Limitless Path

Beth smirked slightly, looking down at the likely older teenager, before replying, "It's fair because we paid the gold to get the emblems."

"How could you afford it? It's two golds!" he exclaimed angrily.

"There's opportunities out there, if you're willing to take risks. Some are more valuable than others," she replied still smirking, leaning against the counter next to the youth and across from Tazeen.

"So that's how you're gonna explain it? You just got lucky?" he asked with a frown, crossing his arms as he glared at her.

"Not much else to tell. Find a couple dungeons and clear them every day, that'll get you a couple silvers a day. Save up and buy an emblem, then you're in. Or try to find some rare trial or something, but those are really dangerous," she replied with a shrug.

"And what about that armor?" the young man continued, eyeing her armor, especially her heavy gauntlets, his brows only scrunching further.

Beth tilted her chin up, preening a bit at the desire the youth displayed, saying, "Once you're a Copper, there's a shop inside. Call it a commissary because of how the organization is set up or something, but it buys and sells. Got some pretty nice stuff."

"Well listen, this guy's no help, but I won't give up. I'll show you both," the young man declared, with his jaw clenched as he tilted his chin up with a sharp motion. Beth used Identify on him just to check.

James Gordons, level 2 Novice Warrior

"Hey, there's an ant dungeon and a wolf dungeon near our house," Beth suddenly said. "They're too high level for you, but the beasts around them would be enough for you to get some levels."

"You think I can't handle a dungeon even a girl can beat?" he replied more than a little snottily.

"Well, suit yourself," Beth said with a frown, straightening up from her lean and glaring at the young man. "But let me tell you this, James. The wolves around the wolf dungeon are between level one and level four right now. The first room of the dungeon is six wolves together, the lowest levels being three threes. The boss room has ten wolves, with the leader or 'boss' being a level ten Great Grey Wolf, which is a wolf the size of my wolf companion, even if it's weaker and slower than her."

James' eyes had widened slightly by the end of her description, and he gulped with a nervous motion, the braggadocio of earlier entirely gone. "Maybe I'll stick to the monsters outside," he said quietly.

"The ants are easier. I live in the Pine Groves neighborhood, if you know where that is?" she said to him.

"Yeah, yeah. Just west and north of here, it's the eastern part of Hillsboro," he replied with a nod.

"Yep. Ant dungeon is north of the development, wolf dungeon is south," she said.

"Thanks!" James replied, his brow having smoothed and jaw unclenched. Without so much as a 'goodbye', he immediately turned and walked right out of the lobby.

"Well done," said Tazeen suddenly, the first he had spoken since Beth's group had entered the lobby.

"Don't know what I did to earn that, but OK," Beth replied as she turned to him.

"That young man's persistence is admirable, but even I do have a limit to my patience," he replied, a slight edge to his voice.

"Right, well, anyway. I was wondering if I could rent a room for at least through tomorrow?" Beth asked, switching to the real reason she had stalled in the lobby.

"Of course. What level are you looking for?" Tazeen asked in turn.

"I don't want anything too crazy, but I can afford something beyond the basic. What are the options, exactly?" she asked him in response.

"We have all manner of rooms that members can rent. If you would like my suggestion, we have fighter orientated suites in the basement area of the arena section. They are four room suites with a living room, bedroom, bathroom, and small kitchenette. They cost either fifty copper, one silver, or five silver a night. There are other options, of course, but one of these would put you central to all of the fighting focused aspects to include the training and testing rooms, the arenas, and the commissary," Tazeen explained in reply.

"Well," Beth said, a little surprised at the options, considering the suites he listed were just one small subset, "how about we go with one of those suites, at one silver a night?"

"Certainly," Tazeen said. "Please, place your emblem on the counter here." He indicated a section of the counter near his left hand that had a dark crystal square set in it. Beth pulled her emblem out of her stat window and set it on the square, which glowed with a faint blue light briefly before returning to how it was. Tazeen produced a rectangular prism from under the counter, something about the size and shape of a standard lighter, and handed it to her. Beth, in turn, handed Tazeen a silver she pulled from her stat page, completing the transaction.

Beth took the object and looked at it before looking back at Tazeen and saying, "I take it this is my key?"

"Yes. The individual rooms are locked securely, and by holding that key up to the panel you can unlock the door. The door will automatically lock upon closing. You are in Arena Basement Suite two-twenty-one," he replied.

"Thanks Tazeen," Beth replied with a nod, slipping the key into her pouch before heading further back into the building. She walked down the hall until she reached the lounge where they usually met up, entering the room to find it empty excepting Blood by Baelvyr in his usual seat. Beth walked over and sat at the table, receiving a nod from her instructor as she did so.

"Ready for another long day?" he asked her, Blood looking between them as they spoke.

"Not today, I think. Just rented a room until at least tomorrow, and Blood and I are going to use, uh, that, if you know what I mean," she replied.

"Right, right. Just be careful with that, will ya?" he replied.

"Yeah, I know the limits," Beth answered confidently.

"Yeah sure. Just let me give ya a little advice here. I would recommend ya stop if ya get up to level forty or so. Stuff is gonna get a decent boost at level fifty and beyond, and ya will want to get better gear, including some armor for yer companion before going any higher. I'd also tell ya to get at least one of those two weapons skills yer working on to Journeyman level before hitting fifty," he said, taking a big swig from the tankard he was working on today.

"Right, I'll keep that in mind. I would love to get to forty in one night, but I don't know that that's gonna happen," Beth said with a nod.

"Well, it's fine either way. Just make sure not to push too hard. Yer a promising student, I don't want to lose someone like ya to something stupid," he said to her with a serious expression on his face.

"I got it, I got it. We'll be careful," Beth said with a frown, narrowing her eyes at him.

"Good. See that ya are," he replied sternly.

Beth stood up from the table and motioned to Blood, who got up and followed her out of the lounge. She walked down to the elevators in the arena with the wolf in tow, taking the elevator down to the second subbasement floor. It only took her a few minutes to find the room, pressing the key against the lock of the door. The door silently slid open to reveal the rooms beyond, Beth stepping inside with a rather slack-jawed look on her face.

The first room was about three hundred square feet, featuring a plush carpet, warm lighting, incredibly well-crafted furniture, and beautiful paintings hanging on the walls. The furniture was of some kind of dark wood, a set of chairs with a small table and two large couches. It was all upholstered in a light cream that was thickly padded, looking quite comfortable. There was a door to her right, a door across from her on the right side of the far wall, and a doorway to the left of that.

The right-hand door led into a large bathroom decorated in black tile on the floor and halfway up the walls. The remainder of the walls and the ceiling were painted light blue, and the lighting was again a warm and comforting tone. There was a vanity with two sinks to the right of the door, all in marble, set in front of a large mirror. There was a large toilet in the room, and Beth walked over to find it had its own control panel, clearly possessing more functions than what she was used to.

There was also both a shower stall and a massive tub in the room, the shower stall done all in the large black tiles with multiple different shower heads throughout. The bath was of a dark black stone with gold and silver veins shot throughout, and it was clearly designed in such a way that multiple people could use it at once. It looked more like a jacuzzi or spa bath she had seen advertised from high-end resorts and, even not being a bath person herself, she really wanted to try it out.

Walking back into the living room, she opened the door on the right of the back wall, finding a bedroom. Inside was more plush carpet, with the walls painted a deep, calming blue. The lighting was from two small overhead fixtures that produced yet more warm light, creating a diffuse glow over everything. There was a large wardrobe to her left and a dresser to her right on opposite sides. In the center of the room was a huge bed with thick blankets and large, wonderful-looking pillows.

Beth returned to the main room and looked into the open doorway to the left, finding the 'kitchenette,' which contained a full-sized fridge, what looked like an oven with a range on top, something that Beth guessed was a coffee maker of some kind, and what looked like maybe a microwave. She stepped back a step into the living room and looked around again, seeing a large area on the wall opposite the bathroom that she guessed was a screen.

Beth was simply flabbergasted. She guessed a silver for twenty-four hours was a steep price, but she made two silvers a day farming the two dungeons right now, making it seem fairly cheap. The suite was just incredible, and Beth was both eager to stay here as well as to see, sometime later when she was rich, what the truly expensive suites were like.

She looked around the room a little more before sitting on one of the couches in the living room. The first thing she needed to do was check her skill as she hadn't in a while, and she wanted to see if anything had changed.

Ancient World Gate[0]

{A legacy of a Transcendent Ruler from before the Age of Dreaming. This skill allows the wielder to create a gate linked to a temporal space full of battle. The higher the skill level, the more one has control over the temporal space and the gate itself.

Current Gates: Ant, Wolf, Lion, Mantis, Vine...Golem.

Current Environments: Plains, Forest, Jungle, Tundra…Warehouse.

Current Modifier: 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x}

Beth noticed several things immediately. The description had remained the same, but there were definitely a bunch of changes to the other sections. She had gained a whole new line listing out environments, as well as a large number of enemies she could set in the gates section. She had also gained two new levels of time compression, four and five times. The lists were long enough now that they truncated, but she could focus on any part of the interface and see the whole list of details.

Now she had to make a few decisions and, the more she thought about it, the more it seemed like she might be using the gate a few different times. She would really like to fight the golem enemies again, as they were quite easy for her to defeat, even before she had her new heavy gauntlets. On the other hand, she didn't want Blood to fall behind, and the golems were rather terrible opponents for the wolf presently. She figured she might wind up opening the gate for both, but this left her with a problem; namely that either way she would wind up at a somewhat higher level than Blood.

Thinking about it for some time, she couldn't come up with anything but to pick an opponent that the two of them each could handle without too much trouble. The crabs had perhaps been the easiest, and tastiest, enemies that both of them could reasonably handle. Then again, the old tried and true ants were a rather easy opponent for the two of them at this point. After dithering for a while, she asked Blood for her input.

"We've got a choice and I don't know what to do. I can make any of the enemies we've fought already for our training exercise. What do you think we should do?" Beth asked the wolf.

Blood tilted her head and flicked one ear in response, clearly listening and having some input of her own. The communication barrier was proving to be a little bit of a hurdle, however, and Beth got around this by simply listing out all the enemy types she could generate for them to fight. Blood seemed to agree on ants and crabs, though she also barked and nodded in the affirmative for the mantises, oddly enough.

"Well, I should be fine with doing a couple different gates if we're struggling. Let's do Mantis in forest to start?" Beth said to Blood, a questioning lilt to her voice at the end. Blood responded in the affirmative with a bark and a tilt of her head to the side.

Beth got up and made sure she had everything ready. She moved into the kitchen as she thought about it and grabbed several bottles of water and a nutrient pack, shoving them in her pouch. She then returned to the sitting room and made sure Blood was ready a final time before opening the portal in the middle of the room.

The portal this time grew out of the floor as two trees, the trunks of stately oaks emerging from that mysterious dimension that existed below the carpet. They grew upward with branches spreading out, though contained to a somewhat limited area. The branches were focused around the tops of the trunks, and those branches between the trunks grew together as they reached the ceiling to form the top of the arch. The arch itself was still filled with a liquid-like substance that shimmered in the soft light of the room, what was on the other side hidden from observation.