Limitless Path

Beth still had hours of refereeing left, but she did have enough free attention that she could keep on eye on her surroundings. She had a feeling a lot of the refs did the same, considering many of them were getting close to rebirth ten or were at it. Watching matches of people who were at their first rebirth just wasn't that difficult, giving even the weaker refs plenty of attention span to scan what was going on in the rest of the arena. There was also the downtime, including times when people didn't show up for a match and they had to wait five minutes for a disqualification.

Beth was able to catch some snippets of Bai's team during the rest of the afternoon, watching little bits and pieces of their duels. They mainly fought as a team, though they did also fight in the doubles brackets. The team almost never fought in singles apart from Ming, the battle maniac, who fought anyone at any time in any circumstance. Eventually, the afternoon was over and Beth was replaced by one of the newcomers to the Hall. Well, they were newcomers to her, but some of them had been there close to a year at that point, so they weren't exactly new to the Hall, and they were all Gold Emblems, so they weren't new hires, either.

"Finally done?" Bai asked as Beth walked over to her team, the six not having left the floor apart from quick breaks to eat and use the facilities.

"For today. Still have tomorrow and Friday to go, and maybe even this Saturday, based on what John told me earlier," Beth replied with a sigh. "But enough about that. How do you want to do this?"

"I'd like to fight you alone, and I know Ming wants that, too," Bai said.

"What limits?" Beth asked immediately.

"No limits," Bai replied with a slight frown.

"Well, okay, but one round each," Beth said. "Then we'll put some limits in and see where it goes."

"I need to see how strong you are myself before we agree to a bunch of extra rules," Bai said while still frowning, though she nodded in agreement to Beth's stipulation of only one round for each of them.

"Let's get in the queue," Beth said.

Beth supposed they could have gone down to one of the training rooms and used it for their purposes, but Bai's group wanted to stick to the arena. Beth couldn't really blame them, either, as that was where all the action was happening right now. It also would look pretty good if they could give a good performance, even losing the matches, and the arena had quite a few spectators as well as many senior CRA members. She suspected that Bai and her team were also greatly underestimating her still; that much should be obvious, but she had the suspicion that the short girl and her team thought that they were only outclassed by a narrow margin. Well, the matches would prove where everyone was at, much more so than even an explanation would.

They had to wait for about twenty minutes until they could get a field; there were quite a lot of people fighting right now, even with it getting a bit late, and many of the fights took a while. While people at rather low levels and low rebirths didn't have very much END or many defensive skills, they also weren't doing a lot of damage. Many of them also didn't have very high proficiency with their main weapon, their weapon skills being Journeyman at most, which further slowed the pace down. It was always a balance; higher level individuals had much more powerful offensive capabilities, but they also had high END, good defensive skills (or dodging skills), and quite good equipment. Everything balanced out, at least, most of the time; there were times where somebody would just dominate a Hall or bracket. Veren was a good example; very few people below Enlightened were going to be able to deal with a Grandmaster. Beth could, as long as said Grandmaster didn't also have a Mana Physique, but even then, she couldn't win all the time.

Bai and her team were an incredibly far cry from Grandmasters, however, though they weren't terrible. As Beth entered the dueling field and took her place in the circle she could feel the shorter girl activate some buffing skill. She decided not to use any of her own, as that really felt like punching down. Besides, Beastly Tyrant was always active to at least a small extent, the skill having both a passive and active component. She wouldn't use anything else, at least in terms of buffing skills, and she was tempted not to use any other skills apart from her weapon skills. She was curious if she just used her overwhelming stats and weapons, which would be her sword and her body, if Bai had any kind of chance. She thought it unlikely, but it was worth trying; besides, Bai was very unlikely to do her much damage, let alone one-shot her. If her stats and weapons somehow weren't cutting it, she could adapt on the fly.

Her considerations had taken them to the point where the ref was asking for their readiness. It was a second of the newer Gold Emblems, a tall and thin woman with very long legs that was in the habit of wearing bright colors. Beth gave the requisite bow indicating she was ready, though a nod or verbal agreement could suffice, and waited for Bai to reciprocate. Once they had both signaled, the five second timer started, and she could see Bai visibly tensing in the circle across from her. Beth had some of her older gear on, including one of the masks they had used for a while, so Bai couldn't see her slight smirk, but the shorter girl could definitely see the very slight shake of her head Beth gave right as the ref was signaling the start. The ref was able to easily interpret it as a gesture for the opponent and still dropped her hand, at which point Bai charged her.

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It wasn't a messy charge, however, as the girl still clearly remembered that Beth could teleport. It only took getting surprised and punched in the back of the head or gutted like a fish once to be eternally wary of a teleporting opponent. The Chinese girl was moving fast but not at her top speed and Beth could pretty much feel the scanning skill the girl was using, not to mention how intense her focus was, both on Beth and the space directly around Bai herself. Beth waited for the girl to close, not moving or even shifting her stance until Bai was right on top of her. The girl used whatever charge skill it was she had as she got close, speeding up dramatically as she barreled into Beth. Despite that massive increase in her forward momentum, Beth wasn't fooled, able to easily track Bai, blocking the swing of her saber with a casual flick of her sword.

If Bai was surprised, she was much better at concealing it now than she had been, not reacting to Beth's deflection but instead returning with another swing. Beth deflected that swing as well, a tap of her sword to the flat of Bai's saber knocking it well off course. This went on for a few moments, Bai competently and rapidly maneuvering her large blade, constantly clashing with Beth. Beth found it trivial to bat the girls sword away, having far more stats and a higher skill level than the other frontline fighter. Bai didn't let the situation continue, clearly sensing she wasn't making any headway, nor likely to, and she activated a series of skills one after the other. The first let her massive blade move at an incredibly rapid speed while leaving confusing afterimages in its wake, the blade still carrying all the force of a regular swing. That regular swing was then multiplied as the second skill Bai used caused the blade to be imbued with fire and smash into Beth's blade explosively.

Against any other opponent, this combination alone would have been devastating, not to mention that Bai was running two skills that boosted her strength and speed. Combine all that with her stats and she could stand near the top of Earth's current Wayfarers, though even discounting Beth, she wasn't at the very top. Against Beth herself, however, these skills were nothing, the much taller girl able to keep up with the speed and power without even flinching. The only concern Beth had at the moment was whether the sword she was using, an older greatsword that she hadn't used much in a while, could withstand the onslaught. That was certainly something to be wary of in such fiery exchanges, equipment many times not being as tough as the competitors themselves, at least at the lower levels. Even were her sword to break, which the arena would fix when they were done, she still had her fists and feet, both of which were very heavily armored.

Beth was content to stand and fight, allowing Bai to go all out without retaliating much, watching the younger woman hammer away without giving up. Bai didn't rest after using her skills but added more to them, activating another skill that allowed her to add a push to every swing, like a telekinetic blast from the edge of her blade every time she slashed it at anything. This was a bit novel, and Beth did find it harder to guard with the added force, but harder didn't mean impossible. She continued to block and parry Bai's attacks for a handful of seconds, observing how the other girl tried to vary her angles and attack in unexpected ways before she started circling Beth, trying to get a positional advantage. Beth still didn't move, other than to rotate a little in place to keep track of Bai's movements.

After a little while of this Beth was pretty sure she had seen everything Bai currently had to offer and she had to say, she was mildly impressed. The younger woman hadn't had quite as many opportunities as Beth, but she was still rather powerful, with many of her skills at the peak of Silver and at least one of them in Gold. Beth pushed her further when she started counterattacking, causing Bai to display one of her hidden pieces, that being her Presence, which the girl had held out on using so far. Beth's short, sharp slashes came close to severely injuring Bai several times, prompting the girl to call on her Presence for the added power boost. She was better than some Beth had seen, but it was clear to her that Bai still needed a bit of practice with summoning and manipulating the ability, as she wasn't as fast or decisive as Beth was with her own use of her Presence.

Bai's Presence was a fiery mantle, draped over her shoulders and with a short half-cloak at the top of her back. The whole thing was literally made of a deep red fire, which Beth could feel the heat of from a few feet away, though that level of heat and fire mana wasn't enough to cause her injury. Within the fiery mantle were two small, glowing white stars, one on each of Bai's shoulders, clearly signifiers of her rebirths, the same as the filled-in eyes of the wolves on Beth's crown. Bai's Presence had greatly increased her strength, moderately increased her speed, and slightly increased her defenses, though Beth wasn't quite sure about the last part, as she hadn't hit Bai with anything really powerful. Yet.

Bai kicked into high gear with her Presence out, smashing away at Beth's defenses, still using the ability that added force to her attacks with every swing. Beth figured the skill was some kind of force multiplier, as she could tell that it wasn't just that Bai's swings were stronger but that the increase in Bai's strength had dramatically increased the amount of force the telekenetic skill was deploying. Beth blocked every attack Bai threw out for a few seconds, feeling the shocks of the impacts in her wrist and the bleed over of the force skill pushing on her whole body. If she weren't as damn powerful as she currently was, the combination of everything Bai was doing would seriously have her on the back foot. As it was, it had her locked down enough that she was legitimately finding it difficult to counterattack. Well, that was if she still wasn't doing anything other than use her sword and no other skills.

As soon as Beth added a little more into the mix, putting just a thread of mana in Spatial Domain, the game completely changed. She wanted to use a skill she had only practiced with a little bit in real combat and, to be totally frank, she really wasn't in any kind of danger currently, despite Bai's big improvement in strength. Spatial Domain allowed her to manipulate space in a certain area around her; the higher the skill level, the broader her range and the more force she could exert. That would hold true through Gold, but as with many skills, she expected the skill to become more powerful or change in some vital way at Platinum, or Diamond at the latest. As it was now, it was more than enough to mess with Bai's rhythm, which was very clear from the first moment Beth activated the skill. She had tried to freeze space around Bai's arms, which hadn't been entirely successful, but she had managed to really thicken space, which totally threw the younger girl off. More, that solidifying of the space caused Bai to become wildly unbalanced, which she quickly corrected, but that also caused her to slow down and become more cautious.

That was a great mistake, as Beth took advantage of that to begin not just counterattacking, but attacking outright, pressing the small girl back. She still wasn't using anything other than her blade and her domain skill, but even with her Presence active, Bai wasn't able to keep up. When Beth realized she was fully overwhelming the smaller girl, she decided to put an end to it; the matches would be better when they figured out some limit for her and some boost for Bai's team. She activated only one more skill, that being Spatial Obliteration, perhaps not the kindest way to end it, but she wanted Bai to have a good understanding of the difference in their current strengths and that skill made a good demonstration. It took, in fact, only two swings to eliminate the other girl, the ref immediately calling for stoppage after Beth's second swing, calling for one of the two Gold Emblems acting as a medic to come over even with the dueling field healing them both; such was the damage Beth had done with just two attacks.