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Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Sixty-Six
🕑 Added 2024-01-02 18:00:03 +0000 UTCThey cleaned up the grull quickly after that, Beth injuring them and Blood easily finishing them off. Blood's teeth and claws were certainly sharp enough to rip apart the joints of the beasts without any help from Beth, and her fangs could penetrate the armor, it just took time for her to punch through. Time was life in a battle like this and Blood just couldn't afford to spend that many seconds on a single attack when they were tangling against a whole pack of enemies. Blood could have slowly torn the armored enemies apart on her own, but with Beth there she was able to quickly and efficiently savage to death the already injured beasts.
They took a short rest after the dog-like beasts, each munching through a ration bar and guzzling tons of water. They took off again after just five minutes, continuing to wander deeper into the jagged, crumbling terrain. The easiest places for them to navigate as they searched were long ridges of hardened stone, the rock almost entirely smooth like giant presses had compacted a long trapezoid of old stone for centuries. The surfaces of these ridges were just scarred enough that they could provide a little grip to walk on, but they weren't cracked and broken and scattered with debris in the same way as the rest of the area was.
"I don't really know what to do," Beth said to Blood as they hiked. "Think your super senses will offer any help in finding a dungeon?"
'I don't know, sister, I've never tried such a thing. I'll see if I can smell something different in the area,' Blood replied.
Blood began questing about, ranging further from side-to-side as they continued deeper, trying to scout anything unusual out with her heightened senses and sharp instincts. It was an even more difficult task than what they had first thought, as everything in the surrounding area smelled like baked rocks. The rats, much to their chagrin, didn't really have a scent, so they were forced to keep an eye out for them, while the dogs did have a kind of earthy, musky scent that Blood could use to track them. It was as they were moving through an area of broken boulders that Blood's senses made a new discovery.
'There's something here,' she sent to Beth. 'I don't know what, but be careful. I smell something like…tar…burned into hot stone…'
"I don't know what else I can do to help," Beth replied with a shrug. "I'll keep an eye out, but I'm finding the heat vision thing isn't as useful in a number of cases as I thought it'd be."
'Move slowly and keep your guard up. There's something here,' Blood said, sniffing the air before giving a deep huff and a snort. Shaking her head, she began pacing in a moderately tight circle while sniffing and swinging her head, trying to find what was off. Beth stood in place, turning slowly as she carefully scanned their surroundings, moving just a bit as she turned. She stopped suddenly, having been using her heat vision to scan the environment.
"Blood," she said. "I see it." She kept turning as she spoke quietly, trying to look like she hadn't seen the enemy.
'Where?' Blood asked.
'A quarter turn right to where I'm facing now,' Beth replied through their bond. 'About thirty feet from where I'm standing, a line appeared in the rocks. A line of heat, I mean, washing out of somewhere or something.'
'I will circle wide while keeping an eye on the area. Tell me if you see anything else strange while you keep spinning,' Blood said.
Beth continued to play an old top, spinning in place and observing the surroundings while focusing on her heat vision. She didn't notice anything else unusual until she was back facing the first anomaly, seeing nothing out of place. She stopped spinning and squinted her eyes, trying to see some kind of pattern or visual clue of any kind that something was unusual. A few tense seconds of focus later, Beth reacted as a massive chunk of rock hurtled towards her.
She realized as she blitzed to the side, using several of her skills to move quicker, that it was not a rock but one of the eponymous rock lizards rushing her. It really appeared as if part of the brown and red hillside had come alive and was barreling down on her, apart from the now wide-open maw of the beast that radiated heat, little wisps of flame curling out of the corners of the creature's massive jaws. It had long legs thick as a column but was stunningly nimble, correcting the path of its charge as Beth dashed out of the way. It wasn't able to correct enough, but she could feel the wind of its passage as it freight-trained by. The thing had to weigh at least two tons if it was an ounce, and that much kinetic energy would not feel good, especially considering the generally lower level of defense of her armor. She really did have to buy something better for her torso and legs at this point.
Beth didn't let it get far after it passed her, following it and leaping onto its back. Its body was hot, but no more than the rock around them baked all day by the relentless sun. She wondered for a brief moment if this whole thing would be better done at night, as she doubted if the lizards would cool off enough to stay perfectly blended to her heat vision. She grabbed onto the hardened ridge of its spine with her left hand as she shook loose the extraneous thoughts, fully charging Crush in her right arm before delivering a massive smash to the back of the creature's head. Its rock-like hide fractured and cracked from the power of the strike, superheated blood gushing out as the beast cried out in pain.
Beth didn't give it any chances to pull any new tricks, hitting it with the same kind of strike in the same spot. This second blow did the trick, the already severe damage from the first hit enough to seriously wound the beast, and the second strike hitting the same area dealing enough damage to kill it. Beth hopped off the back of the giant lizard as it collapsed, wiping at a little of the blood that had gotten on her.
'Its smell is strong, but it permeates the area where it hides,' Blood commented. 'I don't know that I can give anything but a general warning that there's one nearby.'
"That's fine," Beth responded. "I was thinking we might try moving at night, anyway. I'm not sure if they'll cool down as fast as the surrounding hills. They also might not get as cool, and if we can find a time when they're a different temperature, my heat vision will catch any we run into before they can catch us."
Having a bit of a plan, the two kept moving through the late afternoon, dealing with yet another and larger pack of storm rats. This group was higher leveled than the last, all into the low eighties in level, with the apparent leader of the pack being level eighty-three. Almost as soon as they had finished that battle, a group of the grull rolled up on them, ten of the dog-like beasts jumping them. The advantage that Beth and Blood had going was their speed, allowing them to fight well even against large numbers. They used the same strategy that had been working so far, Beth crippling with Blood dealing a few killing blows as well as crippling limbs herself. It wasn't long before all the beasts lay dead, Beth taking a minute to make sure they both had a good bit of water to drink.
With the second pack of enemies taken care of, they continued on, the daylight fading in as it was starting to get late. They weren't bothered, with even Blood having keen vision, let alone Beth who had particularly powerful eyes now. After slaughtering yet another pack of grull, they moved even deeper into the area, hoping they were making progress towards the heart of the zone. Though, there was no guarantee that the dungeon entrance was in the heart for it could be anywhere, even somewhere back closer to the plain.
As the light faded, the heat of the day lingered for a short time, Beth having started to sweat just slightly. Her enhanced body combined with a number of her skills let her weather extremes of temperature much better than an unenhanced human could, but she had still been not just trekking but fighting in hundred-plus Fahrenheit temperatures. They took another, slightly longer rest once it was fully dark, eating a decent amount of ration bars and drinking a huge amount of water. They set out once they had rested ten minutes, Beth frowning as she had stuffed one of the outer pockets of her backpack full of wrappers.
They walked for only a handful of minutes before Blood stopped them, having detected the aroma of singed tar and burnt stone. Beth stopped and looked around carefully, trying to see if she could…well…see anything out of place. It was here that her suppositions were proved correct, as she was able to spot a section of rock that was hotter than the surroundings. It was also rather suspiciously shaped like a lizard, but that wasn't all. As she continued to scan the area where they had stopped, a little gully between two cracked hills, she noticed a second source of heat, almost directly opposite the first. It seemed the two beasts had stopped near each other, and the question now was whether they were working together or just had happened to stop next to each other.
'Two of them,' Beth sent to Blood silently.
'I can only smell them, I can't see them,' Blood replied.
'Ninety degrees to my right, thirty feet out. Not quite ninety degrees to my left, forty feet away,' Beth replied, explaining where they were.
'They blend in so well, I cannot see them even knowing where they are,' Blood said. 'How are we going about this?'
'Uh, I'll rush the closer one and kill it, then kill the other one?' Beth sent a little tentatively.
'I expected no less,' Blood replied, amusement in her mental tone.
Beth put word to deed, suddenly pivoting to her right and charging the closer of the two rock lizards. At first it had no reaction, and that single second of inaction proved to be fatal, as Beth had no problem crossing almost the entire distance separating them in that time. Just as the lizard began to move Beth reached it, not bothering with anything fancy, she simply fully empowered her left leg and leapt forward, bringing the strengthened limb forward in a flying snap kick directly into the beast's skull. The force of her empowered kick was too much for the rock lizard's head, the stone of its hide shattering as its brain was pulverized.
'Sister, the second!' Blood called out.
Beth planted a foot and pushed, darting to the side and turning at the same time. She saw the second rock lizard charging her, noting that her first dash had given her a good enough position that a second would take her out of the beast's range. She made that thought real, leaping further to her right and darting to the side, avoiding the initial charge of the second lizard. She then performed nearly the same tactic as she had last time, leaping upon the upper back of the lizard before pulverizing its brains with several hard punches.
"Moving at night in this terrain might work better after all," Beth said, hopping off the back of the lizard.
'We should just be wary. We might not have seen everything this place has to offer. And we still don't know what the dungeon could be producing,' Blood commented.
"Hopefully something easy to smash," Beth said, flexing her left arm as she did so.
'Hopefully something easy to kill,' Blood responded slightly acerbically.
With a shrug, Beth led them onwards, still searching for the dungeon entrance. It turned out, without prior knowledge, finding a random dungeon somewhere amongst miles and miles of rough, broken-up terrain wasn't at all easy. It was even more difficult based on the assumption that the dungeon was underground, which meant they were looking for some kind of cave entrance or even crack in the ground that might have some unusual beasts emerging from it. They searched as well as they could while constantly getting entangled in fights, the night doing nothing to discourage the rock lizards or the grull, only the storm rats seeming to call it a day at light's passing.
It was Blood's superior senses, or rather, superior nose backed up with her skill at identifying and tracking scents that gave them a lucky break. They were wandering around an area that Beth thought might be close to the center of the rocky terrain, with the ground being particularly broken up into jagged juts and shattered hills everywhere they went. Amongst such thoroughly cracked and cratered countryside they found a long gash in the ground, led by Blood who had smelled something strange from two hills over. This gash looked like a giant with a cleaver had sloppily slashed out, tearing a fifty-foot-long opening into the ground that was narrow on both ends but close to a dozen feet wide in the center. It lay against the base of an especially jagged hill, the angle of the opening causing it to lead down into the ground at an almost forty-degree incline.
'It smells,' Blood commented helpfully, sniffing at the rent in the rock before giving a sneeze.
"You think it's worth checking?" Beth asked, staring down into the gloom.
'I think it won't cost us much time unless it leads somewhere important, in which case it's not wasted time,' Blood replied authoritatively.
"Well, I don't have any better ideas at this point," Beth grumbled, waving for Blood to lead the way.
The wolf slunk down into the opening, keeping low and quiet, with Beth waiting a minute before following behind. It didn't really do any good to have a stealthy scout if she walked ten feet behind them making all kinds of noise. She kept back and used a measured pace, which was still at least what a jog would have been before she had the system cranking her physical capabilities well into the superhuman. She stayed alert as she moved, observing that the gash continued for some distance before narrowing slightly into a broad tunnel strewn about with rocks and debris along the bottom.
Comments
Jamal Cheatham
I just realized that Beth is basically Kiba from Naruto if he was a better fight 😂
