple layers on, while Blood had her long, thick, luxurious fur, but it started to weigh both of them down. It sapped their stamina and leeched into their muscles, slowing their movements and tiring them out. It got bad enough that at the three-quarters mark, by Beth's rough estimation, they stopped after clearing a moderate sized room containing all level forty-fives, before backtracking to ensure they had a buffer zone. They set up the tent or, at least, Beth set up the tent while Blood stood guard. Beth then sat outside on the ground in front of the tent, which she had placed in the corner of a room with only two doorways opposite where they were, watching while Blood slept.

Beth gave her nearly three hours, taking her chest armor off at one point to re-stitch a few scales. She was pleasantly surprised, though also a little suspicious, that no wandering kobolds entered the room during Blood's rest, but she shrugged it off as she woke her companion up. She immediately dropped in the warm section Blood left in the blankets on the tent floor, passing out as soon as she stopped moving. The environmental cold was rather draining but that wasn't even the worst, as the kobolds had all started to use ice and frost in their attacks. It was only a small amount, but it was still annoying in the short term and highly frustrating as the battles compounded.

Beth's sleep was also uninterrupted until a large, warm, soft nose poked her cheek rather hard. Beth grunted and rolled onto her back, groaning as she realized how much sleeping in her armor sucked. She sat up and scratched Blood thoroughly, giving her lupine sister plenty of attention before getting up and exiting the tent. She grimaced a little before making her way to the next corner over and relieving herself, greatly missing the comforts of her CRA room. She finished her business and got out water and rations for both herself and Blood before packing the tent, the auto-fold and -unfold functions worth twenty times their weight in gold.

They set out after they were properly hydrated and nourished, making their way to the next room with enemies. The room was slightly large, but more than made up for the extra overseer and two miners by granting them each another level. The fights were long and tedious, fighting up several levels, but their stats, high level skills, training, and coordination let the two fight the relatively easy beasts while only sustaining minor injuries. The level closed the gap a little more, and Beth was dumping points into STR for both of them, further evening the odds. She would have to get her DEX back in line after this, as she was approaching having only half in that stat as she did in STR, but she was otherwise doing rather well. Blood was also doing nicely, her DEX being over one hundred giving her more than enough speed and maneuverability while her growing STR and END let her engage more directly in the fights.

They were only two levels under the dungeon and Beth estimated they might be able to eek one more out before the final boss, depending on how many side rooms they went through on the path to the finish. As long as the enemies didn't have a spike in levels, she was rather confident in dealing with a level forty-five boss even at forty-three, let alone forty-four. She and Blood made sure to check thoroughly for any loot or loose items, but they were earning nothing apart from coins and general experience. That and Ice Resistance levels were the only things they had to show so far, and Beth was kind of frustrated with what might be the last big dungeon she did before hitting the big five-oh for the first time.

They didn't even find any more puzzles or sealed doors, Beth assuming that the simple switches setup earlier was where things like puzzles were introduced, though her catalogue of three dungeons and a trial wasn't much to go on. They managed to match Beth's predicted pace, hitting forty-four before walking down a rather long and somewhat large tunnel that led into a massive cavern. Different from what they had encountered so far, there were stalactites hanging from the ceiling while the floor was quite rough and uneven. Beth knew footing could be a real problem, at least for her, the ever-fleet Blood not likely to be overly bothered by the jagged terrain. The other thing Beth noticed was the boss, and it was hard not to notice, considering it glowed a faint bluish white and emitted an aura of frigid cold. It also towered eight feet tall and wielded something that much more resembled a tree trunk with the branches hacked away than it did a club. As always, she used Identify to see what they were up against.

Level 45 Kobold Ice Mauler

Mauler was a new appellation, and Beth had a sneaking suspicion it might have some small relation to the massive pillar of wood the beast held. It was also equipped with a solid hauberk of a style similar to the Ravager, though it also lacked both arm and neck protection. Going for a neck blow would likely be rather risky before this opponent was greatly injured, so it looked like they were sticking to limb mutilation as a battle plan.

'Limbs first and always, unless we have a perfect opening,' Beth thought to Blood, able to fully communicate through their link without making any audible noises.

'I understand, sister. Watch out for the tree,' Blood replied with a nod, her massive, beautiful eyes glowing in the reflected light from the stone attached to Beth's waist.

Beth sighed, closing her eyes and centering herself for a moment, her meditation skill activating for a few brief seconds almost by instinct. When she was ready, she stepped forward into the room, saying to Blood, "Let's get the fuck out of this shithole."

The boss kobold was clearly a decent cut above the rest, even more so than the Ravager, as its head snapped slightly to the side as its eyes shot open, the white orbs with thick, blue veins locking onto Beth before her first step even finished. As her quip to Blood finished, the kobold had already hefted its club and moved toward her, Beth noting its speed was only slightly faster than what she would expect from a powerful level forty-five kobold thanks to its quite long legs. She met the beast a quarter of the way across the room, sliding a half step back and countering the initial sweep of the massive club with a left to right swing of her own, aiding the huge hunk of wood in flying by her. Beth felt the wind of its passage, grimacing as she realized at only a one level difference she was greatly outclassed in terms of raw power. A hit here would crack even her reinforced bones, not something she could afford against this powerful of a foe.