Limitless Path

"I must tell you I am not happy with you, young lady," Rachel started off with the frown and arched brow that Beth had become quite used to over the years. She knew this was brewing into a hell of a fight already. "Did we not tell you explicitly that you are to contact us if you will be out late or, heaven forbid, all night?"

"Hey mom, sometimes I'm going to stay at the CRA Hall," Beth said with a nod.

"Don't give me that young lady. I will ground you until school resumes, you understand? I am serious about this," her mother replied angrily.

"Look, I'm sorry, OK?" Beth replied, crossing her arms over her chest as she stared at her mother a little sullenly. It was as she was staring at her mother eye-to-eye that she realized…she was staring at her mother eye-to-eye.

"You are lucky your sister covered for you, young lady, or else you really would be facing a real punishment," her mother continued, the raised eyebrow now accompanied by a wagging finger. After Beth didn't respond for a moment, Rachel continued, "Nothing else to say?"

"We're the same height," Beth blurted out in response, which stopped the finger mid-wag.

"Yes, well…so we are," her mother responded, the second eyebrow joining the first for a moment. It was not long before both lowered, however, and she resumed her earlier harangue. "Be that as it may, we were discussing something very important. What would we do if something happened to you?"

"Run," Beth replied with a slight smirk.

"This is not a laughing matter, young lady," her mother continued huffily.

"It actually wasn't a joke," Beth replied with a frown.

"What do you mean?" her mother questioned, anger in her voice still, but also a trace of fear.

"Again, check my level," Beth said a little smugly.

"OK," responded her mother before narrowing her eyes for a moment. They flew quite wide an instant later, Rachel exclaiming, "You are already level twenty-eight?!"

"You don't have to tell the whole planet," Beth replied with a wince, miming at rubbing her ears.

"Sorry, it's just…rather a shock," Rachel said slowly, taking a few moments to recover her equanimity.

"That's why I said you should run," Beth said, turning to leave the kitchen. "If it takes me out, nobody around here can stop it."

"We will be continuing this conversation later, young lady," her mother said from the kitchen as Beth walked down the hall, Beth waving lazily over her shoulder as she continued her retreat.

She headed up the stairs to her room, followed by Blood. She let Blood in, following behind her and shutting the door before making her way into the bathroom. She cleaned up for the evening, including taking care of brushing her teeth, before heading out into the bedroom and getting into pajamas. She spent a moment browsing the net before shutting down for the night, putting her phone down on the nightstand before turning off the light and rolling over, falling asleep immediately.

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Beth woke somewhat early the next morning, a little before seven, and popped right up out of bed. She supposed that was one thing a little bad about the massive improvements to her stats, she never really got the lazy urge to snooze an extra hour in bed. As soon as she woke up, she was wide awake and ready to get to doing something, not content to lay around anymore than necessary.

Heading into her bathroom, she got ready for the day, pulling on one of her sets of CRA clothes once she was brushed, rinsed, and relieved. She made her way out of the room, Blood following along before splitting off to head down the hall toward Beth's sisters' rooms. Beth herself headed downstairs and wandered around for a minute before she remembered a little thing she had forgotten until now: the seeds from the trial.

The seeds were on a cloth on the counter corner, and Beth meandered out into the garage to see if she could find an empty pot and some potting soil. She was able to find both, rather fortunately, her mother always seeming to have some empty terracotta pots, and there being a mostly full bag of soil left from some recent garden work. She filled two moderately large pots and planted a seed within each. She carried the full pots and their containers up to her room and set them by the two windows at the front, dumping a little water in before returning to the kitchen.

Beth continued the usual routine from here, opening the front door to let Sabs in before tightly hugging the petite girl. After shutting the front door, Beth led the way to the kitchen, where the two began breakfast prep for the day. It wasn't long before the rest of the group mustered at the island, Soph again basically riding Blood down the stairs and into the kitchen. The five of them ate quickly and cleaned up a little messily before getting ready to leave for the day.

They gathered up in the mudroom and pulled on their equipment, something that was already becoming second nature to them in this new reality. They exited through the backdoor as they were suited up, gathering in the cool air of the morning in the yard.

While the girls had stopped clearing the dungeons daily to allow for enemies to populate the surrounding area, or 'fresh target practice,' as Zack called it, they decided to do quick clears today. Beth wasn't really in the mood to mess around, and they practically ran to the ant dungeon, ignoring all but a single ant that wandered into their path along the way. They flew through the dungeon itself, all the girls able to handle the first two floors easily, and Beth killing most of the ants on the third floor alone. She let the lower leveled members of the group tackle the boss room solo, something that didn't take very long and gave them the most benefit.

The group didn't even pause for a rest, not having expended terribly much energy, even Soph not needing a break after such light work. They made their way out and southward, heading into the wolf dungeon as soon as they could. More wolves intercepted them on the way than ants had, but the difference in speed was negligible. Once they had entered the dungeon, they proceeded to tear through it, clearing the minimum number of rooms possible to get the clear bonus. Beth and Blood took part in the boss room, quickly dispatching the large number of lower leveled wolves while the other girls fought the boss and its two higher leveled 'guards.'

Cleaning up the dungeon was relatively easy with their strength, and they were out and headed to the CRA Hall a few minutes later. They moved through the nearby wooded areas rather quickly, not really concerned with non-dungeon monsters. The strongest they had encountered so far were the boars, which were all in the single digits, and any member of the group could fairly easily dispatch one at this point.

It was only five minutes or so for them to make the Hall, entering as a slightly disorderly group. Tazeen manned the counter this morning alongside John, who he motioned to as the group made their way through the lobby. John got up from the stool he had been resting on, following the girls down the hallway to the lounge. Today was a fairly typical day in that the rest of the trainers were still in the lounge, and the girls split up to participate in their regular training.

Baelvyr ran Beth and Blood through the same thing he had run them through the day before, dividing the arena into two sections and pushing them with highly skilled opponents. Beth was actually growing to like the training more as they progressed. She got to fight opponents that were, in a sense, much stronger than her with few risks. The lack of real danger did make it a little less effective, but her skills were still low enough that that small amount wasn't really noticeable at this stage.

They took a break at around lunchtime, both Beth and Blood eating nutrient packs, of which Blood was clearly not fond. The wolf forced it down anyway, seeming to understand that this was what was available for this meal, and the two drained more than one bottle of water before returning to the ring. The training continued in much the same manner, but Beth's feelings of improving as time progressed, as well as the fact that Baelvyr kept an ever-changing stream of men and beasts for her to spar with, kept it quite interesting.

The two finished up in the late afternoon, and they took advantage of the room Beth had to shower off, and for Beth to change. They headed back up to the lounge once they were done, the other girls already present, still just as tired as they had been the day before. While Beth was tired herself, her high END meant she still had a moderate amount of energy left. The other girls were clearly working hard, and with their lower END, they were running themselves into exhaustion more easily.

Beth wasn't particularly worried about it, however, given the skill and experience of the senior members the others were training under. They should have a very good idea just how far they could push their students without causing them strain, injury, or mental duress. At least, too much mental duress, some stress was bound to happen even in training, and such was the path of someone looking to dedicate themselves to a life of adventure and battle.

Beth and Blood accompanied the girls back to the neighborhood that night as well. While she would have liked to have stayed at the Hall, Beth also didn't want to get into too big of a row with her mother at that point. She figured she would give a few days for everything to settle down before staying away from home for the night again.

They didn't encounter anything unusual in their trip and arrived at the Bell's house fairly quickly. Sabs parted with them here, as she had to show her face at her house at least every once in a while, and she would be sleeping at home that night. Beth led the others inside the mudroom, where they left their equipment, and to the kitchen, where they were early enough to actually participate in cooking with their mother. Kim handled most of the assistance in that regard, with the others sitting at the island.

It wasn't very long before they had finished dinner for the family and they all ate together, though there was a decided lack of conversation from the younger sisters. It fell to Beth to fill their parents in on what had been happening and how everything was going. She discussed their clearing of the dungeons briefly before giving a fairly quick summary of what her training was like. The others were obviously drained, and their mother dismissed the younger girls to their rooms before having Beth help with the cleanup.

Beth headed up to her room after she finished assisting her mother, but not with the intention of sleeping. At least, not yet, as she was curious if she could find any new information out on the internet. That is, if the internet was even still functioning properly. It was likely there would be a decent length of time when almost the entire internet was down, as the interference of mana became so intensive that the equipment powering it could no longer function properly. To upgrade or replace the entire backbone of the internet wasn't something that was going to happen with a finger snap, so any information she could get off it before it was unusable would be a bonus.

She was particularly interested in anything related to the area around where she lived. The unfortunate thing was that they lived in an area that straddled the line between suburban and rural, meaning that not a lot of people around were posting things. Furthermore, what would get talked about the most was either incredibly mundane minutiae, or the huge events and happenings. That meant there were plenty of updates from the local knitting circle, and plenty of discussion about the appearance of the closest CRA Hall, the one they all used, but there was no real discussion around much else.

There was, of course, a lot of doom and gloom. People stuck inside for long periods of time with little else to do were spending copious amounts of time posting about the end of the world, the rise of demons, and even how lizard people were actually real. Beth was of the opinion that if they had that much time on their hands, those people could either get out and do something productive or go play some games and leave the internet clear for actual meaningful discussion. A vainglorious hope, but something that she could grumble about herself to as she tried to sort through all the cruft.

Something else she could grumble to herself about was her PC shutting off mid search. She got up in a huff and flopped down on her bed, waking her cell phone up to continue to browse for a moment. Her PC hadn't been hardened against mana exposure in any way, but her phone had been adjusted by Jaq and was holding up just fine. She spent a little while searching for anything else that might be of use before plugging the phone in, an old and unnecessary habit now that it had mana charging and setting it on her nightstand.

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Beth woke up around five hours later, in that still time of the night, when everything had gone silent, and a whisper could seem a shout. She hopped out of bed and stretched lazily before heading into the bathroom, taking care of her morning routine in short order. She dressed for the day and headed out of the room, followed along lazily by Blood, the two making their way to the kitchen. Food was ever the number one priority, and the two of them took care of that first.

Once they were fed, Beth headed outside, equipping her gear before stepping out the door. She had a mind to take a quick look around the neighborhood, mainly the outer perimeter. She observed as she went, seeing that the wall that they had talked about building was actually taking shape. It was anchored by steel poles they had gotten from somewhere and was built of heavy slabs of wood that it looked like they had gotten from cutting down nearby trees and splitting them in half.

Beth wasn't particularly impressed, but she supposed it would be better than nothing. A level four or five ant wasn't likely to get through it, at least, not in any kind of reasonable time frame. It would likely hold up for a little against something a little higher level, but if the mana density on the planet continued to increase and spawn stronger monsters…well, things wouldn't be getting better. Hopefully they could come up with something better, and Beth thought it might be a nice little idea to ask for something at the Hall. Maybe Jaq would have some kind of brilliant idea, though it would likely cost a million gold. Well, with the conversion rate, that would be one hundred diamond coins, which would be equivalent to one of the higher-level coins. She couldn't even remember what that coin was, but considering she struggled to even maintain fifty silvers to her name, it would be some time before she had to worry about that.