Limitless Path

"Let's go," Beth said, taking the lead.

"Go where? Shouldn't we go to the lounge?" Kim asked, a little unsure.

"I don't want to spend the whole day coated in ant goo and wolf blood. You're welcome to just go right to the lounge yourself," Beth replied over her shoulder as she walked off down the hall.

"Fine, let's go," Kim said, gesturing to the rest.

Beth led the whole group around the lounge and down into the underworks of the arena, leading them to her suite on the second basement floor. She pulled her key out of her pouch and swiped it across the pad by the door before standing to the side, gesturing the rest to enter. She entered behind everyone and let the door slide shut behind her. She chuckled as she saw the obvious wonder and excitement on the rest of the girls' faces.

"Wait, this is the room you were renting?" Kim asked, looking around at everything in the living room.

"Yeah, it's one silver per day for the suite. Even includes food and lets you use the laundry room for free," Beth responded with a nod, already stripping off her outer equipment.

"Why are we here?" Soph asked with a slight frown as she poked her head into the kitchenette.

"I know you didn't get very dirty Soph, but the rest of us did. There's a full bathroom here with a separate shower and tub, both of which are awesome. Well, I haven't used the tub yet, but the shower is awesome," Beth replied, shaking her head.

The other girls immediately followed suit when they heard Beth's plan, stacking their equipment to the left of the main door. In a move that both Beth and even more assuredly Kim could have predicted, Soph entered the bathroom first and monopolized the tub. Beth simply ignored her, helping Blood wash off before she showered herself. The other girls took turns with the shower, and the entire rest of the team was washed and dried and ready to go before Soph had stepped out of the tub.

They waited another ten minutes before Soph was ready, and Beth led them back out of the room and down to the shop. She had it in mind to stop and grab something, which would also require some work from the group, before they got to the day's training. They entered the commissary a minute later, empty as usual, and waited for Jaq to appear.

"And why are we down here now? Do you just like to annoy Jaq?" asked Kim with a bit of a puzzled look on her face.

"She certainly does, but is not alone in that endeavor," answered Jaq as he stepped out of the leftmost door behind the front counter, sweeping the entire group with a piercing glare.

"Aren't you, like, a shopkeeper or something?" asked Sabs. "Why are you always so snippy when people come in to spend money?"

"Don't bother," Beth interjected as Jaq's glower deepened. "He's got a solid one-star review right now and doesn't care."

Jaq's eyes narrowed dangerously as he said, "Other than harass me and eat away my valuable time, did you bringing your troupe of rabble in here today have a point?"

"Uh, yeah, it did," Beth replied, crossing her arms over her chest as she returned his narrow-eyed glare. "We need stuff to clean our armor. Got anything?"

"One minute," he replied coolly before walking off, disappearing into the center door. He reappeared a few moments later and stepped over in front of Beth. When he waved his hands over the counter, four kits appeared in front of him.

"Armor maintenance and repair kits," he explained tersely. "These can service a number of different kinds of armor including leather, mana copper, and mana steel. Are any of you rabble a Blacksmith or Leatherworker?"

"I'm interested in becoming a Blacksmith, but no, we don't have any of those skills," Beth replied while shaking her head.

"The skills aren't required to use the kits for cleaning, or for extremely simple repairs, but if you want to repair more serious damage or wear, you'll need to take the armor to somebody with some skill," Jaq replied, rather overemphasizing the last word.

"How much?" Beth ignored his jabs.

"Twenty silvers total," he replied.

"So, five each?" Kim cut in, placing five silvers on the counter. The other two girls followed her example, each placing five silvers down, though Soph was clearly displeased with the expenditure.

"A pleasure," Jaq said after making the coins disappear, using a tone that clearly indicated the opposite was implied.

"Right," Beth replied, stretching the word out overlong, before grabbing her kit and turning to lead the girls out of the commissary.

They returned to Beth's room, where they dragged their gear over to sit in piles beside them as they sat on the two couches. They set the new kits on the table and opened them up to find an almost dizzying array of items inside. There were bottles of oil, needles and thread, bottles of what looked like harsh cleaning solutions, two small pairs of pliers, a small but sturdy hammer, and several other tools and items. Beth immediately grabbed the control and turned the screen on, causing some little buzz from her sisters and Sabs, before scrolling through the menus. Something she had noticed the other day but hadn't used yet was the capability to access Outernet resources, similar to the computers up in the library.

She was able to find some instructions on using the kits after half a minute of searching, and it was rather convenient for the whole group, having the guide up on a massive screen on the far wall. They set about cleaning as best they could, Beth making the executive decision to grab a set of towels from the bath for the initial major grime removal. She would hopefully be able to get them clean again with a run through the washing machines on a heavy-duty cycle, so they used the towels and some cleaner to remove the dirt and gunk first.

The group then took some time following the instructions to thoroughly clean and oil their gear, with Kim attempting a repair job. She had actually lost a scale on her right forearm from a nasty hit just that morning, and she attempted to use the sewing equipment and a spare scale to fix it. Fifteen minutes of work following a section of the guide specifically on stitching parts to leather created a rather crude, if actually serviceable, repair to her torso armor.

"I got a skill for that," Kim stated in some surprise, her eyebrows inching up her forehead.

"Hm, what is it?" asked Beth.

"Leatherworking Apprentice[0]." Kim replied with a slight grin.

"After seeing what you did to the arm of your armor, zero is about right," cut in Soph sarcastically.

"See if I don't stitch that head-hole of yours shut," Kim replied menacingly.

The two sisters sniped back and forth as the group finished their work, Beth and Sabs ignoring them as they tried to get through their tasks quickly. The two of them were definitely more eager to train than the two younger girls, both for different reasons. Beth enjoyed fighting, enjoyed growing stronger, and really enjoyed leveling up. She'd always played video games, and one of the best parts of any game, in her opinion, was seeing the numbers go up. The amount of money you had, the stats of the characters you controlled, even the number of items in your inventory. Now that real life had become similar to a game, she just couldn't get enough of the feeling of seeing her numbers constantly increase, especially with the actual real-world power that increase brought with it.

Sabs, on the other hand, was rather different from Beth. She didn't want to increase her stats to see her numbers get bigger or to fight even more dangerous foes. She was mainly focused on something else entirely; Beth. She wanted to be able to adventure with the younger girl, not just be protected by her, and the only way to achieve her goal was to grow stronger. She was always eager to train the last handful of days because she could actually feel herself growing, her skills and fighting abilities improving rapidly under her mentor's instruction. She was determined to catch up to her new girlfriend, not to compete with her, but to journey with her.

Beth realized after a minute that hurrying didn't really matter, as she had to be the last to leave the room. She and Sabs had finished and put their equipment to the side to wait, not wanting to gear up and sit on the couches. The other two girls took another fifteen minutes to finish before they were ready to head out, the group leaving the room and making their way up to the lounge.

Some of the instructors were present, and some were not. Baelvyr wasn't around, but Beth wasn't particularly worried, having been granted access to even more training resources than they had actually used so far. Lyrissa wasn't anywhere to be seen either, and Soph stomped off in a huff to find her 'layabout instructor.' The other two girls met up with their instructors and headed out for whatever training they were up to, leaving only Beth and Elana in the room.

Beth made her way over to the central table at the back of the room that Elana sat at and sat down herself. The dwarf was in some type of casual clothes composed of several layers that seemed to shimmer dully in the light. She turned her head to give Beth a hard stare as she sat down.

"That old blockhead not enough for you? You need to bother me as well?" she asked in her surprisingly warm voice.

"Well, I don't have to, but I did hear a nasty rumor that you know Blacksmithing and might be willing to teach somebody new?" Beth queried in response.

"Phew," Elana sighed and then grumbled something short to herself under her breath. "Yeah, I can teach you, but I have to charge you my regular rate. I'm also not going to be lenient, whatever that old bastard says or does."

"Yeah, so, um, what exactly is the rate for this?" asked Beth a little nervously. She felt like her wealth was a river that endlessly flowed away from her. The more she clutched at the few coins she had, the faster they ran through her fingers.

"The first two weeks' worth of instructions is discounted through a CRA instructor at twenty-five silvers. Every two weeks after that will be fifty silvers until you hit Journeyman rank, then it's a gold every two weeks," Elana replied, staring at Beth as she listed the prices out.

Beth barely suppressed the wince at the pricing. "I have like, forty silvers right now. I can pay for the first two weeks, but I might have to wait a little after that."

"You don't have to do it all at once, it's just that every two weeks are a unit that is used to determine training time and pricing," Elana replied with a smirk and a quick shake of her head, the thick braid her hair was bound into bouncing against her back.

Beth sighed in relief. "Alright, I'd like to sign up for the first two weeks of Blacksmithing courses."

"Show me the coin and we'll get started," Elana replied calmly.

Beth withdrew twenty-five of her precious silver coins and set them on the table. Elana, like all the other seniors, was able to make them disappear instantly with a nearly imperceptible motion of her hand. Afterwards, she reached out with her hand, making a book suddenly appear in it, which she passed to Beth.

"I assume you can read Universal, or do you need the crystal for it?" she asked.

Beth replied, "Lyrissa already showed Blood and I the crystal, and I showed the other girls. We all can read and speak it."

"Good. Your first assignment is to read that book. And when I say read it, I mean thoroughly. I want you to be able to answer questions based on the material in that book," Elana said in a serious tone, pinning Beth with a harsh gaze.

"Right, I'll get on it right away. Anything else I should do?" Beth replied.

"Just the book. When you're done with that, we'll talk again. When I think you're ready, we'll go down to the forge," Elana answered with a nod before going back to the tablet-like device she had been looking at when Beth walked over.

Beth got up and headed out of the room, followed closely by Blood, and made her way back down to her rented room. As much as she wanted to train, she wanted to get started on the Blacksmith skill track ASAP. It was especially important as she thought about her advantages. Right now, she could always use the gate power, even if she only used it once a week, to do a week’s plus training in a day. She couldn't, however, get training in something like Blacksmithing in the gate, and she wanted to use her time as efficiently as she could.

Beth let the two of them into the room and took off her gear before crashing on the couch. She slumped back with her legs propped up on the table before turning the screen on and browsing for something to put on in the background. When she'd found something vaguely interesting, she tapped it open and then opened up the book Elana had given her, starting to read.

Fortunately for Beth, whether it was thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even billions of years, somebody in the time this whole Path thing had been around had figured out how to write introductory books that weren't as boring as watching paint dry. Though it didn't really seem like it was the same author, the tone and descriptions used reminded her a small bit of the basics book she had read most of in the library. She settled deeper into the couch as she read, trying to concentrate on absorbing what she was running her eyes over.

The book wasn't particularly long and was an overall fairly basic introduction to the Blacksmith skill. It paid particular attention to the basic tools of the trade, discussed some of the basic ores and metals, and laid out some simple techniques. It mainly focused on discussing the rhythm of hammering metal, where to strike to achieve what result, and how long to hit the metal. This last point went hand-in-hand with how long to heat the metal, the section paying particular attention to the colors of various metals, and how they would change color or glow in specific ways at specific temperatures.