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Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Ninety-Nine
🕑 Added 2024-02-28 18:00:01 +0000 UTCBlood didn't give up, of course, nor did she rely on Beth for help. Despite how much she complained about training, when they were actually in a fight, she always gave it everything she had and more. She used the experience as a touchstone, refining her skills ever further as the statues pushed her to her limit constantly. She was eventually able to critically damage one of the two statues she was fighting, though she wasn't able to kill either of them before Beth had finished both of her opponents. As much as Blood reveled in a good fight, and a good hunt, she was more than happy to have her sister aid her in battle. She understood they needed to actually complete the stages, and that there were plenty of opportunities to fight still waiting for them even in this stage.
And speaking of more opportunities to fight, they took advantage of every last second of the break between fights to rest before they were assaulted by five statues. Beth wound up picking up the slack here, as she wanted to relieve some of the pressure off Blood so she wasn't totally overwhelmed. Fighting three statues did take her longer than fighting two, but that just gave Blood more time under the exact right amount of pressure for her to excel.
When they moved on to six statues, Blood was under a little too much pressure, which cause her to burn extra mana. Hitting the enemies with her Silver-level skill was enough to do them fairly significant damage, especially when she burned a lot of mana in empowering the skill. They just had to hope that she wouldn't bottom out on mana before, or even during, a critical fight. Based on how the statue fights had been going so far, that was a distinct possibility, considering every 'tier' of statues had more enemies, meaning more groups for them to wade through with ever-dwindling resources.
The seven statue fight required far more movement from the girls in the beginning, as getting surrounded by four statues, while not a death sentence, was still an incredibly bad idea. More of the work fell to Blood as Beth still hadn't managed to push Swift into Silver, something that frustrated her quite a bit. On the other hand, each of them had one or more skills in Silver before their first rebirth, which was already quite amazing as compared to the average. And the power of those Silver skills was no more obvious than when Beth used quite a bit of mana to shatter limbs or even deal killing blows with a fully charged Crush.
They rested after all seven opponents had been pounded into gravel, Beth checking to see if they had acquired any levels, quickly telling Blood to distribute her points for the one level they had attained. They took care of that in literal seconds before fully dropping back into meditation, trying to recoup as much mana as possible with their Copper-level skills. It was not something that they could do anything about other than continue to feel the frustration of the limitations of their skills holding them back.
The next group was even worse, at least for Blood, with eight powerful, skilled statues putting an immense amount of pressure on them. Beth picked up some of the extra slack, taking a handful of heavy hits herself as she kept the pressure from overwhelming Blood. Beth's armor was heavier and her ability to roll with the punches, so to say, a bit higher, and she wasn't too worried about taking a few extra strikes. Not with the combination of skills she already had, including the new Indomitable Heart, which was already doing quite a bit of work in minimizing the injuries she was sustaining.
The group of eight was eventually taken care of, though the girls were focused less on resource conservation by this point and more on survival. They rested as much as they could before the group of nine leapt down into the arena, Beth just focusing on the fact that there should only be two more groups after this one, as long as the established pattern held. The nine statues surrounded them from the start, attacking as a coordinated group, forcing Blood to move even faster and Beth to take even more hits. She snarled as an axe blow cracked the upper bone of her left arm, smashing her right fist into the responsible statue so hard that its arms blew off and went flying across the room.
Beth channeled her anger, calling on her Presence and infusing her limbs with mana before dancing among the statues, sliding out of the paths of blades and clubs while dishing out terrible blows to her opponents. She was burning mana and stamina rather freely, but she was confident enough in her own estimates of her strength to be able to destroy some of this group while not getting overwhelmed by the remaining two groups. She only used her burst of power to destroy four statues before letting go of her Presence and continued the battle more "normally." With the statue she had shattered in anger earlier, they were now against four statues instead of nine, and it was far easier for them to handle that and wrap the fight up without burning much more of their precious mana and stamina.
After their slightly extended break of eight minutes, they were interrupted from their meditation by ten purple-eyed statues jumping down into the arena. Beth didn't fuck around at all this round, summoning her Presence and infusing her body with mana before launching herself into the group with a bang. She slammed into the statues with a cracking *boom*, knocking the sword of the first enemy aside with a backhand while smashing her right arm into the statue with so much force the two statues to either side staggered slightly. That first strike was a fatal blow, Beth not even needing the ding in her mind to know as the statue's eyes immediately reverted from bright purple to dull, lifeless black rock.
Beth darted around the arena floor, smashing and crushing and pulverizing, blowing apart a total of seven statues before she relaxed. One of the remaining three statues was damaged, and Beth actually took the opportunity to rest. Blood was able to keep all three statues occupied, and even kill the damaged statue after a minute while Beth sat off to the side meditating. As long as Blood was still fighting they weren't at all penalized either, as Beth was able to meditate for more than ten minutes before Blood was finished without anything happening to them. That led into the eight minute break, Beth not moving at all before the last wave of statues jumped into the arena.
She once again burst forward explosively, the ground under her feet cracking as she launched herself at the statue group. She had her crown atop her head and mana coursing through her muscles, and the statues simply didn't stand a chance against her. Eleven statues presented a bit of a challenge even for her, but her Presence more than evened the odds. It did take her much of her mana to clear them some space to breathe, destroying seven of the eleven statues before she let go of her Presence and joined in the fray alongside Blood to clean up the remaining four statues.
It actually took Beth longer to take care of her two statues than it took for Blood to finish hers, allowing the wolf to rest for a little extra time before Beth was done. As soon as the last statue was down, a message appeared in front of them, though Beth ignored it for a second. She looked around the arena, seeing that it was empty; all save for one lone statue at the top of the 'seating' area. The other statues had been well over six feet tall, a decent few inches taller than even Blood, not counting her ears when standing straight up, but this statue was much smaller in size. It was likely only five and a half feet tall, but that didn't mean anything to Beth, and as she looked at the statue she got a distinct feeling of power flowing out from it.
She looked at the message then, reading through what the stage was telling them and almost breathing a sigh of relief. The message indicated that they were given a full five hours of rest before the final challenge would start. Beth and Blood promptly took advantage of that, with Beth setting an alarm to wake them in just over four hours before both simply passed out, still wearing their armor. They slept the entire time, taking advantage of the ability of sleep to restore both their stamina and mana to greatly replenish both. They were awake with a small bit of extra time remaining on the counter, which they used to meditate to restore themselves as much as possible.
They stood with a handful of seconds left on the timer, Beth staring up at the statue as she waited. The wait wasn't long, and the statue's eyes suddenly lit up, glowing a bright white before it started to move. It was far different from any of the other statues, moving with a kind of fluid grace that immediately had the hair on the back of Beth's neck standing up. Unlike the other statues, the last statue didn't jump down into the arena in a large and grandiose movement, nor did it make any sound, but instead merely shifted its legs a little, appearing a few feet in front of Beth with barely a whisper. Beth's eyes widened as she reacted on instinct, striking at the creature with a fast snap punch.
It was clear how unlike the other statues this one was when it dodged out of the path of Beth's punch by simply leaning back and to the side slightly. It returned her attack with a drawing attack, its sword leaving its sheathe with a slight hiss and darting right for Beth's throat. She swayed back and punched the flat of the blade, the statue boss turning its interrupted attack into a downward chop to keep her at range. It transitioned fluidly from that movement to a wide, sweeping cut that caused Blood to abort the attack she had just launched from the side.
The white-eyed statue was just as powerful as the purple-eyed statues if not more so, but it was far more skilled. That didn't just extend to its weapon usage, but even its movements were far more graceful and precise and, though it wasn't necessarily saving any stamina through that, it was still more efficient. This efficiency allowed it to position itself better during the fight, so much so that it was rather easily able to fight Beth and Blood together without getting outmaneuvered. They continuously tried to pincer attack the boss, timing their attacks to strike at the same instant from entirely different angles, but the statue was able to repel them every time.
The only good thing was that they were in a stalemate, as their constant double attacks weren't leaving openings for the boss to do much attacking of its own. Beth hadn't used her Presence yet, but was burning everything else she had at maximum and technically wasn't even keeping up with the boss, as it was only with Blood assisting that she wasn't currently in a bad position in the fight. It was pretty clear they would need to use everything they had to beat the boss, as Beth was also pretty sure the boss hadn't even shown everything it could yet.
As soon as she activated her Presence, she cursed under her breath, as the boss had activated its mana enhancement skill, which it hadn't been using up until that point. She was still the stronger of the two, but not by as much as she had hoped. The battle was now fast enough that even Blood had trouble keeping up, the wolf in human form running her boosting skills at max while only barely able to add an attack in from time to time. She and Beth did coordinate in a nearly entirely seamless manner, with Blood only ever capitalizing on openings that Beth made where the Brawler was out of the line of fire of her claw skill.
The other problem that they had was it was unlikely they could exhaust the statue, considering it was some type of construct. It likely only ran off mana and didn't even have stamina, and it would have plenty of mana long after the two girls were exhausted. They had to move even faster and hit even harder, overwhelming the statue with a combination of Beth's high skill and their sheer damage output. Beth focused on narrowing down her movements even more than the boss's, trying to be hyper efficient in how she positioned her body while at the same time picking her opportunities to get in incredibly devastating strikes to the statue's limbs.
Blood noticed as Beth seemed to start to move even more fluidly, dodging slashes of the boss's sword with only a hair’s breadth to spare, dancing around the statue with incredible skill. Her fists and feet lashed out at the precise time they needed to in order to interrupt the statue's attacks, moving so quickly they were blurs even to Blood's sight. She circled as Beth continued to move more smoothly, to accelerate, to dish out even more damage ever more rapidly, looking for any openings to slash with her claws.
It was one such opportunity where Blood managed to get in the perfect strike, the perfect moment happening as Beth lashed out with a half-dozen punches that were mere blurs, making the air tremble and shake from the force. As the last punch was still in motion, Blood had already been moving and now fired off an incredibly precise, incredibly concentrated Blood Queen's Claws, all five energy blades from each hand condensing into two single blades, with both blades meeting at a single point just as Beth danced back slightly after her last punch. The singular point they landed on also just happened to be the center of the back of the boss's neck, a rumbling crack echoing out as the boss's neck sustained massive damage.
It wasn't enough to take the boss out of the fight, but it was affected by the hit, slowing slightly and moving in a somewhat more choppy manner. That essentially spelled its doom, as Beth only continued to accelerate, moving faster and more smoothly as she hit harder, lashed out more frequently, and turned into a machine of death, well-oiled and lethal. Blood leapt upon the statue after another thirty seconds, the whole of the boss showing cracks and breaks, large chunks having been shorn from its arms and torso by Beth, who was still smoothly jack-hammering the boss in a beautiful series of enhanced strikes. The lupine woman had timed her leap perfectly, firing off her skill at the apex of the leap, another precise movement allowing her to once again stack the energy blades, once again hitting in a single small point at the base of the boss's neck.
The boss's neck cracked and shattered, though it still wasn't enough to kill it, and the statue spun with a surprising fluidity and struck at Blood, catching the wolf in the torso. Blood's mana steel and leather torso armor parted before the boss's stone sword like onion paper, the statue cutting deep through the right side of Blood's chest, cleaving apart her breast and slashing through her ribs before exiting around her solar plexus. The boss's victory in dealing critical damage to one of the two was incredibly short lived, as Beth had never stopped moving the whole time, with her heavily armored right fist slamming into the boss's head. The punch was unbelievably fast and hard, carrying the force of a runaway freight train, impacting with a sound of thunder echoing throughout the arena. The boss's neck shattered, stone pieces flying everywhere, as the head was partially pulverized, chunks of the statue's face arcing through the air. What remained of the statue's head flew across the arena like a runaway bullet before slamming into the middle of the seating tiers with an explosive *BOOM*.
