LimitlessPath

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Ninety-Three

"You look lost," Blood growled with a grin, the throaty tone of her voice with the growl showing her amusement.  

"Got a new skill in all that excitement, just reading over it and thinking about it," Beth replied, watching Blood go through two towels just to get her hair dry. 

"Oh, sweet. What is it?" Blood asked. Beth made the skill and description appear, spinning the text box in the air with a flick to face Blood, a little tr...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Ninety-Two

Beth took advantage of their unfocused nature, slamming into the man with a renewed fury, knocking him further back before knocking him down. The spear woman interrupted, thrusting at Beth over the man laying on the sand, but Beth pulled a move that caused a shocked look to appear on both of their faces, digging her right sabaton under the man and snapping her leg up and forward in a kicking motion. She launched the greatsword-wielder into the air, causing him to take a direct strike from the...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Ninety-One

One clash in particular left a deep impression on her, as a girl that looked just as young as she was wielded a spear with such skill that Beth had a very difficult time keeping up. It felt like every time the young woman even twitched her hands Beth was in danger of dying, barely deflecting or blocking every strike. The pressure she felt was enormous, and Beth was no longer some fresh recruit with her weapons, both her Swords and Unarmed skills being more than halfway through Journeyman. She...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Ninety

They had only gained one level during the whole course of the stage, but the bonus reward for placing highly gave them another two levels on top of that. That put the two of them at level one hundred ten, which was far higher than Beth expected them to be at this point. The closest Warder grunted angrily at them as they stood there, causing both girls to jump before they hurried to clear the area. They left the array room and headed back to their temporary quarters, where they rested just for...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Eighty-Nine

The two of them left after checking their balance, noting that she was already over nine thousand points in this resource drive. They made their way over to the CRA Hall, heading down to their room on the fourth basement floor where they dropped their packs and started their evening routine. After eating and resting for a minute, they bathed and took care of the rest of their cleanup before heading to bed.  

The next six days proceeded the same as the last f...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Eighty-Eight

Once she had somewhat gotten used to the toxin, she carefully dug up the plants, having to exert quite an enormous amount of strength to even break the ground open. She had to resort to slamming the clawed tips of her fingers into the ground quite hard with multiple powerful punches to break up the area around the flowers. 

"What are you doing?" Blood hissed at her, clearly upset at the amount of noise Beth was making. 

"We'...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Eighty-Seven

They made sure their keys worked on the room and everything was in order before turning right around and heading back out for the day. It was still morning, though it was about to hit noon, and they needed to at least get the lay of the land before they did anything else. The first thing Beth suggested was a little research, able to tell Blood's thoughts on that by the drooping of her tall lupine ears, but that's still what they settled on doing. They spent a quick half-hour paging through th...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Eighty-Six

She tore into the boss and all the enemies around it, great gouts of blood and flesh flying into the air as she hewed away, monsters dying to one side and then the other. The boss was large, nine feet standing fully upright and nearly a ton of thick fat and sinuous muscle, which did little more for it than prolong its suffering. Beth cleaved it apart in a relentless dance of death, her blade tearing out create hunks of flesh with each strike. The beast eventually fell, dark red blood spewing ...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Eighty-Five

The fight took quite a while, due in large part to Dream Snake, as they were much slower and more methodical than Beth was used to being in battle. She wound up, even without Blood's assistance, killing nearly half the enemies herself, just because she fought more aggressively and was willing to take more risks. She could tell just from their expressions that Dream Snake largely didn't approve, though Trish seemed much more ambivalent about the whole thing. Dean approached her after the fight...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Eighty-Four

"You're not nervous throwing fire around like that in the woods?" Beth asked Liz. 

"These trees can take it, they're crazy sturdy," Liz replied. "It's very wet wood, as well, and it's been raining recently, so it's even more damp. Even the underbrush won't be smoldering from my spells, much less catching fire." 

"It's about knowing the terrain you're fighting in," Dean added from the side as he led the team in carving up the monsters...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Eighty-Three

Blood herself was having a bit of a harder time, but she thrived in it, the challenge that the monsters presented giving her a good opportunity to hone her skills. It was also a good chance to work on her Blood Queen's Claws, the move powerful enough even in the mid-Copper ranks to slice through the hide and flesh of the phykes, every single energy-claw of the attack dealing deep wounds. She was much, much faster and more agile than the phykes, the monsters not able to utiliz...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Eighty-Two

"So, people don't, like, I don't know, make mana crystal artificially?" Beth asked. 

"Oh, sure, but then you don't have as much guarantee of the quality, no matter what they tell you. Plus, everybody knows that, so then you have to get even more people involved; extra inspectors and enchanters and so on," Trish explained. 

"And more people mean even more money, which cancels out the savings," Beth nodded in understanding while Blood ...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Eighty-One

They informed the counter staff they were ready for stage nineteen and that they wanted it private, same as they always did. They were redirected to the Warder closest to them, who directed them through the next portal they were in line for immediately. A brief sense of disorientation and moment of time later, they were looking around at the setting for stage nineteen. 

They found themselves in something that Beth halfway recognized, mainly from her gaming background, ...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Eighty

They were back in the array room in no time, rested and watered and fed, as well as bathed, having taken advantage of the massive tub in the bathroom of their suite. They signaled they were ready for the start of stage eighteen, and made their way to the Warder to wait. When they were given the signal, they leapt through the portal and experienced that brief moment of disorientation. 

When they were aware of their surroundings again after a moment, they found themselve...

Accidental Post

I know some of you read the posts in your emails; please take note that I was uploading the upcoming chapters this morning and accidentally set a chapter to early access for essentially everyone. I have since deleted that chapter, but it is likely still in some of your inboxes. I apologize for the mistake, please disregard that post as it is highly out-of-order. 

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Seventy-Nine

The crocodiles were the clear lords of the swamp, as they grew more numerous and higher in level. The girls also observed them attacking a number of other beasts and tearing them apart, though there was a kind of armored ape that lived deeper in the heart of the swamp that could give the crocs a run for their money. A group of apes would lure a crocodile into attacking, which they would dodge, before pounding its head and legs with stones. Sometimes the croc would tear several of the apes apa...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Seventy-Eight

She put word to deed as she summoned her Presence, knowing this was another round where she would need to go all out from the very start. She felt the weight of the crown settle on her head as her power surged, time seeming to slow slightly as even her chronoception was boosted by her new ability. She utilized her newly boosted speed to the max, layering Swift and Beastly Body over top of her Presence to maximize everything right away. All five of t...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Seventy-Seven

The rest before they started round seventeen was just as long as Beth had imagined, taking a couple hours before she was ready to go again. She was a little frustrated that her healing and meditation skills weren't able to make the jump to Silver just yet, likely needing to wait for her to undergo her first rebirth. Meditation skills in particular were tricky, as the way to best advance them was to…well…meditate. It was a process of deep introspection involving the development of greater ...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Seventy-Six

A four-on-two was a better situation, but it still certainly wasn't ideal, especially considering the strength of all four opponents was at the level of a dungeon boss monster. Blood had been conserving her mana a little, but had decided it was worth sacrificing mana instead of stamina, as the first was still far more easily recovered. She started to use Blood Queen's Claws far more often, firing them out almost continuously at one point. She focused on the very first ap...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Seventy-Five

They weren't given much time to think, as the five boss enemies spawned the instant the projection was finished speaking. Beth did have enough time to get a decent look at what they were up against before she started moving, knowing that sitting still wasn't going to do them any favors. The enemies were all uniformly at level one hundred three, and they were a real mixed bag. The first round they faced a golem, a troll, a salamander-type beast, a shadow panther, and something that Beth identi...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Seventy-Four

The next two weeks passed like that, with Beth working on her smithing, seeing it improve to Apprentice[7] under the guidance of several new Master-level craftspeople. Now that her skills were really kicking up, she had started to seriously consider what she would build as her piece for the competition. She felt a simple sword would be a little too cliché, and she also wanted to use the competition as a chance to push herself. Using even a competition to try new things might sound a little c...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Seventy-Three

After reviewing the information, they looked over what the first packet had on Presences. It was largely as Beth had already started to figure out; a Presence was basically, at lower levels, a berserking skill. It provided a big boost in power in exchange for rapidly depleting the person's stamina and, if pushed too far, could leave injuries that might take weeks to heal. The aspect that Beth hadn't really explored herself yet was the suppressive effect of a Presence, something she had alread...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Seventy-Two

Blood tried both of the sets of boots, walking around the atrium in each of them to test the fit and her ability to walk, run, and jump. Beth marveled a little at how easily Blood had adapted to her human form, not really needing any time to figure out how to move around, the fluid grace of her wolf form carrying over to her human form as if by instinct. Blood settled on the second set of boots after trying both, then moved on to the gauntlets. Here, however, was the first time the woman work...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Seventy-One

They quickly returned to the room, eager to get away from both prying eyes and prying ears, not taking the Warder's lack of care for the norm. Once they were inside, Beth took another minute to look over Blood in her human form, admiring what her companion had turned into. Blood preened under the attention, turning in a slow circle again while stretching out to let Beth get a good look. 

"Uh, question," Beth said then. 

"What is it, ...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Seventy

The two had done quite a good job in thinning the herd as it approached the wall, with the defenders easily able to handle what flowed around them. Now they pulled back, back to the wall before leaping over it, clearing the field for a rest. Beth had been fine in the heart of the action, but now was gripped by a deep thirst and an urgent need for the bathroom. They both took care of several needs, including getting some rations in them, before returning to the wall to spectate for a short tim...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Sixty-Nine

When they regained their senses and looked around, they found themselves in a non-descript white room without anything in it. Before Beth could even say anything, a screen popped up in front of them, with quite a bit of information displayed on it. Beth took a quick glance around after the screen appeared, making sure that no enemies or other threats had appeared. It never hurt to be cautious, as she had learned.  

"You see this, right?" she asked Blood.&nbs...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Sixty-Eight

At the end of the floor, they encountered another set of stairs, but this one was only half a dozen steps leading up to a huge set of doors similar to the entrance to the dungeon. They were carved with the same kind of relief that was carved onto the outer doors, though this artwork was clearly depicting an entirely separate battle than what the entrance showed. The two girls sat to take another rest, giving it nearly an hour before they were ready to proceed. 

"...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Sixty-Seven

It was a few minutes later when Blood sent a message back to her, just indicating that there was a beast ahead and that she would wait for Beth. After another minute of slightly quicker movement Beth had caught up, stopping just beside Blood and kneeling slightly to try to minimize her profile in the wide tunnel. Looking ahead, she could see a definite source of heating moving, it taking a minute for her eyes to pick out some of the details in the low light. Her heat vision was definitely mor...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Sixty-Six

They cleaned up the grull quickly after that, Beth injuring them and Blood easily finishing them off. Blood's teeth and claws were certainly sharp enough to rip apart the joints of the beasts without any help from Beth, and her fangs could penetrate the armor, it just took time for her to punch through. Time was life in a battle like this and Blood just couldn't afford to spend that many seconds on a single attack when they were tangling against a whole pack of enemies. Blood could have slowl...

Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Sixty-Five

Beth watched as their levels rose by another two, having gained one during the stage as well. Three levels wasn't amazing for a stage, but it wasn’t anything to sneeze at, and was still a lot better pace than what they'd likely be doing outside of the Trial. They quickly cleared out of the vicinity of the array at a glower from one of the Warders, heading back to their room for a rest. They showered, slept, and then ate before they were back in the array room, ready for yet another new stag...