Limitless Path

The two stayed like that for somewhat more than a minute, Beth reluctant to get up from the pleasant embrace. Eventually, she hoisted Sabs up and set her on her feet before hopping up herself, squatting down to grab the chest and lift it. She went through the motions to return it to her shoulder, shrugging to settle it before starting for the CRA Hall.

"Can you run with that?" Sabs asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

"Not very well, and not for very long," Beth grunted in response, quickening her pace slightly to a fast walk. Of course, a fast walk with her stats meant a moderate jog for Sabs, considering both her lower stats and much shorter legs. It took them nearly an hour to get back to the Hall, Beth getting pretty winded near the end. They moved around to the front door, entering the lobby to find only Tazeen currently present. He merely raised a single eyebrow a precise amount at Beth carrying the chest, which she responded to as they passed.

"Found a chest of plain mana steel ingots a little bit ago," she said. "Just went down to retrieve it today."

"Would you like me to take a look at them?" Tazeen asked calmly.

"Oh, uh, sure?" Beth stopped in her tracks, eyes widening a little as she puffed over to Tazeen. She thumped the chest down on the counter, trying to be careful but still causing it to emit a moderately loud slam as she set it down.

"No traps?" Tazeen asked, apparently rhetorically, as his eyes glowed very briefly before he flipped the chest open. He withdrew one of the bars and held it up, inspecting it as his eyes glowed again. Beth leaned against the counter to the right of the chest while Sabs mimicked her just to the chest's left. Blood sat back a small ways from the counter and observed everything as Tazeen performed his inspection.

"Nothing special," Tazeen commented calmly. "But nothing bad. Very standard mana steel bars, very uniform throughout the chest."

"You think I could work with them?" Beth asked.

"Likely not yet at your skill level," Tazeen replied simply. "You can work them before the end of apprentice, but I would wait until apprentice[8]. You likely won't have the skill to do much more than very simple things before that, and there's not much point using a more valuable bar to practice what you could do cheaper and easier with mana copper stock."

"Advice noted," Beth responded with a nod. "I'll stash it in the room for now."

"If you need anything else, including lessons, you know where I will be," Tazeen said with the smallest of smiles, a bright and radiant display by his standards.

"Will do, Tazeen, thanks," Beth nodded and grabbed the chest again, hefting it to her shoulder.

"Just curious, but do you know how much that weighs?" Sabs asked Tazeen as Beth turned to head back deeper into the Hall.

"In your units, that chest right now is roughly three thousand six hundred pounds," Tazeen answered Sabs calmly, almost causing Beth to stumble.

"It's what now?!" she asked, turning wide eyes to Tazeen.

"Steel is heavy," Tazeen explained with an almost imperceptible shrug. "Mana steel even more so. A chest that size filled entirely with normal steel would be somewhere around two thousand nine hundred of your pounds. The mana imbued in the steel makes it denser, causing the same volume to weigh anywhere from fifteen to fifty percent more. It is one of the ways you can determine the quality of mana alloys, based on the density of mana. Considering the just over twenty-four percent increase in weight would explain why I rated it as fairly standard mana steel."

"Oh, well, it doesn't feel that heavy," Beth replied a little lamely, shrugging her shoulder to adjust the chest. "Good info on the density stuff, too. Thanks again."

"Thanks, Tazeen," Sabs added.

"It is no problem."

The three left the elf to his vigil, heading down the corridor and into the arena, bypassing the lounge and other areas. They trudged to the elevator and rode it down to Beth's floor, moving to her room where she let them in with her free hand. Sabs pushed the door open for them, allowing Beth to get in without fumbling with it. The tall girl moved to her left after entering, thumping the chest down in the corner where they typically dumped their gear. Sabs dropped her gear after Beth set the chest down before moving across the room.

"What else?" asked Sabs, plonking down on the couch.

"I should either grab Tazeen or Elana and get started on my gloves," Beth replied with a sigh, dropping her pack before pulling the damaged gauntlets out.

"They took a real beating," Sabs said, looking at the mess the gauntlets were in.

"Yeah, saved my arms from taking even more serious damage," Beth replied with a grunt.

"I'm gonna just chill, if you don't mind," Sabs said, grabbing the remote and leaning back.

Beth walked over, tucking the gauntlets under her left arm, before leaning down and kissing Sabs warmly. "I never mind, Sabs. I'll also see if I can get a second room key from Tazeen to give you. You should think of this place as yours."

"Beth…" Sabs said with a big grin before pulling the tall girl back down into another warm kiss.

When they broke off, Beth looked over to Blood, asking, "What about you? In or out?"

'I will stay with the cute one.' Blood replied mentally.

"She says she'll stay with the cute one," Beth said to Sabs, getting a blush out of the older girl. "Alright, I'm off for now. I'll be back in a few hours, at most."

Beth stopped in the corner and grabbed her hammer from the small pile of loot she had accrued, hoping maybe to get one of the two senior smiths to walk her through repairing the gauntlets herself. She headed out of the room, letting the door close behind her before heading to the elevators. She headed to the lounge first, checking for Elana.

She found only Baelvyr in the room, sitting in his usual corner and drinking from a massive stein. He had a screen hovering in the air in front of him and just to the side, but seemed rather distracted by what was on one of the large TVs. Beth walked over to his table and gave him a nod.

"Hey, thanks for yesterday, if I didn't say it before," she said.

"Hey, no problem, girlie," he replied with a shrug. "All part of the job."

"I take it I can look forward to such things in the future?" Beth asked.

"If ya mean more of them bastards poppin' up, then maybe," Baelvyr responded before taking a mighty quaff. "If ya mean doin' stuff like that yerself, helpin' the greenhorns, then maybe wait until ya ain't so green yerself, first."

"Yeah, yeah," she responded with an eyeroll. "Have you seen Elana?"

"Yep," he replied, "she took that kiddo she got under 'er down to the forge a little while ago. Might wanna check there first."

"Thanks, Baelvyr," Beth said, turning to head to the door.

"Ya need trainin', ya know where to find me," he replied.

"I will then, since I hit Journeyman off that fight," Beth answered, stopping halfway to the closer door.

"Damn, kid. Must've really pushed ya, huh?" he said with a small chuckle that Beth still felt like a slap.

"Guess so, but now that I'm here, I need to figure out the differences. And I want to start pushing toward Expert."

"Maybe keep yer feet on the ground and try to get used to what ya have now first," he commented with a snort.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll hit you up day after tomorrow. I wanna help with the power and water stuff for my neighborhood that Jaq's working on tomorrow."

"Again, ya know where I'm at," he said before draining what was left in his tankard. She just saw him doing his typical trick of pulling bottles of out nowhere as she stepped out of the room, shaking her head slightly as she started back into the arena section to head down to the forge.

She made her way to the elevators and headed down to the bottom basement floor, walking down the brightly lit hallways to the back of the basement. She pushed open the door to the smithy, a bit of heat and a large amount of noise washing out, as both Elana and James hammered away at metal.

"Elana!" Beth called out, letting the two know she was there as well as getting the senior smith's attention.

"Girlie," the smith teacher answered, placing the piece she was working on back partially in the forge as she finished her last few hammer blows. Turning to Beth, she gave her a nod as the tall girl walked over to the dwarf's work area. Beth set her gauntlets down on Elana's anvil, holding her forging hammer in her left hand with the head set on the top of the anvil as well.

"Well, girl, let's hear it," Elana said, putting her hands on her hips as she glanced at the gauntlets.

"Got advice from Jaq, of all people," Beth replied. "He said these would be fixable, might be some good experience for me to do it myself with supervision."

"We can do that, but you aren't currently paying for any lessons," Elana replied, eyes narrowing a little as her hands remained on her hips.

"Yeah, yeah," Beth said with a snort, flicking Elana a gold.

"That's two months' worth," said the woman as she caught the gold, taking her hands off her hips during the process.

"For my sobbing wallet, it should be even more," Beth muttered darkly.

"Relax, girl, you make plenty already. Once I hammer you and this slob," she said, jerking a thumb at James, who's head popped up with a frown, "into shape, you'll make plenty just with that fancy hammer of yours."

"Right, but don't expect me to hammer all day, every day," Beth said with a shake of her head and a slight frown. "I've got shit to do. Including killing."

"We all remember being young and hot tempered, girl, no bonus there," the dwarf replied with a brushing motion from her right hand. "Let's have a look at these."

Elana picked Beth's shredded gauntlets up and examined them. She started with the right gauntlet which, while dinged and a little dented, was still at least in a relatively useable state. Elana didn't rush, doing a thorough inspection, but her skill let her check from fingertip to elbow-joint in good time. She set the first gauntlet down only to pick up the second, giving it a more critical eye, even going so far as to stick the index and middle finger of her right hand into the rent and pull at the metal. Beth watched the metal visibly move at the smith's ministrations, not really surprising, considering Elana had to be rocking well into the single digit thousands of STR, if not into the low tens of thousands.

Beth followed up on that thought, curious if the smith would mind sharing. "Say, you're pretty damn strong, mind giving me a ballpark on your STR stat?"

"What do they say, girl? Knowledge is power," the stocky smith returned with a scowl.

"Just askin'," Beth replied, holding her hands up defensively.

"It's more than five thou', if that can satisfy you," the smith said, not even blinking as James dropped his hammer after listening in from his workstation. "And don't treat your tools like that, you oaf."

"Sorry, sorry," the young man apologized, picking up the dropped hammer before turning to pull some mana copper round stock out of his forge and start hammering it. Beth was pretty sure it wasn't hot enough, and that he was just doing it to look busy to avoid more tongue-lashing.

"Heats it four times, hammers it ten, and listens zero," Elana muttered, low enough Beth was pretty sure only she heard it. "Anyway," the smith continued, putting the damaged gauntlet back on her anvil, "you want me to hammer this back into shape, or you want to work on it yourself? It will take some time to do right, at your skill level."

"I've got time," Beth replied with a shrug. "I just want them fixed for now, and besides, I have a chest full of mana steel in the room now; I'd like to start working that sooner, rather than later."

"Ah, why didn't you say so?" Elana responded. "Bring it on down and we can have a look."

"I'll grab it if you want, but Tazeen already looked at the bars," Beth said. "He said they're around mid-quality, and that I should wait for apprentice[8], at minimum, before I tried doing anything with them."

"Ah, if he's looked at them, then I trust what he says," Elana said with a nod, crossing her arms as the conversation continued. "I would personally recommend waiting even longer, at least apprentice[9], if you can stomach it."

Beth just sighed, saying, "I don't want to wait, but I know it's smart. Just means burning more time, but at least I have tons of that now. And it's not wasting the time, I'm still learning."

"Alright, let's talk about these," Elana said, gesturing with her left hand before replacing it in her arms-crossed stance. "Tell me how the damage happened, not that I don't have a good idea, so I know exactly what I'm working with."

"Kobold boss," Beth started, going on to explain about the fights with the kobolds, including the massive boss that pounded the snot out of her and Blood.

"Alright, good, that fills everything in," Elana nodded as she uncrossed her arms and picked up the right gauntlet. "Lucky for you, no ice or frost mana invaded the metal. That can happen at higher levels, usually not until close to or over level one hundred, but that's not a hard rule. Since there's no hostile mana or skill remnants in the metal, we only have to worry about repairing the metal's shape and strength. Don't want it too thin after we're done, at the very least."

The smith led Beth over to the workstation on her other side, the two of them setting it up so she was working third in their line counting from James. The room had far more than three stations, but they occupied the three centermost and left the rest alone, though everything in the room was kept well clean. When the forge was heating and the tools were arranged to Beth's liking (just some tongs and a set of pliers beside her hammer), Elana tossed the left gauntlet on the workbench before placing the right gauntlet on the anvil.