Chương 72: Limitless Path Chapter Seventy-Two

It took nine days. Beth spent all day, every day, training. The rest of the girls continued to train as well, though not nearly as long or hard as Beth. She had to renew her room today, making that the first stop of the day as she headed out to the lobby, having used the room the previous night. She checked her status page right before entering the lobby to confirm her current wealth, or lack thereof, and noted the improvements with a smile.

Name Elizabeth Anne Bell Class Brawler Level 28 Strength 84 Dexterity 40 Endurance 62 Intelligence 24 Wisdom 24 Free Points 0 Titles Silver Flame Empress' Inheritor Skills Ancient World Gate[0] Blacksmithing Apprentice[4] Crush Copper[9] Focused Meditation Copper[6] Identify Copper[7] Lightning Resistance Copper[4] Lordly Reconstruction Copper[8] Monstrous Blow Copper[8] Pain Tolerance Copper[9] Swords Apprentice[9] Toxic Resistance Copper[4] Unarmed Apprentice[9] Wealth 0g 29s 49c Emblems CRA Copper Emblem Bonds Blood Nine days of insane, grinding training and hard work had brought both her Unarmed and Swords up to level nine, and she had gotten another level in Blacksmithing with a couple late night sessions in the forge.

She closed her status screen with a blink as she entered the lobby and walked over to Tazeen. She stopped in front of him, returning his nod, before setting her key and ten silver on the desk.

"Another ten nights?" he asked calmly, already having made the silver disappear. Beth nodded as he moved the key over the panel and updated it with a quiet beep.

"Thanks, Tazeen," Beth gave him another nod as he handed her key back, giving her a very slight quirk of the lips in return, practically a radiant glow for him. She took the other girls through the dungeons before returning to the Hall to drop them off, letting Soph use her bathroom. The two moved up to the lobby once Soph was done, waving to Tazeen as they slipped out the front doors.

Beth had gotten a bit stir-crazy, only doing the two dungeons before spending twelve to fourteen hours a day training and practicing. It was time to explore, and she had quite some confidence in doing so. It was likely she was one of the strongest people in the area. There could be others stronger, of that she didn't really have any doubt, but she should be able to at least get the hell away from most people, and there were certainly few beasts that could challenge them.

Also, if anything truly troubling popped up that she couldn't handle, there was always the ability to send an SOS signal that the nearest CRA Hall would detect. As long as it wasn't some world ending calamity, she and Blood only needed to hold out for a few minutes at most before someone would arrive as back-up. Beth hopped on Blood's back, steering them southward as they hadn't done any kind of exploring in that direction as of yet.

They loped along or, rather, Blood loped along while Beth monitored the area around them, looking for signs of a good fight or a new dungeon to explore. The two of them encountered a whole lot of nothing for an hour, Beth guessing that there was nothing high level nearby. They did stumble upon a single ferret the size of a large dog, but Beth killed it with an empowered punch from Blood's back as they charged by it without even breaking their stride.

Blood stopped suddenly just over an hour into their journey with a soft whine, raising her head to the left, seeming to sense something to the east. Beth patted Blood firmly on the right side of the neck and gave her a nod, indicating that they could follow her senses to find out what was giving her an unusual feeling. They continued that way for just under three minutes before Blood pulled up suddenly again, starting to sniff around the area where they had stopped.

They were in a field with a handful of houses a couple hundred yards to the north and what looked like a warehouse with several tractor trailers in the lot further to the east. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. It didn't take a huge amount of effort for them to discover what was unusual in the field, with Beth being rather happy she had been on Blood, as it might have been a little more abrupt discovery otherwise.

In a slight dip in the field, they found an area of more than fifty feet across cut out as if a giant cookie cutter had descended from the sky and sliced away the earth. There was a winding ramp around the inside of the pit leading down into the gloomy depths, but Beth was still glad she hadn't tripped into the chasm and fallen onto a lower portion of the ramp. She hopped off Blood and the two of them proceeded to investigate the area around the sheer edge of the pit but found nothing of note.

There were no interesting beasts, no herbs or ores, nothing but grass and a few shrubs in the field.

"Well, time to see what this is all about," she said to Blood, leading the wolf to the edge of the long, rough ramp spiraling down into the pitch dark. The wolf merely chuffed in response, following behind as Beth began to walk down the long curve. The pit was surprisingly… bland. After walking for nearly ten minutes, it had gotten fairly dark, but there was little change otherwise. The ramp was still rough, fractured stone, and the walls were still a damp, hard-packed dirt.

Beth trailed a hand along the wall as they continued to descend, noting that while it was a rather dark color, the dirt wasn't crumbling or sloughing off the wall. Just as Beth was starting to wonder if the pit had any end, they arrived at the bottom. There was no chamber or room, the pit looking like someone had taken an apple-corer to the Earth to carve out a perfect cylinder. It did, however, have two tunnels leading outward from the bottom, across from the base of the ramp and separated by about twenty feet.

It was quite dark at the bottom of the chasm, but Beth could see that each tunnel led away from the other, so as to have the right tunnel leading off at a rightward angle. She drew her sword as she and Blood stepped off the ramp, finding the floor of the pit jagged and uneven, with clumps of gravel loosely scattered around. She proceeded towards the right-hand tunnel, turning her head to say to Blood, "Watch the footing, though I think I'll have more trouble than you will."

Blood chuffed in response, following along behind as they made their way to the opening. Taking half a minute to cross the floor of the pit to ensure a stable footing, Beth peered into the tunnel, seeing, "A fat lot of nothing." Blood snorted in response to this.

"What, you smell something?" Beth asked, turning to the huge wolf, noting how her emerald and golden eyes glowed in the low light. Blood shook her head, accompanied by a slight growl, Beth picking up the clear idea that all the wolf could sense was more dirt.

"This place is pretty weird," she continued.

"Way different than the area around it, plus we haven't seen any beasts anywhere nearby. Makes me a little nervous." Blood growled again in response, doing her best imitation of a shrug, as if saying ' I'm a wolf, what do you expect me to say?'

"Well, let's head back for now," Beth replied with a shrug of her own.

"As much as I want to see what's down in the uncharted depths, I'd rather do it with a flashlight. And maybe some other much needed supplies." At an affirmative bark from Blood, the two turned and carefully made their way back to the ramp before jogging up the spiraling path at a brisk clip. It took them far less time to return to the surface than it did to cautiously make their way downward, and Beth mounted back up as soon as they confirmed the coast was clear.

They resumed their journey southward, taking some time to roam east to west and back again as they went, trying to cover a larger area. Beth was hoping to find something else interesting that maybe wouldn't require them to have anything but their wits and their weapons at the ready. It took nearly another hour for them to encounter anything unusual, Blood once again proving the strength of her senses, detecting the anomaly well before Beth could see or hear anything.

The large wolf carried her to the west and south this time, veering from their almost due south heading with little more notice than a bark. In about a minute or just over, they approached an open section of field surrounded by a wooded area. There was a section of highway just visible further to the west through a gap in the trees, but the two paid it no mind as Beth hopped off Blood near a large archway.

The object had certainly been what had caught Blood's attention, the nearly three-story high edifice of black and silver metal emitting both a certain presence and smell into the surroundings. The best Beth could describe it as would be old vegetable oil; a greasy, oily, vegetal smell that wasn't quite rancid, but certainly wasn't pleasant to the nose. The two approached the new discovery cautiously, not wanting to be caught by surprise by some beast or security system.

Considering the person she bought all her goods from was apparently a nanotech-wielding cyborg, Beth made no guarantees there weren't any sci-fi types of security systems just waiting to electrocute them at a new location. As she drew closer, she observed the black and silver was not just some form of forged metal, but appeared to be active, for lack of a better term. It looked like there was either some type of circuitry embedded in the arch, or there was some kind of power being pushed through the material.

Stopping a few paces away to observe the pulses of what seemed to be electricity in the metal, she was startled but not shocked when a burst of energy rippled through the space in the center of the open frame. Taking a few quick steps back, checking that Blood was still tucked in behind her while she did, Beth drew her sword and waited to see what, if anything, would emerge from this new occurrence.

As she readied herself, she watched the power coruscating through the opening gather into a tight sphere of about a four-feet diameter over the course of three seconds. The blue-white sphere of energy pulsed twice before a large dinosaur suddenly dropped from it. The sphere disappeared immediately after, leaving Beth staring at what could only be described as a smallish triceratops. She quickly used Identify on the creature before it turned and roared at them.

Empowered Triceraton Level 20 Beth watched the dinosaur as it slammed its front left leg into the ground twice, lowering her stance as she anticipated the charge. And what a charge it was! She didn't know if it was because the mottled dusky brown and orangish beast had the 'Empowered' descriptor, or if it was just something a four-legged dinosaur that was nearly four feet at the shoulder and over two tons could do, but the beast absolutely stormed across the intervening distance.

Beth danced to the right just as the beast lowered its huge head and made to ram her flat, nimbly sliding to the side as she reversed her grip on her sword. Flipping the blade slightly in the air, she grabbed the hilt with the palm of her left hand facing down, blade pointed to her left, and set her right palm against the pommel.

As the prehistoric freight train rushed by, she inverted her momentum, stepping back to the left and lashing out with the tip of her sword, driving it forward with all the strength in her right arm. It was a good thing she had, for the blade didn't quite punch half-a-foot into the side of the beast, leaving a wound that would be much more annoying than crippling. As the beast roared again and slowed, preparing to turn for another pass at her, Blood leapt in from the side with a full powered body check.

What would have normally sent an opponent tumbling with broken bones barely caused the opponent to sway, the wolf darting back away as the dinosaur spun slightly to its left away from Blood, lashing its thick tail towards Blood's side. Beth didn't waste this opportunity, the beast both distracted and presenting its wounded left side to her. She had resumed her normal grip on her sword, and now she slammed the blade point first into the large gash on the beast's side.

It roared again, an infuriated, warbling bellow that made Beth's teeth rattle and vision blur. She ignored what might have been a skill, or perhaps just the force such a powerful creature could generate was enough, stepping forward with a snarl herself as she buried the blade nearly to the hilt in the Triceraton's side. The beast bellowed again, a sound which turned into a hacking cough halfway through.

Beth didn't let up, digging her heavy boots into the ground as she shoved with her now quite powerful arms, carving the dinosaur apart from the inside out. The beast staggered again and made to thrash its head at her, but before it could twist around more than a short distance, Blood appeared again beside it. This time, the massive wolf slammed her gaping jaws into the beast's neck, sinking her dagger-like teeth in up to the gums.

As Beth continued to push, Blood began to pull, tearing the creature's tough flesh as it staggered to the side. With her own bellow, Beth infused her arms with a massive burst of mana, hearing her joints crackle and pop as she felt her muscles swell. With a large step forward, she exerted enough force to start the dinosaur toppling, swinging up with all her might. The skill Monstrous Blow was fully active now, and Beth grunted as the sword was stopped in its path of carnage by the beast's backbone.

With another snarl, she pushed with her legs while twisting her torso and bunching the muscles of her back and arms. The spine of the beast blew apart with a CRACK like a rifle shot, the sound echoing across the field as blood and viscera sprayed from the nearly bisected dinosaur. Beth pulled her feet out of the furrows they had dug into the ground with a grunt, stepping back and shaking out her arms as she inspected the corpse with a critical eye.

Blood, meanwhile, had let the neck go and was sniffing about at the open wound, eyeing it to perhaps see if she could pluck a choice organ out.

"Adventuring really is dirty work," Beth muttered, scrunching her nose as she stepped back up to the large corpse. Setting the blade of her sword into the opening she had recently created, she twisted the weapon to the side, opening the remains further with a wet, crunching, tearing noise. Blood barked enthusiastically, shoving most of her massive head into the gaping opening.

Beth backed up with a grunt, practically scrunching her whole face as she turned from the scene of Blood's feast, dismissing the kill notification as she walked back toward the archway. The opening of the arch was about fifteen feet across, with the black metal pillars themselves being about three feet in diameter. Beth tried to use Identify on the construct but got nothing in return, once again lamenting that she had neither a more advanced skill nor a separate one that worked on objects.

Beth moved forward again, sword held firmly in her right hand, approaching the left side of the arch itself. The construct did not react this time, the pulses of power across its surface continuing steadily as she stepped up and touched the metal. It was warm, which she could tell even through her gauntlets, meaning it was actually somewhat hot.