Chương 128: Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Fifty-Three

The two rested for just over an hour, enough time that Beth got most of her mana back, before they moved deeper into the labyrinth. They didn't encounter any other significantly strong enemies before the end of the labyrinth and the final boss, much to Beth's disappointment, but the final boss proved to be a bigger challenge than basically anything they had faced so far. The final room in this labyrinth stage was an imitation of a lavish throne room.

Beth thought of it as an imitation as it was extremely gaudy and over-the-top, with a huge amount of gold layered over everything while a ton of banners hung all over the place. The art on the banners was also incredibly ostentatious, with a prolific amount of gold and silver thread used in every design. The whole place gave off the feeling of somebody that was trying more than a bit too hard to seem wealthy and powerful, somehow making even the marble of the floors seem to be too much.

The boss itself wasn't much better, being a combination of both the main enemies they had faced so far. It was a deranged humanoid, of a similar size and shape to the mini boss, but wearing one of the suits of haunted armor. The armor looked like it was made of pure gold, with silver accents across every single visible surface of the plating. It was… a bit much. Beth scanned the enemy while she tried to protect her eyes from being burned out from the sheer gaudiness present.

The quality of the forging and the skill with which the inlay was done was certainly not something that could be described as good. Beth thought a drunk, one-armed man might have done a better job with the designs, but at least the opponent appeared strong. Level 69 Deranged Merchant King Apparently, the flaunting of too much tacky wealth came from being a Merchant King, whatever that meant, and the beast was still of the deranged moniker.

Beth flexed her hands and cracked her knuckles before walking forward, Blood automatically taking a position to the side to circle the boss. As they moved forward, the boss reacted once they were only two steps into the room, charging at Beth in an even more crazed manner than the mini boss had. It also was clearly a good bit stronger, as it closed the distance much quicker, Beth not rushing in to meet it, but watching it tear across the throne room as she held her sword ready.

The boss also clearly had a lot more STR stat than the mini boss did, based on the way it clashed head-on with Beth and even pushed her back slightly when she wasn't using anything more than Beastly Body. She felt like she was only a handful of points short, which wasn't an enormous difference at this stage, considering she had over one-seventy in the stat already.

The one thing she was a bit surprised by was the speed the boss moved at, able to pretty much match if not exceed her without her using Swift, while still a little inferior to Blood's natural speed. The beast was able to respond to her swings as she was making them, just enough skill combined with a greater speed leading to it deflecting most of her strikes before they could get close to landing.

Blood starting to get a feel for the pace of the fight and getting some damage on the beast's limbs opened it up for Beth. She was then able to start getting some powerful punches and kicks in, smashing and pulverizing the boss's armor, and the boss underneath. Both the armor and the boss were quite resilient, but that didn't discourage her at all. Beth hammered away at the boss, its armor looking more and more miserable as time wore on.

Eventually, they had done enough damage that the armor began to tear off, scattering gold and silver across the massive throne room like a glimmering wave. As the boss's limbs became exposed, Blood was able to start doing some real work with both her teeth and claws. Despite whatever other monikers the boss had, it bled red and took serious injuries from their every attack. As the wounds built up, there was a sudden change in the boss, the beast lashing out simultaneously at both Beth and Blood.

The two were knocked back just a step, but that gap and the pause that accompanied it were enough for things to change. The boss wasn't up to a simple trick, but was instead using the wealth it had available from its armor, the room, even the surrounding areas of the dungeon to enhance itself. The remains of its armor, which was still quite a bit, began to wriggle and undulate, the metal becoming molten and runny as it started to absorb into the boss's body.

Beth could see the wounds on the boss begin to heal as the armor seeped into its cuts and even seemed to meld directly through its skin. The healing was thankfully not as much as it possibly could have been, but the speed and power of the boss had also both increased. The battle turned into a total slugfest, with Beth standing up to the boss and going blow-for-blow with it, trying to avoid taking any particularly hard hits.

The damage built up on both of them, but luckily it built far faster on the boss than on Beth, thanks in part to the assistance of Blood, who had a far easier time damaging the boss now that it was absorbing its own armor to heal. Beth took a few solid hits to her arms and torso as she smashed the beast's head and body, smiling grimly as the exchange of blows did more to the boss than her.

She then lashed out with her right leg, mashing a side-stomp into the inside of the boss's left leg to crack its knee before slamming forward a double-fisted punched with both her gauntlets clenched around the hilt of her blade. That, combined with the thousand-pound wolf hauling on the boss's knee with all her might, took the boss to the ground.

She couldn't help the sarcastic little grin, watching as the boss pulled the remaining fragments of its armor and weapon towards its body instinctively, unable to stop its struggle even as Blood finished it off. The wolf fully tore the flesh of its neck to tatters before worrying at its spine, eventually winning through with a massive, crackling CRUNCH, the boss stilling almost immediately.

Considering the efficiency of its special skill, it simply wasn't able to counteract the huge amount of lethal damage with a few fragments of dusty, cracked mana gold. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Beth gave a heavy sigh as the notification rang in their minds before the world went white and they were teleported out of the stage.

The labyrinth hadn't really been that bad, all things considered, and they had managed, at the end with the boss's death, to get a fourth level out of the thing. She was just worried about how much the difficulty would ramp up continuing on, as well as tired from quite an intensive boss battle.

Blood was in a little better shape, but the wolf had still expended a huge amount of stamina and quite a bit of mana against the boss, her companion having not just made copious use of Rending Bite, but also infused her own body to strengthen it. Of course, there was also Swift, and even though the wolf was well-practiced with it, it still would have taxed her running it as long and hard as she had for that fight. Beth motioned to Blood, leading the way toward the doors to the main atrium.

She had to stop short, though, as a woman burst in right through the set she was about to use and almost bowled her over. The young lady was short and quite thick, Beth guessing at quite a bit of dwarven blood even before identifying the red-eyed, silver-haired beauty. Jane Stronghand, Level 55 Dwarven Shield Guard"Clear out, oaf! Can't you and your damn dog see people need to get through here!?" the woman snarled at Beth as she just slipped to the side of her, Beth just shaking her head at the jab.

"Some people," she just muttered in response, resuming her walk out of the area with Blood trailing behind her. The two headed back to their temporary quarters before stripping down, Beth tossing her gear in a pile in the corner, having to adjust her sword on her backpack as she did so. The system that this faction used worked the same way the CRA arenas did, so none of their gear was actually damaged after that moderately long dungeon dive.

Once the two were stripped down to nothing but their birthday suits, they moved into the bathroom to clean off, Beth too tired for anything more than a quick shower. While gear and health were both fully restored after a stage, stamina and mana were often not, though it seemed they got a little bit of the latter back. Even that didn't help with the mental strain and exhaustion they experienced, the two drying off only to stagger over to the bed and conk out for at least six hours.

They awoke still with a decent bit of time left of their stage eight "break time." The first thing they did, after taking care of their morning business and getting dressed, was to head for one of the restaurants to get some grub. The two ate enough for a full party from the first restaurant they had tried several days ago, Beth once again polite enough not to let out an earth-shattering belch until they were out in the hallway and away from the front doors.

Satisfied for now, they made their way back to the array room, ready to take on stage nine. Before they made their way to the counter, Beth led them to the back of the room to check out the screens showing the other contestants. It was likely possible to pull the screens up in their room on the wallscreen or at a number of other places, but she just wanted to take a couple minutes to observe who was currently doing what.

She had to laugh as her eyes naturally gravitated to a non-private screen in the middle of the wall to see the dwarf girl that had rudely brushed by her earlier. The girl was currently attempting stage seven, and clearly not having a very great time of it. Beth just imagined how much more irritable she would be after that stage, especially if it caused the young hothead to fail, chuckling again as she shared her thoughts with Blood. The two watched for a moment longer before checking some of the other screens.

One of the screens showed someone tackling the puzzle room, a tall man that appeared to be struggling a little to get through a complex number puzzle. Beth lost interest almost as soon as she saw it, moving on to see someone in the duels. The person currently dueling seemed a bit better than even Beth herself, dispatching the moderately weak opponents even quicker than she herself had.

Beth watched for a minute, interested in having a bout of her own with the man as he was a spear user, something she had not really encountered much of yet. She eventually moved on, not particularly interested in watching the man clean the floor with the level of opponents in that stage. The last screen she watched for a minute was of the simulated battlefield, where the woman participating seemed to be an assassin of some type.

Rather than get enmeshed in the fighting as Beth and Blood had, she managed to avoid both armies entirely before popping up by the command tent of the enemy generals, appearing as one of her knives sank into the man's throat while the other went for the weak point in the armpit of his armor, slamming home into his heart at the same time his neck grew a second smile.

The woman vanished almost completely, certainly enough that the other generals didn't see, though Beth could still see her, and moved back to the lines. Once there, she proceeded to assassinate a captain with casual ease before disappearing again. It took very little time before she had decimated the command structure of the enemy force, leading to an early rout and quick victory. Beth shrugged, turning from the screens and leading the way to the counter, where she requested a private stage nine.

They then moved over to one of the Warders before being signaled to move into a portal. They leapt through the portal, experiencing the brief flash of white light before they were into the ninth stage. The two found themselves standing within a very small fortification. There was a small wall about eight feet high in front of them made of a rough, brownish stone. The wall curved around from the face of a cliff rising behind them, forming a slightly shallow semi-circle of protected area.

The total length of the wall wasn't more than fifty feet, probably a little less, and the area behind the wall had a single building of only one story and a building that was more an open-sided barn or equipment storage. The wall had a thick wooden gate in the middle, the material banded with iron and burnished quite dark, likely with some kind of thick resin coating. The wall had a walkway about three feet in width, just enough to move back and forth across as long as it was in single file.

The only building was a rough rectangle abutting against the cliff, made of coarse stone with only a handful of arrow slits on the front and sides. There were people within the building, if the sound of conversation was anything to go by, and there were four people standing on the wall. As Beth finished surveying the muddy ground of the yard, a message actually popped up in front of her and Blood. Objective: Survive 12 hours After a few moments, the message disappeared, Beth and Blood sharing a look as it did.

Apparently, this was a pure survival challenge, though the exact details weren't presented. Still, given the situation they found themselves in, Beth assumed they would likely be sieged in this tiny outpost fort by some kind of superior enemy, likely one with the heavy weight of numbers on their side. As Beth turned from Blood to the door to the building, it opened to reveal a tall man appearing to be in his middle years, if the grey at his temples was any indication.

He wore practical splint mail armor and had an unadorned longsword at his waist. The only bit of ornamentation about him was a fancy brooch holding his cloak together, a rose made of mana platinum with several rubies embedded within it.