Limitless Path

Blood had apparently decided to find her own accommodations for the night, likely in Soph's room, as she was not sitting outside Beth's door when the two walked up. Beth opened the door and let the two of them in, closing it behind them before turning to Sabs.

"You need to shower?" she asked.

"Uh, y-yeah, sure. If you don't mind?" Sabs replied.

"Not at all. There're fresh towels in there, just use whatever soap and shampoo that's in there," Beth replied while gesturing to the bathroom with one hand.

Sabs entered the bathroom, shutting the door behind her before running the shower. Beth, in the meantime, changed into a loose T-shirt that was not nearly as loose as she remembered before she flopped on her bed, lifting up her phone to start scrolling. It only took Sabs a few minutes to finish up, repeating a scene Beth had seen once before as she stuck her head out the door.

"Uh, Beth, um, do you have something I can wear?" she asked hesitantly.

"Oh shit, sorry," Beth replied, hoping up from her bed and going over to her dresser. She pulled out an older pair of plain panties, a smaller T-shirt, and a pair of shorts she knew would be baggy on the small girl and took them over to her.

"Sorry, but I don't have a bra that would fit," she continued, scratching at her temple after handing Sabs the clothes.

"It's fine, I don't really need one anyway," Sabs responded as she blushed deeply before shutting the door. She opened it a few moments later, even Beth's older clothes before she had her recent growth spurt making the older girl look like a kid wearing their parent's clothing.

"You look a little silly," Beth chuckled, reaching out to wrap her arms around the older girl.

"I know I'm tiny, you don't have to rub it in," Sabs muttered angrily, leaning into the taller girl's embrace.

"I think you're cute," Beth replied firmly, leaning down to plant a solid kiss on Sabs's lips. The older girl let out a slight moan as she returned the kiss, pushing upward into Beth's lips. The two were absorbed in the kiss for quite a while before they broke, both rather flushed from the experience.

"That was really nice," Beth commented a little lamely.

"It really was," Sabs replied before blushing even more deeply and burying her face in Beth's rather ample chest.

"Come on, let's at least make it to the bed. I know you had a long day," Beth said with a nervous chuckle before easily picking the small girl up and carrying her over to her bed.

Beth set Sabs down on the bed and immediately crawled in over top of her, shifting to lay on her side only to find Sabs's lips right in front of hers, the older girl initiating another kiss that the two held for quite a while. Sabs eventually broke it off before wiggling against Beth, once again burying her face in Beth's chest.

Beth slid her right arm under Sabs's head and held it gently, making sure not to suffocate her girlfriend against her boobs. She wrapped her left arm around Sabs's lower back, holding the smaller girl firmly, marveling at the feel of her smooth, muscled body under the thin clothes Beth had lent her. It wasn't more than a few moments later before Beth both heard and felt Sabs begin lightly snoring while pressed against her. She closed her eyes as she listened to the older girl snore, quickly drifting off into a land of pleasant dreams herself.

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Beth woke the next morning feeling fresh and ready to go. She also felt a wet patch against her right breast, even trailing up to her shoulder. When she starts drooling, she really turns into a drool faucet, she thought helplessly. She moved her left arm a little, so her hand was on Sabs' back, which she started rubbing gently. The older girl let out a light snore and shifted slightly, but continued to sleep comfortably against Beth.

An indeterminate amount of time later, Sabs woke up suddenly with a snort. She pulled herself up after a moment to rest on her left hand, looking blearily at Beth for a second. She seemed to focus after a moment, and also realized her face was somewhat wet. She wiped at her face with her right arm before she really fully came to, suddenly realizing that her face was coated in drool, and that her face had been on her girlfriend, meaning her girlfriend was also coated in drool.

"Sorry! Sorry! I'm really sorry!" Sabs exclaimed, quickly wiping at Beth.

Beth's response was to laugh as she grabbed the older girl, rolling on top of her with a quick twist of her body. She directly kissed Sabs on the lips before kissing the area of drool on her cheek.

"Come on, knock it off," Sabs huffed, pushing at the much larger girl.

"You're cute," Beth responded, which caused Sabs to freeze up and blush at the same time, an opportunity Beth didn't waste. She planted a deep kiss directly on Sabs' lips before rolling off of her and hopping up off the bed, heading to the bathroom. She started brushing her teeth and taking care of her morning routine and was joined by Sabs in a moment.

When they had gotten ready, they headed down to the kitchen, Beth taking a moment to look out the window into the grey, pre-dawn light. It wasn't super early, as it was getting into fall now and the days were certainly getting shorter, but it was still a little early by 'normal' standards. She snapped out of her slight daze after a second and helped Sabs prepare food for both of them and Blood.

The first half of the morning was back on the standard routine, the rest of the girls getting up and ready, making their way through the two dungeons, and heading to the CRA Hall. The only slight difference was the three low level girls gaining a level most of the way through the ant dungeon, but they distributed their points quickly and kept fighting.

When they were at the CRA Hall, they split up to work with their instructors, with Beth working with Baelvyr that day. Several days of fighting weak enemies and studying had left her with an itch, one that only some serious combat could scratch. So, she set to it, diving into match after match on the arena floor against the same swordsman she had been using to hone herself.

She didn't develop any grand new insights or breakthroughs, but she hadn't expected to, either. She merely put her nose to the grindstone, as it were, and worked hard. After close to eight hours, not including a small lunch break, Baelvyr had seen enough and headed off to do, well, whatever he was occupying himself with in his free time. Beth headed down to her rented room, ready for a good shower and some easily made food.

She spent a little more time studying smithing before she was done for the day, deciding to sleep in the suite that night. She headed to bed with Blood, passing out right away and sleeping a deep and dreamless slumber.

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Beth awoke refreshed and raring to go the next morning, hopping up immediately to head into the bathroom to take care of her morning business and get ready for the day. She heated some food for herself and Blood, and the two ate fairly quickly before heading out and up to the lounge.

Elana was in the lounge this morning, and Beth made her way over to her table. She sat down to a brief nod from the woman, pulling a water out of her pouch to sip on. Elana was drinking something that smelled rather like how tea should smell from a large mug, and Beth waited a few minutes for her to work her way through her morning drink.

"So, you read the whole book?" Elana asked her.

"Read it twice through, took some notes as well," Beth replied with a nod.

"Alright then, I told you this was coming; I'll ask, and you answer," Elana said in a serious tone. "First, what temperature does mana copper ore melt at?"

"Depends on the mana infusion amount. Regular copper is just under two thousand degrees, mana copper is around twenty-two hundred, but can need twenty-three hundred."

"Good," Elana nodded before going into rapid fire mode.

"Melting point of mana steel?"

"Hammer type to use making scales of mana copper?"

"Swing rhythm when striking mana steel?"

"How can you tell the difference between Mana Silver and Mana Platinum ore?"

.

.

.

"Where is raw Adamantium most commonly found?"

Beth answered every question to the best of her ability, extremely glad she had studied the book thoroughly the last two days. She was pretty sure at least the very last question was a ringer, not remembering anything being mentioned about Adamantium in the beginner's book. Elana took some notes after she was done with her questions and Beth heaved a sigh of relief. When Elana was done with her notetaking, she turned to Beth to discuss where they were at.

"You did surprisingly well. The list I just went over comes from a bigger set of standard questions to ask a potential apprentice smith. Even for an instructor with high standards, you would have passed," Elana explained.

"What about that Adamantium question? Is that something in the starter guide?" Beth asked with a slight frown.

"No, you're right, it's not in the basic book I gave you, but it is still considered part of the apprentice information. There's a lot of information that you might not use starting out as an Apprentice, but you're not going to be a great smith without a great foundation," Elana answered. "There's other resources that you should study to improve your knowledge before you advance much as a smith."

"So, I have to read more books?" Beth asked with a sigh. "I was hoping to actually, like, hit some metal at some point."

"Trust me, the more you spend time learning now, the better you'll be later," Elana answered. "A lot of smiths get stuck at Expert rank their whole lives and don't understand why they can't go any further. It's because their foundation isn't solid enough; they don't understand enough information, including having a firm enough grasp of the basics. Not only that, but another big barrier is understanding materials and magic. You can research things later, but understanding more now means you'll understand more of what you're doing later. Harder to get trapped down wrong paths or find yourself not really understanding something important."

"Just tell me what else I have to study," Beth replied, propping her head up with her right cheek resting against her right palm, her elbow on the table and forearm extended upright.

"Don't look like I just robbed you, this is important," Elana replied with a frown. "And I have the other two books here," she continued, pulling two more books out of nowhere and handing them to Beth. "You can keep all three of those and mark them up with notes if you want."

"Thanks," Beth said, grabbing the books and briefly checking the covers. "A Study of Metals and Their Properties. A Guide to Expert Armor Refinement. These don't sound dense at all."

"If you want to be a smith, you can just go beat some metal into a shape," Elana said, crossing her arms under her rather ample chest. "If you want to be a good smith, then you'll learn everything you need to know to make excellent equipment in the best way possible."

"OK, OK. I got it," Beth replied, holding up her hands. "More reading for me."

"Come on," Elana said immediately afterwards, uncrossing her arms and standing from her chair. She turned and started walking to the far door of the lounge.

"What?" Beth said, a blank look on her face.

"Follow me," Elana replied with a slight snap in her voice.

"Oh, right," Beth said before scrambling up and hurrying to catch the surprisingly swift woman.

They headed out of the lounge and down the hall with Blood in tow, moving into the arena section of the building. Their destination was deep in the heart of the underworks, Elana taking them on the elevator down to the lowest floor available. When they stepped out on basement level five Elana immediately turned left and headed down the long outer hallway. After walking for five minutes, they arrived at a room that must have been near the back of the arena, if the back were opposite the side where the front building with the lobby was located.

Elana used her emblem to open the door to the room, stepping inside while motioning for Beth and Blood to follow. The first thing Beth noticed was that the room they entered was massive, stretching at least fifty feet back from where they were standing and likely being close to a hundred feet wide. It also must have taken up that section of the fourth basement floor as well as, even though there were no doors there, the wall above where they entered was likely the outside of the back hallway wall of the floor above.

The room was filled to the brim with just about everything Beth could imagine was required for smithing, and she really had a feeling of being a kid in a candy store. There were smelters, forges, anvils, workbenches, piles of ore and ingots, and racks upon racks of tools scattered throughout the room. It once again shocked her how wealthy the CRA must be, especially considering this was all readied quickly and transported instantly to Earth when it joined the Path.

Elana led the way over to a forge and anvil set on the far side of the room. There was a workbench of some kind of dark metal with thick legs pushed against the wall to the forge's right, and above it hung several tools on pins and mounts bolted to the wall. To the left of the forge was a stand-up rack filled with more tools, as well as what Beth guessed were some forms for molding metal into pre-configured shapes. In front of the forge was an anvil, also made of the same dark metal, and set on what looked like a thick stone pillar. The pillar clearly had more to it than met the eye, as Elana pressed her left hand against it twice and it adjusted its height slightly, moving the anvil along with it.

"That's pretty crazy. Is that an enchantment of some kind in the pillar?" Beth asked.

"Yes," Elana answered. "The pillars we use in CRA smithies have a number of inscriptions carved in that allow them to make adjustments to height. Look down at the side here at these two symbols."

Elana then pointed down to where she touched the pillar, showing Beth how to raise and lower it. The symbols needed to be touched once for a second to activate, then let go and pressed again one second later to move the pillar. This 'double-press' was used in a number of inscriptions, mainly in work areas such as the smithy, to prevent a single accidental bump from interrupting a crafter while they were mid-work.