Chương 292: Limitless Path Chapter Three Hundred Sixteen

The team put their collective heads down and plowed on, following Bjorn as he moved through the horde. They kept mobile most of the time as stopping would give the enemies too much of a chance to bunch up and overwhelm them. The devils cared nothing for their fellows, the blue-skinned and red-eyed beasts swarming over each other to the point of tearing each other apart to get at the eight team members.

Their strength was quite high, even for their level, and demonstrated that Beth and Blood wouldn't be able to take it easy and just cruise in the higher two hundreds. Level two hundred fifty was another major turning point for beasts and monsters, their defenses getting far stronger and their speed improving by fifteen or twenty percent. The devils, on top of being above two hundred fifty and having that improved strength, were even more powerful for their level, giving Beth no end of frustration.

"Why are they so strong?" she asked at a point where Blood and Andrea were resting.

"They're devils, lass," Rell replied. Even in the midst of frenetic combat, Beth found time to turn her head and glare at the dwarf.

"Fine," he continued, seeing her icy stare, doing nothing to warm the frozen surrounds.

"Devils are a form of corrupted being, making them monsters rather than beasts. Monsters are inherently stronger and tougher'n beasts of the same level."

"That it?" Beth grunted as she cleaved through the neck of a devil with her blade.

"They're fallen demons," Rell explained.

"Demons, unlike some folklore out there, aren't evil, just aggressive. When demons fall to madness, they become devils and become twisted and malformed. It makes them stronger and faster than beasts of the same level, but takes away even their instincts. They're left with only one single desire; attack."

"It's why they rip each other apart," Beth felt a little enlightened after the further explanation from Rell.

"Aye, lassie. They don't behave like beasts in that they don't even fight, despite what's happenin' to us now. They literally only attack; there ain't no thoughts in there, only the desire ta tear apart," Rell explained, his tired voice taking on a thicker accent as he spoke.

"That's why you guys were hesitant to tackle this?" Beth asked further, continuing her neck-chopping at the same time.

"Aye, lassie," Rell repeated.

"Devils don't fight, they destroy. Fortunately, they're a relatively mild form of monster. They don't have the cunning and devious means of other monsters." The explanations ended there, with Beth focusing her full attention back on the fighting. It wasn't until many, many hours later that the horde finally started to thin, the cold having long since chilled even her marrow. She paused for a moment as she found herself in a small clear area without any monsters attacking, looking back at their path.

Bjorn had led them the whole time, taking a slightly curving path so over the course of many hours, they had spiraled out from their starting position. From where they were now, that path made it look as if the entire field was covered in piles of monster corpses. The devils cared as little for their dead as their living and would often tear apart the corpses of their fellows, sometimes not even to get at Beth's group but just as a focus for their blind ferocity.

The frozen field of scattered corpses, body parts, and innumerable pools of blood made for a rather grisly sight, even to a veteran adventurer like Beth. She turned from the carnage and resumed the battle, seeing they likely had another hour or two of fighting to go to clean up most of the rest of the monsters. The devils weren't shy about charging the group; they had just killed enough of them that they weren't totally swarmed any more, with some devils having to run a good distance to get to the group.

That would take them quite a lot of time, as the devils would attack each other even if the other devil weren't blocking their path, slowing the progress of the more thinly spaced monsters. It was good news for Beth's group, as the pressure on them had now greatly lessened, allowing them to rotate the pairs for longer breaks, restoring far more stamina and mana. Beth and Blood were the only ones who were still relatively fine, as they were just a bit tired physically, but the challenge of such a…

well, special challenge often resided more in the mental strain than the physical. Beth and Blood had cut their teeth on beast tides and the endless hours of battle against impossible odds was second nature to them by this point, making them the freshest of any of the group. Even Bjorn, who was damn near indefatigable himself, ironically enough, was feeling the strain mentally. He let the group know in no uncertain terms, as well.

"Fucking tired," he rumbled as the last of the devils was swarming them.

"Aye, lad," Rell replied from the center of their formation, leaning on his hammer.

"Glad we're at the end of it."

"Don't curse us!" Andrea exclaimed, helping to cull the last of the monsters.

"Too late," Beth said grimly. The group all looked over to her before following her gaze, seeing something moving on the horizon in the direction she was looking. No matter how long they had fought in that place, the light remained the exact same, equivalent to a late afternoon with heavy, thick cloud cover on Earth. Out of the icy mists at the edge of their range of vision was approaching a fresh wave of enemies, with the group giving voice to a various range of curses and muttered oaths at the sight.

"Me an' me big mouth, eh?" Rell grumbled, lighting his pipe to have a quick smoke.

"They're different," Kris commented quietly, having not fallen to expletives as the rest of the group had.

"What?" Adam asked before leaping high in the air, using the same trick Beth had seen him pull a time or two to hover for a short time before falling back to the ground.

"She's right."

"Tell us o' it, laddie," Rell said.

"They're spread out," Adam explained.

"They're bigger than the ones we just fought, and they don't seem to be attacking each other indiscriminately."

"Bad news," Rell sighed.

"Why's that bad? There's less of 'em and they're moving slower. Isn't that better for us, overall?" Andrea asked.

"They're a higher form of devil," Rell explained gravely, puffing at his pipe with a solemn expression.

"We don't have to worry quite as much at being overwhelmed, but this lot'll be stronger an' fight a lot more cunnin'. Beware 'em takin' ya by surprise with a dirty trick."

"Great. Smart devils, just what we needed," Andrea groaned, sitting to rest for a minute as all of the first wave had been dealt with and she needed a short break.

"Special challenges ain't easy," Rell commented, still leaning on his hammer and smoking.

"Any special tricks Mortaine gave you?" Beth asked, even knowing it touched on Rell, and Mortaine's, hidden secrets. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"We have a few tricks, lassie, but dinnae go countin' on 'em to get us through this," Rell said calmly, though a small smile curled the corners of his lips.

"Still have the airship to try," Blood pointed out.

"Let me try it before they get here," Beth said quickly. She found that pulling the airship from her necklace worked, but the device refused the command to unfold. It apparently couldn't successfully manipulate the space in the special challenge to unpack to its full size.

"No go," Beth said.

"Unfortunate," Itharion commented calmly.

"Shit. Guess we just gotta kill 'em all," Beth said with a grin.

"You're really crazy, you know that?" Andrea replied, though she also grinned back.

"Insane people sometimes make good team leaders," Kris commented quietly, drawing quite a few raised eyebrows.

"Sorry, it was a joke."

"Not as much of a joke as you might think," Rell muttered, but refused to elaborate. Beth returned the airship to her necklace and took a moment to assign a few free points she had from the last two levels. Another good part of the special challenge so far was that the devils were worth quite a bit of experience. Everybody in the team had leveled no less than eight times, with Beth and Blood leveling more than ten.

Ten levels weren't a huge amount, but it still represented over two hundred stat points for each of them, which was still a significant amount of power at their levels. The next wave of devils was there, and this one was much as Rell had expected. These devils did not attack each other randomly, or not most of the time, anyway. They also didn't simply throw themselves bodily at the group, but fought with some level of tactics and cunning.

It was still nothing compared to people who had weaponskills at Expert or above, though Expert was the limit of their current group. It simply made the fights a bit more challenging, but it was balanced by the devils no longer swarming each other to attack the party. With them attacking in a more predictable way, the group could fight in a more regulated manner. The other good thing they found, though it took quite a few hours, was that this second wave was a bit smaller than the first wave.

Beth supposed it was intended that the second wave was harder, especially with the group tackling the special challenge already being tired from handling the first massive horde. Beth's group was a bit too strong, however, for even though they were tired, they weren't truly exhausted and were able to slowly fight their way through the fresh horde.

"Please, no third wave," Andrea huffed a number of hours later as they were cleaning up the last of the second wave.

"Who's jinxing us now?" Rell grumbled.

"If you've got that much energy, you're fine," Beth quipped. They mopped up the last of the wave and took that chance to rest, with Beth keeping watch as she had just rested recently. Fortunately, nothing popped up for a good fifteen or more minutes, letting all of the team get at least a bit of rest. Beth scanned the horizon diligently while the others rested, wary for the next wave or horde to suddenly pop up. It was that vigilance that let her spot what was next before anyone else noticed.

"Good news and bad news," Beth said, drawing the entire group's attention.

"Bad news," Rell requested, though it was more a command. Everyone was rather tired at this point.

"Another enemy," Beth said.

"Good news?" Rell asked, his voice ticking up.

"Pretty sure it's the boss," Beth said.

"It's one hundred percent the boss," Blood said.

"How are you sure?" Beth asked in response.

"Eye power hit Gold a while ago," Blood explained.

"Rest until it gets here," Beth ordered the group, moving to stand a short distance in front of them. The group took every second they could get, waiting until the boss monster was focused on Beth and starting to charge her before they were on their feet and joining her. The monster was a gigantic devil with malformed arms and a preponderance of twisted and gnarled horns emerging from the crown of its head.

Its hide was a deep, dark blue riven with hundreds of lines of icy white as if crystals of deepest frost flowed turgidly through every one of its veins. Its eyes glowed with a pale crimson light, made all the creepier by the juxtaposition with its dark blue skin and misshapen form. Beth was shocked when she didn't manage to properly deflect the very first strike from the monster, getting clipped and sent sprawling.

Good that there were seven other people right there, as Bjorn slammed into the creature as it tried to lunge after the downed girl. Despite its size, speed, strength, and high level, the boss simply wasn't in the same weight class as the titan descendant, the massive man knocking the devil entirely off its feet and slamming it into the ground. The frozen dirt cratered from the force, sending glimmering crystals of ice exploding up and out in a huge haze.

The devil swiped at Bjorn from the ground, but its position and angle were both bad, and the huge man barely slid back a handful of inches from the strike. The boss leapt back to its feet in the next instant but was immediately hit by four different attacks at once, with Rell and Adam slamming their weapons into it from either side while Blood slashed at the legs and Kris blasted its ugly mug with void lightning.

The monster staggered just slightly, and that was all the opening Bjorn needed to slam into it again, knocking it back on its ass and causing it to flail wildly before it could resume its feet. A second blast of the bluish-purple lightning to the boss's head caused another momentary stagger, but the monster recovered quicker this time, a storm of ice shards and chilled air swirling around it.

"It's using ice spells to dampen the effects of magic attacks!" Kris called out, frustration in her voice.

"Manipulate the water in the ice to try to restrain it!" Beth commanded as she lunged at the beast alongside Andrea. The two girls went face first into the monster's fists, each of them punching an arm as it came in to try to swat them, finding the creature's power too great. Both girls were sent staggering back, just barely managing to keep their feet on the icy ground, the terrain doing nothing but hinder the team.

Bjorn appeared to be the only one with the mass and STR stat combined that could knock the boss back, a real problem for the team as the rest of them got tossed around. The monster also increased the storm of bone-shattering cold around it as Kris contested for the water the ice was comprised of, the extra mana the boss was using stymying her efforts.

The team worked together very efficiently to hammer away at the monster, pairs and trios of them darting in to try to land attacks before sliding out of the way and, hopefully, out of the boss's reach. Beth noticed as they fought that they were having far less of an effect than she had hoped, seeing most of their attacks had barely scratched the skin of the monster, its hide having the effect of compressed ice that had been frozen for millennia.

The boss also didn't bleed, at all, regardless of how good a strike they got in on it, which further raised Beth's concern. It was really like pounding at a massive block of ice with their bare hands, for all the damage they were doing, but the block of ice could fight back. And fight back it certainly did, with the team suffering attack after attack, many of them causing minor damage, but bruises and cuts piled up, not to mention fractures and serious rents.

The team's armor was also generally unable to resist the unbelievably sharp claws of the devil, the monster able to rend even their steel with ease. The only exception to this was Bjorn as the mountain of a man wore another mountain of metal atop his huge frame. The plating around Bjorn's torso and thighs was thick enough to make a battleship envious, not just providing incredible defenses, but adding even further to the enormous man's mass.

The fight was one of attrition, a slog after they had spent more than a day and a half slogging through tens of thousands of devils to get there in the first place. It took them a very long time, accruing quite a few injuries, before they started to seriously injure the monster. Beth was hopeful they were on the right track in the battle, but the bottom of her stomach dropped past her knees when the monster turned to them and grinned wickedly.

"Back!" Beth screamed, the others responding in a split second. Everyone leapt far from the monster while at the same time, the boss exploded into a towering pillar of ice and frozen air. The temperature was so low that little pieces of ice and bits of frost hung suspended in the air while that very air itself solidified, the molecules losing all energy as they slowed further and further.

Heavy plates of dark blue ice had grown over the boss's body, many of them with thick spikes protruding from them at varied angles, while its claws had elongated and were covered in thick rime. Bjorn had backed up with the rest and Beth could feel the mana twisting around him before the boss was fully finished with whatever it was that was happening to it.

He charged the monster, building speed far too fast for it to not be some kind of skill, slamming into the boss at a speed so fast the air around him split and shrieked. The very impressive ice armor the boss had just expended a huge amount of energy and time to build was immediately severely damaged, cracking and breaking in numerous places.

As soon as he had staggered the monster, Bjorn backed off to charge again, while at the same time allowing Kris to unleash a terrifying blow directly to the cracked chest armor of the creature. She had been channeling since even before the monster performed its super move, and now all that time and mana spent paid off in spades as a bolt of lightning thicker than Beth's thigh and so dark it drank in the light around it smashed into the monster's chest.

The boss was blasted off its feet, sailing through the air with a dark grey and black smoke trailing after it. Kris had punched through its cracked chest armor and heavily injured its torso, the greatest single blow they had dealt it thus far. The trip through the air had also greatly increased the space between the boss and Bjorn, allowing him to build up a good head of steam in his second charge, the titan in all but name crashing into the monster as it tried to roll back to its feet.

It was sent sprawling yet again, bouncing across the ice encased dirt before sliding to a stop, shaking its head lethargically as its momentum was spent. It was just the wrong thing to do, as Adam had leapt high into the air and concentrated a huge amount of his remaining mana into his blade, his Presence burning brightly. With the monster stationary for a moment and his teammates clear, Adam brought his blade down in a slash from range.

A thin line of pure white light emanated from the tip of his blade as he slashed, cleaving apart the clouds, the icy mist, and much of the armor and a good deal of the flesh of the boss. Adam's attack was followed by Beth and Andrea, both having summoned their Presences and using all the skills they could at once. They hit the boss at the exact same moment, their fists just a fraction of an inch apart, tearing through what little remained of the boss's armor and shattering many of its ribs.

They pulled their arms back immediately, tearing apart flesh and causing further terrible damage before sliding out of the way, allowing Itharion and Blood to hit the boss with their powerful combination attack. They hit right around where Beth and Andrea had, absolutely shredding the monster's chest and knocking it down. The monster was definitely not smiling now, and it wouldn't have the chance to do it ever again, as Rell slammed into the beast as soon as Itharion and Blood were clear.

The dwarf had flared his Presence and used a very powerful skill that he rarely utilized, but one that could build immense momentum and that he had mastered to a great degree. It was the final blow the boss needed, a strike so powerful that ice on unrelated parts of the boss's body, such as its legs, cracked and shattered. The monster's torso was blown apart, its arms and head careening off in different directions, though none of the team lost track of the parts.

It was proven wise a moment later when Beth crashed into the head with monumental force, mostly shattering it and ensuring the boss's demise.