Chương 404: Limitless Path Chapter Four Hundred Twenty-Eight

Baelvyr walked them through the process of filling out all the forms, in triplicate, before getting the spikes to manipulate the dungeons. The commissar at this Hall was a pleasant, mild-mannered woman who was almost the polar opposite of Jaq and was very accommodating with all their needs. She handed the mana spikes to Beth after all the forms were filled, filed, and double-checked.

Each spike was the length of Beth's forearm and about half the thickness, with complex series of runes spiraling around the outside in an alternating pattern. She stashed them all in her necklace before handing two to Sera and Blood each, making sure she wasn't the only one with the spikes. The next part was a part Blood didn't like, but they deployed the airship and had Baelvyr fly it after modifying the pilot's chair a bit.

It made the lupine woman quite upset, but she still hadn't completed her pilot license certification yet, so she wasn't allowed to pilot the ship on a more populated world. Baelvyr took them to the destination in a couple hours and set the ship to hover before heading down to the ramp in the cargo hold, pulling his hammer out when he got there. He moved to the edge of the ramp and twisted the weapon in his hand, spinning it around before bringing it down on the air in front of him.

The result was a massive force attack that flattened everything under the ship for nearly half a mile, including the trees and plants. Any beast caught in the blast of his swing was instantly pulped, killing at least a few thousand enemies.

"That's all I got for ya," Baelvyr said when he returned to the bridge.

"Park this thing and then get started. Ya know how to contact me if ya need me." With that, he disappeared off the bridge, Beth not quite sure how, but also not sure that it really mattered. She led the way down to the cargo hold, where they made sure their gear was ready before leaping out and down to the flattened area. Beth had the ship land and fold up before she stashed it away, looking around at the devastation that Baelvyr's single swing had caused.

She directed the other two to head south, wanting to check the area around the easiest and most popular of the dungeons first. Despite the strike having cleared out a sizeable area, that certainly didn't mean there were no beasts still around. That was proved doubly true as they moved towards the southern dungeon, finding the area was overrun with feline enemies.

Before they even got close, well before they were within sight of the dungeon, they were hip-deep in tigers and lynxes and panthers and leopards and so on. They all used mana, as well, making the fights even more annoying. Fortunately, most of the enemies were below level two hundred fifty and thus weren't much of a challenge to the girls. The beasts that were above level three hundred, while rarer, were much more difficult to battle.

Still, while other teams might genuinely struggle with such a thing, Beth and her two companions were able to slaughter their way towards the dungeon entrance with little difficulty. It was all just fodder for them, giving them a level by the time they reached the dungeon entrance, though they had to spend quite a bit of time clearing the area around the entrance.

It was the same, if not worse, than the last time Beth and Blood had dealt with such a situation, as beasts were pouring out of the entrance at a prodigious rate. That made clearing a space around the entrance a major pain in the ass, as they were constantly deluged with waves of new beasts before they even had gotten rid of what was already there. It took many hours, nearly a full day, before they had a bit of breathing room, though the dungeon was still overflowing at a rapid pace.

They had worked the area and the dungeon down enough that they were just dealing with the overflow and that had lessened a bit. They took a break, rotating who was resting and who was watching the dungeon entrance, which was a small grove of trees with an area inside that distorted and twisted the sense. Walking into the grove and moving into that twisted area sent one into the dungeon, and one could return from the dungeon through that area, either by beating a boss or by stepping back out of the distortion.

Beth made sure they were fully rested before attempting anything else. She first wanted to see what was up with the dungeon, especially since they could just turn around and leave if they wanted. The instance, though nestled in a temperate forest, was a humid jungle on the inside, making it uncomfortable to navigate.

Even with their durability, high temperatures and humidity still had them sweat a bit and was a bit annoying, and Beth would personally rather deal with cold climates, though that was coming soon, and in a very unpleasant way. The dungeon wasn't really much to write home about, as it was just a dense rainforest with a lot of beasts roaming the interior. It was rather packed, with dozens or hundreds of the feline-type enemies every few hundred feet, and it stretched out far into the distance.

The dungeon had to be a couple dozen square miles in area at least, maybe even closer to a hundred square miles, and it was longer one way than the other, more like an oblong than a rectangle. It had to be thirty-five or forty miles along the long axis, with the entrance located at one end and, presumably, the boss at the other end.

They couldn't just sprint through the dungeon, either, because of the beast density and the difficulty of the terrain slowing them down, though Beth might be able to do it in another rebirth or two, given the dungeon at the same level. They cleared the whole thing on that first attempt, finding the boss a massive tiger that used a mixture of lightning and fire to attack, as well as its massive body.

Fire wasn't a great element to use to fight a dragon, let alone Beth, and the boss learned that the hard way when its own flames were turned against it, boosted by a healthy dose of dragonfire. Blood was also much faster than the level three hundred ten boss, though it was no pushover itself, and she ran circles around the tiger, attacking to hamstring it as the others dealt with the magic.

Blood was at the point of getting more than forty free points per level and, now being in the two hundreds, had close to ten thousand DEX. Beth could still mostly keep up due to her Mana Physique, but she would be left behind once Blood got a Mana Physique if she wasn't able to also evolve her class again before or by that time. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

The tiger boss fell in short order, and the group got a small bump of experience, though it was still very hard to tell. Experience viewing skills were still something Beth might look into at some point, but she knew they were rare, confusing, and not incredibly reliable. With the tiger dead, Blood started harvesting it while Beth and Sera inspected the dungeon rewards.

Two pedestals had appeared, both with potions on them, one being a Major Healing Potion while the other was a Potion of Fire Body, which increased resistance to ice and chilling effects. Beth tossed the potions in her necklace and waited for Blood to be done with her skinning and dismantling before exiting the dungeon. The next thing they were going to do was use a spike on the dungeon and see what happened with that.

It would also be a good time to take it a little slower so Blood could skin and break down more corpses; the bodies of the beasts in a supercharged instance had to be worth a lot more. When they stepped out of the dungeon they were immediately set upon, as the hours they were inside had led to beasts being disgorged from the dungeon in massive numbers. That led to them having to clear the area, again, taking hours to get the area just around the entrance back under control so they could breathe for a minute.

Beth withdrew a spike from her inventory while Sera guarded her, making sure new beasts didn't attack Beth while she used the spike. It was very easy to use the device, as Beth just had to push a tiny trickle of mana into it and point it at the dungeon entrance. When it detected the dungeon, it popped up a message asking for activation permission and more mana.

When Beth agreed and supplied the mana, which was not very much, the spike leapt from her hand and slammed into the dungeon entrance, sinking into it as the runes glowed a bright white. The entrance slowly shifted and changed, runes appearing around it as the spike dissolved. After ten minutes, the spike was gone, and the entrance to the dungeon was surrounded by a series of white runes that glowed in the evening light.

Beth glanced at Sera, who quirked an eyebrow and shrugged, then back at Blood, who frowned slightly but didn't otherwise react. Shrugging herself, Beth stepped forward into the portal, finding there was a bit of a sloughing sensation when she entered, like her mana had been tapped and moved. She regained her senses after less than a second, finding herself in a very similar dungeon, but things had obviously changed.

The place was brightly lit, which was unusual because the sun had not pierced through the clouds and the coverage of the dense foliage nearly as well last time. The trees were also much taller and wider, with less openings that were easily navigable in between them. The beasts were a whole other matter, as well, with all of them having leveled up significantly from the use of the spike.

The lowest levels were now three hundred ten and they ranged up quite a bit from there, going to over three hundred twenty-five by the midpoint of the dungeon. The beasts also used more types of mana, more varied attacks, and more mana types in combination. Tigers with lightning and wind, panthers with shadow and dark, leopards with fire and plasma, lynxes with water and ice, and more besides.

The dual mana types on every enemy were very annoying, as it made them much more powerful and much more varied in their ability to both attack and defend. The fire beasts still did very badly against their team, but the rest were a hassle that Beth hated having to deal with in every fight. The dual mana types were rare in beasts, especially before level five hundred, and having every single beast with a dual affinity was very annoying.

The boss was far worse, with a triple affinity, though it had retained fire, which was much to its detriment. In addition to the fire, and the lightning that it had also kept, it had acquired the ability to manipulate nature or plant magic, and its nature magic was resistant to its own fire. They were not resistant to the fire that Beth commandeered, nor to the fire that Sera breathed, which Beth also commanded and increased.

The vines and branches from the trees and generated from the ground from the tiger's magic were very annoying to Blood, as they were plentiful and worked mainly on impeding her movement. It was a good fight, in Beth's opinion, something that pushed them without the danger of them dying. Well, there was always the danger of dying when walking the Path, but that was true even without the Path.

Sera's toughness, Blood's speed, and Beth's overwhelming strength were far too much for the tiger, eventually crushing it into a burnt, bloody pulp. There was less for Blood to harvest, but she had harvested a whole lot of hides, meat, bones, organs, beast cores, and more from the rest of the dungeon that she only grumbled a little bit about the loss. The rewards for this clear were… something else.

Beth approached the five pillars that had appeared after the boss was killed, finding that they all contained much, much rarer and more powerful items than the two potions from the first run. The run had been much more difficult, and taken several times longer, but if five or six runs like that would clear the excess mana, it wouldn't take more than a week or just over per dungeon.

That was even better considering the rewards, as Beth pulled an epic helmet, a small chunk of mithril, two minor elixirs, and a rare dagger that required level three hundred off those five pillars. None of it was mind-blowing, but fifteen to twenty dungeon runs like that would add up to a massive amount of wealth.

"Why don't more teams do this?" Beth asked as she tossed the stuff in her necklace.

"Because most teams don't have two beast sapients that progressed near or to the point of body runes and a freak with a Platinum Mana Physique at rebirth five," Sera said drolly.

"Good point," Beth responded. They waited for Blood to finish cleaning the boss kill before leaving the dungeon, finding the place outside swarmed again. It was even worse, as beasts from the other two dungeons had made their way over, a swarm of locusts using ice mana and a pack of moles blasting out mental attacks currently in the middle of a three-way battle with the feline beasts. The girls were caught up in it as soon as they stepped out of the dungeon and set about taking a couple hours to clean the area up.

It was a reminder that even after they brought dungeon one back under control, there were still two more dungeons that had to be cleaned up. They took advantage of Beth's gate power to rest, going into the dungeon again after spiking it before clearing an area around the entrance and then having Beth summon the gate. Sera was surprised she could summon a gate within a dungeon, but the Path made the impossible possible and the unreal real, so it wasn't necessarily shocking.

They slept for a handful of hours, Blood guarding the gate for a few hours first before switching with the other two. After a quick set of showers, they were fully refreshed, devouring some rations before they were back out in the spiked dungeon and working on the next clear. That clear took most of a day, but they were still fresh enough that Beth thought they could do a third before resting.

The second spiked clear got them three elixirs and two potions, though both of the potions were buffing potions like the potion that boosted fire mana and resisted ice. Beth was just grabbing everything and stashing it, the others not concerned she would run off or anything. Honestly, at this point, even with their improved minds and memories, it was more likely Beth would forget she had things than that she would take something without mentioning it.