Chương 100: Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred

They made their way up to the lounge first, checking who was in at that time of the morning. Baelvyr, John, and Navere were at various tables, and Beth simply gave a nod as they passed through, leading the way to the lobby. They found both Tazeen and Lyrissa behind the counter, and Beth moved over to Tazeen first.

"How may I help you today?" he asked in his standard impassive manner.

"Can I get an expert opinion before heading out for the day?" Beth returned his question with one of her own. He merely raised an eyebrow in response, and she reached into her backpack and pulled the much-maligned left gauntlet out, setting it on the counter. Tazeen picked it up and glanced at it as Beth leaned against the counter with her right hip, laying her right arm on the countertop. Sabs busied herself scratching Blood while they waited, getting long strands of red fur on her armor for her troubles.

"You would like this repaired, I assume?" Tazeen asked after a few moments, setting the gauntlet down and looking at her.

"I would like to repair it myself, if possible," Beth replied.

"I guess my questions are: 'Can it be repaired?' and 'Can someone in the middle of Apprentice level as a Blacksmith do it?'""Repairing it is certainly possible," Tazeen replied with a tiny nod.

"However, it might be challenging with your current skill level. What exact rank is it?"

"Apprentice[4]," Beth replied, poking at the damaged gauntlet with a frown.

"I suppose it depends on your requirements, mainly being time," Tazeen continued.

"I doubt you would do a very good job, even with guidance, repairing it at that level of skill. You are either going to need to get more practice, or act as second to someone else doing the main body of work."

"Well, hurry up and wait, I guess," Beth muttered with a sigh, tossing the gauntlet in her pack again.

"I'll train 'til I can do it. Thanks for the help."

"It is no problem." Beth nodded to both Enforcers, getting no response from Lyrissa, before patting Sabs and Blood on their shoulders and leading the way out of the lobby. When they were outside the entry, she turned to Sabs to ask, "You want to ride or try to keep up?" Sabs thought for a moment before responding, "I'll stretch my legs and get some practice for Swift."

"Then let's go." They set off southward, moving at a very good clip as all three girls exercised Swift to increase their speed and maneuverability. Beth and Sabs were stretching their legs and working on leveling the skill while Blood merely maintained their pace, having taken the skill to the top of Copper already. They took only a handful of minutes longer to reach the field than Beth was used to, partly thanks to the fact they made use of Baelvyr's Divot, as Beth was secretly calling it.

When they entered the field, Beth halted them immediately and looked around, not wanting to be taken by surprise by another rogue. They seemed to be quite thoroughly alone, and she waved the others forward, noting that Sabs was slightly flushed, but not in any way badly out of breath. They walked across the dried-out field, most of the grass already dying as the fall chill was hitting hard during the nights.

They crunched their way across the field to the pit, Sabs peering down with a frown coupled with a scrunched brow. Beth paused for a moment, giving Sabs a raised eyebrow, waiting for her to be ready. The smaller girl bit her lip and glanced down into the yawning chasm again, clenching her fists and taking a deep breath before striding forward and onto the ramp. Beth followed behind, catching up after a few quick steps and wrapping an arm around Sabs' shoulders.

"Are you sure this is safe?" Sabs asked in a subdued voice.

"I mean, no?" Beth replied with a small smirk, grunting as Sabs elbowed her in the gut.

"It's a deep pit leading into dark, cold tunnels full of enemies. That doesn't sound safe."

"You're not doing a whole lot to reassure me right now, hon," Sabs pouted, giving Beth another light elbow jab for good measure.

"You'll be fine. You have both Blood and me here, which is more than enough," Beth reassured her with a light chuckle. The three made their way down to the base of the shaft, Beth pulling out two light stones and handing one to Sabs. She showed the older girl how they attached before setting her own on her belt and lighting it with some mana.

"So, two tunnels?" Sabs asked, glancing back and forth.

"Yep. Left is housing; right is dungeon," Beth answered simply.

"And how many enemies?" Sabs asked, shuffling from foot to foot.

"A lot," Beth replied with a snort.

"But more down to the left than the right. And they don't really seem to wander or anything, so we can avoid basically all of them just going straight to the end."

"So, this place isn't spawning new beasts and sending them out?" Sabs asked as she followed Beth into the righthand tunnel.

"You know, now that you mention it, I don't really know," Beth replied, tapping her chin as she walked.

"There are obviously kobolds in the tunnels, and there's a dungeon down here, but I don't know if it's actually generating enemies. And I haven't seen any up top, either." They walked for a while until they came to the first simple room, Beth showing Sabs the first mana powered lamp and explaining the room had one box with junk in when she and Blood had found it.

She also shared her theory with Sabs that these things were just made-up entirely, not moved from somewhere else, pointing out the way the tunnel had no support beams but the room did. They stepped back out into the tunnel and continued, Beth pointing out the other rooms and side-tunnels as they passed until they got to the first place that had had enemies when Beth and Blood first explored the tunnel. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"Let's see if the first enemy is back," Beth said, leading the way into the short side passage.

"What level?" Sabs asked, all business.

"I believe it was fourteen. Might be fifteen now," Beth replied, just finishing the second sentence before a shriek echoed out. Sabs darted forward, meeting the shrieking kobold as it lunged out of the room at them. Beth didn't remember it attacking until she entered the room the first time, but then again, they hadn't been talking the first time through. Sabs quite easily deflected a wild swipe from the kobold's right arm with a small flick of her left dagger.

She then stepped forward with her right foot and slashed her right dagger against the inside of the kobold's left arm, preventing it from following up with an off-hand swipe. She then swung up with her left dagger in a precise thrust as she was still completing the second deflection, slamming her mana copper dagger into the bottom of the kobold's jaw. The dagger sunk almost to the hilt, killing the kobold instantly, the beast starting to lift its left arm again as if not realizing it was already dead.

It then dropped the arm halfway through the motion before itself dropping to the ground, dead as a doornail.

"Sometimes, you're kinda fucking scary, Sabs," Beth said with slightly widened eyes, seeing just how fast the small girl had put even the slightly weak enemy down.

"I'm not trying to be," Sabs said quietly. She then grinned and continued, "I just really like knives."

"Like I said, scary," Beth muttered, shaking her head.

"Do they get much stronger than this?" Sabs asked, glancing down at the beast corpse on the ground.

"Oh yeah, but we can get into that later," Beth replied with a nod.

"I just wanted to show you what they're like, but I kinda underestimated you a little. Sorry."

"It's fine, Beth," Sabs said, reaching out and squeezing Beth's left hand as they turned to return to the tunnel.

"We haven't fought together much overall, and the last time was also 'easy' stuff."

"Well, you'll have plenty of time to show off in the next few days," Beth replied, interlacing her fingers with Sabs' as they walked.

"John would hate to hear you say that," Sabs replied with a giggle.

"He says, 'No excess movements. It's not a show, it's a battle.'

""John?" asked Beth with a raised brow, glancing down at Sabs.

"The same John who lays around calling people 'loons' and slacks every chance he gets? That John?"

"I know he seems kinda shifty and lazy, but when he gets serious, he's really overbearing," Sabs replied with a small shudder before shaking her head.

"Not that he, like, abuses me or anything. But it's just a big reminder when I train with him that all this is real and serious and very, very deadly. Also, that sometimes people just seem lazy or whatever, but by no means are they weak. John's a real scary motherfucker."

"Well, good," Beth replied.

"I mean, not good that he's a real scary motherfucker, though I guess you want those kinds of people to be Enforcers. I meant good as in good that he's not treating you badly."

"Yeah, I would say something to you at least. And I think Baelvyr is way stronger and higher rank, and he seems like good people. If somebody were up to something, I would go to him."

"Yeah," Beth nodded vigorously, "that's definitely true. After watching Baelvyr vaporize a guy a good bit stronger than me by running through him, it's pretty clear he's crazy strong. And, despite being so gruff and surly, he really does seem like a pretty good guy."

"Good we agree," Sabs said, smiling as they walked down the tunnel. A smile that thinned considerably as she asked Beth, "Is it just me, or is it getting a lot colder?"

"Eh, a little," Beth replied, holding her right hand up and wiggling it.

"It doesn't really bother me at all. Other than turning things bluer." Beth pointed at her eyes as she finished talking, a reminder of her new heat vision.

"Well, I think it's getting damn cold," Sabs returned, shivering a little and pressing against Beth.

"Ah, here," Beth said, dis-entangling their hands for a moment. She quickly grabbed the ring on her middle finger and tugged it off with a slight grunt. She then grabbed Sab's hand and slid the ring onto her middle finger before entwining their fingers together once more.

"You know, that could've been really romantic if you weren't grunting and jamming it on so fast," Sabs sighed, shaking her head.

"Oh sorry, let me make it up to you," Beth replied, turning quickly to grab Sabs before planting a firm, if somewhat sloppy, kiss on her lips. She could feel the small girl laughing through their lips and didn't resist when Sabs pushed her away.

"I like your sloppy kisses, Beth, but let's save it for later," Sabs said, still giggling.

"And thanks for the ring, it really helps."

"I'm glad; about both," Beth responded with a smirk, receiving another light elbow jab in the side for her trouble. The three continued down the tunnel, Beth pointing out the side passages as they passed. Blood padded along silently behind, occasionally sniffing the damp, frosted air. Beth pointed the way to the armory as they passed, explaining the fight against the kobold hulk and that the armory was where they discovered a lot of the good loot she had on her about a week ago.

Sabs just nodded as Beth recounted the fight, worrying at her lower lip with her teeth and clenching Beth's hand tighter. They moved further down, eventually coming to the hexagonal room. It was fully dark, and Beth took the opportunity to show Sabs the mana lamps on the pillars, walking her through the process of pushing a tiny thread of mana in to light them. The small girl had to reach just above her head to touch the lamps, but she still managed with only slightly more effort.

They took a minute to move around the space lighting all the lamps before reconvening near the entrance tunnel.

"Okay, now what?" Sabs asked, looking around.

"There aren't any kobolds here?"

"Yeah, there aren't," Beth nodded.

"Dunno why, but there was just some random junk down here. Oh, and the dungeon entrance."

"Where's that?" Sabs asked, looking back to Beth after determining there was nothing noteworthy in the main room.

"Opposite door," Beth said, pointing at what she thought of as 'door four.'

"Best not to go down there, since the dungeon starts at level thirty-eight. Not that I think it's likely, but if we got sucked in somehow, it would be a huge pain-in-the-ass to slog through again so soon."

"And you'd have to protect me the whole way, right?" Sabs asked with a little frown.

"I mean, yeah," Beth answered with a shrug, holding her hand up as she saw Sabs' frown deepen.

"Sorry Sabs, but it's super dangerous. I'm not trying to call you weak or make fun of you, but you could seriously die from just a single hit from a 'weak' enemy in there. The boss or one of the special variants could likely kill you with a blast of ice from halfway across the room before you could properly react."

"Right, sorry, I didn't mean to get so upset," Sabs replied with a quick shake of her head.

"It's just a bit annoying that I can't keep with you and Blood."

"Well, we have a number of advantages, including our willingness to go out for hours and hours early on and fight higher level enemies," Beth replied with a bit of shrug, shifting her weight from her left to her right foot.

"But we'll take you and the girls out for some training the next few days."

"It's fine, Beth," Sabs replied, stepping forward and practically hopping up to give her a swift peck on the cheek.

"You really are just so damn tall."

"Just more to love," Beth said with a smirk, doing a bit of a cheesy flexing pose.

"Seriously, come on, let's get done whatever you came here for," Sabs replied with a very pronounced eyeroll.

"Yeah, yeah," Beth responded, shaking her head.

"In here." She led the other two into the first office-type area they had found, what seemed so long ago, when they were first exploring the place. It was exactly as Beth remembered it, being in the same exact state they had left it in. She walked over to the chest and patted the lid, making sure it was secure before getting ready to pick it up.

"That's what we're after?" Sabs asked, standing across from Beth and staring at the dark grey chest.

"Yepper," Beth replied with a nod.

"Mind if I try?" Sabs asked, not waiting for Beth's permission before bending down and grabbing the handle.

"Lift with the legs, not the back," Beth commented quickly. Sabs stopped and looked up at her, asking, "Um, what exactly does that mean? I've heard people say it, but I don't lift weights, so I don't really know."

"Let me demonstrate," Beth said, motioning for Sabs to straighten up. She then stepped forward slightly and squatted down.

"This is basically what it means. You see how I'm squatting down to get in position to grab it?"

"Yeah, not a graceful looking pose," Sabs replied with a smile, taking any sting out of the words.