Limitless Path

Beth and Blood moved forward at the same time, weaving back and forth to confuse the seven before slamming into them again. Bronson wasn't very proficient in his skill, or it actually had some kind of cooldown, as he didn't use it this second contact. The two girls reached the formation at the same time, but Beth teleported just as she threw her first punch, not holding anything back and slamming a fist empowered by Celestial Annihilation into the back of one of the seven's head. The man staggered forward and fell to the ground, but Beth hadn't stuck around to finish him off. It was important that they got a ton of damage dealt across the team as fast as possible, and dealing severe brain damage would take that one out of the running. She had teleported behind the woman nearest between her and the man she had just taken out, the lady just turning in reaction to the sound of the fist impacting when Beth's fist made the impacting sound again, but now against the side of the woman’s head.

Beth leapt out of the fray, deflecting the swing of an axe with her blade while barreling through a blast of electricity from the same person that was throwing the magic bombs around. It would likely have been enough to disable a normal opponent, but Beth had plenty of resistances and a very high Pain Tolerance, crashing through the electrical blast without even flinching. The enemy team was better coordinated than to follow her, certainly in ones and twos, and she started moving around them in a circle, opposite to how Blood, who had taken out an enemy herself, was currently moving.

The other advantage of them having heavily injured two of the seven was that, even if they wouldn't have killed them if left exposed, the other team clearly operated with a thought process that would have made that a priority. They moved to guard the two downed Wayfarers, trying to block them off from taking another hit from the two girls while the second woman Beth had hit chugged a potion, clearly dazed but not having taken a hard enough hit to lose consciousness. She only had enough time to for the last few ruby drops to disappear into her mouth before Beth and Blood coordinated another hit, twenty bloody energy claws sweeping out towards the group while a series of golden beams lanced into the party from the other side.

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Jessica was not having a good day. First, they followed that dipshit Bronson on this wild goose chase that turned out to not be as wild as they thought. Then, they had to fight through a million lizard assholes, eating up tons of their supplies, including a lot of their explosives, which they would need, by the way, to actually clear the damn dungeon. Then, these two random angry bitches showed up and Bronson just had to get into a goddamn pissing contest with them about a dungeon that likely could sustain a hundred groups running it at once before needing time to recharge.

Now, those two selfsame bitches were tearing their team up like old beef through a meatgrinder. Jess's head was still ringing and pounding from the single punch that the shorter of the two masked girls had managed to land on her, and Brad was still out cold, his helmet partially crushed but his body still shifting and twitching, letting her know he was still likely alive. Just as she thought that, the two bitches attacked again, but now from range. It was crazy that they could even do that, as they had both been attacking from deep inside melee range, with the shorter one getting hands-on, quite literally, with her punching maneuvers.

Now, they fired out pure energy attacks, dozens of long lines of blood-red energy bursting from the wolfish woman's claw weapons, while the other woman punch like a machine gun, with every punch thrown into the air shooting a golden-silver beam of energy towards their group. Despite how many attacks the two were launching from a great distance, every blocked or deflected energy strike was like a sledgehammer blow against Jess’s team’s armor. The red attacks were particularly annoying as they carried a great cutting force, meaning getting hit in a joint or weak point tore their armor up.

The other girl's attacks weren't as big a problem…at first. But the more golden strikes the team had to weather, the more beat and battered and pulverized their armor, and bodies, became. Bill tried to fire off arrows at them, but even with his skills, he simply couldn't match the speed the two girls achieved. And Josh was totally useless, his stupid fucking bombs way too slow and small range to hit either of their opponents. Not that them having more oomph would have done all that much good if they were still slow to throw and detonate, and they would have to worry about getting caught in the blasts if they were much bigger anyway.

"Bronson! They're going to fucking kill us!" she shouted as she slashed at the punchy girl with her halberd. "Just fucking talk to them! This dungeon isn't worth our damn lives!"

"It's still six-on-two! And they can't just walk in and steal shit from me-from us! Not and get away with it!" Bronson roared back as he slammed his maul on the ground and blew the wolf-girl away.

"Bronson! This is stupid!" Jessica yelled as the other girl slammed into her, the expressionless mask radiating a calm cold as the girl managed to flat-out deflect her Revolving Strikes and get deep into her guard. Jessica swore while trying to bring the butt of her weapon into play, cursing internally as the other girl slammed a series of lightning-fast strikes across the entire front of her torso, knocking the wind out of her and causing her to stagger several steps back. She was only saved from further brutalizing by both Bronson and Jeff, their support and Crowd Control (CC) specialist, locking the girl down for a second before blowing her away.

"Bronson! She cracked my fucking armor! Do something!" Jessica screamed, backpedaling to form up in a tighter group with the others.

"Presences! Now!" Bronson roared back, his face red and sweaty while veins clearly stood out on his neck.

As one, the remaining six people pushed mana out and twisted the very fabric of reality around them, summoning all of their Presences at the same time. Bronson's stupid white-and-gold cloak appeared on his back, Jessica's stylized Valkyrie-type helm appeared on her head, Josh's strange machine-orb…thing...appeared hovering around his head, Maria's blue crystal flashed into existence on her back, Bill's weird vine-and-thorn vest grew over his chest armor, and Jeff's set of golden wings with black veins sprouted from his shoulder blades. They all had empty sockets or gaps or places where other things were meant to fill in, though the information the group had managed to scrounge said they wouldn't get that stuff until they did at least one 'rebirth,' whatever that actually took to accomplish.

Now it's fucking on, stupid bitc- Jessica managed to think before she was doubling over, lifted from her feet by the brawling girl's fist buried to the wrist in her gut, crushing her armor inward. She'd never been hit that hard before, not by the special elite they'd found when they were all still level ten that had come close to killing the smaller group of three of them at the time, and not by the crazy STR-based boss fifteen levels above them the group had managed to kill when they were at one-forty, putting the boss over the major one-fifty power-spike threshold. It felt like her guts had been pureed by a freight train powered blender, and she couldn't even try to stop the reflexive geyser of vomit that exploded from her lips, Jessica noting a little deliriously that there was an awful lot of blood in the stream of puke.

But how?! Jessica screamed in her mind as she watched Jeff, Bronson, and Josh all team up to lock the girl down and hammer her, dealing what appeared to be mediocre damage, at best. There's no way she could be unaffected by our Presences! She's not even using hers! Not unless she's been running it since before we even started talking.

Jessica struggled to stand as the thoughts continued racing through her head, the woman wondering how the other girls weren't exhausted if that were true. Nobody could run their Presence like that and be fine, not for that amount of time. She was struggling to get to her knees when the shorter girl broke away from the other three, appearing a little more cautious, Jessica thinking that it was about time for them to be at an advantage in this fucking six-versus-two! She lifted her right leg and put her foot down flat, so she was only on her left knee, looking over to see Maria and Bill had combined their ranged skills and competence quite well to hold the weird wolf-girl off and make her more cautious.

Maybe their Presences are running out? thought Jessica as she struggled to fully regain her feet, her stomach feeling like it was ground-up fire, and a very ominous rumbling from lower down making her worried about a violent ejection from the other end of her digestive tract. As she staggered back upright, she was shocked to watch the shorter of the two tall bitches dive right back into the middle of their formation, or what was left of it, going head-on against Bronson. This bitch really is psycho!

Jessica only managed that thought before it felt like everything froze and inverted, black becoming white and white becoming black. What little was left of her stomach twisted, the short woman grimacing as she clenched up but only partially succeeded in keeping some of her intestines, at least from the horrific feel of it, from leaking out her other end, as if her clothes weren't already destroyed enough. If she lived through this awful fuck-up, she was definitely burning everything she was wearing as soon as they were out of danger.

She fumbled to grab her halberd, what remained of her stomach really not enjoying the half-bend she had to do to grip the handle before starting forward towards the fight. She staggered one step and came to a stop, eyes wide as she saw in those couple seconds of weird frozen time, bowel troubles, and fumbling for her weapon both Bronson and Josh were down, and not from a glancing blow. Bronson had an arm bent in a way that was definitely not natural and part of the left side of his chest piece was crushed, while Josh had both legs twisted to varying degrees of absolutely fucked. Jeff was throwing every single thing he had left, kitchen sink and all, at the demon in front of him, but the girl barely slowed and certainly didn't flinch, pushing through walls of solidified air, a set of entangling vines she ripped from the ground just by running, and a series of chains made of what appeared to be frozen vines, though it was only artfully shaped ice.

None of it mattered, nor did Jeff's Presence increasing his speed, though he couldn't fly with the damn thing. Yet. In the end, he was pummeled into a bloody pulp, the girl sparing no effort in beating him beyond senseless, getting her left hand on him and jackhammering her other fist into his face and torso in a terrible blur. She ended the crazy assault with a kick that caused the ground below her still planted left foot to crack almost as much as Jeff's ribs likely did from the impact of her heavily armored right sabaton, sending him, or his corpse, spinning away through the air. The girl then turned and stared at Jessica, just for the briefest of moments.

Oh, shit! Oh, fuck! Oh, not the- was all she could think, bringing her halberd around and trying to weave two of her skills together to repel the other girl. It was a beautiful defense, and entirely useless, as the girl streaked towards her before disappearing right outside her range. Jessica was just suddenly staring into that cold, emotionless mask a handful of inches from her face before she felt an impact like a dinosaur-destroying meteor had just hit her torso, not even caring as what felt like the remainder of her digestive tract rocketed out both her mouth and butt.

She barely hung onto consciousness as she went flying, noting Bill already laying on the ground with his vest gone, meaning he was at the least unconscious himself, and Maria's limp body dangling from one of the tall bitch's hands as she was held by the skull. Jessica's meeting of the minds with the grounds drove those images, and all other thoughts, right from her head, as blissful darkness dragged her down into its sweet embrace.

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Beth sighed, looking at the seven bodies, all unconscious but alive, scattered around them. Even without healing potions, all seven would likely live, and Beth wasn't in a particularly generous mood at the moment. Blood stalked around the battlefield and checked to make sure they didn't have any corpses nor, more worryingly, any fakers just waiting to pop up and stab them in the back, while Beth made another call. It only rang once before the intended recipient picked up, his usual calm demeanor soothing Beth just a bit.

"Ms. Beth."

"Tazeen, we got a little, uh, fucking situation," Beth started, trying to rub at her forehead but just clacking her gauntlet against her mask.

"Details," Tazeen commanded coolly.

"Team of seven, ones I mentioned just a bit ago. We were trying to explain that we were on official business to take care of this dungeon; showed our emblems and everything. In the middle of the conversation, their team leader sent a signal and they started to attack. Got into a pretty big fight and Blood and I wound up kicking the shit out of them. Literally, in several cases," Beth explained, wrinkling her nose. "Now we've got seven unconscious hostiles, and we still have to take care of this dungeon. Thoughts?"

"You would have, as you well know, been within your right to kill them," Tazeen said coldly. "Since you have incapacitated them, killing is essentially off the table. The CRA takes a dim view of doing anything untoward to prisoners, especially summarily executing them. We are responsible for cleaning up other's messes quite often, and we have procedures in place for such things, as I am sure you remember from the material you studied for the test. Make sure they are secure, and several Seniors will be with you in a few minutes."

"Thanks, Tazeen. We'll make sure none of them get any bright ideas, assuming they wake up before help gets here," Beth replied.

"If there is nothing else, I will end this and you may speak with the Seniors when they get there," Tazeen said, clearly a dismissal even though it was phrased more like a request.

"Nah, send them up, Tazeen, thanks," Beth said before disconnecting.