Limitless Path Chapter Seven Hundred Eleven (Patreon)

Don Hopkin

Ten Minutes Earlier

Don wasn’t really sure what to think. After shaking the young woman’s hand, and she did look young, even for one of the centuries old CRA types, she had been very calm about the whole situation, which was more than he could say for a lot of people who were out here on the line a second or third time. He supposed that he wouldn’t be all that concerned if he was over level five hundred and was up against some level two hundred eighty beasts, but even numbers could still be a problem. He’d learned that lesson well when he’d gotten cocky after his first rebirth and nearly got killed by a swarm of level one hundred beasts when he was level one hundred fifty, which had really driven the lesson home.

When the young woman moved over to the front line, he had expected something a little more…circumspect, maybe? She had simply gone around the Smith brothers and, before they could even adjust to having someone in their fighting line, had grabbed a lizard with one hand and just…held it there. That was more impressive than it sounded, considering the high level of the beasts, not to mention the fact that they weighed in excess of two tons and had that much more muscle to be able to move around as quickly as they did. She held it with its front legs off the ground, scrabbling and panicked, acting like the weight and snapping movements of the beast were nothing to her. The even more terrifying part was that, upon finishing her examination of the beast, she killed it with a single movement of her hand and wrist, a quick and clean snapping of its neck.

Things didn’t get any better from there, or maybe they got a whole lot better; Don was still reeling a little bit and trying to figure out what he was feeling. Hell, he was still trying to piece together everything that had happened, as, after her appearance, it felt like the day had just turned into a crazy whirlwind that didn’t make all that much sense. The next part had really been where he had had his eyes opened, however, as watching her move so fast nobody could track it, and he’d checked, had been parts beautiful and terrible to behold. The result of that couple seconds of movement, namely being a wide swathe of ground now cleared of any living beast, all of them reduced to bloody corpse meat, was even more eye-opening.

Nobody was willing to follow her into the heart of the pack after that, not that the woman had needed or seemed to want any kind of help. Watching her calmly walk through what would have been a field of death for any of them, the only death being what she dished out, was also an awe-inspiring experience. Don hadn’t felt anything like that in a long, long time, not since before even the Path showed up on Earth, and the last time he had experienced a similar feeling was when his sister had brought him along to a concert. One of the best musicians in living memory was playing that night, and the way he handled the instrument, the music it produced, it was something that transcended common sense, an experience that felt like something one only got to experience once in a lifetime.

Don was now having a second experience like that, but this was of a very different kind, make no mistake about that. If that concert he had attended with his sister and his sister’s family had been one of the most beautiful pieces of pure art he had ever witnessed, then this was the most beautiful piece of destruction he had ever seen or heard of. It was at that same kind of level, transcending what he had thought was possible for a single person to do, despite what he had seen and heard since this new kind of life had started. It was a symphony of death, a concerto of destruction, a whirlwind of violence and raw destructive fury. The thing that made it truly terrifying was how calm and and unbothered Beth made it look; the young woman walked through a maelstrom of death, a maelstrom she was causing, and looked like she was out on a Sunday afternoon stroll.

The casual ease with which she destroyed everything in her path, and didn’t express a care at all, either for the enemies confronting her, if barely being able to flee her was counted as ‘confronting,’ or what happened to the bodies or other loot, was pretty damn scary. Don had seen a lot in his time, even before the Path, but this was definitely a new level of focused violence, not to mention cold, hard skill on display. He wasn’t even sure how she was performing some of the attacks, both from the speed she sometimes moved and from the amount of skill she was using. Their were times where she would casually move her arm as she walked forward, a gesture that felt like a simple wave or twist of her shoulder and elbow, and yet two or even three punches would be produced by it, all of them deadly in both their accuracy and precision.

That was just the start, or maybe the build-up to the big finale, as she had moved far enough away that even Don’s enhanced eyes couldn’t really track her anymore. After a minute there was a noise like a dozen artillery pieces all hitting each other at the same time and a big blast of air, which he pretty easy was able to determine was just the minor shock wave from whatever attack she had just performed in the center of the horde. There was a pause for a moment, even the massive lizards seeming to stop and hold their breaths, and then a even more massive concussion rolled out through the area the horde was occupying.

That was just the precursor, however, as a moment later a massive explosion rocked the area, something that reminded Don of the couple times he had seen fuel-air, or thermobaric, weapons utilized. Those bombs were typically much bigger blasts, in terms of the visible fireball, and even often in terms of the shock wave, and both were true here. Whatever she had done, a massive fireball appeared in the middle of the horde, and it was only when one of the scouts pointed out that it looked wrong that Don realized it had two layers. The CRA rep had somehow set up a massive column of fire and energy, though it was quite as visible, if that description made sense, as the fireball it was containing.

The blast that resulted was also channeled upward to an extent, but Don and the others still had to brace heavily as it rolled across the field. It wasn’t quite strong enough to pick up the multi-ton lizards and toss them around, even the dead ones, but it was strong enough that he could see it moving towards them as a visible wave, shoving the remaining lizards forward and down and disturbing the air as it passed. Don was rocked back, but his senses were keen enough the he had been able to detect the blast wave and react well before it had reached him, as had basically everyone else. There was some swearing behind him from back at the camp, which looked like was from a few people that hadn’t been paying attention, which was already silly, but a couple guys had had their backs to the horde while eating or some such and had spilled their food or been knocked over.

The fire faded after a handful of seconds and there wasn’t any secondary blast or back blast from the epicenter, so Don started to relax before the CRA rep just suddenly appeared standing beside him. He aborted his reaction after only a fraction of a second, but he still saw a slight smirk ghost across her lips for a movement. He could only shake his head a bit himself; if he had even drawn on her, let alone attacked, it would have likely…well, she was strong enough she could have just batted his attack away without really hurting him, but it would have been hellaciously embarrassing. She surveyed the area around her even after she had appeared, which was good operational procedure, but had Don worried. What if she found something that was actually dangerous to her? The rest of them would just be fucked.

“That was…uh, impressive?” Don tried, scratching his head.

“Yeah. Found the source of the horde out there; was just a mana disturbance. They can have all kinds of effects, but the simplest is just to produce a lot of beasts. If it were let go long enough, because of how it works, it would have drawn in most of the mana in the area,” she explained.

“Wouldn’t that create something like a mana desert? Would that be bad?” asked one of the brothers that had been holding the line.

“Yes and no,” she said, tilting her hand back and forth. “It was drain the mana from a wide area around it, but it wouldn’t be totally empty of mana, so no mana desert effect. It would do that to pull mana in, so the area around it would then be saturated even higher than a lot of the high spots on Earth. It would be enough a low-rebirth person would start experiencing complications if they stayed in that area for any great length of time. It would also mean the number of level of the beasts would have kept increasing. Eventually, all that mana couldn’t just sit there, and it would have done…something with it. Probably formed a dungeon, but there’s a dozen or more possibilities for what could have happened, and some of them aren’t really great. Glad I actually took the tip seriously and came and saw what was up.”

“How’d you break it?” one of the mages asked.

“Not really a complex way, but I wouldn’t recommend it,” Beth said with a shrug. “I don’t mean to be a dick, but I’m way stronger than you guys. That mana anomaly wasn’t all that powerful, not yet, and the easiest way for me, given my strength, was to just overwhelm it. It’s crude, but I hit with enough mana and force in a short enough time that it blew some of the mana away and destabilized the rest. That mana instability then caused what you might guess; big boom. I contained that with one of my core powers and made sure it didn’t turn into anything too bad.”

“Core powers?” someone else asked, causing the woman to shake her head, though she did chuckle a bit.

“Didn’t expect to be teaching a class today,” she said, though it was good-natured.

“Sorry, but you know so much. It’s rare for CRA reps to just give us the info for nothing, eh,” Don explained.

“Yeah, they don’t like playing teacher most of the time,” she said in a teasing tone. “Anyway, I’ve been around the block a time or two, so I know some things. On top of that, you have to study a lot to get the higher Emblems at the CRA, which means you pack away a ton of knowledge. I’m sure you guys are already experiencing that everything about us is better as we level, including our memory, so I won’t really go into detail, but think about it. I have a basically perfect memory and I have to study an encyclopedia’s worth of material for each new Emblem level.”

“That explains some things,” muttered someone else in the group, seeming to have just put a few things together.

“Yeah, and ya gotta remember, the tests get harder and cover a lot more ground, so you have to study way more,” Beth explained. “I’m currently in the middle of the process of getting my Platinum Emblem, which is a years-long process even for the fast ones, and can easily take decades for people who are just a bit slower. But anyway, I feel like we’ve strayed a bit.”

“Core powers,” someone threw out.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s where we were,” she said. “So, core powers is just what people call a bunch of the powers you get, or need to get, to progress. Sorry to tell you guys, but your Presence, or humanization for beasts, is the only freebie. After that, every major power along those lines you gotta earn, they don’t just hand those out anymore.”

“So, it’s stuff like our Presences, eh?” Don asked then, understanding what she was getting at.

“Yeah, yeah, that stuff. I’m sure a lot of you have at least heard of Mana Physiques, even if you haven’t started looking into them yet. That’s step two after Presences, and you need one to do rebirth ten, if someone here didn’t know that already,” she explained. “Beyond that isn’t anything for a long time, but the next one is called an Ideal. I don’t want to go too far into it as I don’t want to either influence you guys too much, which can throw you off when trying for the core power, or get you too excited for something that’s still too far away. If you tried to work on your Ideal before even getting a good understanding of what you need for your Mana Physique, you’d be in a pretty terrible spot.”

“I take it what you did was something to do with this ‘Ideal’ thing you mentioned?” Lacey, the scout that had been beaming lizards in the head, asked.

“Yeah. Ideals are really strong, if that wasn’t obvious, and they can be manipulated like a skills, but with even broader effects or influence, depending on what the Ideal is and how you view it,” Beth answered. “My Ideal is complete, which is insanely rare for someone of even my power level to have done, not to toot my own horn at all, but it gives me tons of power and capability to manipulate things around me. I used it in a kinda crude way there, just forming a big cylinder and using it to contain or negate parts of the explosion I made, which I did just with ‘regular’ skills, but there’s far more Ideals can do. It’s not really something to get all wrapped up in now, though; don’t want to lose focus of what’s important.”

“Shouldn’t we work on it now, if it’s that important?” one of the mages asked. Don thought they went by Tom, but he wasn’t sure. Some of the group cycled in and out and he didn’t know everyone all that well even if he knew the core group pretty well.

“Nah, you have so much time,” Beth answered with a shake of her head. “Every rebirth is extending your lifespan, alchemy elixirs and products can extend your lifespan, even some skills can extend your lifespan, not to mention all kinds of other stuff. You have plenty of time, but if you reach for step three before even working on step two, to put it a little crudely, you can get stuck spinning your wheels on step three for decades or centuries, and without step two, you reach a hard cutoff. Someone without their Mana Physique usually lives about two three centuries, something like that, assuming they get to rebirth nine, maybe somewhat longer. If you complete your Mana Physique and keep climbing, however, you can live up to about three thousand years, or ten times as long, without even going to any extreme, or expensive, lengths. So don’t try working on your Ideal before you basically have your Mana Physique done; don’t blow the three or four hundred years you have trying to get step three done instead of doing step two, which would give you another twenty-five hundred years or so.”

“Oh, well, that’s…uh, a good point, eh,” Don said, trying to process everything she had gone over.

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