Limitless Path

They descended, again fighting beasts, finding nothing that was a challenge, and again they were beset by a monster. It took slightly longer this time, as the group was on the edge of the ledge of that tier and ready to leap down, Blood tensing her legs right as they heard the howling and ghostly whispers. Beth just rolled her eyes, looking around coldly to find the fade, and coldly was right, as the fades showed up as areas of increased cold in her special vision. They seemed to suck the life and heat out of everything around them, Beth finding on doing a moment of research on her communicator that that was the method by which they typically fed. As largely incorporeal monsters, they were immune to many attacks that both sapient beings and beasts would use against them, though even the most direct or physical of skills could deal damage to them if it had enough mana behind it. That and the fact that weapon skills could deal vast amounts of damage to them, as long as the wielder was at least a Master, something their group didn't have any shortage of at the moment, meant there were plenty of ways to harm them.

This fade was stronger than the last, but only by a little, and was dispatched with virtually the same level of speed and ease. The group waited a moment to see if they attracted any other howling and crying visitors, but when none presented themselves, they leapt down, continuing further into the Pit. Another two tiers passed with little fanfare and no more monsters, making Beth think that Oumar's assertions that there were very few of the things down there were correct or mostly correct. The group wasn't letting their guard down, obviously, but they went quite a long time without encountering any monsters or anything else out of the ordinary. That was, until they were another three layers deep, well over a dozen layers down at this point, and finding the Pit had narrowed a substantial bit.

Some of the layers had several hundred feet between them, not a problem for anyone in her group, but a fall like that would do in people with much lower stats. Endurance could really help strengthen a body, even at lower amounts, but it was somewhat less effective on resisting external impacts; someone with a hundred Endurance, for example, wouldn't have to worry much about hurting themselves even when using many hundreds of points worth of Strength, but the protection was not at the same level when blocking external force.

Of course, everybody in their group was into, if not well into, the quadruple digits when it came to their stats, especially Endurance, and leaping two or three hundred feet down didn't really bother them at all. They had to be more worried about the damage they would do to the surrounding terrain, though the mana density had increased as they went down. Mostly it was Sera and Bjorn, as the two of them were not just quite large but quite heavy, with Sera almost rivalling the bigger titan; Beth personally though it was something to do with Sera's scales, as, though they weren't much of her body's volume, even coating her tail, they were a lot of mass. Sera had shed one or two, though she shed quite rarely, as the scales could grow and adapt to changes in her height and size, and Beth had been rather shocked to find the scale heavier than a steel ingot and more than twice as strong. Just based on her scales alone, weaker enemies would have a terribly tough time doing her any real damage, and it was something to consider, as Beth liked Sera to stay a bit scalier, even as her Humanization advanced. The greater mana density meant that Sera, with her heavy scales, and Bjorn, with his sheer mass, didn't have to worry quite as much, but they were the only ones who, upon leaping a great distance, might find themselves slightly embedded in the stone.

"You can, uh, get smaller, if that would help," Beth said, chuckling a slight amount as she help Sera rip free of the dense stone ground.

"It's not that bad," Sera said. On seeing the skeptical looks, she elaborated, "It's not a danger to my performance, and I like being tall and armored. Not to mention, she likes it."

"It's an aesthetic thing," Beth said, holding up her hands and defending herself as the looks turned to her.

"Mm-hmm," Val said, turning to lead the way with Blood. "I'll think I'd like to know less."

"What?" Beth asked, glancing between Sera and Kris.

"Nothing, my love," Sera said, patting her on the shoulder before padding after the others.

As they were proceeded downward, the mana wasn't the only thing that was growing denser. Both the number of beasts, as well as the number of formations, were increasing rapidly. The formations were also not at all natural, whether placed by the Path or by somebody else in some long forgotten age, it was often hard to tell, but they were starting to give Val a challenge. That usually just meant the group was a little slower, as they had to stop more often and for longer to let Val break up or just turn off nasty bits of ones. The arrays weren't all just barriers now, as they had moreso been up top, but many included some rather devious traps or other tricks that would have made stumbling over one rather unpleasant.

"So, what do they do, blow up?" Beth had asked Val as she tackled yet another array. This one was outside a deep tunnel that burrowed into the side of the Pit. They had encountered one of these before, full of beasts and with some very valuable ore at the end, so they decided this would be a good site to explore sideways a bit.

"No, this is an Illusion Formation," Val replied as she worked at it. "Many of these are traps for the mind, and if you don't have the skill or skills needed to resist, plus high Wisdom and often Endurance, they'll suck you into a fantasy and leave you stranded there. Meanwhile, your mind is empty, but your body is still here, prone to attack, or even dying of starvation or thirst. Sometimes they're less hostile, just leading you in damn circles for fucking hours before dropping you back at the start, allowing you to walk back out but get no further towards some treasure. Other times, they're way more hostile, some kind of Life and Death Formation that attacks your mind, often by pitting you in battle against foes you could never hope to beat, killing your consciousness and leading you to brain death, which leads to real death."

"That sounds…unpleasant," said Beth.

"Yeah, the Path doesn't fuck with people like that until they're a lot stronger," Val replied pertly, still working on the array. "Other people, however, can use them whenever, though a Life and Death Array isn't something easy to make, nor is it easy to just carry in your back pocket. Most times, big clans or government agencies use the stupid fucking things to protect some high-level treasure vault or the like, though it's really to keep the pests away. Stronger people have ways around or to deal with them, so it's usually just the fucking losers that get caught in one."

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"That's, uh, interesting," Andrea said, eying Val skeptically as she worked. "And you're, uh, sure you know what you're doing."

"Yes," Val replied testily. "Unlike the rest of my group, I'm actually stars-damned competent."

As she finished saying that there was a click and a brief flare of light, not that bright, and then the runes that had formed the array all lost their luster and stopped glowing. Val straightened up from where she had been kneeling to access the last runes and stretched her back a bit, pressing against it at a bit of an unusual angle with her multi-jointed arms. She turned and motioned to the others, waving them forward before walking through the area the array had just occupied, showing them it was indeed disabled. That didn't help them for very long, as the moment they got deep into the tunnel they turned a corner to find a glowing barrier blocking their way. It wasn't just one, either, as there were clearly multiple layers; three, if Beth didn't miss her guess, all of which blocked the rest of the tunnel from their sight and passage.

"Shit," Val swore, examining the new obstacle. "If I knew I was going to be spending the whole weekend doing enchanting work, I would've studied a little more first. It's been months since I've done this crap and I'm not even that high-level at it. Not yet, anyway."

"Just give it a go," Beth said with a shrug. "We don't need to go through here; we can always go somewhere else or do something else. Just see if you can solve it quick, otherwise we'll go back and do something more fun."

"Right, more fun," Val muttered, starting to examine the barrier blocking their way.

It took Val a couple hours to get through the first two barriers, but she had insisted on working on it, that it was good for her skills. Not only that, but if something was guarded by three such powerful and complex barriers, it was likely pretty damn valuable, so they were all curious to see what could be further down the tunnel. She had the first two barriers down and was working on the third, but the time on that one stretched on. And on. And on.

"Should we just go?" Beth asked, squatting further back in the tunnel. Sera was standing behind her, the dragon's back to the wall and her tail wrapped around Beth, the shorter girl basically in-between Sera's legs.

"No, dammit!" Val snapped, poking a silver tool into a rune and getting a zap of mana that numbed an extra-long, extra-jointed finger. "Fucking Blood Stars! I'll get this thing yet. Fuck!"

"She swears a lot," Kris commented quietly.

"Eh, I've heard worse," Beth said with a shrug.

"You've said worse," Sera commented quietly.

"I'm not that bad," Beth argued back with a frown.

"Most of the time," Sera said under her breath, which was still more than loud enough for the whole group to easily hear.

They waited a while longer, most of them squatting or sitting in the hallway, though they took turns watching the way they had come. Blood would also go out from time to time to scout around and make sure there wasn't anything too crazy sneaking up on them, but they didn't encounter anything really troublesome. The hours dragged on, and Beth suggested leaving again, but Val insisted she had it, and the others were happy to rest and relax. Some napped, Bjorn pulled out a chair that took up a large space back at the corner before the barriers and sat with Kris, and several people pulled out food and some light sources. Andrea set up a small brazier that was meant to be a portable campfire that one could cook on and burned with a mana flame that was basically smokeless.

After a few more hours had passed, Beth had had enough. She got up from where she had practically been entirely submerged, Sera wrapping multiple limbs and her extremely long tail around her to cocoon her. Beth started stretching and flexing, not saying anything but drawing stares from some of the others. She watched for a minute as Val continued working on the final barrier, the glow of the shield flickering occasionally but never really dying outright. It was clear the array that produced the thing was an order of magnitude more complex than the others and that Val was really struggling to figure out how to break it without some terrible consequence. Beth's patience was about up, even if she could have summoned her gate and had everyone relax, or even train, inside while they waited.

"Enough, Val," Beth said, walking up to the kresnik.

"No, no!" Val huffed. "I've got this."

"You don't, and we're done waiting," Beth said firmly, grabbing her shoulder and lifting her entirely off the ground before setting her on her feet. "Back up."

"What…what are you doing?" Val asked, angry in the first instant but becoming much more hesitant as she felt power swirling around Beth.

"You want to see what's on the other side? Well, let's see what on the other side," Beth said. "Everybody; back up."

Everybody listened to her now, backing up after making all their items and comforts disappear back into various dimensional spaces or pocket spaces. Beth stepped up to the barrier, cracking her knuckles as she flexed her neck left and right, popping her vertebrae. Power continued to build up in her as she pumped her body full of mana and it didn't stop, swelling greater and greater, the others in the tunnel feeling a distinct threat building. It was like the tide receding far out into the ocean, a distant rumbling and stillness in the air preceding a great tidal wave about to sweep across the land with devastating consequences. The others watched as her hair started thickening and growing, her muscles thickened before making a literal grinding sound as they condensed down, becoming even more powerful, and her physical appearance seemed to get larger and wilder.

As this reached its height, the space around them shattered as her Presence appeared, stronger than ever and glowing like a bright beacon in blackest night. Beth had always been adept with her Presence, skilled, even, and hers displayed more power and stability than many Enlightened people's would for a long time. The boost it gave her was significant, and some of the very dense, heavily mana infused stone at her feet cracked and flaked away just from the power her body was emitting into the air around her. It was very much like a wild beast that was just on the edge of control. And, much like that wild beast, she displayed little finesse or sophistication in her next actions.

Beth attacked the barrier with a tremendous force, the air around her splitting and shrieking just from the force of the blow. She didn't stop at a single hit, instead building up, striking over and over again, every punch and kick faster and harder, bringing ever more force to bear. The tunnel around her quaked and shattered, even the thick stone, infused with enormous quantities of mana over the course of many years, unable to hold up against just the backpressure her attacks were giving off. The barrier in front of her shook and flickered, but in the end, it held steady. Well, it held steady for the first while, as her power built, her Presence increasing in weight, her muscles grinding and thickening, and energy seeping off her in waves.

When Beth started ripping and tearing space itself apart, then things changed, though the others had to retreat at that point. She was releasing so much energy that it was putting pressure on them and making the tunnel around them unstable. They could only detect what she was doing through their enhanced senses and skills, feeling the space around the barrier, and what space it occupied, starting to tear and crack. Beth continued the relentless assault, the others exchanging glances as they heard her roaring in laughter as she released horrific amounts of mana and energy into the air around her. The shaking was quite extreme, and Blood privately thought her first bond might be giving the camps and town upstairs a bit of a rude morning wake-up call.

Things couldn't hold out forever, those things being the barrier, as Beth battered through it, the others hearing an explosive pop followed by a loud bang. Air and mana rushed down the tunnel around them and Kris created a screen of water to catch all the dust. They walked forward behind that screen, Kris hoovering up the dust and clearing the air as she went, circulating the water and adding fresh water as the dirt built up. Eventually, she walked up to Beth, dousing their team leader in slightly dirty water before withdrawing everything and making it disappear, leaving a pile of mud at the side of the tunnel.

"The shower wasn't necessary," Beth growled, having released her Presence but still partially retaining some bestial characteristics that were slow to fade.