Limitless Path

"Maybe that's enough excitement for one day?" Sera asked with a slightly quirked brow.

"We've got a lot of sites to investigate," Beth replied with a small frown.

"That's true, but we don't have a time limit," Sera replied.

"Other than the limit that most of these places haven't been checked and are about to overrun," Beth retorted. "We either keep pushing or we deal with high-level beast tides, and soon."

"Point taken," Sera said with a quick nod.

They continued to the next site, something thankfully a little more normal than a crater with level five hundred beasts stalking the bottom. Well, normal if a level three hundred dungeon was considered normal, but the girls were relieved to find something so ordinary by comparison. Blood put the ship down a decent distance from the site, and they debarked before packing the ship away. They found the area wasn't nearly as hostile as their last stop; it was hostile, to be sure, but it wasn't as bad as having a level four hundred wyvern suddenly trying to bite their heads off. There were plenty of beasts attacking them, but dealing with something at level two hundred thirty was a relief after fighting a flying, scaled, armored, fire-breathing terror of the skies at level four hundred. Some of the beasts far out from this dungeon were weak enough that Beth could kill them with two quick strikes, which didn't necessarily mean they were truly weak; it just really showed how strong the girls were becoming.

They approached the dungeon quickly, slowing down as they got into the range of the beasts the place was spewing out. They found that this dungeon was producing something resembling a cyclops, standing rather tall and with one giant eye that gazed around. Angrily, if Beth was any judge of one-eyed glares. Most of them wore some kind of simple loin cloth, though some had more complex clothing like breeches made of rough animal hides. Some, also, had nothing on at all, which was certainly not pleasant to look at, considering the beasts' hygiene and general appearance, but they were already well-used to that kind of thing, and it was rather rare, however fortunately. Beth took some pictures, videos, and scans before they waded in, noting the cyclops were in the high two hundreds, those outside the dungeon entrance, at least from what she could see.

The entrance to the dungeon itself was buried in a large building, or the ruins of one, teleported to Earth whole, or as whole as ruins could be. They had to navigate the rather large structure, which was not a maze, thankfully, and they managed to find the central room, where the entrance itself was located. Beth frowned at it after they had cleared the large room out, which she supposed was meant to be a dining room, but the architecture and décor was a bit…off. There were too many doors, not enough chairs, or tables for that matter, and the whole thing had the feeling of a temporary sitting room or even a cross-connecting hall. Once again, the Path being weird and not understanding things or messing with things that already existed for reasons very few in the universe understood. The entrance itself was an unvarnished gate in the middle of the room, nothing fancy or odd about it, and it stated it was a large dungeon starting at level three hundred that was located over a mana well.

The place must be more recent than some of the other stuff they had found, as Beth had a feeling that it had leveled up very little since being moved here. Some of the other places felt like they had grown in power since entering the mana rich environment, though that wasn't a guarantee. This place also didn't have tons of beasts wandering around on the verge of going on a rampage and creating a tide, which was a big relief, as it was a place that nobody necessarily had to do anything about just this moment. They could leave it alone for weeks or months and not have any terrible problems crop up from that decision.

"You look rather thoughtful," Sera said, wrapping an arm around Beth.

"I want to do this dungeon, but we don't have time," Beth said with a sigh.

"We can get through it in a day or two," Sera replied with a shrug.

"Assumptions, assumptions," Beth said with another sigh. "We have a little over a day until we have to be back for ref duty. If this somehow takes longer than twenty-four hours, which is possible, then we'll be late for duty only a few weeks into our refereeing. Not a look I want to foster."

"Well, we can come back next weekend and tackle this. Do you want to keep exploring then? We do still have time," Sera said.

"I think we'll head back," Beth said, whistling at Blood to get her attention. The wolf trotted over to them and Beth explained, "Here's the plan; we go back now, use my gate tonight, tomorrow, and tomorrow night, and start putting on levels. We get as high as we can before Monday morning, go do ref duty this week, and then we do the same next weekend. As soon as we're off-duty on Friday, we head over here, explore, and chart out the sites. We turn around Saturday evening, like now, and head back to the Hall to level."

"A lot of boring grinding," Blood grunted, shaking her head.

"We can take some time to relax," Beth countered. "But, then again, I'm not planning on opening my gate every day. I still can't handle that kind of strain. So, we have the evenings and nights free, as much as we can get while we're on duty."

"Sounds like a plan to me," Sera said, nodding in agreement.

"As long as I can keep flying," Blood grumbled, turning and leading the way out of the ruins.

Stolen story; please report.

They deployed the airship again when they had gotten to a free clearing, though the clearing had only become free once they killed the dozen beasts in it. Blood was on the bridge right away, getting them in the air and moving. The airship was fast enough that even taking it easy, they were back to their home Hall within two hours, landing the ship just a bit away from the Hall and packing it away. They used a side entrance to get into the arena section, finding they weren't the only ones who were using different entrances. At least, there was somebody walking out the door they were using, gawping at them as they entered, Beth assuming he wasn't fleeing anything based on the amount of time he spent stopped and staring.

Beth took them down to the room where the first thing they did was get a generous helping of food before Beth opened the gate. With the current time compression, they could get more than a hundred hours of grinding in over the next twenty-four hours or so. Their adventures in middle America had gotten them a handful of levels; killing beasts between a hundred and two hundred and fifty levels above themselves gave them quite a bit of experience, and they had gone from the one twenties up to over level one hundred forty. That meant that Beth could set the starting level of the beasts in the gate to level two hundred forty-five, though that would only suffice for a short time. They would be moving away from the gate at a rapid pace to constantly be fighting higher-level, more rewarding foes. Beth had set it to hobgoblins, which were stronger and more skilled than goblins, providing a bit more experience, but were still relatively simple beings, even at a higher level, for the girls to kill.

A hundred something hours of killing beasts might have been a lot for most people, but the three of them needed little rest, even while killing for hours and hours at a time. That, combined with their frankly overwhelming strength, meant they could chew through thousands and thousands of enemies at much higher level than themselves every twenty-four hours. Doing that for several twenty-four-hour blocks with only an hour of rest in between saw them getting more than forty levels during just one objective day. They emerged from the gate a good bit stronger than they entered, taking a couple hours to sleep after showering off. It was then time for them to head to a counter, check-in, and get to work refereeing.

This week was going to be a little different yet again, as there were going to be sets of exhibition matches hosted by different Halls with different participants traveling between the Halls. The teleportation fees had been reduced to a few dozen coppers for the whole week, so CRA members were going to be freely moving among the Halls across the world for just a few pennies' equivalent. That meant a lot of people that they hadn't seen before, though Beth still wasn't particularly impressed by anybody, at least not that day. Monday and Tuesday were both, in fact, pretty boring, and it was just nice that almost everybody had used a crystal for Universal Standard and used that to communicate. Beth wasn't really a languages person and only knew a handful of Spanish phrases apart from her American English, making her rather glad everybody had a language that they could just get dumped in their heads and understand perfectly well.

The week got an awful lot more interesting on Wednesday, that being the day a very familiar contingent from one of the Halls in China decided to cycle through their home Hall. Beth was pretty impressed with what she saw, Bai's team having all undergone two rebirths and cruising for a third. They were all already over level one hundred, though their minimum level would be one hundred twenty at this rebirth and something told her they weren't minimum level type people. The team of six walk into the arena floor of Beth's home Hall quite confident but not to the point of arrogance, looking around at all the duelists on the fields and waiting in the wings. Beth could pay attention to the match she was officiating and still have enough left-over focus to see the moment Bai saw her in the ref box and her eyes went wide. Not that she was shocked out of her mind, but it was clear she was surprised at seeing Beth as an official and not a participant.

The short girl walked over and waited until Beth called the duel she was officiating for the short man that was using a massive hammer as his weapon. Baelvyr might be interested in a new student there. She waved the two off the field as Bai stepped up to her, not quite coming up to the edge of the referee box but stopping a few steps away and looking at her. Beth glanced over at the girl and gave her a small wave before refocusing on the dueling field.

"I see you've made some improvements," Beth said before Bai could say anything.

"Hello to you, too," Bai replied with just a faint trace of bitterness. "And it's nothing compared to what you've achieved, though I'm somehow not particularly surprised by that."

"Lotta time, effort, and a helluva lotta luck went into," Beth shrugged in response, waving the next two duelists into position. "Now I gotta stay here and ref for another ten or so months."

"What is this, a punishment detail?" Bai asked as Beth checked the fighters' readiness.

"No, you gotta do this for Gold Emblem," Beth replied, raising her arm as the timer started. Once the time hit zero, she dropped her arm and shouted for them to begin. Technically, the fighters were waiting for her; it wasn't something that came up often, but she had to signal the start because that was official, even with the timer. If the ref didn't give the signal and somebody started casting or left the starting circle, they were in the wrong even were the timer to have hit zero.

"Right, you're a Gold Emblem. What I meant when I said we hadn't advanced as much as you," Bai said.

"Nope, not yet," Beth said. "You have to do a year of referee duty as part of the qualifications for Gold Emblem. Blood, Sera, and I are all doing that right now. If you plan on getting a Gold Emblem, you'll have to do the same. I have to say, too, that it's pretty damn boring work, so look forward to that."

"I didn't realize that there were more requirements than the tests," Bai said, frowning thoughtfully.

"Yeah, it only gets more tedious as you go up the ranks," Beth said, still watching the match on the dueling field. The two new duelists were pretty evenly matched, but Beth suspected the tall woman starting from the blue circle would win, given that she was moving faster and wasn't seeming to tire as much.

"What would you say to a rematch?" Bai asked, glancing at Beth hopefully.

"Well, I don't mind, but I don't think things will go much differently than last time, sorry to say," Beth replied with another shrug, glancing at the short girl out of the corner of her eye.

"I think we might surprise you," Bai said, glancing at her team standing just slightly off to the side. "We've gotten a lot stronger; maybe stronger than you might expect."

"Not to be rude, but I doubt that," Beth said. "Do you have Identify or something similar in at least Gold rank?"

"Not yet. Mine's still at the peak of Silver," Bai replied, frowning at the strange tall girl. "Why's that relevant?"

"It lets you see rebirths," Beth replied calmly, getting a grunt from the other girl. "Having done two rebirths is pretty impressive for the time and effort you put in. Even more is being over level one hundred and going for your third, but you're still quite a bit behind, I'm afraid. And it's not just rebirths that has you on the back foot, but I won't give away all my secrets for free."

"Still, it would be good to try," Bai said, having learned some caution and humility, partially from the last time she and her team had tried to take Beth on.

"Look, I've got free time in the evenings, but I'm just warning you that you should be prepared if we're going to duel," Beth replied, calling the match for the tall woman, as she had thought. "I don't mind sparring or fighting or doing official duels, but you're going to be punching up. Way up."

"Still, we'd like to try," Bai said. "I see your wolf companion is here, too. Would she mind participating?"

"She's still just as lazy as ever," Beth said. "Though, you could substitute in my wife if you wanted instead."

'My wife,' Bai mouthed, surprise written all over her face.

"Well, okay, she's not my wife, but I consider her my fiancée, and she agrees with that," Beth said, chuckling at Bai's shock. "She's not quite as strong as I am, but she has a far different fighting style, so you might get a lot out of fighting her."

"If she'd be willing, we'd be more than happy," Bai said with a bow.

"Anyway, I gotta work until the evening," Beth said. "You guys should go do some duels, train, warm up, whatever you gotta do. Have a meal, have a drink, toss out a few Hail Mary's, you know, whatever you gotta do to get in that headspace."

"I don't know what you're saying, but we'll warm up and fight some duels," Bai replied, shaking her head at the crazy American with her crazy sayings.