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Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Sixty-Seven
🕑 Added 2024-01-03 18:00:02 +0000 UTCIt was a few minutes later when Blood sent a message back to her, just indicating that there was a beast ahead and that she would wait for Beth. After another minute of slightly quicker movement Beth had caught up, stopping just beside Blood and kneeling slightly to try to minimize her profile in the wide tunnel. Looking ahead, she could see a definite source of heating moving, it taking a minute for her eyes to pick out some of the details in the low light. Her heat vision was definitely more powerful somewhere like the tunnel, where essentially no natural light made it down, causing her regular vision to essentially be overwhelmed as she only "saw" with heat.
The beast that was further down the tunnel from them appeared bipedal, that much Beth could get from the heat profile, and seemed to be slowly walking away from them. It turned at one point to step over to the righthand wall of the tunnel and investigate something, digging its hand in before pulling out a chunk of rock. Beth was curious what was going on but soon put it together as she saw the being stuff the rock in its mouth, looking around in the tunnel herself to note it seemed there were some resources present, some type of ore at the least. It appeared the beast was scarfing down hunks of unprocessed metal ore and possibly other elements as a tasty treat.
The being was fairly robust, with thick arms and pillar-like legs branching out from a wide, barrel-like body. Its head was a thick, bullet-shaped block that rested on a short, fat neck that was heavy with muscle. Beth got an impression of a brownish hide with some dark green marks, noting the creature's bulbous, sausage-like fingers as it tore another hunk out of the wall slightly further down. Beth and Blood moved a little closer at her signal and she tried to scan the beast, finding a not altogether unexpected result.
Level 84 Stone Ogier Tough
Beth wasn't really concerned that much with its class or type description, something being called a "tough" not really rating very high in her estimation, considering that was a descriptor often used for common thugs. It being a stone ogier was a little more worrying, knowing they were distant kin of the powerful ogres, typically both tougher and dumber than Baelvyr's species. With it being fairly different than the other beasts they had encountered in the rocky terrain so far, Beth thought it was a promising lead.
'Level eighty-four. Labeled as a stone ogier tough,' Beth relayed to Blood.
'Go ahead. I know you want a crack at it,' Blood replied with the clear feeling of an eyeroll in her mental communication.
Beth didn't need to be told twice, increasing her pace until she was jogging at the beast, ready for just about anything. What she wasn't ready for was nothing, no reaction at all; at least, not until she was within twenty feet of it, at which point it turned with a snarling growl to face her. It took a step towards her, but was still moving ponderously slow, its thick legs simply unable to articulate well. It also didn't seem too motivated, clearly intent on getting its hands on her, but not instantly losing its mind at the sight of her.
It seemed she was encountering the first beast that wasn't totally or near-totally subsumed by rage and hunger, but that also seemed due to its laziness. Still, she got up close and dodged a fast but clumsy swipe from the beast's left arm, ducking under it and punching out with her left gauntlet. She didn't empower the strike, and it really felt like she punched a brick wall, though the consequences of that were far less severe than before her body was enhanced. The "wall" that she had punched was also far more affected than what would have happened just six months ago, the side of the beast's torso cracking and breaking. It howled in anger and pain, taking a heavy step towards her and lashing out with both its arms, trying to smash her flat against the floor.
Beth was able to easily dodge its movements, hitting it with a couple more moderate strength but un-empowered punches to gauge its toughness. It was certainly a solid creature, but even her normal punches were cracking its hide and dealing some damage to its insides. She thought she really had its measure after half a minute and decided to end it, but she was caught entirely off guard as the beast belched out her. It was not a normal burp, but instead a breath-type attack as a cone of fire shot out of the beast's mouth right into her face. She blocked with her gauntlet, grunting at the heat, but largely able to ignore it with the combination of Silver Pain Tolerance and a few levels in Flame Resistance. With a grunt and frown, Beth weathered the attack and struck out herself, this time utilizing Crush to shatter a section of its torso, followed by an empowered kick the finished it off.
"Am I missing an eyebrow?" Beth asked Blood, patting at her face.
'You're a bit singed, sister, but none the worse for wear,' Blood replied with a snort.
Beth took a few minutes to meditate and use Lordly Reconstruction to fix her minor burns, finding that if she focused, she could actually regenerate lost hair with it. She didn't go too far with it, not having ready access to a hairdresser at this point and not wanting to have to deal with her hair down to her knees. When she was fully healed up and ready, they continued on down the tunnel, encountering another of the ogier a minute later.
What proceeded was four hours of them trudging through dark tunnels filled with slow but powerful enemies stinking of sulfur and a smell like old asphalt. The positive side was, given the density of enemies they started encountering and those beasts' higher levels, they gained two levels. The first level was with the second ogier they killed, meaning about four hours of almost constant battle gave them a single level. The mixed side was that their Fire Resistance went up by a couple ranks. Nice to have, but not nice to earn, considering they had to endure quite a few flame baths to get it.
The negative side was they still hadn't found the dungeon entrance, though Beth thought that was only a matter of time at this point. The further down and further in they went, the greater the concentration of enemies was becoming, as well as the fact that their levels had increased to the point they were fighting level eighty-six and now a single level eighty-seven enemy. Beth wasn't exactly sure what discovering and pioneering a new dungeon was supposed to be like, but she figured, based on her experiences so far with things like the ant nest, the more they headed into danger, the closer they were getting.
It turned out her instincts were spot on, with the two of them discovering the dungeon just two hours later. She wasn't sure it was always like this, but at least this stage gave a pretty good introductory experience to what being sent out into the wilds alone was like, and a decent idea of what trying to discover an unknown and potentially highly dangerous dungeon was like. Beth continued to muse about the stage as they approached what she assumed was the dungeon entrance, a massive gate of stone carved into a large wall in the depths below the broken terrain area. The gates were two twenty-feet-high sections of black stone carved as a single piece, with reliefs of a great battle carved on the front, depicting two enormous forces of ogiers, clad in heavy plate and wielding massive weapons, clashing on a field in front of a forest of towering oaks. The doors stood ajar, allowing a space for ogiers spawned by the dungeon to leave, wandering out into the tunnels below the fractured landscape.
Based on the numbers, Beth estimated the dungeon could have been there without anyone running it for closer to a year. The big problem was that even dungeons such as this, ones that spat beasts out into the surrounding area, still drank in too much mana from their source node compared to what they needed to operate. Eventually, they would become over-saturated to the point that they would go haywire for a time, spewing out a massive wave of beasts that, due to the much greater mana concentration, would be entirely mad. This wasn't the only source of beast tides, but was a common and powerful one, with some high-level dungeons capable of spewing out millions of enraged beasts in the course of four or five days. Beth had a brief insight, barely a scrap, of memory drifting on the ethereal winds of her conscious, a planet flooded with beasts bearing the form of a sphinx, and rivers of blood flowing in every direction.
Their job here was to try to prevent just such a scenario, and so they moved forward, not stopping even for a short rest before getting ready to confront the dungeon. Unlike the ant dungeon, they immediately found, this was a dungeon that had an entirely separate reality. At the same time, it didn't function exactly the same as the kobold dungeon, as that separate reality wasn't split into different pockets or instances, but was simply a massive sub-dimension that anyone walking through the door would step into. Beth read the notification as it popped up:
Ogier's Ancestral Hall
{You have stepped into one of the Ancestral Halls of the ogier people. Within you will find many of their kin, though low have they fallen in the aeons since their greatest glory. Find the seat of the king and reclaim what has long been lost.
Properties: Unified, Large, Greater Mana Well
Current Occupants: 1/25}
Unified - This dungeon contains a single instance which is limited in the number of active occupants. Please refer to the dungeon details for information on delver limits.
Large - The category above Simple, this dungeon extends at least a mile in one or more directions. The maximum size is an area of ten miles in any one direction, and the layout is only restricted in not requiring any sort of spatial movement or special skills to access the main section of the instance.
Greater Mana Well - This location is formed on top of a Greater Mana Well, providing a vast quantity of mana. Expect more numerous and more powerful enemies than what would be present in a Discrete dungeon.
Beth scanned over the details of the dungeon after they entered, noting that one was the same as what she had seen before, that being Large. The other two appeared to be either upgrades or different classifications of categories she had encountered before. Unified seemed to be an upgraded or perhaps just related form of Closed, while Greater Mana Well was definitely an upgrade over Anchored. How that would affect the difficulty of the dungeon remained to be seen, but Beth was at least a little excited for encountering something new.
They didn't really have long to ponder the details, as the room they had emerged into contained quite a few ogier, several of whom quickly spotted the girls. The next five minutes were a rush of thick, rocky bodies and billowing flame as the two cleared the entry room of all beasts. None that were in the entry had any weapons, though a few wore some simple leather hauberks. Beth noted their levels were in the high eighties, but nothing the two of them couldn't deal with. It was even rather good experience, Beth hoping for another level fairly soon.
They ventured further into the dungeon, finding even the hallways clogged with enemies, making forward progress rather slow going. They had to fight for every step, often finding that new enemies approached by the time they had finished the initial ones that started the fight. The only fortunate thing about the whole ordeal was that the dungeon, or the first floor of it, anyway, seemed to be laid out in a simple grid. With a handful of identifying marks at some corners and along a couple of the hallways, they were able to get their bearings and navigate without too much trouble, a blessed relief amongst the endless churn of rocky bodies.
Six hours of exploration and near constant fighting, plus two levels, later they arrived at a massive set of stairs that led upwards to a second level. They had also, a little unfortunately, in Beth's opinion, gotten another few levels in Flame Resistance over the course of those six toasty hours, but she couldn't really complain too much about something that was making them stronger. It had been a tiring slog to get there, however, so they took half an hour to rest before they pressed on any further, just enough time for a quick meditation session.
It was two ogier thumping down the stairs that interrupted them and also spurred them to continue onward, Beth excited a little by the fact that both of the newcomers were wielding weapons. Beth rushed to confront them, her excitement dulled just a little by the sloppy way in which the ogier swung said weapons, the two beasts doing little better than flailing the mauls in their hands around them at random. Realizing that she wasn't going to get the kind of intense fight she had been hoping for, she swiftly dispatched the two opponents, not even having to bring her sword to bear.
"That was disappointing," Beth muttered irritably after caving the second beast's chest in.
'Not everything can be a challenge, sister,' Blood commented indifferently, sniffing at the corpses briefly before walking up the stairs, Beth following after.
The second level of the dungeon was made up of much larger corridors and rooms, laid out in some kind of alternating pattern that Beth struggled to figure out at first. She quickly got a feel for how the rooms alternated as they progressed, slaughtering even more ogier. As they worked their way through the floor, the enemies' level increased slightly, and the quality of their gear also rose. It wasn't anything fantastic, but they definitely were wearing and wielding better items than the ogiers outside or even on the first floor had been.
The dungeon did live up to its moniker of "Large," though the amount of time they needed to clear the second floor had more to do with the unbelievable number of enemies versus the amount of distance they had to cover. They stopped for an hour of rest in the middle of the floor, backtracking for a while so they would be somewhere a little more secure. They continued after that hour of meditation, clearing the rest of the floor, giving them a total time of nine hours for floor two.
Comments
Tyler Hooker
Oh boo, I caught up
