Chương 159: Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Eighty-Four

"You're not nervous throwing fire around like that in the woods?" Beth asked Liz.

"These trees can take it, they're crazy sturdy," Liz replied.

"It's very wet wood, as well, and it's been raining recently, so it's even more damp. Even the underbrush won't be smoldering from my spells, much less catching fire."

"It's about knowing the terrain you're fighting in," Dean added from the side as he led the team in carving up the monsters for their cores.

"It's always a good idea to understand your environment. Fighting underground? Fire would be a bad call for a bunch of reasons, not least of which is burning up too much of the available oxygen. We're all still a long way from being powerful enough to not need to breathe for hours at a time and, even if you are strong enough or have a skill to let you get away with it, fire underground can cause the caves or tunnels you're in to collapse from thermal stress really easily."

"Same with fighting in somewhere dense in ice, particularly magically made or grown ice," chimed in Thom.

"You also have to consider mana, so fighting in somewhere so heavily biased to ice mana would dilute other types of mana; fire and related mana types, such as magma, in particular. The stronger you get, the more you can usually ignore it, but you will find areas that are really dense in certain types of mana or have certain special forces influencing them, so much so that even Ascended can have problems dealing with it."

"I've fought underground a lot, so I get the terrain stuff, but I haven't really encountered anything where mana is such a big problem," Beth replied, tapping her chin while giving Blood a glance. The wolf just shrugged, returning to helping with gutting the kills and collecting anything valuable. Beth didn't mind lending a hand with the efforts, since it got them moving quicker, but she was a little annoyed that they weren't going to really get any tangible benefit from the effort.

As Natalie cleaned the last kill, Dean called for the team to group up and start heading back to the road. They took their time about it, Beth frowning a little as it was even longer making the safe return trip back to the path than it took them to run into danger. Beth hopped back down from the tree tops when they were on the road again, moving alongside Dean as Blood and Thom scouted ahead.

They carried on like that for an hour or more before Thom returned, warning them of a small group approaching, though it was regular beasts and not monsters this time. The team decided to meet the threat head on, engaging with the beasts as the two groups met a few minutes later. The beasts appeared as if they had been fleeing from something, rather unusual behavior for such creatures, though even beasts could be goaded into certain behaviors by monsters.

The group was not really anything worth mentioning, and the team dispatched the beasts rather quickly. The only thing of note to Beth was just how slow they were going, with this just another thing that slowed them from investigating the source of the monsters.

Moving at a pace that let the scouts stay ahead and have time to report back slowed them, dealing with all the random beasts the encountered slowed them, Dream Snake's insistence on harvesting every kill slowed them, and their methodical approach to the mission, while safe, was also slowing them down. Beth didn't say anything as they continued on, moving at such a slow pace she didn't have to put more than a tiny trickle of mana into Swift to keep up.

The forest they were navigating through was massive and stretched for a few hundred miles north to south and nearly a hundred east to west, making it quite a huge tract of land to cover, especially given the density of trees and foliage.

They were moving at what might have been a very fast sprint for a rather fit adult before Earth was introduced to the Path, but now it was little more than a jog for Beth, and considering they were planning on making it back to the city by nightfall, it meant they wouldn't make it very far out today. Her guess proved not far wrong, as they continued on for another ninety minutes or a little more before stopping, having encountered beasts several more times.

They had dispatched them all and cleaned all the corpses, Beth silently helping with what skill she had at butchering to speed the process up, and now it was past mid-afternoon. Dean had them halt and called Thom back while Beth sent a message to Blood to return to the group for the moment.

"Alright, that's far enough for today," he said once they were all assembled.

"This was just an initial scout, and I say we did quite well. We dealt with a decent number of monsters, took care of a lot of rampaging beasts, and got a good start on getting a feel for the area. We'll head back to town for now and rest there tonight. We'll continue tomorrow, when we'll move a bit faster and have an easier time from not running into as much to fight for the first part of the day."

Beth nearly laughed but managed to contain it to a huge smirk, which she hid by scratching her left cheek with her right hand, covering her mouth with her gauntlet in the process. She could see Blood also restraining herself, rolling her eyes when Beth glanced at her before running her clawed left hand through her hair, giving it a flick as her hand left the back of her head before shaking herself briefly.

The two had already been through hell and back on more than one occasion and it was clear without even speaking mentally to one another what they considered of the near vacation-level day. The team moved back to the city after Dean was finished speaking and getting confirmation from everyone. They only encountered any enemies a single time, a mangy pack of wolves jumping them, Blood grimacing with a heavy snort at the beasts.

They were clearly ravenous, which had goaded them into a mindless fury, rushing at the team without even the most basic of techniques or tactics wolves would usually display. The team put them down quickly and began carving them up, Blood standing on a branch and frowning down at the spectacle.

"Sorry, does this make you uncomfortable, Blood?" asked Trish as the group was working. If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

"Only in that they are a sad, pathetic mockery of my kind. Not even able to hunt or fight at the most basic of levels in their mindless hunger. I feel…pity," Blood replied.

"They're still beasts," Dean said as he finished carving the claws out of one of the last of them.

"They would have torn us all apart without a thought, you included, had we not put them down. That and much worse."

"Trust me, I understand," Blood said coldly.

"But I can still feel pity for a man that has fallen so far from grace, even as he tries to kill me and I put him down." Dream Snake looked at each other, eyebrows cocked and exchanging shrugs before Dean got them moving again. Beth gave Blood a slightly narrow-eyed look, but the wolf woman just waved her off, moving back into her scouting position. The rest of the trip back to the city proved uneventful, and the group picked up the pace when they were back in the cultivated area that stretched out from the walls.

Beth rolled her eyes at this, noting how the team was so slow to move into somewhere they considered dangerous and yet so fast to move into somewhere they considered safe. Beth and Blood would have broken off at the city gates to head for the local CRA building, but Team Dream Snake insisted that the girls stay in their lodgings.

They had extra free single and double rooms, and Beth and Blood took one of the double rooms, taking turns in the shower before they flopped into the two small but comfortable beds to sleep.

They woke quite early the next morning, Beth's one very brief use of her Presence not having really taxed her in any way, and they set about finding food. They weren't really surprised to find they were they first ones up, other than a single sleepy cook who had just arrived at the building himself and was getting the initial food for the day ready with several large yawns thrown in for good measure.

The two waited patiently for the man to get through the first part of his routine before requesting oats, eggs, and bacon, which he was happy to cook up quite quickly. Beth had to say, the cook that Dream Snake had employed was pretty damn skilled; not at the level of the chefs from the Golden Platter back in the Trial, certainly, but he was no slouch at all. Even the simple breakfast he whipped up was rather tasty, with a savory flavor to it that she couldn't quite put her finger on but was most welcome.

The two of them cleaned their plates even down to the last bit of sauce before thanking the cook and heading out, poking around the building the team was using while they were in the city. They found a small library, not much bigger than a standard bedroom, with eight comfortable chairs and a small fireplace that was cold and dusty. They spent an hour or so in the room, mainly paging through the volumes available before they were found by Trish, who told them they were going to have a very brief… well…

briefing before setting out for the day. The two followed along behind the support mage, entering the room last of all before they got started. The meeting was quite short and was mainly Dean updating the support personnel on what they had found so far and getting a few updated reports on monster-sightings by some citizens that worked at or in the edge of the forest.

When they had finished the quick back-and-forth, Dean led the team out of the room, checking that everyone was ready before leading the way out of the city. They used the same route and same gate as the day before, jogging quickly down the same road as they headed for the forest. It didn't take all that much time to get there, and it was a couple hours earlier today, with the team having the briefing earlier and getting through it quicker giving them more daylight to work with.

The team still proceeded into the forest at a fairly sedate pace, Blood and Thom ranging out ahead the same as they had the previous day. They reached the area they had stopped the day before just as it was hitting noon, the yellow-white sun of the world shining high overhead with a dry, consistent heat. Beth was glad there was a bit of a breeze flowing through the woods or it would be rather stifling, even with her END giving her some resistance to common heat and cold.

Beth grimaced a little as they moved down the road, noting Thom returning for yet another report on the scouting. They were keeping to a fairly sedate pace as they let the scouts move ahead and get a lay of the land, making Beth more than a little annoyed, though she kept the signs of it to just a few facial ticks. She perked up a little as she heard Thom detail a large pack of the beasts ahead, hoping for a good fight.

"Is Blood able to make it back quickly?" Dean turned and asked her.

"Let me check," she replied before messaging Blood.' Are you nearby?' she asked.' Not really,' came Blood's reply.' Do you need me, Sister?'' We're about to engage in a fairly large fight, but I think we can handle it,' Beth replied.' The group of forty about twenty miles from the point you were at around noon?' Blood asked.' That should be about it,' Beth answered.' You can handle that. Let me know if you need me.'' Where are you?' Beth asked.' Following up on what I started yesterday.

I'll let you know,' Blood replied.

"She's too far away right now," Beth said aloud.

"This shouldn't be any problem for us, anyway. Let's just get in there and clear it out."

"It's always better to use your full strength," Dean responded with a frown before signaling the team to move out. Beth disagreed with Dean's assessment, but didn't say anything; no point in arguing with him over small things and creating any bad blood. She moved along with the team, sticking to the front of the group with Dean as Thom ranged ahead to scout the monster group.

It didn't take them very long to reach the point on the road closest to where the group was, and they promptly turned and pushed through the trees towards them. Beth took to the trees again to get a high position over the monsters and attack from an advantageous angle. The battle started the same as the last battle of the day before, with Dean signaling Beth before counting down for the whole team.

Beth leapt on the one count, slamming into the midst of a large group of monsters that had been slowly moving through the forest while tearing most things around them apart. They had a lot of difficulty with the trees, but they even uprooted some of the smaller ones, meaning the area around them was a mess. Beth was especially careful of her footing as she dove into the battle, slashing around her with clean, quick strikes as she danced over the uneven terrain.

The biggest issue wasn't just that the place was a total mess, which should be obvious, but it was that there wasn't any type of consistency even in the debris, with plant and animal matter of all kinds everywhere. The footing wasn't the only issue she had to deal with, as working with a new team presented its own challenges. She was far more used to working solo or with Blood, who coordinated with her so seamlessly that they didn't even need to speak.

Working with Dream Snake was much different, as they were new to each other and, personally, Beth thought their styles didn't really gel well together. She simply focused on doing her own thing while listening to the commands Dean was shouting and trying not to get caught in the crossfire of Liz and Thom.