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Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Forty-Nine
🕑 Added 2023-12-04 18:00:04 +0000 UTCShe took a step forward and to the right while swinging a one-handed backswing, infusing the slash with Monstrous Blow, slamming into the second captain's sword right as she was thrusting to gore one of Beth's allies. The blow threw the captain's aim off, causing her sword to merely glance off the targeted foot soldier and go wide to the captain's left before cutting into the sod of field. In the moment the captain was distracted trying to pull her sword free of the ground, Beth punched her in the side of the head; once, twice, three times before the captain fell to her knees, letting go of her sword with her right arm to try to block Beth's fist. Beth, however, wasn't limited in her weapon choices, immediately taking a step forward with her left leg and bringing her right foot straight up before snapping her armored boot forward with all her quite high STR, crushing the captain's already battered helmet as the woman's neck snapped with a sickening crunch.
Beth charged up her muscles, not trying to be subtle in the least, only slightly surprised that the regular enemy soldiers didn't back down in front of her. She gave a mental shrug as she swung a horizontal attack from left to right through their ranks, the full power of Monstrous Blow literally cleaving her enemies apart. She didn't push forward but instead stepped back afterwards, the gap in the line taken care of as her side's soldiers stepped forward around her, pressing forward as Beth resumed her movement down the rear of the formations, sword held loosely in her right hand. She looked for any other gaps opening up, glancing down the line to where the flank was still holding fast, neither side able to effectively perform a pinch or wide swing without any cavalry present.
Beth found another hole forming a minute later, a single enemy captain anchoring a point where the enemy soldiers were starting to push forward. Beth darted forward, Swift at maximum as she slid in between her own troops before slamming into the enemy soldiers. She sent the first enemy flying with a horizontal slash before knocking the second enemy down and back with a front snap kick. Beth flat-out killed a third soldier on her backswing, tearing his throat apart with the edge of her blade as she leapt forward into the gap. The captain attempted to stop her as she moved forward, Beth parrying two strikes as the gap closed behind her. She knocked the captain's sword up and to the left before stepping forward and skewering the enemy, her greatsword punching through the armor covering the captain's chest with little resistance.
Beth planted her foot on the captain's corpse and kicked it off her blade, quickly and easily sliding back in among her own lines before returning to her position at the rear. She noted an officer of her side further down the ranks, seemingly doing something similar to her, patrolling and looking for holes in the line to plug. Beth wasn't sure if it was just her limited view of the battle, but it did seem like the enemy captains were more aggressive than the ones on her side. She looked to the rear, well behind the lines, seeing an area set up with an open-sided tent where several high-ranking personnel were overseeing the battlefield. She assumed that was her side's general or generals and their attendants, seeing messengers running from the tent to the captains and back. One of the senior officers looked at her, Beth being able to see her quite clearly give Beth a bit of a glare before resuming looking at the battlefield. Likely unhappy that a chaotic element like Beth was thrown into the mix, though Beth assumed the enemy commanders would be even more unhappy about her participation.
She moved forward again as another breach formed in their lines, this time smashing apart two captains and half-a-dozen soldiers before she stepped back. She let the allied army fill in the gaps before moving back down the line, reinforcing another position quickly as a captain made another push. The battle seemed to wane for a minute after she resumed her patrol of the rear, with new orders going out from her side. The lull in the battle had only been a short reprieve, as the new orders saw her side's captains moving forward in teams of three, pushing into the enemy lines with speed and force. The opposing side was down quite a bit of their strength from both Beth and Blood's work, and they began to break as her faction's push intensified. When the enemy broke, they broke fast, Beth watching as the whole enemy faction began falling back, a handful of the enemy soldiers at the rear turning to run away.
Beth and Blood took the opportunity to rack up a few more kills, surging into the ranks of the routed enemies. This was the most brutal of the fighting in the whole engagement, with the chaos of the enemy trying to disengage while the allied force pushed forward quickly but methodically. Nobody on the enemy side could put up too much of a fight until Beth encountered one of their actual elites, a commander from their rear guard stepping into her path. This man was much stronger than the captains, blocking the first two blows Beth dealt with her sword with much greater ease than anyone else on the field had. He even threw in a quick feint before redirecting a horizontal chop into a rising slash, Beth bashing away his sword with the back of her right gauntlet.
The fight had moved past Beth by this point, but nobody from her allied side interfered, likely unable to match up to this kind of fight. Beth moved forward into another chopping attack, ignoring the speed-up of the enemy's blade as she slashed at his neck. This forced the enemy general to take a step back, causing his swing to glance off her armor without really dealing any damage. Beth pursued as he retreated, moving faster and more nimbly than what he was able to and, despite the general being stronger than the captains, Beth's STR now topping one-fifty meant he was still a decent bit weaker than her.
That weakness led to him being slowly overwhelmed as Beth continued to push him, able to simply knock him back, away, and down with her superior STR. Her Beastly Body did work as well, the bonus power it provided allowing her to hit even harder, disrupting the general with every swing. Beth parried three consecutive blows, throwing him off balance as she let go of her blade with her left hand, swinging at his head with a fast chop before following with a rib cracking punch, denting the thin plate armor over the right side of his chest. As the general desperately swiped at her in return, she leaned back and fired off a front snap kick to his chest, sending him off his feet onto his ass in the dirt. The general slashed at her from the ground, but Beth easily batted the strike aside with a one-handed swing of her sword, stepping forward and to the right a little as her fist shot out, a full dose of Crush performing up to its namesake as she crumpled in the front of the general's skull.
She looked up to check her surroundings and the progress of the battle, noting that Blood had continued her slaughter in the meantime, the enemy army thoroughly broken as they fled the field. Another general was caught by several allied captains and pinned down, with one of Beth's side's generals moving in to engage. Beth resumed her mop-up operations, breathing a sigh of relief as her vision flashed white and she was returned to the array room. Slaughtering other sapient beings hadn't been the most enjoyable of tasks, and she was glad that the stage, as short as it was, was finally over.
Beth didn't need another rest, but she could go for a quick bite, leading Blood out of the array room and down the hall. A quick bite for her turned out to be two massive plates of grilled beef and sautéed mushrooms with something that was extremely similar to mashed potatoes. Managing to keep the massive belch in until she was in the hallway, Beth chuckled as she wiped a little sauce off Blood's muzzle. She put the points for the level she had gained from the battlefield into STR before checking her and Blood's stats.
Beth led Blood over to the counter as she dismissed the floating screens from her vision, happy to see Blood had put a few points into both STR and END as she leveled. The wolf's love of DEX was still clear, and her unenhanced speed at this point was growing to be quite impressive, as well as her ability to slide around attacks and change her angles of movement. Beth was sure the high DEX would be even more useful in the future, hopefully when Blood got a few more skills, and was happy her companion was able to make the decisions for herself.
She talked to one of the two people at the counter, noting that there was actually nobody in the back of the room watching any of the screens. Apparently, everybody else was either in a stage, in their rooms, or in one of the other establishments scattered around the area. She asked for privacy on their next stage again before being directed to the Warder, who directed her to stand in front of the fairly dark blue portal. When the signal was given, the two companions quickly hopped forward through the gate and into the start of stage five.
A stage which immediately made Beth groan. It took her only a single glance to see what was going on here; it was a large room that had several puzzles meant to be solved in a particular order. Beth rubbed at her temples as Blood immediately started padding around the room, eagerly examining the puzzles laid out before them. Beth did her best to look over what they were confronted with as well, perking up quite a bit when several beasts were teleported into the room.
The group consisted of four level sixty orcs, all of them wearing leather armor and wielding some sort of crude weapon, either knapped stone or crude iron. Beth leapt forward to intercept the orcs, drawing her blade as the four warriors all snarled and lurched towards her. Luckily, the four beasts were not sapient, meaning they got in each other's way as they all attempted to get to Beth first. She found that they still had reduced stats, or reduced power in some way, as they didn't hit as hard as level sixties should.
All that added up to Beth rather handily dispatching the four orcs by herself while Blood, in the meantime, busied herself with the puzzles. It turned out that the wolf was a wizard in terms of problem solving, figuring out how to solve a slide puzzle on the northern wall before the second group of enemies spawned. Their spawn interrupted Beth, as she did have to assist with sliding the elements around several of the parts due to Blood's distinct lack of opposable thumbs.
The whole room proceeded much like that, with Blood solving a series of ever more complex puzzles while Beth killed things. The fights became more challenging as the time went on, but they were spaced rather far apart, and Blood managed to solve the last puzzle in the room before anything particularly interesting could spawn. She was glad at least to be done with the challenge, though she was a little worried that they might not have their levels at a high enough point for the ensuing stages.
They returned to the array room after only a bit over an hour, with Beth leading them over to the counter right away. She immediately requested to start stage six and to keep it private, returning with Blood to the array right afterwards. Going through the same song and dance that they were becoming accustomed to, they entered the deep blue of the stage six portal. The transitions seemed to take the same amount of time regardless of how large or complex the stage was, with the two young women appearing on a hill amidst a modest copse of trees a second later.
Beth quickly surveyed the landscape, noting that they had appeared in a moderately hilly area with several small copses dotted about the place. The sky was totally clear, blue with just a slight tint of green, a lone sun hanging high overhead. The world otherwise looked incredibly unremarkable, the grasses and shrubs and trees appearing quite similar to Earth. She was somewhat puzzled at first, glancing around before sharing a short look with Blood with a quirked eyebrow. It didn't appear there was anything nearby to fight or to, well, do.
The puzzlement was instantly evaporated when Beth heard a long, guttural, lowing cry ring out from what she estimated was to their east. The air around them seemed to shiver a little from the depth and force of the sound, Beth squinting as Blood growled with slightly hunched shoulders. The weird thing was that all Beth could really see was a slightly distant hill, perhaps a little less than two miles away, shift a little. It became a lot less weird and a lot more frightening as the hill moved a second time; moved, not shifted or trembled.
Beth and Blood had the same realization at the same time, that being that the hill was not a hill, but instead a beast. A beast of a proportion so gargantuan that Beth had mistaken it for a hill the first time she had noticed it. It also became clear, as a large, brown and greenish head shaped more like a massive brick moved forward on an enormous neck and let out another lowing roar, that this was the challenge of the stage. So far, Beth and Blood had yet to encounter a beast of such a size and had heard precious little about them. Rather than a special variant or something, she seemed to recall, tapping into a little of the memories her inheritance had put in a little lockbox in her mind, that there were much rarer beasts that were immensely powerful for their relatively low levels, due almost entirely to their enormous size and mass.
