Limitless Path

Beth exchanged a bow with the woman, who surprisingly walked up to Beth afterwards, exiting the field with her at a glare from the ref. She clearly wanted to talk, so Beth moved to a space at the edge of the arena floor and gestured for her to go ahead. The woman paused for a moment, clearly chewing on her words for a second before deciding on exactly what she wanted to say.

"Good fight," she started with. "Gotta say, I'm rarely surprised like that. Guess that'll teach me that not everybody uses all their tricks in every fight."

"Good fight to you too," Beth replied. "I take it you watched me fight before?"

"Yeah, I always like to check out new Awoken that are stomping the chumps on the floor," she replied. "Andrea, by the way."

It took Beth a second to process, then she replied. "Beth. Good to meet you."

"Yeah, same. To answer your question a little better, I watched your fights, including Jared, the man with the hammers, and I thought I had your measure. I really had no idea you had hidden not one, but two giant trump cards in your back pocket."

"I didn't really want to use everything yet," Beth replied with a shrug. "But, you're just way too tough, and I knew there was no chance I could win if I didn't use everything."

"I'm not so sure about that," Andrea replied. "You weren't actually doing that bad, and it's pretty clear you had a lot more in the tank. I know those moves you used were both high tier and likely trained to the top of Silver, but even so, revealing those two moves and winning almost instantly shows that you had a big margin. If you were so outclassed it was hopeless, I should have been better able to respond to your hidden tricks than that. So, don't sell yourself short, especially as somebody who managed to beat my ass so thoroughly."

"Sometimes, it really is just luck," Beth said with a laugh. "I was pretty overwhelmed out there, you just hit way too hard and way too fast. Yeah, teleportation and annihilation mana are kinda almost cheating in this bracket, but if you had responded even a fraction of a second quicker, I would've been just as fucked."

"I think you're still underestimating yourself, but we'll leave it at that," Andrea replied. "If you need someone for a team fight, or you want to go out and do some training, let me know. I'm happy to help."

"I'll remember that," Beth replied, accepting the woman's handshake before she turned to go.

"I mighta lost one finally, but that's no reason to give up for the day," Andrea said over her shoulder, waving as she headed into the area under the stands, likely to queue up for her next fight.

Beth figured she might as well do the same; considering she had just revealed the rest of her cards, she might as well take advantage of that before everyone at this Hall knew what she could do. She put herself in the queue and made her way under the stands, waiting until she was called to get her assignment from the counter, being assigned field four. She found that the field was empty, save the ref, a different person from the day before. She didn't have to wait long, as a tall, thin man hurried up to the field, the ref impatiently gesturing them to their places before the man even made it to the edge of the dueling field. They went through the starting procedures quickly and the ref signaled the start, the two contestants charging each other as the ref's voice was still fading away.

Beth immediately knew that she was going to be in trouble, having a brief flash of annoyance at the attendants for setting her against powerful Awoken one after the other, but she dismissed the thoughts immediately. The queues for the Ladders were entirely unbiased, selected through a randomized system where the only times a senior member intervened was in double-checking to assure there wasn't anything that had gone wrong. In the end, it was just a bit of shit luck that she was matched with two highly skilled and very powerful Awoken competitors back-to-back. Maybe she should have just stayed in bed with Blood all day.

The man was fast, closing with her in a few moments, meeting her far past the center line of the field and towards her starting circle. He hit her with just as much power, knocking her staggering a step back with the mace in his right hand before gesturing at her with the small orb in his left, shooting a wave of frost mana right into her face. Beth trucked through the spell, swinging a horizontal slash at the man from her right, figuring that his left side with the orb in hand would be the weakest. That was not a great assumption, as his experience shone through and, obviously having been attacked there by beasts and people quite a bit, he was extremely quick on the reaction. He was also extremely smooth, causing Beth to frown slightly and make a tsking sound, not seeing any opening that she could exploit.

It didn't even necessarily need to be him being sloppy, but sometimes people could become so used to having to do certain movements or execute certain forms that they could become too rigid in that movement. The man displayed none of those characteristics, at least not that Beth could see, though she was sure someone like Jaq or Baelvyr would see a hundred openings in his technique. But she wasn't them, and she couldn't see what they might have seen, and that meant that she was again caught by a blast of frost before the man used a skill to try to shatter her armor.

She managed to dart out of the way of the strike, though the impact of the mana shockwave his blow created made the floor tremble slightly. Not that it was damaging the floor, but the arenas were set up, even in default mode, to convey some level of force. They also wouldn't shed harmful mana, meaning that something like the man's ice attacks would constantly build up ice on the floor and only be cleared at the end of their fight. Beth was pretty used to unsure footing in a fight at this point, so that didn't really bother her much, though the ice building up would eventually become a bigger problem.

She exchanged three fast hits, surprised at just how much strength each of the man's strikes was using, especially considering he was using a one-handed weapon while Beth had both hands on the hilt of her blade. She couldn't really decide if she was fortunate that he wasn't using a two-handed weapon, or extremely annoyed as he blasted her with even more frost. The frost was starting to build up on her armor, and Beth found the fact she didn't really have anything to purge herself a bit annoying. Sure, she had resistances, but she was learning that it would be nice to find some kind of self-cleanse skill to flush away or out external influences.

Thoughts of that self-cleanse were flushed as an enormous bolt of frost mana slammed into her chest, the man clearly having used a skill to create such a powerful attack. Beth staggered back, fortunately moving out of his immediate reach, and cursed at all the frost and ice built up on her armor. She ran Beastly Body as hot as she could, but the skill only improved her strength and physical damage resistance, not giving her any extra protection against magic or debuffs. She charged the man with her buff burning, swinging at him with an overcharged Monstrous Blow, forcing him to block from the sheer speed her blade traveled at. As soon as he stopped the swing and staggered a step back she teleported, slashing down with a massive overhead cleave from directly behind him, pumping Celestial Annihilation into her blade to such an extent the field glowed gold.

The man's counter surprised her, as he managed to block her sword with his mace from a seemingly impossible angle, likely yet another skill at play, before he twisted his left arm around and set off a frost nuclear bomb right in her face. She screamed curses internally as she fought through the damage and pain, realizing that the man likely had a skill at gold and that his stats were likely even higher than she had assumed, probably being more concentrated in INT and WIS than she had thought. She was thoroughly frozen now, capable of moving at only a fraction of her prior speed, and barely got her sword up in time to block another of the shattering hits from the man.

He clearly knew he had her on the ropes, and took his time with the next strike, maneuvering around her and trying to approach from her side or behind. Beth turned desperately, pumping more mana into her body to try to keep up, feeling her muscles strain at the load, just barely blocking a quick strike aimed at her temple. She launched a desperate counteroffensive, slashing at him twice, both strikes deflected with ease before a huge blast of frost roll over her like a glacial tsunami, ice coating her armor, locking her joints, and freezing her to the floor. She knew, before she even saw him lining up, that the next strike was going to be a fast, full-powered blow from his shattering skill that would definitely end the match.

Beth wasn't ready to give up, despite her injuries, despite the odds, despite the fatal blow swinging towards her even now. She had trained, she had practiced, she had fought for years to get to where she was, and she loved battling against the strong. Overcoming the odds, tearing down the problem, even thinking about it had her heart racing and her frozen muscles clenching. She had spent so long with all of her current skills, especially her boosting skills, that she had a deep understanding of them, not that she knew everything about them, but she knew at deep level just how they operated.

That was especially true for Beastly Body, a late comer to the party but a bread-and-butter skill that she had invested a huge amount of time and energy into mastering and that she relied on constantly, more so than even Swift. As a buff skill, she constantly had it running, constantly influencing her body, and she was constantly monitoring it and adjusting it and her use of it over time. She knew the skill, knew how it pushed mana into her muscles, tendons, and bones, knew how it reinforced her body, made her stronger, more resilient, and fiercer. She used that knowledge now, ripping mana out of her own reservoir and dumping into every muscle fiber in her body, every tendon, every calcium atom in every bone.

Power flooded her as she dumped every particle of mana she had in the tank into the skill, draining her mana pool from eighty percent to near-zero in a second. Her muscles swelled and then compressed, gurgling and squealing as they dealt with the extra strength, the ice around her shattering as she twisted, her now much longer and thicker hair billowing out behind her as she met the swing of the man's mace with nothing but her armored fist, the impact causing an explosion to rip the air apart around them, pushing the man back and making him stagger. Beth launched herself forward, roaring like an angry bear roused early from its hibernation, slamming her fist into the man's face, blowing past his guard and crushing bone and flesh alike. She barreled into him, knocking him to the ground and mounting him, raining down a machine gun of punches and elbows to his face and chest, the snapping splinter of fragmenting bones ringing out as blood fountained across the arena.

It was only a few seconds of this before the man was teleported away, a medic charging across the arena floor to grab him and ensure he was properly healed. The ref called Beth's victory and she turned to him, crouched on all fours with muscles tense as she glared at him through the mask. The man didn't seem much surprised, his hand dropping to the hilt of his sword at his waist as he looked at her with a cold expression, but it didn't come to blows. Beth shook it off, staggering as she tried to stand and finding a second medic at her elbow, one she hadn't noticed in her…eagerness to continue the fight.

"Mana deprivation," the woman said calmly, holding up a little glass to Beth's lips. She sipped without asking questions, trusting a CRA approved medic not to poison her on the arena floor. The large mouthful of liquid had a soothing iciness to it, and Beth felt a handful of percent of mana return to her reservoir immediately, enough that she could stagger off the field, giving the ref's disdainful scoff a dismissive wave.

She found herself terribly hungry, and as soon as the medic said she would be fine, she staggered off the floor and into the main building, ordering a half dozen dishes when she made it to the cafeteria. She took them to a corner table and dug in a minute later, ignoring any looks and mutters as she ripped through the food like she hadn't seen any in weeks. She forced herself up as soon as she finished, trudging over and handing the plates to a worker before retreating back to the arena and down to their room. She found Blood still sprawled on the couch, just as naked and even more akimbo than when she had left a couple hours before, and gave her a tired wave as she made sure the door was shut and hobbled into the bathroom. She didn't bother stripping down, dismissing her sweaty set of clothes and gear as a future Beth problem, making them disappear into her necklace before stepping into the shower.

Blood entered the bathroom a moment later and walked right into the shower, asking, "Is everything alright, sister?"

"So tired," Beth sighed. "I did…something just a little bit ago and it totally drained me. I'm dead on my feet."

"Just relax," Blood growled out, grabbing the somewhat shorter girl and starting to wash her, Beth not protesting at the help but still trying to contribute, causing Blood to grumble a bit as they got tangled. After a couple minutes, Blood was satisfied Beth was cleaned and rinsed, and initiated the dry cycle, helping with a warm towel before pronouncing herself satisfied. She helped Beth out of the bathroom and was a bit surprised when she collapsed on the voluminous, luxurious couch, doubly so when she pulled Blood down on top of her, wrapping her arms around the lupine woman and burrowing her head against her. Blood growled contentedly, realizing after a moment that Beth was already asleep.