Limitless Path

It was getting a little late and Beth was pretty tired after an entire day of what was essentially dueling someone far stronger. She was finding out that her high END wasn't actually nearly as high as she thought; she just hadn't actually been in strenuous enough combat for long enough to be heavily impact before today.

She had already cleared staying in her rented room with her mother, and she made her way into the underbelly of the arena. She keyed the door open, holding it for Blood to get inside, before heading into the bath to clean up. After showering, she put on a fresh set of clothes and headed into the kitchenette, heating several of the readymade meals for herself and Blood.

She brought the food out into the main room, putting it on the low table in the middle of the room before turning the screen on. She pulled up some more arena fights while the two ate, watching more 1v1 battles in the dueling arena. She was particularly focused on how the combatants moved, watching their footwork and timing. She felt that she learned better from doing, but she could still glean a lot from watching others fight. She could pick up on how they fought, when they attacked, when they retreated, how they moved, even how they blocked strikes.

Beth couldn't hold on for very long, and less than an hour later took a moment to clean up their trash before heading into the bedroom. She flopped on the bed, Blood hopping up beside her, neither bothering with the covers as they both passed out almost immediately.

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Beth woke up a little over seven hours later, yet again showing that her END wasn't yet as powerful as she had believed. If she had over a hundred END, she might have been able to handle the training better and slept less, but that was still a ways off.

She was at least rather refreshed after the full night's sleep, hopping out of bed and heading into the bathroom to relieve herself and make ready for yet another day. It was somewhat early in the morning, just after dawn in these fall months, and she was going to make a long day of it.

She first prepared food and water for both her and Blood, making sure to eat a decent portion even though she wasn't really a breakfast person, per se. She knew she would need the calories for the intensive training to come. She took a moment to clean up rather quickly after they ate, and then they left the room together.

She could feel that her spirit, soul, or whatever it was that she had been warned would be stressed by using the gate was still a little overtaxed, so they couldn't do any beast fighting any time soon. Not unless they found another trial or a random high-level dungeon in the area, but Beth didn't think that kind of luck quite likely. They would just have to train in the arena and the practice rooms for a few days, honing their skills.

Beth found Baelvyr in the usual spot, nobody else currently in the room this morning. She sat and waited for a few minutes while he ate a meal, allowing time for her to fully wake and get her focus dialed in for the day. Baelvyr wasn't long, his appetite not commensurate with his massive stature, consuming only a single plate of meat and bread before he was ready.

The morning was much the same as the day before, Baelvyr summoning the same phantom for her to fight. She found the challenge just as difficult, actually putting Baelvyr's instructions into practice as a sword was swinging for her throat proving to be rather arduous. She at least tried to remember his advice about not becoming aggressive when outmatched, her average fight time steadily increasing all morning. It wasn't thrilling, but going from surviving seconds to surviving minutes was definitely great progress, Beth somewhat happy to at least accomplish that much.

She had a fabulous lunch of nutrient packs and water while Baelvyr gave her some instructions based on what he had seen in the morning, Beth noting that Blood had wandered off somewhere during the time she had been training.

Baelvyr said, "Gonna be a long process, just gotta keep going as ya are. Fightin' more defensive is goin' well for ya; good to see ya slow down a little and think. It won't always be the case, but at yer current level and skill ya need to take the extra time and analyze what's happenin'. Other than that, yer still too predictable with yer movements. Ya should especially remember what I said about attackin' from different angles, including yer non-dominant side a lot more."

"I think I'll just focus on it taking longer to get impaled for right now. I can't think about swinging left-handed at the same time," Beth grumbled in response.

"Well, that's gonna be the challenge for ya. Yer gonna hafta learn to think about stuff like that, and learn to think about multiple things as ya fight. Ya can't just think about one thing, think about one move. Ya gotta plan several moves in advance, think about yer skills and abilities, figure out what yer opponent is doing best and how to counter it, and even learn to focus on the bigger picture of what's happenin' around ya," he replied, thumping on his huge stomach to emphasize the point.

Beth took a minute to hit the restrooms before returning to training, fighting all afternoon, still focused on the same opponent. By the early evening Baelvyr was done with her for the day, offering a little advice about how better to position her feet and move around before he headed out. Curious, Beth decided to check the interface by the ring to see what opponents she had available to fight, having remembered Baelvyr had said he had unlocked four in the system for her to fight against.

She navigated the menus for a moment until she found the training section, most other sections locked off to her at present. Much of what was in the training section was locked as well, but she could still see a list of opponents she could fight in a standard duel in a standard arena layout. The four choices were the longsword user she was familiar with, some kind of warrior that used a sword and shield, a nimbler fighter using long knives, and some type of swordsman using two one-handed longswords curiously labeled as a mage in the system.

Beth just couldn't resist the temptation, and she picked the weird mage swordsman as an opponent. The settings had an option to allow the arena itself to provide the referee duties, which she selected before moving over to the circle on the ground. The simulacrum of the mage appeared across from her, at first Beth assuming him to be a human male. Upon closer inspection, that certainly proved not to be the case, as he had two sets of horns growing from the top of his head as well as what looked like finely trimmed claws instead of fingernails. There were a number of other differences too, including his eyes, though Beth was already getting used to strange eyes and they didn't necessarily register for her.

She recovered from her slight daze when the circle she was standing in flashed, realizing a voice had been speaking to her from the arena's systems. It was asking her if she was ready and warning her delays at this point in the process could cost her points. Since Beth had been told earlier by Baelvyr that these practice spars didn't really count for anything, she assumed the voice was going through the standard referee speech. She quickly looked around, seeing there was a holographic ref in the ref box to the side. She bowed to the hologram to signal her readiness and it turned to query the simulacrum.

Once both had indicated readiness, the referee had them bow to each other before counting in the start of the match. It used a standard five count with its arm raised before dropping its arm and shouting "Begin!" on zero. The simulacrum darted towards her as it drew both its swords, approaching her quite quickly. Beth reacted as she had been practicing, swinging her greatsword in a tight arc to block his first attacks.

Unfortunately for her, as the simulacrum made its first swings, it charged both its blades with a massive shot of electricity. As the two longswords smashed into her more massive blade, a huge blast of electricity shot up her arms, through her torso, and out through her legs into the floor. Beth seized up almost entirely, able to take only a half-step back as every muscle in her body clenched and spasmed, feeling her heart judder and jump at the amount of electricity coursing through her. She didn't have long to attempt a recovery, as the familiar yet still horrifying sensation of having her neck sliced apart soon greeted her.

She fell to one knee, clutching at her neck as she gasped for air. The wound almost instantly closed, the referee declaring the bout for the simulacrum as she struggled to regain a little of her equilibrium. After a minute or so she had recovered a little, standing back up and making her way out of the ring and to a section of the arena nearby where there were waters and sports drink-like consumables open to fighters of at least Copper Emblem rank. She took a water bottle and drained it completely, holding her throat with her left hand as she did so, as if afraid the water would leak out while she drank.

She finished the bottle and tossed it in the recycler chute, pulling out a second one before she walked back to the arena and sat on the bench. She started going over the fight in her mind, wondering if there was anything she could have done differently. She recalled the power of the lightning the man had put on his blades, shuddering at the thought of how it had almost stopped her heart immediately. She assumed the only reason she hadn't died straight out from it was due to actually having a few levels in Lightning Resistance thanks to her and Blood's foray against the salamanders.

She sighed heavily before getting up and heading down to her room to clean up and eat. She found Blood sitting in the hallway outside the door, Beth letting the two of them into the room with her key before making her way into the restroom. Once she had cleaned up, she got food and more water for the both of them, setting the food on the table when she had heated it up. She wasn't exactly sure how, but the food they ate seemed to be restocked in the refrigerator every few days, which was quite nice.

She turned on the wall-screen to browse what she had available to view, sorting through the endless list of fights and matches. She was curious to see if she could find anything involving someone enhancing their weapons like the second swordsman in her training set, so she browsed through the fighter information, looking to find someone using swords with their class set to some kind of mage label. She didn't have to search very long, finding someone who basically fit all her criteria in half a minute.

She turned the match of the sword-wielding mage on while she ate, watching the full fight. She was a little disappointed to see that they didn't make their blades electrified the same way the person she had just fought did, but it was still really interesting to watch their battle. This fighter used blasts of ice, timed between or even during their sword swings, to damage and disorientate their opponent. It also seemed to have at least somewhat of a slowing effect, the warrior they were facing definitely not as spritely by the two-minute mark as they were at the start.

The opposing warrior did have a few tricks of their own, however, the woman using what appeared to be a buckler and some form of estoc. The woman seemed to break out of her torpor all at once, suddenly becoming several times swifter out of nowhere. Her sword became little more than a blur, giving the impression of a wall of spikes overrunning the ice-user as she thrust her blade faster than Beth could follow. This clearly put the ice mage on the back foot, his speed also increasing explosively, but whatever skill he used was clearly not up to the same level as the woman's. He was rapidly overwhelmed by her onslaught, eventually releasing a massive blast of ice to push her back and partially freeze her.

The move clearly wasn't without cost, however, as it looked like the ice wielder had just run a marathon after a sleepless week. He still pushed forward with his dual blades, going for the kill on the woman, but it was an attempt in vain. She did something with her left arm, the buckler moving like a thing possessed, blocking both swords and smashing into the mage's face in less than half a second. That was more than enough, as in the brief window the already exhausted mage was stunned from having his face crushed in, the woman thrust her blade just above the neck guard of his armor, up under his chin and into his brain.

The fight was declared immediately, the man collapsing limp to the ground. The arena's restorative powers kicked in, the video ending as a medical staffer also rushed onto the field toward the downed man. Beth frowned for a moment before sorting through the available videos again, looking for something else interesting to watch. She found another few, watching them as she finished her evening meal, cleaning up when she and Blood were finished.

Having had a thoroughly exhausting day of fighting and dying, Beth turned in for bed with Blood at a fairly reasonable hour. The two of them once again just passed out on the bed, Beth too tired to really care about much and Blood comfortable sleeping much rougher than on top of the covers.

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Beth woke up the next morning fully rested and feeling much better. The whole dying over and over again thing was still nagging her deep in her mind, like an ache in a muscle that she just couldn't sort out, but she felt it might be the same idea as getting back on the horse. If you let that fear and discomfort take hold, pretty soon you'd be too scared to even leave the room, much less fight massive beasts in terrible environments to try to get a fraction of a fraction of a percent stronger.

Beth rolled out of bed and headed into the bathroom, relieving herself and brushing her teeth. She gave her hair a quick finger comb before a hasty run-through with a brush just to look half decent, exiting the bathroom afterword and heading into the kitchenette to heat up a quick breakfast. Once she had prepped the food for both of them, she brought it to the low table in the central room, where they wolfed it down before a quick cleanup.