Limitless Path

The plan went quite smoothly, at least, in the initial stages. Beth and Blood had no trouble killing their targets, their strength and skills so overwhelming that there was no doubt in the result. The others engaged the remaining three ants as they had planned. The problems started here, as Kim and Sabs weren't strong enough to quickly kill a level eleven. This meant Soph was trying to distract the extremely fast Princess-type from range with her spells, with limited success in overcoming the ant's speed.

When the princess ant avoided a bolt of lightning from Soph and attempted to grab Kim, Beth had seen enough for the day. While the boss was a speed-type monster, Beth had over double the DEX and likely close to triple the STR of the beast. She exploded across the room like a rifle shot, easily reaching the ant before it reached Kim. A single kick to the boss's body blew it apart, with an effect even greater than if Beth had forced it to swallow a primed grenade.

After the boss had been killed, Beth and Blood stood by while the three girls slowly killed the level elevens. It took them almost two-and-a-half minutes to take the ants out, a time Beth made note of, before they were ready to take a quick break. Beth asked Blood to explore the two side tunnels, curious to see if her hunch about them was right, before she moved over to the group resting on a clear area of dirt away from the ant corpses.

"So, that could have gone a little better," she said to start off the conversation.

"Yeah, that was a mistake on my part," Kim replied. "I'd figured how tough the level elevens would be based off of one of them that we killed as a group. Should have taken that into account when looking at a room full of them. Luckily, we had you with us today, so nobody even got hurt. Thanks."

"No problem, but you need to be a little more careful. A single level up isn't enough to suddenly make you invincible, and you can't always count on me or somebody being around to help," Beth said. "We need to check if anything's happened to the wolf dungeon, but with the dungeons getting stronger, you guys need to not just train, but raise your levels."

"God, I hate this," Soph complained. "We have to come into this dark and damp shithole every day."

"Soph, language!" Kim reprimanded, earning an eyeroll in response from her younger sister.

"Well, nobody's gonna force you to do anything. But eventually, the ants that randomly wander up to our house will be stronger than these ones. What happens then? You just hope somebody strong enough to fight them appears?" Beth asked Soph coldly.

"I'll get you or Blood to fight them, obviously," Soph replied in a somewhat haughty tone.

"I'm not always going to be around, even if just because Blood and I will be running around trying to find stronger enemies and new dungeons. Then what? You try to run away. Maybe you succeed, maybe you don't. If you're strong enough, you don't have to worry about it, you just win," Beth replied, some ice still in her voice.

"As long as I practice my magic, I'll always win," Soph replied, flicking her hair over her shoulder in a quick gesture, a smirk on her lips.

"That kind of overconfidence is gonna get you killed, but sure," Beth shook her head in response.

"As long as I have magic, it's fine. I'll just keep learning stronger spells," Soph said, acting like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Yeah, until you hit copper nine and stop," Beth replied, covering the upper part of her face with her right hand, her index finger and thumb pressing one each against each of her temples.

"Wait, what?" asked Soph, feeling a little knot form in her stomach.

"Yeah, what's special about copper nine?" Sabs asked, one eyebrow arched as she looked over at Beth.

"You guys can ask your trainers about it, but you need to get to a really high level, maybe even undergo one rebirth, to get skills into silver. The only exception to that is weapon skills, but they're still really difficult and time consuming," Beth replied, giving Soph a bit of a glare as she outlined the problem with her sister's thinking.

"So…wait…you mean I don't have a choice? I have to spend the rest of my life in this terrible cave?" Soph asked with a petulant whine.

"No, dummy," Kim interjected, rolling her eyes. "This cave will only work for a little while for us anyway. Just look at Beth and Blood, they've been running around fighting stuff and doing other dungeons and they're way too strong to be in here. The only reason they come in here with us is because they're worried. If we really put effort into leveling, we wouldn't have to come back here either."

"But still…" Soph mumbled.

"Enough," said Sabs. "Like Beth said, we can't force you, but you have to decide. Do you wanna be strong or not?"

"Fine, I get it, chill," Soph grumped, crossing her arms and looking off to the side.

Blood trotted back in at this point and gave Beth a nod. "Like I thought, they lead back to the side rooms?" Beth asked the wolf, indicating the two side tunnels from the boss room. Blood nodded again in response, confirming that there weren't two more rooms on this floor, just the rooms they had already cleared.

After getting the confirmation that the floor was clear, they headed back out of the dungeon. Despite its increase in size, it still only awarded them one silver each for defeating the boss, but Beth was pretty sure even that would change over time. They made their way next to the wolf dungeon, Beth waiting to report back to their parents and the other community leaders until they had a clear picture of everything that was happening.

The group didn't find anything particularly unusual outside of the wolf dungeon, but certainly noticed changes once they were within. The trees seemed denser and taller within, blocking more of the morning light from shining through. They were still standing on a dirt path that led deeper into the dungeon, and upon following it, they arrived at the first room. Other than the levels of the wolves increasing just slightly from a few days ago, there wasn't any other difference here.

The room wasn't enough of a reward for Beth to stand back and let the other girls clear it, so they simply bulled through it in a moment. They moved on inward to the second room of the dungeon, finding it also little changed. Another quick skirmish later and all the wolves were dealt with, the girls again moving on deeper into the breeding ground.

This is where things really started to change, as the third room they arrived at wasn't the boss room, but it was full of fairly high leveled wolves. The room had a total of ten wolves within, with the lowest being at level eight and the highest being at level eleven. The girls all looked at each other after examining the room, frowns and slightly arched eyebrows making the rounds.

"I take it we've had an expansion in size here too?" Beth asked rhetorically while examining the room's surroundings.

"Looks like it. Do you want us to handle it, or will you and Blood participate?" Kim asked in response.

"Sorry, but I'm tired of messing around. We can take time to level some other day. Let's just take care of this and the boss room and leave," Beth replied with a shake of her head.

The five of them didn't waste any more time after Beth's declaration, nor did they need to spend time planning out a grand strategy. Blood and Beth's strength was simply too overwhelming, and in less than thirty seconds all the dungeon wolves lay dead. Not bothering to rest or relax, the group proceeded onwards to the next room, ever deeper into the dim wood.

The next room they encountered was the boss room, the dungeon seemingly having grown by a single 'layer' in a like manner to the ant dungeon, moving from two rings and a boss room to three rings and a boss room. And speaking of boss room, it had grown as well, with the wolves inside being even more numerous and stronger. The boss itself was level thirteen, now surpassing the ant princess, and was flanked by two level twelves.

Beth didn't wait any longer than the time it took to use Identify on the wolves, rocketing across the room with her fists up, body leant forward as she charged the boss. The large Great Wolf had time to notice her approach and turn towards her but no more than that before she slammed into it, her heavy gauntlet smashing into its head with a Crush infused strike. She realized it was a bit much as not just the head, but half the body of the boss practically disintegrated from her strike, Beth winding up with some of the boss's copious amount of blood coating her.

If it had been a few weeks ago she would have been horrified by the experience, but now she simply spit to clean her mouth as she lunged at the first of the two level twelves, bashing it into pulp in a single vicious blow. She heard a buzzing zap as she turned for the third wolf, Soph having blasted a level ten wolf in the head from range, frying its brains with a single point of her finger.

The carnage wasn't much less brutal throughout the rest of the room, Blood ripping wolves apart while Kim used her sword in sweeping swings to cleave apart the flesh of the beasts. Sabs was the only one of the group that was any neater, focusing on both speed and precision strikes; it appeared her few lessons with John had already had quite a positive impact on her knife-work.

Clearing the boss room took no time at all, especially with Beth and Blood actually deploying their skills in the mix; more than a bit of overkill, adding insult to injury, as it were. None of the lower leveled girls had increased a level after this dungeon clear, though even with Beth's help they had still had some small gains. The group formed back up and headed out of the dungeon, making for the neighborhood first today before they would go the Hall.

They approached the development directly from the south, crossing over the highway at the red light that controlled the main road leading into the neighborhood. The group received a few stares from the handful of people that were working on figuring out some way of making a gate to be able to seal the roadway without just building an extension of the wall across it. Nobody actually stopped them, however, Beth wondering if all the blood on them was less worrying and more of an intimidation factor for the neighbors.

They trotted up to the community center, finding Zack outside, taking advantage of some of the last warm days of the fall to work under the pavilion tent. He grunted as the girls pulled up, still looking down at the papers in front of him. When he glanced up a moment later, he let out a quick curse in surprise.

"Are you alright?" he asked worriedly.

The girls all looked at each other before Beth replied, "It's not our blood."

"Right. Doesn’t really answer the question, but I'll take it as a yes," he replied with a frown. "What exactly can I do for you? Not running off to train the rest of the day?"

"We will be training, yes," Beth replied quickly. "Before we go do that, however, we wanted to report in on some new findings."

"Alright, hold one while I get 'em," Zack answered before getting up and heading inside. He returned a moment later with Beth's parents, Bill, and Mr. Jones.

"Oh God, are you girls OK?" Rachel asked with deep concern in her voice, starting to move forward towards them. Beth held her hand up to forestall her mother, the girls all looking at each other once again.

"It's not our blood," Beth repeated stoically.

"Right. Well then," Rachel replied, seemingly at a bit of a loss. "You should be more careful."

"Anyway," Zack cut in, trying to move the conversation back on track, "what did you have to report on?"

"We encountered a number of changes in the dungeons and wanted to report back before heading to the CRA Hall," Beth replied. "Both of the dungeons have expanded, adding a new floor in the ant dungeon and a new ring of rooms in the wolf dungeon. There's also stronger beasts in the lower floors of the dungeons."

"And when did this happen?" asked Thomas, the whole group of adults gathered around Zack's table and taking down notes.

"Today was the first day any of us have been in the dungeons in at least two days, so sometime in that time," Beth answered.

"And what level changes?" Zack asked.

"Boosts of one to two levels in the lower floors. The strongest beast around here now is the boss of the wolf dungeon to the south, which is at level thirteen now," Beth continued answering.

"Your group is able to kill a level thirteen, young miss Beth?" Mr. Jones asked in some surprise.

"We didn't kill it," Kim said, shaking her head. "Beth leapt across the room in one movement and hit it so hard it looked like it swallowed an explosive of some kind."

The whole group of adults stopped their note-taking for a moment to stare at Beth, who just shrugged in response. They quickly resumed writing and typing, muttering a little to each other as they went. Finally, they seemed to have taken everything down and were looking to the girls for anything else.

"That's all I've got," Beth answered the stares with a shrug.

"Nope," said Kim, and the other girls all shook their heads.

"Be careful out there. It's quite dangerous," Rachel warned them with a look.

"Oh yeah, we know. But we're fine, nothing's gonna stop us with her around," replied Kim, gesturing to the side with her thumb at Beth.

"That's right," Beth replied with a smirk, flexing her arms.

"Come on, you're falling behind," said Sabs, and Beth turned to see the other girls had already started walking off while she posed. She grunted discontentedly and trotted after them, catching up in only a second.

The group made their way to the CRA Hall next, ambling their way into the lobby and heading into the side corridor. Tazeen was at the front today, and one of his perfectly shaped eyebrows lifted just slightly as he saw the state of the group but, likely because he had some skill that let him determine nobody was injured, he refrained from making any comment.