Limitless Path Chapter Seven Hundred Ten (Patreon)

"So, fill me in,” Beth said.

“Don, are you sure,” someone from the group muttered to him quietly. Or, they tried to be quiet, anyway. With Beth’s enhanced stats and even a decent ability to read lips and understand what people were saying, they might as well have just shouted it, but they didn’t know that.

“It’s fine,” Don said, not bothering to be quiet as he waved distractedly over his shoulder. “She’s over level five hundred, eh. If she wanted, she could just take it all and we couldn’t stop her, eh?”

“I don’t really care to take anything. Just out here to make sure it isn’t a problem going forward,” Beth said, shrugging. That was also entirely true, as she hadn’t seen anything over or at level four hundred when she had teleported over and hovered in the air. The beasts didn’t really hold interest for her at this point, and she would like to get her hands on any valuable resources or treasure that might be in the center, but she wasn’t going to be greedy about it. Besides, whatever was in there probably just wasn’t worth all that much for her, not that she didn’t understand vending machine theory or the like, but she wasn’t going to rob this group that had been working hard at it just for what would likely amount to pennies, at least to her.

“Sounds like CRA talk,” muttered someone else as interest in Beth started to wane. Others had already turned back to the fight or to what they had been doing, as they had set up a temporary camp which they were using as a simple base. It was just enough they had a handful of defenses and a few areas where people could rest, but it was clear it wasn’t any kind of permanent structure or fortification.

“Any better idea of what’s going on?” Beth asked as most of the camp went back to what they had been up to.

“Just lots of beasts, eh,” Don said with a small shrug. “They’re coming from somewhere inside the group, but we’re not sure where. There’s not a dungeon in there, as far as anyone can tell, but there’s some that’s causing there to be a lot more of them than there should be, eh. They break in packs of a hundred or so at times, which can be awful to deal with for the people in the surrounding area, but we’ve been handling them just fine. Can’t really say much more than that, eh.”

“Alright, I’ll just take a look and see,” Beth said. “If I can figure out how to shut it off or stop it, want me to just stop the spawning?”

“I mean, can we even tell ya what to do, eh?” Don asked, giving her a look.

“I’m just making sure things are safe,” Beth said before thinking about it for a moment. “Well, relatively safe, as these things go. If it’s nothing that’s going to overwhelm everything in the area, I can just leave it alone. It would be a good way for people that have done a few rebirths to level.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” said the woman who had first corrected Don. “The beasts have been getting higher in level, and we think there’s more of them, though we’re still killing them fast enough that it’s hard to tell. That could change if more above level three hundred start showing up; we have to tackle those as a group.”

“Well, if it’s being a problem like that, then I should take care of it,” Beth said firmly. “There’s plenty of dungeons around that people can use to level on top of other stuff. If I can figure it out, I’ll stop it, though I’ll let you guys clean it up, if that’s fine.”

“Well, like I said, not really all that much any of us can do to stop you, eh,” Don said.

“Well, let me just check what’s going on,” Beth said, walking through their small camp to where there was a bit of a separation from the fighting.

“You’re gonna just walk out there?” someone asked.

“You have a different plan?” Beth asked, amusement clear in her voice as she walked out toward the fighting.

“Well, it’s pretty dangerous, even given your level, eh,” Don said, trailing along behind her with two others.

“I appreciate the concern, but I think I’ll be fine,” Beth said, the amusement clear in her voice again.

She walked out past a group of sentries or defenders that were keeping the camp safe, standing a good hundred feet back from where the actual fighting was happening, and headed across that clear area towards where more than twenty people were fighting, pushing the lizards back. Most of the beasts were pretty ugly bastards, big heads and bulging eyes and swollen bodies with thick, twisted limbs. Of course, the picture wouldn’t be complete without mentioning several of the species had massive, lolling tongues that they tried to use as weapons or to snatch up any free body parts, especially of other beasts, that they could find to eat. Beth had seen it all and a thousand other things besides, though it looked like some of the fighters here still weren’t quite as used to how brutal beasts could be as she was, some of the warriors making faces or shaking their heads slightly at the grotesque nature of what they were battling even as they kept swinging or slinging spells.

Beth walked up to where two men with swords and shields were holding an area, allowing others around them to move forward or back as needed and providing a bulwark for a woman with a bow as tall as she was to launch arrows that were more like ballistae bolts over their heads. Beth watched an arrow slam into a lizard’s skull and blow it apart, sending pieces of brain and bone flying, blood splattering the surrounding beasts as the continued milling about. At least the deaths weren’t causing any kind of frenzy in the beasts, even of the feeding kind, but the supply of beasts was just never-ending, with more and more beasts filling in the gaps. Of course, their fight was just a narrow area along the edge of the mass of beasts, but they still were dancing on the edge of getting pushed back and overrun at times, though a few big spells from one of the casters would occasionally clear things out for a minute.

Beth went around the men, catching a lizard as it lunged at her, holding its skull in one hand as she examined it closely, the beast’s legs scrabbling for purchase as it tried to wrest itself loose. It was a futile effort, and Beth didn’t see the others behind her exchange glances; it was one thing to see someone was over level five hundred, and to hear about them being strong, but it was entirely another to watch that strength and power in action. Beth only took a handful of seconds to examine the lizard, finding little that was out of the ordinary about the beast, before she gave a firm twist and jerk, snapping the beasts neck like it was an old twig. She tossed the body to the side before slapping away another lizard; for anyone else, that slap might have, at most, stunned it for a second, but even a light slap from Beth was enough to smash the beast’s torso in, bones snapping and exploding as the corpse tumbled away.

Beth started firing off punches then, not even using any other skills, just the fact that she was a Grandmaster and could imbue her strikes with mana. Grandmaster lent her finer control and understanding of the process, allowing her strikes to be more powerful and focused for the same investment of mana and strength. To the others watching, which included all those back in the camp at this point, it looked nothing so much like the end of the world. Beth hadn’t held back all that much, and her fists and arms pistoned so fast that they weren’t even a blur to anyone else there, just a shimmering area of hazy air where someone watching closely could guess her limbs should be. From around her exploded hundreds of images of her fist, traveling so fast those images were hard to track, each one little bigger than her fist but made of pure mana. Those images tore through beasts, sometimes killing more than a dozen before the mana faded.

In what felt like an eternity to those watching with bated breath, but was merely a few seconds, Beth had killed thousands of the beasts, what remained of their bodies strewn across a very wide arc around her. She was totally unphased, walking through the gore to head deeper into the horde, some of the group behind her exchanges glances before shaking their heads. The others chose to reform and then hold their line, understanding quite keenly that they would absolutely be in the way if they tried to follow her into the center of the grouping. They could only watch in awe as Beth walked forward, firing out punches continuously, though at a slower pace than she had been; still, it was enough for her to carve a wide swathe of slaughter through the beasts.

Beth was barely paying attention at this point, at least to what she was actively doing; she was more concerned with scanning around herself. She didn’t need to focus to kill level two hundred to three hundred beasts, nor did she really care about the bodies or any loot that might be laying around. If there was anything the beasts hadn’t gobbled up, like some kind of ore or gems, for example, she was happy to leave it for Don and his group to take care of at a later point. She was more concerned that there was a monster nearby or something really high level that would give her a challenge, which would also likely be very lethal for the camp behind her, depending on how she handled it.

Her worry was good, keeping her head on a swivel in a dangerous situation was old hat and well done, but she needn’t have been nearly so worried. She carved a path to the center of the little horde over the course of a couple minutes, finding the level of resistance didn’t really change. Sure, the beasts changed a bit, with the ones closer to the center being both bigger and higher level, but nothing beyond that changed at all, and fighting things at level three hundred thirty still wasn’t a challenge for her. Well, fighting was a bit generous of a description of what she was currently doing, as brutally slaughtering probably came a lot closer to an apt description, but it was a real kill or be killed kind of world out there, and Beth wasn’t going to be killed, not any time soon.

At the center of the big mass of beasts she found more beasts, of course, but then there was a bit of a strange area. She paused to examine it, subconsciously firing out a few dozen attacks to kill everything within about two hundred feet of her as she studied the area in front of her. She wasn’t quite sure, but she thought she was dead center of this mass of lizards, which had her thinking what a group of lizards was called, though she couldn’t remember what it was off the top of her head. It wasn’t anything as cool as a murder of crows, which made her think either there wasn’t a word or it was one of the dumb ones, like a cackle or something similar.

She dismissed those thoughts as she figured out what she was looking at, though it was something that she hadn’t encountered all that much of so far. It was a distortion in space, but this was a true distortion, not the entrance to a dungeon or a special realm, such as where Basil had been, or anything else similar. It was simply a natural twisting of mana, sort of like a natural formation, which were rare but not unheard of, and places that could produce strange effects. Sometimes the places had a lot of beasts just because they were places with a lot of mana, and sometimes they had a lot of beasts because…well, they were producing them. Beth had now encountered the second kind, and she had to take a minute to examine how the area was twisted and what the mana was doing. Without a space on the other side, she couldn’t just hop in and drain the mana to help alleviate the mana, like she could do if it were a proper dungeon, so she would need to get a little creative.

This wasn’t really her strong suit, as it dealt with formations, natural mana movement, and a bit of dimensionality. At the same time, however, it was something she had a little understanding of, which was just enough that she could at least contain the formation much better than what was happening now. If her read on the situation was correct, she could even do more than just contain it, which would be pretty nice, but she would have to try a few things first. One of those things was moving the mana around and trying to thin it out, though she was not at all good at manipulating environmental mana. She could do it to an extent with spatial mana, and she could cheat a little yet again by using her Ideal, but it would be tough.

That helped a bit, and the beasts spawned slower for a minute, but it was a real, or even long-term, solution to the problem. She needed to at least contain the situation, but she would like to just wrap it up entirely, though that might be a bit…destructive. She looked around, double-checking there weren’t any crazy monsters nearby, and that the others hadn’t decided to wade in after her, before she gathered some mana in her arms and readied a few skills. She then teleported around the disturbance while firing off attacks, using a lot more than just her skill at punching to trying to alter the mana and the anomaly. She could tell the first round did something, as the mana started fluctuating wildly, but it hadn’t been enough, so she got ready for the second round, charging even more mana this time.

This second round, she first off the punches more rapidly and tried to narrow her focus down even more, just concentrating on the center of the natural formation. Whether it was the power or the focus, it certainly did the trick, though she had to use her Ideal to shelter the area, as the natural formation did not go quietly into the night. It went out with a rather large bang, almost all of which she caught and redirected upward just using the spatial concepts of her Ideal. The rest of it used the other concept of her Ideal, the annihilating fire, to destroy it, though it was likely converted, at least partially. Beth was pretty her Ideal wasn’t totally abrogating the laws of conservation of energy and mass, but it was doing something to make things just totally disappear.

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