Limitless Path

"You gonna stay in here the rest of the day?" Beth asked.

"Yeah, we wasted a little too much of the day helping the neighborhood for me to go bother John for training. I'll just hangout for now," Sabs replied. "And just to double-check, but the hammer and broken gauntlets do mean you're going to the forging room?"

"Yeah, sorry, I'm heading down to put some work on these. Depending on if Elana and James are there, I might wind up heading back up in just an hour, or it might be early evening."

"We'll be here," Sabs said, sitting on the couch in her regular clothes while hugging Blood.

Beth waved a hand as she turned and moved out through the door, heading over to the elevators to head down to the forge. She made her way through the underworks and into the forge, finding both Elana and James present. It seemed they had just beat her to the room, as they were both handling setup for their areas before starting work for the day.

Beth naturally moved to the area she had been in the day before beside Elana, getting her own setup prepped before starting to work on her gauntlets. She got a little help from Elana in identifying what the next few steps would be in the work, giving herself something solid to do for the next few days. It would likely take a couple sessions just to get what Elana had pointed out done, and that was before the dwarf gave her another suggestion.

"It is just about time you started on something more complex than nails," Elana said to her.

"Like what?" asked Beth in response.

"Maybe not weapons yet, but we should have you try make a set of hinges."

"Hinges? Like for a door?"

"Or a chest or gate," Elana replied with a nod.

"Give me a demonstration of that first, then I'll work on the gauntlets," Beth replied after tapping her chin for a moment.

"Right, just watch what I do," Elana said with a nod. She moved over and pulled out some mana copper stock and set it in her forge to start heating. She then walked Beth through the process, explaining everything she was doing as she shaped and molded the metal. Beth soaked it all in like a dry sponge pulling in fresh water.

Once Elana had demonstrated making a hinge, Beth moved back to her work area and started working on her gauntlets. The first thing she was trying to do was get all the dents pulled as even as she could. After that, her next task was to even out the rents and tears in her left gauntlet, which included removing excess material so the edges were much more even and uniform. Just the first of those two things would take her longer than the rest of the time she was willing to commit today, and she did what she was able before the early evening rolled around and she packed up her work area.

She returned to her rented suite, dropping her gear and hammer in the corner before moving to the bathroom to get cleaned up. As soon as she had entered, Sabs had moved to the kitchen to get dinner started, and the food was ready by the time Beth was done with a slightly long shower. She sauntered through the central room wearing nothing but a towel, as per usual, distracting Sabs as she set the food on the table.

After Beth had changed and they had eaten, they spent some time on the couch watching weird and wacky interstellar programming, as was becoming something of a habit. They then retired to bed for the evening, Blood occupying the floor of the living room while the two made use of the rather large bed.

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Another three days passed in this way, as Beth spent most of her time in the forge working on both her gauntlets as well as the new items Elana was showing her how to produce. She also spent a small bit of time training with Baelvyr, but the majority of her time during the day was spent in the forge, while the majority of Sabs's time was spent training with John. The older girl did head out to do some dungeon clears with Beth's sisters as well, something that Beth didn't really bother with at this point as she saw the low-level dungeons as a waste of time.

On the fourth day after Beth had started devoting her days to fixing her gauntlets and general smithing, which was a Wednesday, according to Beth's phone, she headed up to the lounge with Sabs in the early morning. The short girl gave her a little bit of an eye as they walked through the halls of the underworks, but refrained from saying anything as they made their way to the lounge.

Once there, Beth signaled for her sisters, who had just entered from the opposite door, to join them. They took places at Baelvyr's table, the ogre just grunting at them as he worked his way through a slightly late breakfast.

"Little late for food…" Beth commented with a nod at his platter as John and Navere walked over to see what was going on.

"Sometimes, girlie, they make me do some damn work 'round here," he rumbled in response.

"Sounds tough," she replied with an eyeroll before focusing on the rest of the group, ignoring his phonebook-being-ripped-in-half snort in response. "I think we're going to change up the rotation for today."

"The hell you talkin' about?" John asked grumpily before anyone else could speak.

"I'm gonna take them down to the place with all the kobolds to keep them leveling steadily," Beth replied, narrowing her eyes a bit as she stared back at the dour rogue.

"Well, Navere," John said, standing and placing a hand on the elf's shoulder, "looks like it's day drinking for us." He then led the way back to their table in the center of the room, the two pulling out drinks as they sat down.

"Maybe I oughta take some lessons in getting him off my back," Sabs said with rather narrowed eyes, watching John start on his day drinking.

Beth rolled her eyes again while also placing her hand atop Sabs's on the table before saying, "We're heading south today, you two. Any questions?"

"Yeah; what?" asked Soph.

"There's an area with kobolds that would be a good spot for the three of you to gain some levels to the south. We're heading down there today."

"And it's…safe?" asked Kim.

"As long as we don't go in the dungeon."

"There's a dungeon down there?" Kim persisted.

"Yes, Kim. There is a dungeon down there. One that is too high of a level for anybody else," Beth replied, turning to Baelvyr as he snorted and saying, "Don't you start."

"I've already been down there," Sabs volunteered. "Didn't really seem too bad, other than it is underground.”

Soph just groaned, thumping her head down on the table in front of her. Baelvyr gave another snort as he finished his food and pulled his tankard out to start his day of drinking. He started mixing from several bottles as he said, "Now that ya have yer plan, leave my damn table."

"Right, right," Beth responded, standing and motioning the rest to follow. She moved around the table and lifted the still head-down Soph right out of her chair to an awkward squawk, setting her on Blood's back, which immediately quieted her down. The group of five left out the far door and headed down to the lobby, where they found Tazeen on desk duty, giving him nods as they passed.

Beth led the way south, Kim and Sabs jogging behind her, as Blood brought up the rear with a sleepy Soph still on her back. They went a lot slower today, as Kim didn't have any kind of movement skill yet, and she would rather not ride double with Soph. It took them closer to half-an-hour to get to the shaft dug straight down into the field, Kim giving it a dubious eye as they walked up to the edge.

"This really doesn't look safe," she commented, glancing over the edge with a growing frown.

"It's fine," Beth replied with a shrug as she started down the ramp. "Just don't trip."

"Thanks for the jinx."

"No problem!"

The group took a few minutes to get down to the bottom of the curving ramp, Kim being careful of where she placed her feet while Soph never left Blood's back. When they were at the bottom, Beth passed a lightstone to Sabs and then led the way down the lefthand tunnel. The rest followed along behind her, eyes wandering over the drab stone, noting the unpleasant decrease in temperature.

"No lights for us?" Kim asked as they approached the first area with an enemy.

"I bought a camping pack from Jaq," Beth responded, hitching the pack on her back to demonstrate. "I paid way too much, and it only included two of these. If you want to carry a lamp, I have an extra."

"No thanks, I think I'll pass on having a hand tied up like that with fights coming up."

"You can buy one of these from Jaq when we get back. Should have thought of it before we left," Beth said with a shrug.

"The combination of the two you both have provides enough, for now."

"It should be enough to keep from getting blinded, but that might be an issue," Soph commented, sitting up straight on Blood's back.

"What do you mean?" Sabs asked.

"Uh, I use lightning," Soph replied tartly. "It's, like, really bright, if you didn't notice."

"And in a dark cave, that would be like a flashbang, except without the bang part," Beth said with a nod. "We'll just have to see how much of an issue it becomes."

"Is there a reason we went left, by the way?" Sabs asked.

"What do you mean?" Kim interjected before Beth could respond.

"There's two passages at the bottom of that opening in the ground," Beth answered. "The one the leads to the right has lower-leveled enemies and leads to the dungeon, which we definitely don't want to go to. This path leads through enemies that start just slightly higher level and leads to a living quarters that has a ton of moderately high level enemies."

"Can you be a little more precise with things. Like, when you say 'moderately high level,' what exactly do you mean?" Kim asked.

"So, enemies down the righthand path start at something like level fifteen and go up from there to the high teens or low twenties, other than the hulk. The enemies down this branch start at about level twenty, which shouldn't be too much of an issue for the group, and increase from there."

"The Hulk? You mean, like, the huge green guy?" Kim asked with a quirked right eyebrow.

"No, I mean a kobold hulk, which was level twenty-eight and really powerful."

"Oh…that sounds bad," Kim replied with a frown.

"Blood and I took care of it, and we're strong enough now something like that wouldn't be a challenge. At least, not at that level," Beth responded confidently, flexing an arm as if to show off her impressively solid muscles through her armor.

"Yeah, I see that you both hit the forties," Soph added in. "How high level is that dungeon, anyway?"

"The first group of three kobolds were all level thirty-eight when we did it a week or so ago. Don't know how much it might grow with mana continuing to increase steadily."

"Yeah, that's crazy, we're not doing something like that for a while," Kim responded with a shake of her head.

"Well, it all really depends on how focused you are on leveling," Beth replied. "With Blood and I guarding you three, you could power through several levels a day down here. Do that every day for a week and you'd be in the high twenties or low thirties. Wouldn't be enough to try the dungeon yet, but it wouldn't be that far off, either."

"Let's just focus on this area before we make plans for something twenty levels ahead of the rest of us," Soph said with a bit of a snooty edge to her voice.

"Yes, the extreme level of focus you are showing riding down here on your favorite mount," Kim replied sarcastically.

The two fell to bickering for a minute before they finally arrived at the first place in the lefthand tunnel different than just rough stone. It was a single empty room, as the first several places in this tunnel were, lacking any enemies or traps, it was also empty of loot. The group took just a minute to explore the room, Kim and Soph not having seen anything down here yet, while Sabs just stuck her head inside to make sure it was what she was already familiar with from a few days ago.

Beth explained a few things about the layouts of the various rooms as they moved on, describing how this branch of the tunnel network seemed like housing. The rooms would start to become suites, then entire houses carved into the dark green and black stone. The rest of the group paid attention, other than Blood, as even Sabs hadn't gotten this explanation yet. As Beth explained what to expect, they passed by the next room, which was just a single room again with nothing but some dust. This let Beth also go into her theories on how the system that governed the Path randomly made and moved areas like this to where they were needed. That discussion took them up to the first small suite of rooms, one that Beth had found a few coppers and a silver within the drawers of the desk in the small office.

The group basically just stuck their heads in the other rooms to get a feel for them, with Beth checking the desk to see if anything new had popped up. As she did, she explained about the drawer she had opened that was trapped with a simple bottle of poison. She gestured with her hands, telling the others how the bottle had been rigged to spray when the drawer was pulled, and saying that everyone should start to be mindful of traps.

"Sounds like it's time for our rogue to start shining," Soph said with a little nod to Sabs.

"I'll do my best, but John and I have only covered a little about traps and locks so far," she replied to the pint-sized terror with a warm smile.

Beth led the way back out of the simple grouping of three rooms and down the main corridor. They chatted a little about what to expect, with Sabs explaining what she knew about trap placement. As was a classic trope, trip wires and pressure plates were some of the most common trigger mechanisms, with entry prevention devices rigged to things like, for example, drawers being a close second. That took them up to the next set of rooms, which was slightly larger with five rooms grouped together.