Chương 625: Limitless Path Chapter Six Hundred Forty-Four

Del He still wasn't really sure about this; running a level five hundred dungeon had already been… difficult. They had struggled, even with Noren's help, and he was not just an Ascended but one that had undergone a number of difficult Trials to attain certain skills and abilities that made him rather powerful. Even given that, Del had had some reservations, and that was just considering this dungeon at its base level, a dungeon which they had now entered after it had been spiked by the other team leader.

Her team, however, was what had given Del paused and basically convinced him to enter. He remembered a conversation his team had had many months ago now, right after they had arrived and found Beth's team already at the instance.

"We need to be wary of the other team," Star said.

"We do not," Noren had said, short and rude, as usual.

"What does that mean?" Star shot back.

"If that team wants to kill us, you should all run, and I will attempt to block them, but it is likely most of us will die," Noren replied coldly.

"Look, they beat at as the arena, but that was a long time ago," Red said.

"We even beat some of them, and some of the match-ups were bad."

"You can believe what you want," Noren huffed.

"I will just say, I'm rather doubtful I can beat their team leader. As to how the rest of you shake out, can you win against them, even without that Swords Grandmaster here? If it were a team battle, even without their two strongest members, do you think you'd win? Against the titan's child and the dragon and the kresnik heir? You think you'd beat them?"

"No reason to be a dick about it," Del huffed at Noren.

"I'm just warning you, so you're aware of the difference. It's like that girl built a team specifically of heavy-hitters and bruisers; even the weakest of them physically would be a challenge for many of us. Don't just go by their arena performances, either; you've had very few fight in the field because I or Karra have always been with you. You never know what kind of ace, or hidden helpers, people might have," Noren explained.

"So, you think they have hidden help?" Star asked, crossing her arms. It might be due to her nature as a sapient monster, but she was often the most aggressive of the group, especially against other sapient beings.

"Let us hope they do not," Noren answered. Seeing the confused looks, he clarified, "The man they had with them at the arena was an Exalted. His team has many powerful Ascended and Enlightened on it, and there are rumors of close relation with another Exalted. They are also all CRA members, and Senior Enforcers at that; any help they might have hiding and not showing themselves is likely to be far, far more than we could ever handle.

Even our whole organization would likely not be handle a single Exalted, so just hope they really are out here alone if it comes to a fight."

"I still think we wouldn't do too badly," Red said.

"Well, I shall hope there's not a chance for that to be proven," Noren said before walking off. Now was as close to that chance as they were going to get without actually fighting the team, something he really didn't want to do either way. The leader of their team was the last in, even after Noren, likely insuring that there was nobody else trying to crash the instance, something that wasn't common but was still good practice to watch out for.

While their team had circled up and started to prep, the other team had already started fighting. He supposed they were used to running the dungeon spiked at this point, but he wasn't going to have his people rush in, even with Noren with them, without understanding what they were up against.

"Don't stress about it," Beth, the other team leader, told them.

"In the spiked version, we basically are constantly under attack, though there are still times where we can rest with just a couple on watch. With more people in the dungeon, we're going to be even safer. We can clear this ourselves, so you guys can just relax."

"Saying to relax in a level five hundred spiked instance is a little much," Red said.

"It's fine. Let's hope we get something interesting this time. Would be nice to have a fun last run," she said before moving forward, joining the others in fighting.

"Watch yourselves and look out for the team first and foremost," Noren warned them.

"They're clearly able to handle this instance without help. Prioritize team safety first."

"Understood," Del said before turning to the others.

"Slot in where you can. Don't exhaust yourselves. Let's take it slow." Noren hung back and watched, clearly more nervous about the team getting injured, or possibly the other team trying something, than clearing out the beasts. It was much like he had said, and like Beth had assured them; their help wasn't really needed. The instance was open now, as compared to the 'regular' version which was underground, which was both a blessing and a curse.

Underground dungeons were generally reviled, as teams often hated being confined and penned in. It was often disadvantageous to be in confined spaces, more so than on open ground, and fighting in tunnels had really sucked. Fighting in the open was better, but it did present more area from which to get attack. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

The underground attacks were probably the worst, with the massive wurms able to appear at any time with almost no warning. The massive man that was part of Beth's team, Bjorn, was often the one giving warnings, sensitive to the movement of the big beasts through the earth.

The wurm could still appear anywhere, and they were often smart enough to wait a moment to start their attack, or even circle away and back again, which made them doubly annoying to battle and kept the whole team, or both teams, constantly on their toes. The wurms weren't terrible to kill once they had emerged and attacked the team, especially not with the phoenix Beth's team had that could drown them in an ocean and blast them with void lightning, but it was annoying to have to wait for them to emerge and attack.

It was never great to always be on the back foot against a beast and have no way to fight it without waiting to respond to its attacks.

"Alright, break time!" Beth called out a couple hours into the dungeon.

"Circle up!" While the majority of both teams circled up, Beth flew up into the air, hovering over the teams as they gathered together and rested. Her team was entirely unconcerned with being in a spiked level five hundred dungeon, pulling out food and drinks and chairs, sitting around and eating and chatting. Del's team was a bit more hesitant, but he indicated for them to go ahead and join in, joining the circle and breaking out their own rations.

Both teams were at the level where they had professionally prepared food for their meals, whether it was catering or restaurant meals or private chefs, and they also usually had something a lot better to drink than plain water or simple soft drinks. Beth, meanwhile, kept the entire team safe for the thirty minutes they rested, not even needing to rely on Noren, who had quite a lot of stamina as an Ascended.

Also, with his mana being denser having done a half dozen or so rebirths in Ascended, he could get more done with less, which was another reason Ascended could last long in a battle than Enlightened while performing at or above the same level. Beth, apparently, had no problem with getting exhausted nor with running out of mana, as she hovered a few hundred feet above them and rained down devastating attacks onto any beast that even got anywhere close.

The only thing they had to pay attention for were the wurms, as Beth couldn't just blast them, though that was mainly because she didn't have any was to detect them deep underground while she was flying in the air. Anything else that got anywhere close got a punch or a kick from hundreds and hundreds of feet away, a massive blast of multiple different energies pulverizing the creature into paste before it had any idea what was happening.

"It's not going to be a problem?" Del asked, flicking his head up towards where she hovered above them.

"Why would it be a problem?" asked the dragon on their team, Sera, giving him a puzzled look.

"Well, she's going to get tired at some point," Del said, confused when Beth's whole team started laughing. He shared a look with Red, seeing the puzzlement shared there, wondering what was so funny.

"Why's that so amusing?"

"Sorry, sorry," Sera said, making a calming gesture as they finished laughing.

"It's just, you're talking about the girl who will fight for a hundred straight hours without even stopping to drink water. To ease your fears, no, she's not going to get tired from resting less frequently than the rest of us while we're in here. If anything, we're going to have to start holding her back at some point or she'll clear the rest of the dungeon by herself."

"Oh, sorry, I didn't know," Del responded almost automatically.

"It's fine, how could you," Sera said, waving away the concern.

"A lot of us don't need all that much rest, but Kris needs more rest to recover her mana, and we all need a break mentally now and then, except for Beth, who's mental never wavers." She had nodded at the phoenix who threw the incredibly destructive spells when talking about mana recovery, which made a lot of sense. With this other team all still being within Enlightened, they didn't have the advantage that mana density brought about in Ascended, so Kris was spending big to produce the big hits she was dishing out.

She also didn't save herself for just the wurms, but participated in all the fighting, so she had to be burning through her mana like a smithy through charcoal. More attacks and explosions rang out as they talked and started putting their stuff away, and when Beth started cackling in the air above them, that's when they knew it was time.

"Okay, when she starts laughing, that's time to reel her in," said Sera.

"She's gonna get carried away and start really trying if we don't pull her down." The dragon shot off into the air, practically tackling Beth when they met, dragging her back to the ground, and sharing several kisses as they did. Del hadn't asked, but the shortest member of the other, Andrea, he believed her name was, explained that they were married, so expect more of that. The group continued forward now that Beth was reined in, going back to the pattern they had been followed.

Red had joined Bjorn and Sera in the front, and the other members of the team spread out with those three as the nexus of the front line. Other melee focused fighters moved in and out of battle as they needed to, and the ranged fighters stayed to the rear and slung spells and ranged skills as needed.

Overall, it might not have been the most efficient, but it had already been made crystal clear that Beth's team was more than capable of handling the dungeon without assistance, so efficiency wasn't in high demand on this run. Even considering how strong Beth's team was, and that all of Del's team was now helping them, he was still surprised with just how fast they were clearing.

It was a little hard to compare to the 'regular' version of the dungeon with the differences in terrain, beast level, and attack patterns, but he was guessing they were going at least twenty percent faster, and they weren't even just rushing for the boss. Beth's team didn't idle around and waste time, but they did kill a bunch of extra beast, and they did explore some side areas, as well as showing Del's team how there could be valuable areas underground in this permutation of the dungeon.

They even let Del's team keep the metal they mined in one of the caves, shocking him when they explained just what it was: a rare variant of mithril that would be fought over tooth-and-nail outside the dungeon. Getting to tag along on the dungeon delve was already a treat for them, but keeping even a few fistfuls of the metal was too much. Del offered to pay for it, but the other team just shrugged it off, their casual dismissal of so much wealth speaking volumes about their current stats.

If something that equaled a few dozen mithril coins, at the very least, in terms of wealth didn't matter to them, they either had a ton of it, had tons of wealth already, or both were true in equal measure. He was even more impressed with Beth's team when they managed to hunt down a rare elite spawn; it wasn't a massive or hyper-powerful beast, but it was a special variant of a 'regular' beast that was found often in the spiked version of the dungeon, according to Sera.

It was a kind of salamander-type beast that swam in the lava pools, which gave an added difficulty since that was the preferred homes of the wurms and they didn't take kindly to intrusion. It was also, well, a lave pool, which was not something easy for any of them to fight in, even Beth, whom he had expected to just dive in with a laugh, at this point. She explained while she could hop in if they needed, she wasn't very resistant to lava and would have to burn extra mana and stamina to keep herself safe.

Better to lure or drag out the enemies and fight them on the shore than try to go spelunking in the liquid rock. The first thing they had to do was take care of the wurms, and yes, there were more than one still in this lava lake, which was a massive pain in the ass. Fighting the things under normal conditions, where just one of them ambushed the teams while they were fighting on a mountainside or the flat terrain of an open valley was annoying.

Fighting a group of them, when the group had the lava lake nearby to retreat to, which included attacking from by flinging clots of lava at them, it became ten times as aggravating. Luckily, they had a few advantages of their own, including Kris, who could solidify much of the lake with an enormous deluge of water that cooled the lava and made things a bit trickier for the wurms.

They didn't want to cool the whole lake, both to not exhaust Kris and to not drive away the rare beast, but they were able to hamper the wurms' movements a great deal just with a few casts from the phoenix. The special variant itself was almost a letdown, by comparison, taking relatively little effort to grab and kill. It would have been a bit of a challenge if it was just Del's team, but the combined efforts of both teams made cornering and killing it light work.

Beth asked if everyone was alright with her using a looting power on it, which also helped to go some way to explaining their teams wealth and disregard for the rare metal, and everyone agreed. People had their fingers crossed, but it was unnecessary, as her harvest was a success and got quite a bit of rare loot from the large body, which she generously split with his team.