Chương 73: Limitless Path Chapter Seventy-Three

When she placed her hand against it, there was no reaction, nor did the currents pulsing through it shock her. She supposed the summoning of the dinosaur might have been some kind of defensive reaction, as she didn't see any other beasts of any kind in the field, but it could just as easily have been part of its routine functionality. She continued to inspect the metal for a minute, trying to see if it matched anything she knew of from her study of smithing, but she couldn't make heads or tails of it.

Once Blood had finished her impromptu feast, she jogged over to join Beth at the side of the arch. Beth finished her inspection before signaling to Blood with a wave of her hand, stepping around to stand in front of the arch. With a quick glance at her companion, she took a deep breath before stepping forward across the threshold. Nothing changed. Looking around, Beth was disappointed to find that they were teleported exactly nowhere, and she was just standing a couple steps further across the field.

She glanced at Blood again, who simply returned the look, before they returned to the outer edge of the arch. After a little more investigation, Beth decided there was nothing they could do here without some other skills or equipment. Remounting her lupine companion, Beth had them curve out further westward with an eye towards moving back north. While what felt like endless days of training had given her a bit of cabin fever, she still wanted to get back to the Hall before it got dark.

Considering they were a couple hours away at a decent pace and it was moving just past midday, Beth thought it better to turn homeward sooner rather than later. They had seen surprisingly few beasts so far, though of the handful they had encountered, about half were into the double digits, a sign Beth found a little worrying.

Considering her and Blood's levels and the sheer presence a high-level, six-hundred-pound wolf could emit, she assumed the beasts they did encounter were likely the strongest and/or stupidest around. Beth's thoughts were interrupted by a low rumbling groan, and it took her a moment to process what she was hearing. The two had just entered a section of field which apparently belonged to a dairy farmer, the rumbling noise having been a large, truly fat cow greeting them.

It seemed non-hostile and, if Beth were being entirely honest, maybe just a little stupid, watching them approach it with big, glistening doe-eyes. She could about look the bovine directly in the eye from her seat on Blood's back, though she did still have a slight height advantage over the white and black-spotted monstrosity. She used Identify on the animal just to check as it curiously bumped its massive, blunt nose against her.

Contented Dairy Cow Level 9 Well, no real surprise there, other than somehow it had Contented as a prefix modifier. Beth hadn't been aware that such… simple… labels could be appended to animals out in the wild, but it was a good note. The cow, content that they weren't anything interesting, went back to its lazy grazing, and Beth noted a few others scattered across the field. With a pat to her neck, Blood was off again, still tracking a little more west than north.

Maybe their two discoveries during the first part of the day were lucky, but they found little else until they were somewhat close to the CRA Hall, having finished heading westward and moved back east as they were making their way north. They were probably not more than twenty minutes away from the Hall at a good clip when they stumbled upon what Beth could only describe as a goblin village. They slowed atop a wooded hill to survey the scene.

The village was little more than a ramshackle group of long houses and a couple outbuildings lumped together. There were a handful of stakes driven into the ground around the area, perhaps supposed to be a defense, but even Blood, with her massive size, could have walked right between most of them. They saw quite a handful of goblins scattered around the village, many either wandering out into the surrounding area or returning from a foraging run.

Beth dismounted from Blood and started down the hill, holding off on drawing her sword just yet. In many video games and stories, goblins were low-level, stupid, and aggressive enemies that proved an annoyance for early on, but she didn't want to make any assumptions in this new world. As it turned out, she could have been rather spot-on with a few assumptions based off her pre-change knowledge.

As soon as a few goblins in the village spotted them, they immediately drew whatever pathetic excuses for weapons they had and charged, screaming incoherent war cries the whole time. The furor quickly attracted more attention, spreading through the village like a wave of overcharged madness. Beth drew her sword while Blood flexed her neck and shoulders, getting ready for a few minutes of bloody work. She used Identify as the first goblins started to near, not impressed with what she saw.

Goblin Vandal Level 8 She was even less impressed with the little creatures as they mobbed her, the light of intelligence very clearly missing from both their eyes and tactics. The beasts, even the three with spears, just mindlessly threw themselves at the two budding Enforcers, only interested in ripping apart their tasty meat. This village was clearly not a group of enlightened goblins, and Beth sneered a little, adopting a bit of a frustrated grimace as she hacked through the wave of beasts.

The battle, if one were to be fairly generous with their labeling, lasted about three minutes, mainly due to the sheer numbers that the little village had disgorged. Thankfully, Beth mused to herself, it appeared the village was some kind of generated thing like a dungeon, as there were no children or elderly present. While the goblins here were of both genders, she judged them all to be in the prime of their lives, whatever age that was for the mindless version of goblins, and quite weak.

Having Identified a few more during the time she and Blood spent ripping the mass apart, she found none of them had any special modifiers, and the most advanced of them had the Vandal "job" listed after their species. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. Beth and Blood left the beasts where they fell, a morass of muddy, bloody bodies and body parts in a churned-up area outside the outer stakes of the village.

They entered the area, Beth keeping her sword at the ready while Blood swept the area with her keen senses, but it seemed the initial wave was the whole village. She stuck her head in the first outbuilding and nearly projectile vomited from the stench, reeling back outside with eyes watering while she gagged and swallowed her bile. While she suspected the village was something more akin to a prop than an actual functional village, the Path certainly made sure to make the smell as realistic as possible.

She dug in her pouch for a second, but quickly remembered she didn't have any extra clothes or anything she could use as a mask.

"Add a note to get some kind of masks or full fucking rebreathers to the camping gear list," she said to Blood, who still paced around the center area of the village, having not tried to repeat Beth's mistake. The huge wolf just barked in response, acknowledging the comment while she tried to find anything useful outside the buildings. Beth steeled herself and took a breath before stepping into the outbuilding again.

Thankfully for her, it was both small and rather barren, taking only a few moments to rummage through. She found nothing of interest, only a few very crude stone tools and a few animal hides and less… savory… bits strewn about. She burst back out of the little shack, coughing and waving her hand in front of her face. Blood merely glanced at her before going back to her patrol, clearly happy to be the one to watch for additional goblins or dangers rather than dumpster dive.

Beth moved up to the first of the three large longhouses as she glowered at her companion's back, shaking her arms out as she steeled herself again for the assault on her senses. Entering the long house was just as gross as she had assumed, the stench hammering at her nose even with her breath held. She observed the interior for a moment as her eyes adjusted to the light, the building having no windows or openings other than a doorway at each end.

The central area had a few support pillars, but no walls or dividers of any kind and was strewn about with what she assumed was the goblins' bedding. Having observed the area, she held out little hope for any loot, but she was determined to poke around regardless. And poke around was exactly what she wound up doing, not wanting to touch anything even using her gauntlets, she poked at the mess with the tip of her sword.

She discovered very little other than filth, a handful of crude stone implements, some of which she thought might be weapons, but it was pretty difficult to determine what any of the junk might have been in the general mess. Just as she was getting desperate for some fresh air, she flipped over a rather large and rather dirty animal skin to find a small, greasy box.

She grabbed the little redwood box with the claw tips of her gauntlets and hustled out the back door right next to her, gasping in the fresh air as she circled back to the center of the village. She looked around, seeing Blood still wandering the village while watching the surroundings, noting the two freshly killed goblins by the western edge of the village. Apparently, Blood had been taking care of the stragglers that had been out scavenging when the whole village decided to break itself against them.

Shaking her head, she held up the little box in the light of the afternoon sun, looking at the greasy little treasure with a dubious eye. Holding the box in the tips of her left fingers, she planted her sword in the ground, freeing her right hand to prod at the box tentatively. It didn't seem to be trapped, though she was no rogue to be able to guarantee such a thing, and it was held closed by a fairly simple clasp.

The make of the box was not particularly impressive, in her amateur opinion, but it was not total garbage, either. Even though the quality was firmly mediocre, it was still leagues better than anything else she had encountered so far in the dismal little village, likely either being stolen or placed there by the Path. She shrugged and dismissed the thoughts, flicking the clasp with her right index finger to pop the box open.

The thin lid opened with a slightly pained squeak, the liberal coating of grease on the outside of the container having not worked its way into the hinges, somehow. She examined the inside, seeing nothing much of particular interest, though she was quite happy to note a few of the coins inside were silver. Apart from the smattering of coins, there was a small knife without any kind of sheath, made of some kind of silvery metal, as well as a small gem.

The gem was a little bigger than Beth's thumbnail and, considering the fact she had always had long fingers, it put the gem at about three-quarters of an inch in diameter. Blood had come over to see what she was up to in the meantime, giving the box a slight sniff before growling and sneezing, in that order. Beth pulled the gem out of the box and held it between the claw tips of her right index finger and thumb, letting the sunlight shine through it.

Blood cocked her head to the side at the stone before sneezing again and resuming her patrol of the area. The gem was round rather than diamond-shaped, with a large number of small facets cut into it. It shone a brilliant sapphire blue in the light, and Beth wondered if she might have in fact found an actual sapphire. She didn't know much about gems, but she did know both size and coloring really mattered, and something this size should be worth somewhere in the range of multiple golds.

Putting the gem back in the box and flicking the lid closed, she grimaced again before heading over to edge of the village, attempting to find a leafy bush. She had some success and gathered up a handful of the leaves which she used to scrub most of the grease off the little box. Once she had gotten it as clean as she could, she shoved it in her expanded belt pouch with a sigh, hoping that she wouldn't have goblin grease in there forever.

She returned to the center of the village and picked the second of the three longhouses to explore. This one was even less impressive, and she emerged back into the light gasping and coughing a few minutes later about ten coppers richer. If she had been offered ten coppers to quickly walk through that longhouse, she probably would have punched the offeror in the face, so she considered it a net loss. Moving on, she entered the third house, a little concerned that she was becoming inured to the smell at this point.

The last large structure was almost a carbon copy of the other two, and she realized that there were no tables or chairs or, in fact, furniture of any kind other than the bedding in the buildings. That meant the goblins ate where they slept and, she assumed from the smell, pissed and defecated there as well. She poked around with her sword for a little, scrounging up a couple copper coins as she worked towards the back of the building.

She was pleasantly surprised to find two silvers hidden under a small, particularly dirty rag of animal skin in the far back left corner of the building, making the smelly coins disappear into her status screen immediately. She poked around the back another half-minute but, on finding nothing else, quickly retreated through the back door and returned to the center of the village. She tossed a silver to Blood when she approached, the coin disappearing as it got close to the wolf's head.

The coppers from the third house totaled another ten and she didn't bother divvying that up; not that it mattered that much anyway, the two happy to share money when needed. She mounted up on Blood, the girls continuing on their way back to the CRA Hall. They didn't encounter anything else unusual before they arrived, only bumping into a large mole-like creature that tunneled into the ground rather than trying to fight the duo.

Beth just shrugged as they continued, not upset that low-level beasts were turning tail and running at the sight of them. Killing the goblins earlier had given her basically zero experience, and chopping apart enemies so stupid they threw themselves on her sword wasn't getting her any weapon skill experience, either. The two arrived back at the Hall in the late afternoon, the sun hovering a little distance above the horizon as Beth dismounted and they entered the lobby.

There was nobody around other than Tazeen at the counter, the place brightly lit and spotless as per usual. Beth returned the elf's nod as they passed him by, heading deeper into the building along their usual route. Beth engaged the elevator in the arena section when they got there and pressed the button for the bottom floor.