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Limitless Path Chapter Two Hundred Seventeen
🕑 Added 2024-05-06 17:00:01 +0000 UTCThe next morning saw them waking up a little before dawn, Beth the first to wake as usual. She sleepily rubbed Sabs's back for a few minutes until the shorter girl stirred, leaning back to pull her head up from the pillow. She looked blearily at Beth for a moment before sliding over and kissing her, snuggling against her for a minute before sitting up. Beth wrapped her arms around Sabs and gave her a number of kisses on the shoulder and neck before letting her hop up from the bed.
They prepped for the day, finding that Blood seemed far lazier in her human form than she was in her wolf form. Beth eventually got her up and moving, and they all got fed and prepped for the day. They split with Sabs after riding the elevator up into the arena area, Beth giving her a rather long kiss that Sabs eventually had to break with a small laugh before darting off.
"You ready?" Beth asked Blood.
"Hopefully we'll actually find a challenge today," Blood replied with a nod.
"We can only hope," Beth said, leading the way out of the arena and to the south.
The sky was rather gray that morning, with heavy clouds still lingering and a cool wind blowing. It had just rolled into April and the temperature was picking up a little, but the storm had definitely blown in with a cold front, and the air was somewhat chill. It wasn't raining that morning, though the ground was still rather damp and wet, getting their boots and armored pants wet as they made their way to the large open field. They found fifteen kobolds in the field as they approached the shaft down to the kobold area, Beth and Blood killing all of them in less than two minutes.
Moving down the spiraling ramp and down the righthand tunnel, Blood took care of killing the handful of kobolds they ran across. Reaching the point where they had stopped the day before, they continued forward down the last part of the tunnel. The side areas had become larger, now being massive series of interconnected rooms that took quite a while to clear. The only good point was that the area hadn't been touched by anybody almost since the last time they had been down there before the trial, the area apparently having changed after a few days of the other girls using it for training once Beth and Blood had left for the trial.
Beth found a decent bit of money, mostly in the form of loose silver coins, though she did find a gold coin in a small pile of copper coins. The other thing she found several of was beast cores, with a few frost-aspected beast cores that she tossed in her necklace. Likely they would be worth at least a handful of golds all together when sold to Jaq, though she wasn't desperately in need of gold. It would be nice to save up a bunch of money and materials and see if she could get that spatial item for Sabs.
Beth shattered the head of a kobold with a sigh, ready to be done with these weaker enemies and lack of interesting challenge. She cleaned her gauntlet off before turning to see Blood squatting by the body of one of the kobolds, poking at it before straightening up. She waved to the lupine woman before leading the way back out of the current sections they were in and back to the main tunnel. It didn't take long of her walking down the main tunnel before there was a change, and not just a side area or branching path.
Instead, the tunnel opened up into a massive cavern, and when Beth thought of it as a massive cavern, that was a bit of an understatement. The roof of the cavern was so high overhead that it wasn't possible to see it in the dim light even with her enhanced eyes. It was the same with the far wall of the cavern, lost in the misty gloom at some distance that was difficult to tell based on the poor lighting. The mist seemed to be a product of the frost mana running rampant in the air and even permeating the stone, Beth remembering that Sabs still had her anti-frost ring, not that that small enchantment would make too much of a difference.
"Cold," she commented.
"Don't really notice," Blood replied, preening her fur just a little.
Beth observed the area as she shook her head, ignoring Blood's little gloat as she inspected the contents of the cavern. She might have called the place an underground city if there were a few more buildings or more consistency in their layout, but the random nature of what was within the cavern and its almost haphazard placement couldn't quite present that illusion. It was more a weird complex of various buildings, random open spaces, and odd constructions all jumbled together, though she couldn't see the far end. It was also where the hexagonal room that had led to the different hallways, including the labyrinth dungeon room, had previously been.
Beth signaled for Blood to lead the way, waiting a couple minutes for the wolf to disappear down into the massive space before slowly following after. She had no idea what they would encounter in the huge area, but hopefully it would provide a little more challenge than what they had been facing the last few days. Well, apart from the titan, but that wasn't a challenge they were at all ready to deal with, so she was only considering the kobolds they had been killing. Though, the ones close to the cavern had been over level one hundred, close to one hundred ten by the time they reach the last bit before the cavern entrance, catching up to them in level more than a little.
She trailed a hand along a wall as she walked, feeling the cold through her gauntlets and seeing frost crusted on the claw tips at the end of her fingers when she pulled her hand back. She refocused after a minute when she heard the sound of battle from a couple dozen feet in front of her, darting forward to arrive in a large clearing between several buildings, seeing Blood fighting twenty enemies, a mix of the kobolds they were used to and some kind of massive troll or something similar. She Identified the new beasts as she dived in to support Blood, also doing a quick check of the levels of everything in the open space.
Level 125 Cave Brute
Level 120 Kobold Demolisher
Level 124 Kobold Savage
She saw enough to get a good idea of what they were up against, a little puzzled at the trolls only showing up as Cave Brutes, but she didn't let that distract her from getting to the battle. The brutes were the biggest obstacle of the whole group, as the level one-twenty-plus kobolds were strong, but nothing that presented a true challenge to them. The brutes, on the other hand, were enormously strong, had very high defenses, and had a powerful regenerative ability, wounds Beth left with her blade closing at a rate clearly visible to the eye.
Beth sort of teetered on the edge of using her Presence, trying to figure out if the enemies were strong enough that they warranted the use of her ace-in-the-hole. She eventually decided it wasn't as serious as needing that after they had killed all the kobolds in the group and wounded one of the four cave brutes enough that it was having trouble moving even as it was regenerating. Beth figured that that was a good opportunity to work on her new skill, pouring mana through her body in the way Celestial Annihilation outlined before letting that mana flow through her arms and out of her hands. The mana infused her blade, the blackened metal starting to glow a golden color before she slashed at the cave brute she was fighting.
The brute staggered back with a scream as her sword left a massive gash across its chest, tearing apart its flesh and cracking its ribs. Beth was a little surprised, given the defenses of the beasts, that the slash had done much of anything, let alone dealing so much damage. She didn't let the surprise stop her, however, as she was now far more experienced in combat and continued to move and swing even as she observed the aftermath of the strike. She hadn't used a ton of mana to cast the skill, but it was still a noticeable drain that she would have to manage carefully. She supposed that was the price for such a powerful skill, in that even casting it less than full strength required quite a bit of mana.
Blood and Beth tore apart the four cave brutes after that, using only a bit of stamina and a chunk of mana to clear the place out. They rested for a few minutes afterwards before regrouping to go over what exactly had happened. Beth started the conversation while Blood dug through the corpses, literally, to look for any beast cores.
"What happened," she asked.
"Smelled something off," Blood replied as she rooted in a brute's chest. "So I came in here to investigate. Had two of the kobolds jump me when I was only a step inside, which alerted the rest of the group. For all that I like to scout, I’m still not a specialist, and I can't stealth."
"Right, I'm not blaming you or anything," Beth said, holding up her hands. "I just want to understand what we're up against."
"These guys don't really make much noise," Blood said. "I can still hear them from a little bit off, but it's much less than the other kobolds we're used to dealing with. That, and they don't move much or clash with each other the way the other kobolds quite often brawl. The cave brutes were also sleeping without really making any noise other than their breathing, and it wasn't until I was knee-deep in kobolds that they woke up and joined the brawl."
"So, first lesson, we need to be a little more careful moving around," Beth said with a nod. "Which especially applies to you in scouting. Let's just make sure you slow down and take it carefully for now. We're not under any kind of time crunch; the jobs for the CRA don't have a time limit on them."
"I'll be more careful," Blood commented, grinning as she ripped a beast core out of one of the cave brutes and made it disappear. Another great thing about their necklaces was that they could control exactly what they put in and took out, meaning that all the blood and gore stayed on Blood's hands and didn't get mixed up in her storage space.
"You want to keep scouting now, or just stick together?" Beth asked as Blood straightened up.
"I'll continue to scout," she replied. "I need the practice and, so far, it's not that dangerous."
"Remember you can communicate with me," Beth reminded her as she moved off.
"I know," Blood grumbled with a dismissive wave as she disappeared further into the area.
Beth, meanwhile, poked her head into one of the two large buildings that sectioned off the open area they had just fought in. Their battle had done a good job in attracting and clearing out any nearby beast, including the ones in the buildings, so Beth was largely free to explore as she saw fit. The building itself was three stories and had a rather simple layout, with a main hallway that had multiple rooms branching off from it and stairs at each end of said main hall.
Beth didn't really find anything interesting on the first nor second floor, but that changed when she made it to the third floor of the first building. There were a number of smaller rooms at the front of the floor, but the back of the floor was divided into two larger rooms. The first of those had little in it, but the second room was where Beth struck gold, though not quite literally.
The room contained a few shelves and tables, and it was on the table furthest at the back that Beth found a rather unusual little box. She had learned her lesson quite well already and didn't just immediately open it, but instead first inspected the area around it to see if there were any external traps. When she had determined that there wasn't anything untoward around the box, she carefully picked it up. Just because there wasn't some kind of external trap didn't mean that the box itself wasn't dangerous, though she was somewhat doubtful it would just explode in her hand.
She expected the box to be locked, but it turned out it was sealed with just a simple clasp. Again, having learned her lesson well, she set the box down on the table again before pointing it away from her in terms of direction it would open. Carefully, cautiously, she flipped open the clasp before holding her right hand between her face and the box, even with it facing away from her. She slowly eased the lid open with her left hand, ready to take a dive at the first sound or sight of trouble, but the box fully opened with nary a squeak.
After waiting another few seconds to make sure she didn't explode, or that poison gas didn't shoot everywhere, or for some kind of boss monster to tear out of the small box, she looked inside. There was a single crystal cushioned within a velvet material, emitting a faint blue glow. Beth picked the crystal up carefully and examined it with her powerful eyes, hoping to see something rather valuable or interesting.
Frost Ghost Heart
{This is the heart of an old frost ghost that has crystallized after its death. Its ice mana can be absorbed to reinforce one's body. It is also a material of great value in the creation of elixirs and alchemical products.}
Beth didn't really understand what it meant about absorbing the ice energy, but if it was something very valuable to an alchemist, that meant it was a true treasure. She carefully placed it back within the padding in the box, snapping the lid closed before making the entire thing disappear within her necklace. She surveyed the rest of the room to see if there was anything else of worth but found the shelves and tables all empty.
Returning to the area where they had just fought, she made her way into the second building, combing it thoroughly for anything else of value. She failed to turn up much, only finding a handful of loose coins and one unimpressive beast core. Nothing to write home about, but money was still money, regardless if it was pennies or dollars. Of course, it was neither in this case, but Beth took her silver and moved on.
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Thanks for the chapter! Might want to use the heart to further reinforce herself instead of selling it, but seems like a good find no matter what she does
