Limitless Path

The next day was bright and clear, and they had finally had enough forced idleness or, as others called it, rest, that they were allowed out of the house. Beth and Blood were going to do an insane power-level just over the next couple days, absolutely blowing through the first few dozen levels or more. They would have to slow down once they hit about fifty and sort themselves out, as that was around the point where they would be even, in terms of stats, with the other girls. It would be interesting to see how fighting up forty levels would work, but Beth was confident in not just their bolstered stats, but their quite high-level skills to bridge the gap with relative ease.

Once everyone had gone through all the morning ablutions and everything, Beth and Blood walked with Sabs upstairs before heading out one of the southern doors. Beth indicated for Blood to head to the kobold area, which the wolf was happy to do, doubly so because that area was close and might mean they weren't going to be camping in a forest for a year at a time. Not that she hated the woods or nature or anything like that, but she was quite content in the luxury of their suite in the CRA Hall, as well as all the other amenities they had available, including a cafeteria that cooked for her so cheaply it was already basically a rounding error in her budget.

Blood was still happily dreaming of a bowl of noodles and beef when they reached the open area and she snapped back to the present, hearing the distinct sound of magically fueled combat echoing from the old field. She quickly slipped through the shadows, staying in the tree line for just a moment before quietly sliding out into the field on the side of a very small incline. She immediately straightened with a sigh, waving back for Beth to catch up as she strolled forward towards the source of the sound. She waited for the fight to finish before walking up behind one of the two girls in the field and enveloping her in a hug so deep the tiny terror practically disappeared with a muffled squeal.

The other girl whirled around, ready to lunge forward with her blade, but stopped when she saw what had caused her youngest sister's distress. Kim spun her blade about by the hilt for a moment before sliding it home in her sheath, glancing around to make sure none of the level ninety kobolds were near enough to be an immediate problem. She became even less worried about that mattering when she noticed Beth striding across the field towards them.

"Beth, you're here too," she said as she met her older sister behind where Blood was still fawning over Soph.

"Am I not supposed to be?" Beth asked, brows both raised in a perplexed look, her tone light.

"No, no. Nothing like that. It's just that usually Blood suddenly pops up from nowhere and starts hanging on Soph, though usually not when we're fighting," Kim explained.

"Oh, that's where she disappears to," Beth acknowledged with a nod before giving Kim a quick hug.

"Beth!" the tanned girl exclaimed.

"What, too grown up to hug your sister?" Beth asked with a smirk.

"It's just," Kim started before pausing and sighing. "Yeah, it's kinda embarrassing, alright?"

"Mental note: hug Kim more," Beth said in a faux-serious voice before Kim punched her shoulder. The younger girl grunted and shook her armored hand afterward, glancing at Beth's armor.

"I would've figured you'd've upgraded your armor," she commented.

"Oh, we did," Beth replied. "But our new gear needs you to be level one hundred, which we're not."

"What?!" Soph exclaimed, having dragged Blood over to the other two. "But Blood was nearly just nearly level two hundred."

Beth just grinned at them until the two Identified her, doing a double-take before they then looked at Blood. They did a second double-take, Beth laughing at the two's antics before crossing her arms over her chest. Soph just sputtered for a moment, so it became incumbent on Kim to clear it up.

"How?" she asked simply.

"We rebirthed," Beth replied with a loose shrug, arms still crossed.

"Did you go all the way?" Kim asked.

"Just last night," Beth replied with a nod, getting another punch from Kim.

"Gross!" she cried before clarifying, "I meant all the way to the level cap, you bitch."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Beth replied with a small chuckle. "And yes, we did. Hit two hundred before we bought a bunch of shit from the Seniors to be able to get the True Rebirth done."

"And how was that?" Kim asked as Soph struggled to hold off a very cuddly Blood.

"Eh, it wasn't as amazing as you might think. At least, in terms of the actual thing itself, we just kinda felt warm for half a minute and then a lot weaker as our stats dropped," Beth explained. "As for the getting to keep a full twenty percent of those stats at level one, that part was a lot more amazing."

"Wait, what the fuck are your stats at?" asked Kim with a wide-eyed stare.

"Look," Beth replied, again just showing the 'top' of her screen to the two so they could see how a rebirth looked and what her stats were.

"Jesus H. Christ on a bike, Beth!" Kim cried. "You have over a fucking hundred strength! At level one!"

"Pretty sweet," Beth replied, flexing her arms only to get slugged again. "Anyway, I want to see if Blood and I can kill some of these Kobolds. Doesn't hurt that you two are here; you can back us up on the first one if we're not strong enough."

"Beth, these guys are at level ninety or more now. I get your stats are high, but they're not that high," Kim said worriedly.

"As Baelvyr loves to say constantly, 'Stats ain't everythin', girlie,'" Beth said, mimicking the ogre's deep, rough voice. "Blood and I are both a lot stronger than our stats indicate. Trust me, this isn't as dangerous as you might think, especially because we don't need to fight through some kind of dungeon full of them. We're just trying to kill one to test it."

"We'll stick close, then," Kim replied, her scrunched forehead and pursed lips betraying her worry.

"Well, there seem to be plenty up top, so let's get to it," Beth said, nodding at Blood at the end.

The wolf gave Soph a last squeeze before letting go and shooting towards the nearest kobold, Beth easily able to hear the small gasps from her sisters at Blood's speed. Despite being level one again, Blood had over a hundred DEX and peak Silver Swift, meaning she could still move like a blur, not even mentioning the extra benefit her improved humanization gave her beyond just the hard numbers on her status page. She appeared near the kobold she had targeted in a few blinks and slashed out, using her soulbound weapon to channel her energy skills at nearly point-blank range into the level ninety-one's back.

That was the point where Blood started getting a feel for how everything wasn't going to be a breeze, as her dramatically reduced stats, especially STR, meant that what would have been a devastating, likely lethal blow a few days ago, only turned out to be a light wound. The kobold spun and screamed, trying to counter, but it just wasn't able to keep up with Blood's speed or flexibility. The lupine woman lured the beast back towards Beth, not evening having to look to slide out of the way as a fist appeared to her right, Beth slamming a hard punch into the kobold's chest. She didn't use a skill and the beast was stopped, but didn't really stagger at all, the punch just barely strong enough to cancel most of the momentum of its sloppy, lumbering charge after Blood.

Beth wasn't at all discouraged, slamming another quick punch into the beast before sliding around a chop from its corroded old sword. She fired off a one-two combo, now empowering herself with Beastly Body and Swift, the two punches little more than blurry lines in the early morning light. That delivered enough force to make the beast take half a step back after the second blow, but it wasn't really that rattled, screaming again and recklessly slashing at Beth. She easily slid around the swings, grinning slightly as Blood came in from the back and further opened the shoulder wound she had caused at the start of the battle.

Thankfully, like most other beasts below level two hundred, the kobold was rather stupid. It responded to what it saw and what it felt, not what the best, most complex course of action should be. When Blood slashed it, it would twirl and slash at her, turning its back to Beth to deal with this new source of pain/danger. Beth then had an opening to land a fully powered strike from close range, using Crush now to smash apart the light armor on the beast's torso and deal significant damage. She was pleasantly surprised by the fact that her reservoir dropped noticeably less than it would have before their first rebirth from fully charging her right arm with mana in using the skill.

The kobold was pretty far outmatched, but it did give them a few knocks of its own, injuring Blood's arm slightly and denting the older set of mana steel armor Beth was wearing. She felt a cracked rib after that hit, frowning a little at what a difference her lower END made. That had been more of a glancing blow and yet it had damaged her armor and moderately wounded her. Not only that, but the damn thing still wasn't dead, flailing a bit at Blood as the wolf slashed at it with a rapid series of claw attacks. Beth wanted to finish this up and move on, especially since their audience was now looking somewhat nervous and like they wanted to step in, so she decided to burn a lot of mana.

Moving forward again, she targeted the weakened shoulder and hammered it with two full-power Crushes in rapid succession. When the beast turned to her to try to retaliate, though clearly without much use from its right arm, she smashed a fist with a full dose of Celestial Annihilation right into its face. The great thing about using that skill as a physical strike was that it combined the power of her punch with the power of the skill, doing even more damage than just using the skill to fire an energy beam would. Enough damage, in fact, to basically kill the kobold, though it wasn't quite dead, slumping to the ground and flopping a little. Blood took care of that, however, grabbing hold of the beast with one massive mitt before using her skill to tear its throat out with the other, the act still taking some time due to the power and toughness differential.

"That's fucking impressive," she muttered as Soph and Kim rushed over to make sure they were alright.

"What?" Kim asked, confusion evident in the scrunching of her forehead.

"Check my level," Beth replied with a grin, starting to use more mana to heal her battered torso.

"Holy shit, you got five levels from that!" Soph exclaimed, looking back and forth between both Beth and Blood with wide eyes.

"And for a group kill, too," Beth said with a smirk, though she sobered quickly. "Then again, that took quite a while, and we both got injured from something that we would have killed without even thinking just three days ago."

"Risk and reward," Blood growled with a shrug, walking over after finishing cleaning off her claws. The freezing kobold blood was annoying, particularly if it was left to sit on something for any length of time.

"If you can kill them like that, we could already group together," said Kim with a slight frown as she glanced between the girls and the dead kobold.

"Probably wouldn't be super efficient yet," Beth replied with a shrug. "We can't really contribute until we get another twenty or so levels, and the two of you would get almost all the experience."

"Is that how it works?" Kim asked with an arched brow.

"Sorta," Soph interjected with a slight shake of her head. "It's a combination of what the level of everybody who participates is, the amount of damage they do, the amount of damage they take, and a few more minor factors like total party size versus number of beasts, etc. The long and short is that if we helped, we would cannibalize a huge amount of the experience for any kill we even did a small amount of assistance in speeding up. So, if the two of them fought together with us right now, they would level crazy slow. Better to let them catch up a little in level to even it out, or the distribution would make it basically not worth it."

"Hmm, I see," Kim nodded. "That being said, we can take a bit of time to help in just staying nearby and watching while you two get in a few more kills."

"Honestly, I think we'll do that for a while then head back. As eager as I am to blaze through these low levels again, we're going to burn through all our mana, if that last fight was any indicator," Beth said. "We could go fight something closer to our level, but then it would take more fights to get the same result as just one kobold, so it might just be a wash."

"Well, we can help you get another ten or twenty levels, depending on how long you want to go," Kim said with a small smile.

"Twenty might be a bit ambitious, but we could try for ten. I doubt we're gonna get five levels every time we kill one of these…though the difference in level is still huge," Beth said, tapping her chin a bit at the end. "And the two of you don't have to nanny us; go back to doing your thing, we'll take a few of these stragglers one-by-one."

"OK, just be careful," Kim warned. "These bastards are multiplying faster than we can deal with them, even with your little girlfriend helping us with it. John came down here a week ago and slaughtered his way through the field and then went underground. The numbers were down for a few days after that, though they're rising again."

"Yeah, we might spend some time with the three of you helping you get a decent few levels in a handful of days here," Beth replied, still tapping. "We've got some important shit ourselves that's on a bit of a time crunch, but if we can get the three of you close to or to level one hundred, that would be a big boost. But, enough about that, let's get to it."