Limitless Path Chapter Seven Hundred Fifteen (Patreon)

The next match was Navere’s student, who was almost the opposite of the man himself. Where the two elves of Baelvyr’s team were stoic to the point of being almost blank, Navere’s student was excitable to the point of being hyperactive. He was constantly talking, moving around, pointing out things that were obvious, and not, about the fights, and just the furthest thing from what Beth expected for a student of one of the elves. He was also not quite as strong as Beth had thought he would be, considering he went out and put on a good show but still got his ass kicked by a mage that clearly also had a lot of experience in close combat. The outcome wasn’t exactly a huge surprise, either, considering Navere’s student wasn’t all that strong, being only at sixteen rebirths himself, but it was still a bit of an upsetting loss that put them down one-to-two.

After that, it was time for Jaq’s student, who Beth could have mistaken for Tazeen or Navere’s student, considering he was a stoic elf, to go out on the field, and Beth knew the conclusion before it even started. Being trained by Jaq, who was an annoying bastard, but was also very strong and highly skilled, wasn’t going to produce someone second rate, not that she was slinging insults at the two from their team that had just lost. She was just saying it wasn’t at all a surprise when Jaq’s student, in rather ruthless fashion, evened the score up to a tie game at two wins each by slicing apart his opponent in fast, brutal fashion.

That was four fights down, and relatively quickly, considering that fights at their level could last for seconds or could last for an hour. Beth actually wasn’t really sure why she was there, other than there maybe being a requirement for so many people to have so many fights, considering they already had five fighters. If this last mentee won, then they would have a win at three wins and two losses, and a loss would be a loss. If Beth fought afterwards, she would either drive the win home even harder or just tie it up.

She watched as Tazeen’s student, a young woman with some bestial features that indicated some kind of lizard heritage or some such similar, took the field against the second-to-last of their opponents, if Beth understood what was happening. The fight was hopefully going to be over quick, then Beth could just stomp whoever was up and go back to what she had been doing before Baelvyr had rolled up and kidnapped her, but if this was a loss, then she would have to carry the team to a tie, which didn’t make much sense. The opponent for Tazeen’s student was a short woman with a shaved head and tattoos on her arms and legs, something that Beth didn’t see all that much of, but she couldn’t say it was really uncommon, either. The tattoos were more than just decoration in this case, though it was not that the woman was trying to copy the runes of humanization, as Beth had been warned about a long time ago.

Instead, the tattoos were just part of, or formed, a skill on the woman’s skin that aided her physical and magical defenses. Beth thought it was a bit of a clever piece of work, but the downside was that it was a bit hard to hid what was happening. The tattoos weren’t runes, but were basically the mana channels of the skill itself, the same way when Beth used something like Spatial Step or even The Tyrannical Beast Itself, that mana would move through her body in a certain pattern along certain routes. The advantage was that having the skill so clearly expressed added to the strength and concentration of the mana, as was aptly demonstrated by the woman’s ability to tank damage and slash through to the other side with her sword and dagger.

The fight was a bit of a nail-biter, but Tazeen’s student was only barely holding the upper hand for quite a bit of it, until Beth was sure she won with a clever bit of swordplay at the end. Unfortunately, that clever bit of sword work wasn’t enough as the opponent’s defenses were much tougher than Beth had given her credit for. Not only were the tattoos better than what Beth had thought, but she recognized another skill, one that looked like it was activated in short bursts for a big boost to damage resistance and regeneration both, employed to keep the woman in the fight. It was a rather risky strategy, not countering the powerful move of Tazeen’s student itself but just becoming more durable and healing faster and hoping not to get called it, but it worked.

The fight was a loss for them, as the tattooed woman managed to obliterate Tazeen’s student after that, the fighting hinging on that single exchange, which was pretty incredible to think about, considering they had fought for nearly four minutes without either of them sustaining all that much damage. Suddenly, in the course of three seconds, the whole thing was over, and it was now up to Beth to tie, she supposed, so maybe the could move on into the tie breaker. Tazeen and Navere’s students seemed pretty banged up about it, but the two stoic elves looked calm and only offered a few minor corrections and some words of encouragement to their mentees.

“So, I tie us up now?” Beth asked Baelvyr as it looked like her turn to fight.

“Nah. Ya go and win it, now,” he said, shaking his head.

“How’s that now?” Beth asked, frowning at him as her eyebrows scrunched down.

“Ya got two fights, girlie,” Baelvyr rumbled. “Tia ain’t got any mentees, so yer standin’ in fer hers, and ya get two fights outta it.”

“I gotta fight twice? Am I getting paid twice as much?” Beth asked before acting like she had a sudden realization. “Wait a minute! Am I getting paid at all?”

“Ya ain’t here for money, girlie,” Baelvyr said, exasperation leaking into his voice.

“Never appreciated for my work,” Beth muttered.

“What’s that?” the Exalted asked darkly.

Beth didn’t respond to him, instead teleporting right next to Zane without even a flicker of movement and sitting on a stool she pulled out of storage. “Hey, Baelvyr said he isn’t gonna pay me for this shit, so I’m your mentee now.”

“Haha,” Zane threw back his head and bellowed a laugh in response, the force of the laughter strong enough to cause everything around them to shake and tremble. “Nice try, kiddo, but no dice.”

With a simple flick of a finger, Beth was suddenly right back where she started, standing next to Baelvyr without having her position even a fraction of an inch out of place. She hadn’t even felt the teleport, if that’s what it was, and had to give props to the man who was said to have cleared one of the toughest challenges in the whole universe not just once, but several times. His mastery of many forms of magic exceeded what some who specialized in those fields for millennia were capable of, and he wasn’t afraid of showing it.

“Don’t think I don’t know what yer up to, girlie,” Baelvyr said, acting like her field trip hadn’t even happened.

“Fine, but you do me a favor,” Beth grunted, starting to walk onto the field as she stretched. “Two fights for the price of one. Scratch that. Two fights for the price of none! The absolute nerve of some people…”

She was still muttering as she got to the center of the field and faced her first opponent, a tall woman in armor that was close to full plate, though with a bit better range of motion, and lacking a typical helmet. Beth was guessing she had something like the neck piece that Beth used to wear that provided a force screen, though once somebody got to their level, the possibilities started to really multiple. It could even be a set of earrings that provided a force screen or defenses like that or boosts to a skill that protected the head; the possibilities really were endless.

Beth had opened her mouth to quip something nominally witty, but the other woman was already talking, saying, “Nice to see someone so fresh show up to support their…people, if you want to call them that. Still, you’re no match for us, and you should probably surrender right now. It would save us all some time, and you a lot embarrassment. Don’t want to looked too bad, especially if your team is made up of such legends.”

The words were nice enough, depending on the interpretation, but the tone, and the attitude conveyed through body language were not nice, and Beth responded in kind, saying, “Did you want to fight or is this debate club? Who cares about winning or losing and not about how good the fight is? Are you just ashamed to put on a bad showing?”

“Oh, you bitch. I gave you a chance. I’m going to have a lot of fun with this,” the other woman scoffed.

“Only if we keep yapping. Are you here to talk or to fight? I thought this was an arena,” Beth said, putting on an obviously faux confused look and tilting her head at the woman.

Before the woman could respond, Zane interfered, clearly sensing that they were both ready and that this could go on for quite some time. He cut Beth’s opponent off with her mouth open, leaving her to make just a small coughing noise as Zane’s voiced rolled over everyone there, asking if the two fighters were ready. Beth and the woman both signaled their acknowledgment, which was good enough for Zane to signal the start, a rather sloppy procedure. Then again, even the four Exalted that were gathered here weren’t going to tell a man at a hundred and ninety-seven rebirths what to do or how to do it, and it’s not like it affected the outcomes of the fights, so everyone just ignored how he officiated as long as it remained fair.

The other woman didn’t waste any time after the signal to start, rushing towards Beth, who just stood where she was, slouching slightly as she watched the woman rush her. On paper, this was a pretty even fight, with Beth and the woman both sitting at nineteen rebirths and having both studied under Exalted for some number of years. They were also a pretty good match going straight up, as the woman was wielding a greatsword on top of having heavier armor and solid defenses, matching up against Beth pretty evenly. That was all on paper, or would be, if someone didn’t have the actual numbers written down, including stats and skill levels. Beth was pretty sure the woman didn’t have a boosting skill that was anywhere close to what she had, or anywhere within artillery range of tier seven at all, if she were being honest.

The charge across the intervening distance would have been impressive to most, but Beth was able to watch it idly, the woman just appearing to be…slow. Beth waited until she was already fully committed to her attack, the opponent’s greatsword whistling through the air, before moving at all herself. She didn’t want this to end too quickly, so she was holding back a bit, quite a bit, in fact, and going slow at the start. She wasn’t boosting herself, other than the always-present passive effects of The Tyrannical Beast Itself, and she didn’t even use all her strength to counter. She lashed out with a simple punch, not even aiming for the woman, but punching her blade, edge-on. She could see the look of scorn that briefly flashed over the woman’s face at the move, which would normally be rather dumb, but Beth was wielding a set of insane gauntlets that she had used a powerful upgrade item on to make truly ludicrous in their strength and durability.

The woman’s facial expression changed real quick when Beth’s fist actually met the blade and the resulting force flung the woman back three steps before she could stabilize her footing, her face now showing an expression of shock and mild distress. It was pretty clear she hadn’t been going all-out either, but she had put quite a lot of force into the swing, and it was also clear to her that Beth had not put a huge amount of force into the swing. Neither hit had used a skill to boost it, but it was still impressive on both counts, it was just that Beth was far more impressive.

“Did you just punch my sword without a skill?” the woman asked, in a bit of a daze.

“It wasn’t hard,” Beth said with a shrug.

Before the woman could respond, Beth surged forward, launching herself across the intervening space so fast it would look to many like she teleported. She did not, in fact, tap into her skill and strength as a spatial mage to move this time, however, simply propelling herself straight at her opponent with most of her strength. She could still observe and react in real time, this not even being as fast as she could go without teleporting, and she watched as the opponent’s eyes started to widen. They didn’t even get to widen all the way, as Beth crossed the gap between them so fast that her opponent couldn’t even properly follow the movement.

Beth planted her lead foot at the exact moment her punch lashed out, anchoring herself to the ground to channel energy and momentum all the way from the soles of her feet to the edge of her knuckles, twisting her body to drive the punch home. She was using incredibly good form, but she still held back, even pulling the punch so her over two hundred thousand Strength wasn’t all delivered to the woman’s jaw with the strike. Her opponent tried to move her sword to interfere, but Beth was so much faster and stronger that her knuckles connected with the woman’s jaw before the greatsword could even properly move into the path her fist had taken.

At the moment of contact, the ground under them exploded from the force Beth had exerted downward to achieve fully proper form and anchor herself well. She could feel the woman’s jaw break in two places on the impact of her fist, and a big blast of air radiated out in a large shock wave as the woman was thrown into the air, partially twisting and spinning as she hurtled more than a hundred feet before impacting the ground. The woman, even being in full plate and landing at an even angle, didn’t skid, but instead bounced once, almost like Beth had thrown a skipping stone across a pond, flying back up four feet into the air and sailing another fifteen before hitting the ground a second time and skidding nearly a dozen more.

Beth looked over at Zane and asked, “Did I win?”

He was back to his lazy pose and waved the hand he didn’t have his cheek propped on in an idle manner, saying, “She’s still conscious, she hasn’t said or moved in a way to indicate surrender, and the Arena Stones don’t count her as having sustained disqualifying damage. She’s fine.”

“Oh. Good,” Beth said before turning back to the woman and starting to walk towards her with a slow, lazy gait.

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