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Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Sixty-Eight
🕑 Added 2024-01-04 18:00:02 +0000 UTCAt the end of the floor, they encountered another set of stairs, but this one was only half a dozen steps leading up to a huge set of doors similar to the entrance to the dungeon. They were carved with the same kind of relief that was carved onto the outer doors, though this artwork was clearly depicting an entirely separate battle than what the entrance showed. The two girls sat to take another rest, giving it nearly an hour before they were ready to proceed.
"My boss-room senses are really tingling," Beth said.
'It is not a sense I possess, but I will take your word for it,' Blood replied.
"Did you remember to distribute your points?" Beth asked, referring to the fact the second floor had yielded another two levels for both of them.
'Of course; I do it as soon as I get them,' Blood answered slightly indignantly with what passed for a wolfish scoff.
"Good. Let's get this done," Beth said, leading the way up the ornately carved stairs.
The doors to the room beyond were slightly ajar, but Beth still put a hand to the door on the right, shoving the massive construct further open. What greeted her was an impressive sight, or it would have been in better times. A grand hall was spread before them, a place for feasting and drinking, filled with tables and long benches. Braziers scattered about the floor provided light and warmth, while slow-burning torches were attached to the walls and a number of pillars that supported the vaulted ceiling. In long past times, this place would have been filled with ogier, drinking and brawling and gorging themselves on fine delicacies. In this dim future, where the hall was the end of a dungeon filled with the mindless beasts the ogier had become, there was no joyous consumption happening.
Instead, the hall was filled with wandering ogier, clad in simple leather armor or scraps of cloth. None of them bothered with any feasting or drinking, and as Beth watched a set of new ogier spawned and moved toward her. As they approached, they noticed her in the doorway, giving out an enraged roar, alerting the entire hall to their presence. Every ogier in the place alerted on them and Beth just sighed, seeing the slog that they were in for. The one bright spot was the boss, a massive ogier with a mana steel chest plate that wielded a huge axe. It was a beast that still would have been small standing next to Baelvyr, but it would certainly be a stunning sight for someone that hadn't spent months being trained by the eight foot mass of muscle and fat.
Beth waded right into the fight, drawing her sword now to deal with the amount of weapons leveled against her. She used her blade to parry and deflect, able to push enemy weapons aside at a distance and open the ogier beasts up for a swift punch or kick. She pushed herself to do more, turning the backswing of a deflection into a parry, pushing herself to create ever more openings. She fell into a rhythm as she fought, deflecting and blocking, parrying and punching. She presented plenty of opportunities for Blood as well, allowing the wolf to get some easy kills, though she did have to spit the hot blood out with great huffing coughs.
The boss was a more serious challenge than the underlings by a large margin, but Beth was able to forestall that battle thanks to the rest of the chaff swarmed around her. Even better, she was able to use the boss as a bit of a touchstone as she cleared the trash out. She deflected several rapid swings from the boss with her blade, causing it to smash two of the nearby ogier directly in the face. That wasn't all, as she redirected a slice that whistled past her into the knee of a third ogier, nearly causing the limb to be removed entirely. The more the boss bellowed and swung its giant axe around, the more Beth focused, and the more the surrounding beasts took an absolute beating.
When Beth had smashed apart all the surrounding beasts, she fully focused on the roaring and thrashing boss, ready to finish the dungeon and the stage. The beast had some impressive power behind it, with a quite high STR, but it was sloppy and lacked DEX, failing to respond to her deflections in a timely manner. It just didn't have the finesse to respond to her parries, the agility to keep up with her movements, nor the skill with weapons to actually stand toe-to-toe with her with a blade. This all led to a long but pre-determined fight, with Beth gradually dismantling the boss, though the torso protection the steel chestplate offered made the whole process take even longer. She did eventually manage to beat the boss with a series of brutal strikes to the head after her helmet absorbed the edge of one for her, showing the difference having a helmet really made.
They had a couple enemies left to clean up after the boss fell, and once they were taken care of Beth and Blood stopped to meditate and rest for a minute. She had to say, she was rather surprised they were still there, but they apparently hadn't fulfilled all the conditions for the stage. Beth was pretty sure she knew what was going on, having thought of this a little earlier; they had to report back. They couldn't really say the job of pioneering a new dungeon was done until they had reported about the dungeon to the authorities. Of course, there would be people who would discover dungeons and keep the information to themselves to try to gain the most benefit, but that was a rather shortsighted move as even the greatest of experts weren't able to deplete the mana of regular dungeons. A dungeon like this one, located on a greater mana well, wouldn't be depleted by teams running it basically continuously. In fact, the amount of good Beth and Blood had done in draining the mana only bought a handful of days, and the town would have to start sending expeditions to dive the dungeon regularly.
All that wasn't Beth's problem, as they just had to report back and leave. Even if this weren't a stage, it was a job she would likely be taking in the future, where people would ask for an individual or small team to find and explore a new dungeon. That team would often leave after the first clear and move on to other tasks, especially if the dungeon wasn't particularly challenging or lucrative for those delvers. Beth and Blood would be mimicking such a team here with both the dungeon not being particularly challenging and the fact the whole thing was just a scenario in the Celestial Awakening Trial.
Beth hopped to her feet when she was finished with her short rest and her bit of pondering, looking over to see Blood already up on her feet, or rather paws, and ready to go. As they were getting ready to leave, the full completion metrics for the dungeon popped up, which Beth was unsure if they would even get to see. As they were within a stage of the Trial, they were not actually given any of the rewards, but she hadn't really expected anything else.
Ogier's Ancestral Hall Complete. Calculating rewards.
Dungeon Cleared in less than seven natural days. Bonus points awarded.
Dungeon Cleared in less than one natural day. Bonus points awarded.
Dungeon cleared solo (Bonded companions are not counted in instance clear numbers). Bonus points awarded.
Calculating final score based on a matrix of variables and appending bonuses.
Calculating…
Final score calculated at a B+. Disbursing awards.
After the reward disbursement notification after the final score notification, they didn't receive any rewards, instead having the exit portal for the dungeon appear, which they immediately took. They appeared back outside the massive doors depicting the battle in front of the forest, still deep underground. Beth looked around and thought, At least our clearing means there's not much down here to fight on the way out.
The two trekked out at a fast trot, taking less than half the time to get back to the surface that it took them in going down. Once they were outside, they started heading back towards the frontier town at a brisk clip, using Swift to greatly speed up their journey. They encountered few beasts on their way, the handful they crossed paths with easily dispatched, especially given the levels they had gained from the dungeon. They stopped after a handful of hours to rest for an hour, their meditation undisturbed by any beasts.
It was only a few hours later that they made their way back to town, hailing the town guards above the western gate. The guards seemed a bit put off for some reason, if Beth could judge anything from their expressions. The massive metal gate swung open entirely silently, Beth and Blood able to feel the hum of the magic as a gap was created in the defenses, though they were still being analyzed as they walked through. They thanked the guards and made their way to the center of town, finding Fulken outside of the guard headquarters talking to someone.
"Captain!" Beth called out as they approached. "Good to see you!"
"Young Enforcer!" Fulken exclaimed. "Was there something else you needed?"
"Uh, no, captain, we're done," Beth replied with a small frown.
"Done?" asked Fulken with a slight uptick in his voice, his right eyebrow curling upward. "You mean to say you've finished with scouting the surrounding area?"
"Uh," Beth replied adroitly, exchanging a look with Blood, both of their brows lowered slightly. "Sorry, captain, I'm not sure what you're saying. We're done with pioneering the dungeon, is what I mean."
Fulken just stared at them for a minute, long enough that the woman he had been talking to cleared her throat, making him start slightly. He then said, "Yes, right, well…I'll take your report then…"
Beth then described their little expedition, with the captain nodding and making appropriate noises through the first part. The terrain and beasts all the way to the shattered hills were well known and didn't give any surprises, so it wasn't until Beth described the tunnel leading underground and the ogier that Fulken expressed any surprise. The surprise turned to concern as she described the Ancestral Hall and their battle through it, but Fulken's lack of available Wayfarers to tame the dungeon wasn't her problem, though with how lucrative a dungeon like that could be, it likely wouldn't be his problem for very long, either.
As soon as her report was complete Beth felt a familiar sensation, as if she had just taken half a step off a cliff while her vision went white. A moment later she staggered a partial step as she and Blood reappeared within the array room, the stage having been completed with her report. They had gotten another two levels of pure experience dumped into them for the resounding success of pioneering the dungeon in less than two days total, a feat above and beyond what was expected. Beth looked at her stat screen somewhat excitedly after distributing her points, seeing that level one hundred was rapidly approaching, likely within just a handful of days at the pace they were going.
Beth led the way out of the array room, saying to Blood, "We're making pretty good progress."
'It feels a little slow to me,' Blood replied non-committally.
"Really?" Beth questioned with a raised brow as they walked back to the room. "I'd say we're doing really damn good. We're already nearing the halfway point and we're getting close to level one hundred. What's slow about that?"
'It just feels like we're not making that much progress,' Blood replied with a chuff. 'Perhaps it is how tedious the stages we are doing feel, especially given that we know how to do these things. This is supposed to be an elite trial. Just who are these training-wheel stages for?'
"I mean, I've been enjoying myself," Beth responded as they walked into the room. "And you shouldn't look down on the stages just because they're not the greatest challenge. There's still a bunch of stuff we could learn along the way."
'I fail to see how these stages are better teachers than someone like Baelvyr, but I'll listen to you,' Blood answered with another chuff.
The two got cleaned up, not that there was much to clean since emerging from the stage usually barely left them sweaty, but it was more about the ritual of the thing. That and luxuriating in hot water for a few minutes was something Beth was increasingly coming to appreciate, given their new propensity for spending long stretches of time in the wilderness away from any sign of civilization. They decided to have a quick sleep afterwards, not even needing four hours for Beth and only a bit more for Blood. Beth's END was steadily climbing through the one hundreds just from her leveling, while Blood had stopped at one hundred as she bumped her INT and WIS before dumping a bunch of points into DEX. Beth thought to comment on it, but she figured her companion knew what she was doing and one hundred wasn't really that low, so she left it alone.
Waking up in a warm bed and being comfortable was a powerful pull to continue lying there, but Beth knew they had to get up. Groaning just a bit at having to leave the comfort of the bed, she sat up and gave Blood a shake before sliding to the edge of the bed. Stretching for a brief minute and feeling her spine pop a couple times, she headed into the bathroom to take care of her morning routine. Once she and Blood had finished everything, they headed out to get some food before returning to the array room.
They took a minute to study the monitors in the back, seeing a handful of runs that weren't private. Beth liked to do a quick check every once in a while to see what people were up to, as well as get a few minutes of entertainment from some of the public stages. She much preferred doing the stages versus watching them, compared to her love of watching the arena fights. She loved participating in arena-type fights as well, but there was just something about watching two or more people compete directly in a high stakes match that really got her blood pumping.
The only interesting screen was the rude dwarf that had shoved past them earlier who was now in the boss rush stage. She appeared to be struggling mightily with the first of the speed-based bosses, not taking much damage, but not able to really land any solid hits herself. Beth watched for another minute as the dwarf cracked one of the boss's arms before turning and walking over to the counter. She requested the next stage and to keep it private before being directed to one of the Warders. They had Beth and Blood wait for their signal before having them enter a quite dark yellow portal, the two experiencing that disorientating second of whiteness.
Comments
Emily Hunt
Ooooo, I'm interested to see some larger scale battles in this setting!
