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Limitless Path Chapter Two Hundred Twenty-Four
🕑 Added 2024-04-11 17:00:07 +0000 UTCBeth was having a much less strange and much more painful experience, as the liquid created a great warmth in her whole body after she finished drinking it. That warmth very quickly turned to flame, a burning pain spreading throughout her entire body as the liquid almost forcefully shot itself through her circulatory system and to every part of her. That was only the warmup, as the liquid then sunk into her bones, turning them into raging lumps of molten steel within her. This was even worse than when she had used the previous elixir, the pain so bad that her Silver-tier Pain Tolerance seemed to do nothing, Beth whiting out for a brief moment as the last of her bones seemed to become fully molten.
The next two minutes were an endless torture, Beth's whole body in endless agony as it felt like her bones were being melted and re-forged over and over while her flesh was bathed in acid. She used all her massive willpower simply to focus on not passing out, wanting to remain awake for the process despite the endless pain. The pain was so overwhelming that she was barely able to observe any of what was happening to her body, the drive to stay awake the only thing that she could focus on with any part of her mind.
The pain eventually started to ease, though it happened far more slowly than when she had consumed the first elixir. She finally became aware of her surroundings again, noting Blood sitting on the counter with a scrunched-up face while carefully observing her. Looking down at herself, she noted that she was covered in nearly as much junk as the first time around, though there was a little less of it, particularly on her head.
"The last time you did this the bathroom really stank," Blood commented. "But holy fuck, you smell absolutely awful."
"Thanks for the encouragement," Beth replied sarcastically. "If you're just going to make sassy comments you can leave. Otherwise, a little help?"
Blood grunted but hopped off the counter and turned the water to the tub on, cranking the heat before waiting a moment for it to warm up. She then helped Beth start to clean off, with Beth starting by getting her hands and forearms mostly clean. It took quite some time for them to get her even to a 'passable' state, at which point she got out of the tub and entered the shower where she proceeded to scrub very thoroughly while Blood cleaned the tub. Just getting all the gunk down the drain wasn't enough, as Blood had to pull a cleaning solution from under the bathroom counter to help get rid of the dirt and mitigate the smell.
Beth was eventually clean, taking quite a while to reach that state, though it was much more about her finally feeling clean than anything else. Now that Blood had the tub clean she drew a bath, plugging up the drain and letting the massive edifice at the back of the bathroom fill with steaming water. The two girls entered the tub when it was almost full, Blood shutting off the water before leaning back with her arms draped across the side of the tub while Beth sank down to her eyeballs on the opposite side.
"Was it everything you hoped for?" Blood asked as she sprawled out.
"Hmm," Beth replied non-commitally, inspecting her status screen before turning her introspection further inward and examining her own body. "In terms of stats, it was basically like he said, fifty to both STR and END. Though, now I am unbalanced…shit. I'll have to spend a bunch of levels putting points into DEX, doubly so because I get two STR every level automatically."
"What's the damage?" asked Blood.
"I'm at three-ninety STR with no buffs but only one-eighty DEX," Beth replied.
Blood winced, "That's pretty fucking awful. I couldn't imagine being so slow."
"Speed isn't everything," Beth replied. "It's going to hurt more against actual thinking beings, like if you and I sparred, versus beasts. At least beasts are stupid and easy to run circles around; having so much STR means I will just fucking wreck anything at or near our level."
"It's the smart ones you have to be worried about anyway," Blood pointed out.
"Don't be such a downer," Beth scoffed as she sat up only to lean back and spread her arms out on the edge of the tub, mirroring Blood's posture. She relaxed for a moment, leaning back a little more as she let her legs drift up, Blood snorting as Beth's toes popped up above the water in the middle of the tub and wiggling for a moment before she submerged them again, enjoying the difference between the cool air and hot water. Blood mimicked the action with a grin, Beth laughing at the claws on her companion's toes before they disappeared below the water again.
They luxuriated in the heat for quite some time before getting out at the same time, not speaking but sharing a taste for the heat so similar that they were done at the same time. They dried off before leaving the bathroom and getting dressed. In all the excitement earlier, finishing their Trial run, getting their rewards, and then using the elixir before bathing, they hadn't had any food for quite some time, so that was the next thing they took care of. When they returned to the room, they put their clothes and other possessions within their necklaces, having plenty of room to throw everything inside while barely making a dent on the internal space. They both spent a little time in practice, as well, so they could not just put on their clothes but weapons and armor as well without having to withdraw them first.
The next few days they spent in indolent luxury, Beth not even wanting to leave the room after the first day. The two of them lay around for three days mostly naked and mostly relaxed, ordering food from the restaurants whenever the urge took them, and Beth ordered some expensive alcohol several times. When it was about time for them to leave, they made sure they had absolutely everything in their necklaces; it was surprising that even with the essentially perfect storage, it was still easy to lose things. Taking something out of a necklace, putting it somewhere, then forgetting to put it back in the necklace was something that Beth could see happening in the future.
They ended in a near-mirror of how they started, with Aytasha knocking at the door and giving them a farewell in the same way she had given a greeting. When they had gone through all the niceties and politeness, Aytasha wished them well before informing them they would be teleported momentarily. This teleportation was different than the ones for the stages, the same as when they had used the token to teleport away from the floor of the CRA Hall. They experienced a sensation of weightlessness, seeing a huge swirling area of clashing darkness and light. Even though they had a feeling of no weight, they still had a feeling of movement, with a sense of them flying through this strange in-between space.
With a slight lurch and a quick flash, they arrived back where it had all started, standing on the far end of the CRA arena floor. It took no more than a second before several people appeared in the empty arena, Beth only taking another second to register that it was a group of Enforcers, those being Baelvyr, Jaq, Tazeen, and John, strangely enough. As soon as Tazeen and John saw who it was they disappeared, Tazeen after a quick nod and John after a quick eyeroll.
"The prodigal child returns," Jaq commented facetiously.
"Shouldn't that be prodigal children?" Beth asked, gesturing between herself and Blood.
"Yes, she was who I was referring to," Jaq commented, pointing first at Blood before then pointing at Beth. "You barely qualify as an infant."
"Can I go back to the Trial, I'm fucking sick of this place already," Beth retorted.
"Enough," Baelvyr rumbled. "Let's move location."
The grumpy ogre then led the way out of the arena and down to a private room in the underworks, Beth noting that Jaq followed along behind. The room was one they hadn't been in yet and was a bit of a strange combination between training room and conference room. It had a training stage as Beth had become used to from long hours in the underworks, but also had a seating area at one end with a slew of chairs and two small tables. Baelvyr led the way to the seating area, assuming position at the lefthand table with a massive creaking of one of the chairs.
"Alright, girlie," he rumbled. "Spill it."
"Spill what?" Beth asked a little obliquely as she and Blood sat at the table, followed lastly by Jaq.
"I cannot tell sometimes if it's an act, or you are truly this dense," Jaq said with lowered brows and a slight edge to his voice.
"How's that business selling single boots to people working out?" Beth fired back.
"Enough! Both of ya! Bloody stars…" Baelvyr rumbled.
"Yeah, yeah. Sorry," Beth said. Jaq looked unrepentant but held his peace.
"Alright. How far did ya get, girlie? Twenty? Maybe even twenty-five?" Baelvyr asked.
Beth and Blood glanced at each other, the wolf lolling in her chair and stretching her legs out, before Beth answered, "Twenty-seven."
"Really?" Jaq exclaimed, eyebrow rising slightly.
"Hot damn," Baelvyr guffawed before asking, "Ya failed on twenty-seven or twenty-eight?"
"We failed in stage twenty-seven," Beth replied with a shake of her head.
"Bad match?" asked Jaq coolly.
"Was an infiltration mission," Beth answered. "We're not that great at it, and Blood's certainly better than I am. We only gathered a little information, and we got nabbed right away when we entered the target location."
"Maybe we need to have you spend some time with John," Jaq said, earning a grunt from Baelvyr. "You don't need to be an assassin or spy, but you should be able to do better than that."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Beth said as she leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. Jaq merely frowned in response, fixing her with a bit of a look before Baelvyr continued.
"Ya got the review data?" he asked.
"Yeah," Beth answered, the data stick appearing in her hand. Baelvyr took the stick and was able to plug it into a slot in the wall by the wallscreen behind him by just leaning back and stretching out his arm. The stick slotted into the wall with a click, and by slotted in, Beth was slightly surprised to see the whole stick slide into the opening on the small panel. He grabbed a tablet out from the small rack before leaning back forward, using it to wake the screen and bring up an initial display.
Beth was surprised to find the first thing displayed was essentially an overall stats page, showing the stages, their clear times through them, and a grading metric for each stage. From there, Baelvyr was able to select any stage and dive into the particulars, which included more advanced metrics as well as a full recording of their entire clear of the stage. The first thing Baelvyr did was pull up stage one, splitting the screen initially to show the recording on the left side while the stats were displayed on the right. The wallscreen stretched floor-to-ceiling and in this room was about fifteen feet wide which, considering they were sitting no more than ten feet from it at most, gave them more than ample viewing room.
"These first stages are always basically identical," Jaq commented as he read the statistics on the right. "Stage one of this Trial is always this infiltrate a camp and kill enemies variant and is almost always goblins and hobgoblins."
"Not a bad performance," Baelvyr chipped in, before noticing Beth stop after killing the first group. "What ya get there, girlie."
Beth quickly displayed Beastly Body, explaining, "I got a muscle enhancement skill, I forget what; I can look it up if you guys really want to know. But it merged in with Copper Body right away and gave me this."
"Already got it to Silver," Jaq said with a grunt. "Gotta make sure to train her on this, fat rock."
"I know what I'm 'bout, tin head," Baelvyr shot back, having returned his attention to the screen.
They watched the rest of the stage with only a few minor comments on the girls' performances, mainly noting inefficiencies in their fights. Jaq seemed a little mollified with their stealth ability after having observed the first part of the stage, but they were still likely going to have to spend some time with John, nonetheless. They moved on to stage two, where the two Enforcers also had little comment, other than Baelvyr commenting that he would teach Blood better ways to handle armored opponents even in her full wolf form.
Stage three actually caused Baelvyr to pause right away, looking over the statistics on the side and the breakdown of the fights. "Didn't know they'd give ya a fight stage so soon."
"Typical stage three," Jaq commented, leaning back in his chair, legs stretched out and arms crossed over his chest.
"Did you do this Trial, Jaq?" Beth asked.
"Yes," he replied simply.
"He did this when he was a just a pipsqueak, which coulda been yesterday, now that I'm thinkin’ of it," Baelvyr rumbled, though Jaq just lifted his left hand to wave it lazily, not deigning to dignify the quip with a response.
"And you didn't?" Beth asked Baelvyr with a raised right eyebrow.
"Ain't ever got an invite, girlie," he said. "Ain't too big a deal; I was up to more trouble with other battles in my youth."
"Don't expect too much," Jaq cut in, nodding at the screen. "This is still an early stage."
Baelvyr resumed the playthrough and didn't stop it again, letting it complete all the way to the end of the stage three duels. He seemed largely unimpressed while Jaq just seemed bored, crossing one leg over the other as he leaned back.
"Piss poor performance," Baelvyr grumbled. "On their part. Barely worth commentin' on that."
"It was…really easy, I'm not gonna lie," Beth said, pausing a bit to pick her words carefully.
"Disgraceful," Baelvyr snorted before starting stage four's recording. The two had much more to say on this one, commenting quite a bit about battlefield tactics and troop movements. It mostly went in one ear and out the other for Beth, though even that wasn't really true anymore, given her now near-perfect memory. She just enjoyed the sight of her and Blood thoroughly routing the enemy troops, using this first review session as a way to both pick up some tips and also see what Blood had been up to, not having been able to keep full track of her companion at all times during the stages.
