Limitless Path

They each had taken some time to sleep, Beth needing it somewhat more than Blood with just how much her Presence drained her stamina, but Blood certainly pushed herself as well. When the other was sleeping, the one staying awake on watch meditated lightly, deep enough that they could focus and restore resources, especially mana, faster, but not deep enough that they wouldn't be alerted to a beast coming up on them. It was about seven hours later they were both on their feet and ready to go, heading back to the secret passage they had found and working their way further down.

Enemies didn't reset in dungeons until the dungeon itself reset unless the dungeon was some type of open instance dungeon like the wolf breeding ground near Beth's house. All that was to say that they had to hop over the bloated corpses of the two dead lizardmen just a few dozen feet down the secret tunnel. They were starting to stink, something that clearly got to Blood, as the lupine woman heavily scrunched her nose as they passed, clearly just holding back a cough.

"Not pleasant, is it?" Beth commented as they continued down the unlit space.

"I don't know just how much better my nose is, but you can't imagine what that kind of rot, even after only a handful of hours, smells like" Blood replied.

"I see you've lost the ears again," Beth said, scanning the tunnel ahead as they spoke.

"Dammit," Blood growled, Beth glancing back to see her human ears disappear and her wolf ones reappear.

"Maybe there's a better way to do that?" Beth mused, but Blood just grunted.

"It really doesn't matter that much. I'm not going to try to correct it now; we have more important things happening," Blood replied.

"Well, at some point it might be interesting to research humanization more," Beth said.

"I have, actually," Blood replied, growling at Beth when she mocked the 'actually.' "I did a lot more research on how the progression works and how to push it forward. The unfortunate thing is that some of it is still speculative, despite how much we know about it. Some of the documents talking about it just refer to a 'deeper understanding of the self and one's own heritage.' A bunch of that stuff isn't really that helpful, and it gets into a lot of philosophy in how to push towards full humanization. I guess that's why there still isn't any definitive guide on how to increase it."

"Hmm, maybe there's still something to the ear thing, though," Beth said idly, continuing to lead the way.

"Hmph, maybe," Blood said. "I'll have to think about it a little, but that's for later."

Beth moved down the tunnel, Blood trailing just behind her, the two of them walking for quite a bit of time before encountering anything but pitch-black, uniform tunnel walls. Unfortunately, that encounter was two more of the incredibly strong beasts. They were wearing the same heavy armor, were labeled as the same classes, and were of the same large size with the same thick muscles and alerted in just the same way. Both beasts started with enraged roars that carried more than just their anger through the air, as it was a direct assault on Beth and Blood's minds.

Too bad for the beasts that Beth was taking point, and quite immune to such low-level skills and abilities, especially with Indomitable Heart protecting her mind and mental state. She had the measure of these beasts at this point and thus started by going all-out, the crown appearing on her head with its one glowing eye at the front. Beth was a little excited to get through her second rebirth just so that the eyes evened out, but there was no denying the power of her Presence even at her current rebirth. Slamming into the beast on the right, she smashed it into the wall so hard the tunnel shook for dozens of feet in either direction, turning as the beast was still bouncing against the stone and slamming into the second Oath Breaker with enough force that Blood could hear its chest piece crushing inward.

The wolf didn't remain idle, either, but mirrored her earlier tactic, teleporting behind the beasts before laying into them with her claws. It was slightly harder to line up at the start, as Beth planted both the enemies into the walls, giving Blood a little less room to angle her attack than what she would normally want, but she didn't let that stop her. She pounced on the first beast that Beth had hit, driving it back into the wall as it attempted to pull itself free before excoriating it with an endless stream of slashes. Her claws cut deep into the scaly hide of the beast's face and neck, savaging it as Blood didn't give it a second to breathe, dodging its spear as she continued slashing and rending.

Beth, on the other hand, was pounding the second beast into meat paste in a series of rapid blows that landed with all the force of falling stars. The air in the tunnel had filled with dust and debris long ago, but Beth didn't even notice, continuing to pulp the beast's chest through the ragged scraps of metal that were all that remained of its chest armor. Only needing to focus on one of them and being able to give it her all let her overwhelm the beast with a truly brutal assault, pushing her skills to their limit as she pounded most the of the creature's torso and head into a slushy meat paste.

She found Blood had also finished off the other massive lizard, though it had taken her a bit longer to work her bloody magic on the beast as compared to Beth. She had finished with a more subtle flair, thoroughly removing the beast's head in a smooth and clean motion at the end of the fight, the remains of the skull of the beasts tumbling into the air before landing with a thump on the tunnel floor.

They didn't need to speak, Blood taking watch as Beth knelt down to meditate for a time, helping restore some of the stamina and most of the mana she lost. She then stood watch for Blood, though they really weren't in much danger, and they were able to both meditate rather safely, just Beth being much lighter in her meditation. Waking from her trance when she felt it had been enough time, Beth gently shook Blood's shoulder before starting down the tunnel again. They had already walked quite some distance, and Beth soon found that they were at a similar staircase to what had led them down, though this time going up.

She tried to estimate where they were as they cautiously climbed the stairs but couldn't quite figure it out. She thought that they were very close to the center of the city, but her math might be off by a decent bit, depending on just how long they had walked. Despite their greatly enhanced senses and minds, it was still pretty difficult to determine distance when the only reference was walking through a pitch-black, noiseless tunnel for twenty or more minutes. She would just have to take a look out a window, likely whenever they finished fighting through whatever building they emerged into.

Speaking of that, she almost faceplanted right into a wall, though it was only after a moment of examination in the dark that she realized it was what passed for a door at the top of the stairs. This now posed the first problem they would have to tackle at this end, namely being the door seemed to only be rigged to open from within whatever room was on the other side. At least, she couldn't find any easy switch or lever that stood out as an obvious way to manipulate the mechanism, carefully tracing around the area with her lightstone.

It wasn't that it was impossible to open without using brute force, it was just going to be a little complicated. Beth handed the lightstone she had been holding to Blood before carefully inspecting the gears and rollers she could see around the edges of the closed door. Unlike the other end of the tunnel, this end had an actual upright door and not a trapdoor sealing it. She carefully pushed one of the large gears, using a bit of force considering how large the mechanisms were and the kind of weight they would be calibrated to handle. The gear barely moved, and so she moved on to a second one, getting much the same result.

That was fine, as she was simply determining a pattern and, one minute and three gears later, she pushed on a gear with some force only to have it start spinning. The rest of the mechanism ground to life, gears spinning and rollers groaning in protest at the weight as the door, a massive slab of thick stone, slowly ground into the ceiling of the passageway. Beth took the lightstone back from Blood as the door opened, stepping through when there was still little enough space that she had to duck to enter the hallway beyond.

She noted the hallway was rather short, though it was broad, made of a dark stone that seemed to drink in the light. She paced forward, keeping her head on a swivel as she moved to the end of the hallway and looked out beyond a second door into the next area, finding a massive room. Before she could really examine it in any detail, her eye was drawn almost magnetically to the center of the room, wherein a massive lizardman rested on all fours. He didn't look like he was quite asleep, but he was turned partially away from them and hadn't noticed as they approached the doorway. Beth tucked the lightstone away as she examined him, not really because she was very concerned about it alerting him; quite the opposite, in fact, as the large room he lay in was rather well lit.

The beast itself was absolutely enormous, likely standing at least a dozen feet tall when upright, and it wore only the most basic of armor. Its legs and arms were essentially entirely bare, with nothing but dull red scales gleaming in the light, while its torso was mostly covered by a studded leather hauberk. The beast wasn't just big, either, but looked like it was some kind of mutant or maybe a different species entirely compared to what they had been dealing with. It had heavy spikes protruding from its joints, including its wrists and knees, and a huge crest of spikes around the crown and back of its head. Oh, and it had horns on its temples that swept upward and then backward, pointing behind and to the sides of its head.

'Beth, I think that's a dragon,' Blood sent through their connection.

'Blood, anything with scales is a dragon for you,' Beth sighed back in exasperation.

'I'm just saying that it has scales, spikes, horns, looks like it might move on all fours, and I think it might have wing nubs under its armor,' Blood sent, ticking things off on her claws as she listed them.

'Your brain is somehow dragon-pilled,' Beth scoffed.

'Not like I'm the one that gets excited by scales,' Blood muttered back.

'Muttering doesn't stop me from hearing you during a MENTAL communication,' Beth snapped back before turning back to the beast. 'You want to try anything different than run in and hit it until it stops moving?'

'Have you even Identified it yet?'

Beth turned her head and glowered at Blood for a long second before turning back to the beast again and hitting it with an Identify through her upgraded eyes. What she saw didn't frighten her but did give her a bit of pause and make her think. This was going to be a tough fight, no two ways about it, but the information led Beth to think this was likely a mini-boss or sub-boss for the dungeon.

Level 225 Ancient Wyverian Dominator

It was considerably above them in levels, and was at the very least a special variant, though Beth thought her suppositions about it being a mini-boss were fairly accurate. She also had some inkling it was something like that based on the room it occupied, which she recognized right away. How could she not? After all, she had spent quite a bit of time in rooms like this the last year or so, considering it was a large arena space, with stands that could likely seat somewhere around ten thousand visitors. The floor was spacious and made of heavy stone blocks that were interlinked with very thin lines of a grey mortar.

The door they had emerged from was a part of what looked like a normal wall surrounding the arena floor. There were quite a few doorways leading out of the arena, similar to what a CRA arena would have, but the key difference was that there were heavily reinforced doors blocking all of those doorways. The CRA did have doors that could be rolled into place to seal off the arena floor, but they were essentially never used since all the fights on the arena floors were in simulated areas. Even one-on-one duels used the dueling fields that had a force barrier enclosed area, and all other types of battles used some kind of simulated arena, such as the one they had experienced during the massive melee tournament.

Compared to that, having massive mana steel doors not just clearly visible but fully closed and sealing off the arena floor was a different experience. Beth could also see that there was some kind of force screen around the edge of the arena just above the walls around the floor, separating the lowest level of stands from the arena. Considering the fact that she could see the screen, even if just barely, it must have quite a bit of power behind it. On one hand, that was worrying, as she couldn't just bust through the screen and get into the stands if something crazy happened during the fight. On the other hand, however, if she could find the power source for that screen in the underworks, such as mana crystals…well, she shouldn't have to explain the temptation.

'Are you ready?' Beth asked, having not gotten any better plans or suggestions from her companion.

'No, but let's do it anyway,' Blood replied.

Beth didn't start, however, but said, 'You don't need to always just agree with me. If you don't want to fight this guy, tell me. Your opinion matters, and we'll leave.'

'I want to hunt,' was all Blood replied, clearly believing that was enough, as she was focused on the Dominator.

'Just wanted to make sure you knew your opinions matter,' Beth said as she cracked her knuckles and rolled her neck, striding forward when Blood just grunted in response.