Limitless Path

They strode back down to the room, finding the large kobold still waiting for them. It was clear right from the outset that this beast was both faster and much stronger than anything they had faced so far. Beth engaged it immediately after the frost blast, noting that instead of a wooden rod or pole, this beast clutched a massive hunk of lumber in both its frigid, grimy hands. Beth stepped in with her right leg and swung her blade hard, deflecting a fast and powerful smash from the beast's club, feeling the force of the deflection ring through her sword and slightly numb her arms.

The fight was long and grueling, Beth and Blood dancing around the beast for several minutes as they exchanged blows and avoided being flattened by the massive hunk of wood. Things took a bit of a turn for the worse when the boss, enraged by the numerous attacks that had sliced up its limbs, shrieked and exploded with frost, shooting a storm of freezing mana and tiny slivers of ice out around itself. Blood was only able to close her eyes to try to block the blast while Beth leapt back and put her hands up, preventing any ice from getting in her own eyes or mouth.

Ice Resistance Copper[0] acquired.

Well, at least she was seeing some immediate benefits to being coated in frost and ice. She winced a little, feeling where several shards of ice had sliced shallow cuts into her face, the wince turning to a frown as she felt a slightly deeper slice on the right side of her neck. Fortunately for her and Blood, the kobold seemed to get slightly tired after such an immense frost blast, giving them a few seconds to recover before it charged her again. Beth responded by pumping mana into the enchantments on her blade, not just a trickle, but a flood, causing the blade to burst into flame. The fire coated the entire blade and billowed nearly three inches outward, a bright, red flame heating up the entire room. Fire underground was not the best idea, for several reasons, but Beth figured she could make this quick.

She was slightly wrong about that, but the flame did make the kobold go berserk, roaring and rampaging for a time before shooting out more ice. Blood was luckily able to dodge most of the second blast before closing back in, getting a great hit in on the beast's left knee. The damage was really starting to stack up at that point, with the elite kobold slowing considerably, funnily enough for an ice-based beast. It wasn't entirely out of tricks, sending out a third blast of ice before speeding back up, furiously swinging at Beth as it went fully berserk. She was able to go toe-to-toe with it for a time, even getting in a nasty cut on its arm, before she wasn't able to move quickly enough and had to block a heavy swipe with her armored left arm, feeling the bone in her upper arm fracture.

The strike had pulled the elite out of position, the beast staggering down to one knee, a weak position that Beth took advantage of despite her injury. She lashed out, her precise timing and powerful strike coming from some finely honed sense of battle as the heavy ridge of burnished copper over her knuckles crashed into the kobold's skull. There was a sound on the impact like someone had fired an artillery piece right next to her, the force slamming the kobold's head down and to the side at faster than highway speeds. The beast's own retaliatory swing went well wide, missing Beth entirely as its skull smashed into the ground with a thunderous shattering sound, the head of the creature breaking apart the stone and forming a web-work cracked pattern that extended in a two feet radius around it. The blow certainly fractured the skull as well as heavily scrambling its brain, but the beast persisted, scrabbling weakly with its arms as it couldn't quite mentally recover from the strike.

Blood darted in as Beth staggered back, cursing at her cracked knuckles as she kept her eye on the beast. The wolf wasted no time in getting the beast's back and grasping its neck in her jaws, clamping and twisting, tearing flesh while she strained and growled. The kobold's neck was only able to hold up so long, the beast thrashing as its lifeblood spurted out onto the cold floor until, finally, there was a sickening crunch accompanied by a loud *POP*, the beast's neck snapping with a final twist.

The two relaxed after just a moment, receiving the kill confirmation letting them know that the beast was truly dead. Beth had managed to get her eyes cleared and started by dropping her pack in a clear area away from the corpse before reaching up and pulling out the ice shard from her cheek with a wince. Maybe because it was magical ice, or maybe because the dungeon was quite cold, or due to some combination of many factors, the ice wasn't really melting, even exposed to their body heat. Beth set about pulling the bladelike slivers out of her armor and herself before assisting Blood, cleaning out her left side and back. Once the ice was clear, the two were able to sit down and meditate while focusing on regenerating.

Beth was first to finish, even with her gaping cheek wound, as her skill was much stronger. After their earlier discussion with Soph, she knew that was because Regeneration was only a tier one skill while Lordly Reconstruction was at least tier two. The comparative power of the two was a strong indication that her skill might even be tier three, as the rate of her healing even with the skill at copper ranks was pretty phenomenal.

Shaking off thoughts of tiers, Beth reviewed the last few messages while guarding Blood during the wolf's healing. She noted the kill message and the reward of money, smiling a little at the fact that the beast was worth a considerable number of copper coins. Everything in the level forty-one to fifty bracket was worth considerable copper, with fifty being a major turning point where beasts got much stronger but also much more rewarding. She scrolled the rest of the messages, noting a few levels in Ice Resistance for both of them, as well as an overall level. She assigned their free stat points before checking their status screens for the first time in a little while.

Name

Elizabeth Anne Bell

Class

Brawler

Level

40

Strength

111

Dexterity

61

Endurance

79

Intelligence

30

Wisdom

30

Free Points

0

Titles

Silver Flame Empress' Inheritor

Skills

Ancient World Gate[1]

Blacksmithing Apprentice[4]

Crush Copper[9]

Focused Meditation Copper[8]

Ice Resistance Copper[2]

Identify Copper[8]

Lightning Resistance Copper[4]

Lordly Reconstruction Copper[8]

Monstrous Blow Copper[9]

Pain Tolerance Copper[9]

Swift Copper[5]

Swords Apprentice[9]

Toxic Resistance Copper[5]

Unarmed Apprentice[9]

Wealth

12g 44s 70c

Emblems

CRA Copper Badge

Bonds

Blood

Name

Blood

Race

Red Wolf Queen

Level

40

Strength

74

Dexterity

106

Endurance

60

Intelligence

38

Wisdom

38

Free Points

0

Titles

-

Skills

Ice Resistance Copper[2]

Identify Copper[7]

Meditation Copper[8]

Lightning Resistance Copper[3]

Regeneration Copper[8]

Rending Bite Copper[1]

Swift Copper[9]

Toxic Resistance Copper[4]

Wealth

52s 29c

She was surprised to see that Blood had a new skill, checking the messages from the battle to see the wolf had apparently learned it during the final push of the fight. It seemed she had either learned or created a skill with her final bite to the throat that had killed the kobold, a welcome additional to her companion's arsenal. Beth noted the new resistance levels and nodded in satisfaction, hoping that she would be seeing a Journeymen level for a weapon skill at some point soon.

She proceeded with cleaning her blade while she continued to wait, noting the slow but steady closing of the cuts across her companion's body. She finished with her blade and dug out the pack of ration bars in the meanwhile, noting they had about half of them left, which should be more than enough for this dungeon dive. She made yet another mental note, thinking they would have to buy multiple packs from Jaq once they were back in the hall. She ate two bars and drank a ton from one of their two ever-full canteens before moving to the back of the room to take care of some business, washing her hands with more water when she was done.

She moved over to the ravager's body as Blood was getting fairly close to finishing her healing, at least, to Beth's observations. She messily chopped the hauberk apart, tugging the sections she hacked it into off the corpse with a grimace. She worked to remove the leather, getting much of it cut away before stacking the frost iron plates in her backpack. She would have to ask Elana if there was any kind of easy way to remove rivets without an entire forge setup.

Blood woke from her meditation a few minutes later as Beth finished with the hauberk and had three ration bars herself as well as a huge amount of water before also making use of the back corner of the room. She came back as Beth was finishing inspecting her armor, noting two scales that were basically broken. She decided not to worry about them for now, as they were still attached and providing some level of protection. When they snapped off, she would use the armor maintenance kit in the pack to make a hasty fix.

"So," Beth said, turning to Blood, "was that you earlier?"

'Yes…' the wolf replied mentally, her husky voice echoing beautifully in Beth's mind. The tall girl immediately leapt on the wolf, wrapping her arms around the big lupine while burying her face in Blood's neck. She dug her hands in and scratched for all she was worth, Blood growling deeply in response to the affection.

"Your voice is so damn pretty, just like you," Beth said, face still rubbing against Blood's neck.

'Thank you, sister.' Blood replied a little sheepishly, hanging her head as much as she could with Beth wrapped around her neck.

"Sister. I like that," Beth replied firmly, letting go of Blood's neck to move in front of her before planting a warm kiss on her forehead. "Welcome to the family, sweetheart."

Blood growled deeply in response, rubbing her face firmly against the front of Beth's torso, not bothered by the hardness of the scales on Beth's chest armor. Beth reached under Blood's massive jaws in response and scratched quite strongly, reaching down onto the large wolf's throat as well. The two eventually broke apart, eager to get out of the elite's room and get the dungeon completed.

Once Beth had repacked everything, they headed back out the only tunnel available to them, moving back to the previous room. Sticking with their 'stay to the left' theory, they would take the only tunnel they hadn't been in from here, which was technically the next choice moving along the left wall. They passed through the room quickly, Beth noting the corpses were still there, not sure how long it took a dungeon to do cleanup. It might not even happen in one of these bigger, instanced dungeons, the bodies only disappearing when the instance collapsed after they cleared it.

Musing on the nature of dungeons almost caught her flatfooted, as they walked into two level forty miners in the tunnel itself. They were stuck in some rather narrow confines for what turned into a quick but brutal fight, Beth taking a few scratches on her heavy gauntlets to absorb a couple sloppy strikes. The two girls dealt with the beasts quickly enough, Blood using her new ability at an opportune moment to quickly and viciously kill the second beast by tearing its neck apart after getting in its blind spot.

'Enemies wander now, sister,' Blood commented through their bond. Beth was unsure if anyone else would be able to hear her, something she was eager to test once they had completed this tedious maze.

"It seems so," Beth replied. "Just means we'll have to stay alert in higher-level dungeons. We can't assume tunnels and such are safe. Hell, we need to be careful when we backtrack, since cleared rooms could have new enemies stumbling into them."

Blood just nodded in response as Beth finished quickly cleaning her blade, the two then moving on down the tunnel just a smidge more cautiously. With the fact they hadn't encountered any branching in the actual tunnels, just the rooms, and that Beth's stone provided ample light to see a good distance in front of them, they certainly didn't need to crawl along. Combined with Beth's rather good eyesight and Blood's superior hearing, they were able to keep making good time.

And make good time is what they did next, tearing through the next half dozen rooms, fighting enemies at level forty and forty-one in every room. They eventually came to what Beth realized was a dead end, a section of the labyrinth that wasn't connected to any other part other than the tunnel leading in. They mowed through three rooms of level forty-one enemies at high speed to prove her thoughts, finding it was entirely a dead-end section. They had to backtrack to the next tunnel that could possibly lead them further into the maze, made an easy feat thanks to their enhanced INT and WIS providing near perfect recall.

Two more rooms and the enemies jumped to level forty-two uniformly. The added toughness made the fights take longer, Beth really done with underground mazes as a dungeon archetype already. The only fortunate part of it all being the higher levels and greater power of the enemies provided ample experience. Beth estimated they would likely hit level forty-one in another four rooms and, if the labyrinth was about the size she was estimating at this point, they would make either forty-four or forty-five before all was said and done. She wasn't really concerned, either, since they just had to be careful not to hit level one hundred the first time lest they lose out on some challenges only available at zero rebirths below that level.

The other thing to worry about, that hopefully wouldn't come up here based on the dungeon's size, was breaching level fifty. While not a concern in terms of missed opportunities, fifty marked a noticeable increase in beasts' power all around, whether it was in terms of offense, defense, resistances, or even overall cunning. She really wanted to make sure she got at least one weaponskill into Journeyman before hitting fifty, which would hopefully give them an easier time dealing with the enemies' increased power.