Chương 152: Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Seventy-Seven

The rest before they started round seventeen was just as long as Beth had imagined, taking a couple hours before she was ready to go again. She was a little frustrated that her healing and meditation skills weren't able to make the jump to Silver just yet, likely needing to wait for her to undergo her first rebirth. Meditation skills in particular were tricky, as the way to best advance them was to… well… meditate.

It was a process of deep introspection involving the development of greater wisdom, not something that could be rushed through in a day, or even a month. At least the healing skills would be easier, as advancing them even to Gold mainly required using them to heal injuries, something they would have plenty of in the coming days, Beth was sure.

Round seventeen was even more annoying than Beth had thought possible, with five speed-based bosses that spent most of the time phasing around or through attacks while still having an incredible level of toughness. This was certainly not what they needed right now, and Beth had to fight herself super hard to not just go all out and use her Presence. With the amount it increased her power, especially her physical abilities, the shoe would have been on the other foot with who was running circles around whom.

She held herself back, however, and simmered in her frustration as the fight dragged on for over an hour. The only good news was that when they finally ended it, they had more than fifteen hours left for three stages. Beth was also confident that they could handle whatever stage eighteen threw at them without her having to break out the big guns, meaning even if she went all-out in nineteen, they would have enough time for her to rest before tackling round twenty.

They didn't even need a full hour to rest after round seventeen, and they started round eighteen as soon as they felt in fighting trim. The next wave was much more to Beth's style, affirming her decision to hold off on using her Presence. All the opponents they were up against were strong, tough, slow beasts that Beth was perfectly conditioned to fight against.

She was fast and agile enough to avoid basically all of their attacks, had the resistances to deal with any magic blasts with minimal issues, and had the immense strength to punch through their defenses with relative ease. The matchup wasn't bad for Blood either, as she had the kind of speed and agility that even three bosses at once weren't able to disturb a single lock of her long, flowing hair.

Her STR was a bit behind, though it was well past one-fifty at this point, and was offset by her new skill that had quite a bit of penetrating power. With less power than what was available to Beth, even not counting the other girl's Presence, she was slower in killing the bosses than Beth was, but she still wasn't a slouch. Even with more enemies than Beth was facing, she was still only a little behind the Brawler in taking out her first boss.

Down to a three-to-two from a five-to-two against opponents they matched favorably with, the rest of the round didn't take long. Beth only having to deal with a one-on-one made the whole thing even easier, as she was able to rather quickly defeat the hulking beast, a four-legged creature nearly twice Beth's height with bulging muscles and a single horn that pulsed with some kind of light energy.

Whatever the beast could do or was trying to do with the horn never materialized, as Beth lopping part of its front left leg off before crushing much of its chest with several rapid strikes thoroughly distracted it. She finished the beast off while dodging two desperate swipes, chopping apart its heart through its broken chest before darting towards Blood's position.

She hit the closest boss to her at extreme speed, crushing part of its left hip with a brutal left hook before planting her left foot into the floor hard enough to crack the immensely resilient stone to halt her forward movement, twisting back around and delivering another overwhelming blow to the same area. The boss had been caught totally off guard and wasn't able to block any of the damage, collapsing onto the ground as the result of Beth's second blow.

She didn't let up, pounding the boss into a pile of meat paste as it tried to block with its short, wide arms and heavy hands. Beth's speed and skill were far too great, however, and she was easily able to work around the beast's pathetic attempts at a guard. Its end was not particularly fast, thanks in large part to its toughness, but Beth couldn't help the little bit of brutality, the bone plating this beast had over much of its body making her sword a rather ineffective tool.

She moved on after a minute to help Blood with the last of the opponents for that round, dispatching it without too much effort. They rested and meditated after the round finished, Beth taking a moment to dip into their supplies for food and water. The canteens were infinite, and the rations were cheap, though she would have to buy a new pack of them eventually. She had enough for another handful of stages, but they definitely wouldn't last much past twenty at their current rate of consumption.

When they had taken care of everything they needed to, they used the projection to start the second-to-last round, Beth glad they still had plenty of time left. She was doubly glad for the extra time once she had gotten a good look at what they were up against. The nineteenth round pitted them against five monsters, and they were all still at the strength of a boss of that level, though that categorization was a little tricky, as monsters were often inherently more powerful than their beast counterparts.

The round had a definite theme as well, as they faced four death knights and a single lesser lich, though this lich, much like the last, didn't use its powers to summon any new undead for them to tangle with. Unfortunately, it did rather worse, firing off beams of death energy and waves of cold mana so dense they pushed the air aside and so strong they burned if they managed to impact either of the girls.

This was a lot tougher than just about anything they had ever faced before, including the beast tides, including even the stage in the Silver Endless Trial that had contained the monsters, which were some kind of demented plant, if Beth remembered correctly. Just the four death knights would have been tough as "regular" monsters, not to mention they were all higher-leveled than the two girls and were bosses, to top it off.

With the higher-leveled lich, which was also a boss, in the background throwing out powerful spells like they were confetti, it was just that much harder. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. After less than a minute of combat Beth stopped holding back, dodging away from a dark purple and black death beam before pulling on that strength within herself, the crown appearing on her head.

The manifestation of her Presence gave her the speed to easily outmaneuver the blasts from the lich, the speed to easily run circles around the death knights, which were immensely resilient and strong, but quite slow, and the speed to position herself just where she needed to be to do the most damage. The whole round would be a test of her stamina and resolve, as she would have to do a lot of the heavy lifting before Blood could really start safely dishing out damage.

While there were a couple of different approaches she could try, she wasn't really in the mood to stall with some kind of deep strategy. The direct way, hard and fast, was her choice, dashing out of the path of another blast of ice mana before cutting in towards the nearest death knight, sprinting directly at it.

With all her skills at max, including both Swift and Beastly Body, she was on the first target in an eyeblink, dodging its greatsword with a barely perceptible movement before smashing her fist into its elbow, shattering the armor and cracking the enchanted bones underneath. Another strike landed and the loud sound of shattering bone echoed out, Beth not hesitating a minute as she batted the monster's sword aside with her left hand while sending a Crush empowered right straight punch directly into its exposed face.

The minimal armoring of its helm over its face twisted and bent as its enchanted skull fractured, a crunching noise echoing out right after the scraping, ringing sound from its helmet. Beth moved at a blinding speed, slamming her right foot into the monster's left knee once, twice, thrice before it was shattered, sending the creature toppling to its left. It tried, unsuccessfully, to catch itself as it fell, but Beth dished out another kick that sent it skidding on the way down.

She followed right on top of it, batting the sword away again before hammering its face with a combination of rapid, brutal punches. She pulverized its head into bent scrap and bone dust before leaping away, dodging a death beam before sprinting to the next death knight. Blood had engaged the remaining death knights, though she wasn't actually battling them head-on.

She was kiting them around the room, also dodging the occasional blast from the lich, though the floating undead had apparently decided that Beth was a far bigger threat. It was both true and fine with Beth, as she was able to rather easily dodge all its attacks, though she could feel her stamina draining away. Her energy reserves felt like a bathtub that someone had shot the bottom of with a shotgun, her stamina the water in the tub, pouring out through a dozen holes at an incredible speed.

She clamped down on her Presence with her mind, trying to hold tight to the power and regulate it, but it was currently like she was holding back the sea with a broom. She rushed forward, engaging the next death knight as quickly as possible, hitting it from the side and knocking it staggering away. She pursued it, smashing into it over and over again, crushing its armor and its bones into nothing more than broken fragments. That was two down and three to go.

Beth let Blood continue dealing with the other two death knights while she charged the lich. The being hovered above the ground and floated away from her when she approached, but it wasn't anything close to true flight, as she was very easily able to catch up with the undead. She leapt upon it, quite literally, as she slammed into it like a meteor, knocking the lich out of the air and to the ground.

Beth shrugged off a blast of death mana from the being, feeling it eat into her left shoulder and upper arm as she started beating the monster into bone dust. She only let up when she was certain that the being was dead, or dead again, whatever the case may be. But she didn't just run off right away; no, just as with the last lich, she knew to check for a phylactery.

She scrabbled around for a moment, frowning slightly as she dug through the remains of a corpse of a corpse, but she eventually found what she was looking for. She found a small container made of some type of strange metal that Beth couldn't immediately identify, but that wasn't the important part. She grabbed the container and placed it against the floor, holding it down before fully charging Crush in her right arm before pulverizing the container into twisted fragments of junk.

Only then did the kill notification for the lich pop up, as the container she had just crushed was indeed its phylactery, the place where part of its soul was stored. With the lich taken care of, Beth sprinted towards the last two death knights, noticing that Blood had managed to do some damage to one of them now that she was under less pressure. Beth attacked the undamaged knight, trying to dish out as much damage as possible before she was forced to relinquish her Presence.

She focused on dealing as much damage to the knight's limbs as possible, managing to fairly effectively cripple its legs and damage one of its arms before she had to pull back. She was teetering on the edge of exhaustion and had to let the power go, the crown disappearing from her head as she moved back a little further, separating the remaining two bosses.

She was still confident in wearing the one she was fighting down, and she was sure Blood could take care of the last one, so she focused on just what was in front of her. It wasn't Beth's first time fighting tired, and it certainly wouldn't be her last, though she found it annoying every time. She had the death knight on the ground by the time Blood had taken out the other knight, coming over to help Beth finish off the last of the bosses.

Beth began shucking her armor as soon as the boss was dead, throwing her bedroll on the ground and flopping on top of it unconscious. Blood joined her a minute later after having both made sure that the round was truly over and that Beth was alright. Beth had pushed herself right to the edge with that round and, in turn, slept seven hours before she was fully rested. It took her a minute to actually wake up and get ready, a small bit of that tiredness lingering with her.

They had been pushing quite hard, not just in this stage, but through all the stages so far, and maybe they would take an extra day of rest after this. They only had seven of those, but if burning just one of them after sixteen stages could let her get refreshed and be ready even for two or three more stages, it was well worth it. They approached the projection once Beth was ready, going through the very brief procedure to start the twentieth and final round.

The projection disappeared with a final buzzing SNAP, and Beth let out a harsh curse as she looked around. She guessed she knew why a lot of participants didn't make it through all twenty rounds.

"You can't be fucking serious!" Blood yelled as the two started moving.

"Don't yell at me about this shit," Beth growled back.

"Focus up!"

"But seriously, dragons!" Blood hollered.

"They're not true dragons," Beth yelled back as she dodged a bite from a massive set of jaws.

"They're wyverns, so at least we have a chance."

"Same difference," Blood snarled as she dodged a slash from a massive, clawed foot.

"Not the same difference. We'd be literal toast if these were dragons, instead of having a chance," Beth replied.

"Now less talking, more killing."