Chương 67: Limitless Path Chapter Sixty-Seven

She did notice at some point that Blood had wandered off, clearly not enthralled with the work in the same way Beth was. She knew the wolf would find her at some point later or be waiting at the room in the evening to see what their plans were. She reviewed each nail carefully when she had finished them, comparing each to the nail Elana had produced earlier. It was absolutely a long, slow process, forging each nail one-by-one before painstakingly analyzing them.

She must have been forging no more than four nails an hour, and going on like that for almost six more hours, she found herself physically still fine, but mentally weary. She decided that that was enough for the day and had Elana show her how to properly shut everything down and clean up. Beth was not, however, done for the day.

There was still some time left until she had to either head home or decide to stay at the CRA Hall for the night, and she intended to use every minute she had available to continue to grow stronger. She headed out of the forge and right up to the arena to get a few quick rounds in with her newest sparring partners. She picked her old nemesis from the control panel, the swordsman with the single silvery long sword.

She seemed to just barely outclass him in Strength stat, but his Dexterity and skill were both leagues above her own, making him the most formidable being she had yet fought. She knew that this would be the best way she currently had to push her combat skills from Apprentice to Journeyman level, something she really wanted to do as soon as possible. It would give her such a huge increase in combat capabilities without any change to her stats and would only make her stronger the higher she leveled from here out.

She spent another four hours working on her weapons skills, losing match after match to the phantom of the swordsman. She was quite glad the practice like she was currently doing didn't count for anything, not even showing up in a person's match history that they had done the practice. Otherwise, her record in the CRA arenas would be off to a really, really dismal start.

After feeling like she only made a small amount of progress, she went down to her room to clean up and get changed before heading back up to the lobby. She found Blood waiting outside the door when she got down to the room and let her companion in as she made ready to wash up. She intended to head home for the day, but she first wanted to stop and talk to Tazeen. She found him manning his usual post behind the front counter, walking over to him after she exited the hallway.

"Tazeen, good to see you," she said to him, receiving a firm nod in response.

"Hey, I want to add time to my room. Can we do that now?"

"Of course. How much time will you be adding?" he asked. Beth took out ten silver and passed it to him along with her room key.

"Ten days, please." Tazeen took the key and the silver and made the necessary adjustments, setting the key on the panel in the counter and pressing buttons Beth couldn't see. After a moment there was a quiet beep and the key glowed dully for a moment. Tazeen passed the key back to Beth with a nod, resuming his stoic vigil over the lobby. Beth and Blood left the lobby and headed out towards their neighborhood.

As they got close, they encountered a new worrying sign; one of the wolves from the area around the wolf dungeon had wandered out to a nearly half a mile east of their usual territory. The beasts produced by the dungeon were both increasing in level as well as, apparently, increasing in numbers. The wolf was likely just the first of many spreading further from the area around the dungeon, and Beth killed it in just a blink.

The two continued, Beth detouring them slightly to see if they could catch any other low-level beasts out in the open. Fortunately, or not, they didn't find any more wolves pushing further out in their brief scout, and they rapidly made their way into the neighborhood and back to Beth's house. They passed through a set of newly made gates when entering the development, one shut and one open enough to let people through but not anything bigger.

There were two youngish men looking to be in their early twenties guarding the gate, likely more so keeping a watch for wolves pushing out from their territory than anything else. Beth gave the two of them a nod as she passed, not that they even noticed, their nervous attention focused entirely on her companion. The two finally made it back home after a rather long day, entering through the front door, for once.

Beth immediately proceeded to the mudroom, dumping all of her equipment except her pouch there before heading upstairs. She checked to see that both of her sisters' doors were closed, assuming they had both made it home already and settled in for the night. She passed the office right before her room and, glancing in, saw both her parents working into the late evening. She stopped to stick her head in for a minute.

"Hey," she said, a little lamely.

"How, uh, how's it going here?" Her father looked up from his notes with a sigh, leaning back in his chair and rubbing the bridge of his nose with the index finger and thumb of his right hand. Her mother also leaned back with a sigh, staring up at the ceiling as she closed her eyes.

"Oh. That good, huh?" Beth continued, crossing her arms and leaning against the door frame.

"Yes, it's going that 'good'," her mother replied, leaning forward in her chair and resting her forearms on the desk in front of her.

"It's really surprising how much work the end of the world entails. Trying to keep everything organized and keep everyone on track is an immense amount of effort."

"What your mother is saying is correct, but we are managing," her father added.

"How are you holding up, sweetie?"

"I'm doing well," she replied.

"Found the wolves are spreading further when I was on the way home earlier. Make sure to let people know to be careful of that." The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"What do you mean by spreading further?" asked her father.

"Blood and I ran into one quite a distance east of their normal territory. We looked around for a little bit after killing it but weren't able to find any others. Still, I have a feeling it could be the start of them spreading further as the dungeon keeps growing stronger," Beth explained in response.

"About where exactly was it? What level was it at? And what was it doing when you found it?" Her father was immediately in analysis mode, taking notes as he fired off questions at her. She explained in as much detail as she could muster where they had found the wolf and what it seemed to be doing, though she knew she wasn't an expert on beast behavior. Eventually, her father was satisfied, and proceeded to take more notes while Beth turned to her mother.

"Hey, I might not be back for a couple days. I have a ton I'm doin' at the Hall, and staying there is easier."

"I'm not exactly comfortable with you staying out all the time, young lady," her mother replied with a frown creeping across her face.

"If you check in with us every other day at a minimum, you can stay at the CRA Hall, but only there. No running all over God knows where. You understand me, young lady?"

"Yeah, yeah. I hear you," Beth replied, standing up from her lean, dropping her arms to her side.

"Just be careful out there, sweetie," her father said.

"I don't want anything happening to you because you are pushing yourself too hard, okay?"

"Yeah, I got it. I'm careful," Beth replied, turning and heading into her room. She took a quick glance around on entering, finding Blood already curled up on the floor and, disappointingly, no cute girl anywhere. She had already cleaned up at the CRA Hall, so she simply got ready for bed rather quickly before hopping in for the night. She sent Sabs a quick text goodnight, which she thought the older girl might not see until the morning, before she dropped right off to sleep.

She woke up the next morning before it was even light, that gap growing wider and wider as the days grew shorter as Fall progressed. She got up, got ready, let Sabs in, then waited a little for the others to be up. After some breakfast, they did a quick sweep of the dungeons before heading to the CRA Hall, wherein the others went to train while Beth headed down to the forge. She was forging nails, examining them, comparing them to Elana's nail, and thinking about the entire process.

She was definitely learning a ton just from the act of forging nail after nail, benefiting a great deal from all the thought she was putting into what she was doing and how she was doing it. Still, it was a long and slow process, and she certainly wasn't going to be a Master Blacksmith any time soon. She spent most of the day forging nails, but stopped before it was too late, as she intended to repeat yesterday's pattern.

That is, she intended to work on her combat skills for several hours, this time able to spend more time on it as she wasn't planning on heading home that day. She made her way up to the main area of the arena after she had packed up the forge for the day, putting back on all the equipment she had shed to work the hot forge. She selected her most hated yet favorite opponent once again, hoping to use his combination of skill and speed, vastly superior to her own, to push herself all the way to Journeyman.

She focused today on ways to attack despite his massive advantages, pushing herself to look for opportunities that might not be perfect, but even ones where she took a serious hit in exchange for getting in a strike of her own felt like a win at this point. Little did Beth know, considering how focused she was on the match, that she was not alone in the arena.

Kim Bell Navere and Kim had followed somewhat of a similar pattern to what Beth and Baelvyr had done at the start, with the main difference being Navere's more hands-on approach. He didn't have Kim spend time with a training program or shadow dummy at first but instead stood opposite her himself as he walked her through various footwork movements. As they progressed over the first number of days, he began adding swings of the sword to work through while stepping.

Just the footwork alone had improved Kim's battle capability tremendously over those first few days, and the addition of basic sword strikes continued to elevate her skill. Moving through Apprentice of a weapon skill was not particularly difficult, not before the last two to three levels, and the coaching of a seasoned and highly skilled warrior like Navere allowed Kim to make steady progress in a short amount of time. It was a little boring and monotonous, something she eventually complained about to Navere.

"When can we move on to something else?" she asked him, a little frustrated that she was just mirroring his steps and swings.

"This is fine and all, but I want to actually fight."

"Fighting, is it?" Navere asked calmly. He stopped and sheathed his blade, indicating for Kim to do the same.

"Follow," he then commanded, and turned and left the training room under the arena that they had been using. Kim was intrigued, mimicking her instructor in sheathing her sword before moving to follow him out of the room. She trailed behind him as he made his way to one of the sets of elevators within the complex. She joined him in the elevator at his signal, already having gotten somewhat used to how taciturn the senior member was in general.

He gave precise and detailed feedback during her training, but if there was a way to use even fewer words to deliver his point concisely, he would find it. They ascended to the ground floor using the elevator before walking over to a stairway that led into the viewing galleries. Navere scanned his pass to enter a doorway which, it turned out, led into a small viewing room. The room was narrow, with eight comfortable chairs set up in four pairs in a line.

Each set of chairs had a small table in between, and all eight faced a large window that took up almost all of the wall facing the arena floor. Navere indicated for her to sit and then took a seat himself. Kim had picked a middle seat, and her instructor had taken the seat that was its companion. The pairs of chairs faced slightly toward each other, and Kim glanced questioningly at her trainer before looking out at the arena floor.

"What exactly are we doing here?" she asked.

"Watch," Navere said calmly, gesturing out to the floor.

"Watch what?" she asked. But in a moment, she realized she hadn't really needed to ask, as movement down on the floor of the arena below them caught her eye. When she looked down at the section of the arena right in front of them, she saw to her surprise that Beth was out on the floor.

"What's she doing down there? We don't have anybody to fight in the arena yet." Navere merely made a small gesture with his right hand while a small smirk appeared on his face. Kim looked on as Beth squared off with a man in a section of the floor that was outlined with a shiny material.

"Who's that? Doesn't look like one of the instructors. Are there others here I haven't met?"

"He is not an instructor. He is a CRA member and an arena participant," Navere replied evenly.

"How is she fighting an arena participant? I don't get it," Kim replied, frowning as her eyebrows lowered.

"It is a training option. Watch," he replied. Kim focused on Beth as a new match began, watching as she charged across the arena towards the opponent. When she was close, she stopped with a jerk, looking like she had just smashed into an invisible wall, all of her momentum shed in a second. It was good that she had, as the opponent swung his longsword horizontally in a blindingly swift strike.

Beth swung her own sword up after she stopped in an instant, slapping against the opponent's sword enough to push it off course and avoid the strike. The swordsman's riposte seemed to happen in almost the same moment to Kim, Beth somehow knowing to move her blade up from where she had finished her swing, her sword stretching out sideways from in front of her across her left side. In the next moment both fighters swung again, their blades slamming into each other right in front of them.

Beth seemed to win the exchange, her sword knocking the opponent's blade away with great force, but his blade was suddenly back in between them, slashing Beth's arm open.

"How did he do that? I don't understand how he was hit so hard by Beth but still slashed her. Is it some kind of ability?" Kim asked.

"No. His Dexterity is far higher. His skill level is also higher. He met her powerful swing with a weak one, using the force to swing his sword in a wide backswing at a very high speed. Beth is far slower and clumsier; she was unable to reposition in time to fully block the second strike, which was the true strike all along," Navere replied.