Limitless Path Chapter Seven Hundred Sixteen (Patreon)

Her opponent scrambled to get back to her feet, planting her sword to help thrust herself upright and quickly spinning to face Beth, only seeing that Beth wasn’t pursuing her after managing to orientate herself. Beth could tell she had mostly healed herself, though maybe the disorientation had led to her healing her jaw before her partially concussed brain. The woman didn’t just wait for Beth, who was still just walking her down, but pointed her sword at Beth and leapt forward, charging across the intervening space in a handful of seconds. Beth didn’t react, not in any way that was obvious as the charge happened, but she still parried the swing of the woman.

That led to a massive flurry of attacks, at least from her opponent, all of which Beth parried with ease, or seeming ease. There were two big problems her opponent was having, neither of which she would really be able to deal with without a massive breakthrough mid-fight, and that was without Beth really trying her hardest to fight. Even a big breakthrough wouldn’t put them on the same footing, which the woman seemed to realize as they were trading blows, or rather, as the woman was furiously attacking, her greatsword singing through the air, nothing more than a shimmering glimmer in the harsh light of the blue sun high overhead.

But, back to the two problems; first was that Beth was just so much stronger. That came from multiple things, including her stats and the fact she had an insane boosting skill that would make even many Exalted green with envy. Even a breakthrough wouldn’t just suddenly make up for such a massive gap, but maybe if the woman suddenly transformed one of her skills into one of a much higher tier, she might be able to put some pressure on Beth. Since that clearly wasn’t going to happen, maybe she could win with the other way to get a massive advantage in a fight, the way that Baelvyr had hammered into Beth, which was having a much superior weapon skill. Unfortunately for the woman, she wasn’t as good as Beth in that category, either, though she was only a level or two higher than the woman in Grandmaster. Still, a level at Grandmaster was a big gap, and Beth wasn’t just a Grandmaster; she was a double Grandmaster, and her other field she was a Grandmaster in was Swords, which let her understand exactly what her opponent was going to do and how she would do it.

Given that the woman was unlikely to have an epiphany, or multiple epiphanies, mid-fight, which would only bring her somewhat close to Beth’s level, Beth wasn’t really treating the fight all that seriously. Sure, she was on her toes; this was a student of an Exalted, after all, and there’s no telling what hidden tricks she also had ready to deploy. They exchanged strikes as Beth kept her eye on the woman, worried mainly about some kind of crazy skill that would suddenly manifest and turn the tide in an instant, though the longer they exchanged strikes with nothing but weapons and brute force, the less she thought such a thing might be coming.

It was right as she was settling in to give the woman a solid beating and end the match that her opponent disengaged, leaping back and getting ready for a much more powerful attack, or so Beth assumed. Energy surged around her and mana concentrated on her blade, and Beth just watched, curious to see what would happen, or that’s how it looked. Internally, she was doing several things, including slowly adding a little mana into her boosting skill to amp up her reaction times and increase her physical prowess. If she was going to let the attack happen without cutting it off halfway, she wanted to make sure she was really ready to deal with whatever the woman would throw at her. Honestly, Beth was assuming that it would both be a series of attacks and that her opponent would pull out something else spectacular to try to take advantage of the massive attack to land something solid.

She was bound to be disappointed, however, as she let the woman charge her skill up, which only took a few seconds, before the attack was unleashed. Three seconds might not be a whole lot, or sound all that impressive or such, but in a fight at the level Beth was already at, three seconds was damned near a full eternity. That also meant Beth was really looking forward to the strike, to see what kind of power this opponent could muster, considering she had been easily keeping up with the woman and even tossing her around so far. The attack, when it launched, was nothing more than a complicated blade wave, though it was a lot more impressive than just a slash made of mana.

The attack was composed of two different elements or types of mana attack, including something made of blue fire or a type of fire Beth was not at all familiar with, and a kind of lightning that glowed a bright blue so pale in palette that it was almost more like a shaded white than a blue color. The slash moved rather fast, though Beth could dodge it, which shouldn’t be a big surprise, given that she was not just a spatial mage but a very skilled spatial mage. The part that was more impressive was that the attack had a hell of a lot of power behind it, especially considering it was an Enlightened without an Ideal, as far as Beth could tell, that had created the attack. If it had been a couple years ago, maybe even eighteen months ago, Beth would have been at least somewhat concerned about the attack and would have decided to avoid it no matter what, but things were a lot different. Beth’s skills were all at a new level, and she had new skills, merged and evolved to be far more than they were even a little while ago.

Instead of teleporting, dodging, or even blocking, Beth took the attack head-on, meeting the mana slash with an attack of her own. She didn’t want to really go all-out as, even though the opponent was displaying a decent bit of strength now, Beth was still far stronger. She was expecting that the other student she would have to face would be even stronger, so she was really trying not to show all her cards. Still, she had to respond appropriately, watching the glowing blue and white attack whistle across the frozen ground they were standing on, bits of dirt and little puffs of ice kicked up by the power of the attack’s passage.

Beth replied with a punch, a seemingly ordinary attack, but it was far from it. Instead, she infused the attack with mana from her skills with Unarmed, and then added in a massive blast of concentrated power from Spatial Obliteration. What was produced was a long, narrow beam of destroyed and shattered space, extending from Beth’s knuckled, through the attack that she easily cleaved in half, and into the opponent’s torso. The woman was lifted from the ground and flung back more than a hundred feet, her armor cracking and shattering as her body was crushed and rent by the force of the long-range punch. Beth hadn’t put her all into it, but even not giving it one hundred percent, the attack was still devastatingly powerful, at least in comparison to her opponent’s level of skill and toughness.

“Alright, enough!” called Zane, his voice echoing across the tundra. Beth had sort of expected it given that the woman had gone down much harder this time and hadn’t even twitched after landing. There was a second of pause and a small glow of light followed by a quick flash, the stones surrounding all of them humming before going quiet.

The woman had been fully restored, though she did seem a bit dazed. Likely Beth had knocked her unconscious and also given her a bit of head trauma; even with the instant healing that the ring technology the CRA used setting a person right, they could still be pretty out of it for a few moments, up to a couple minutes, after coming back from such a beating. Long-time fighters, funnily enough, got much more used to snapping between extreme damage and extreme health, but people who didn’t spend a lot of time in the arenas could become quite discombobulated.

“Alright, clear the field,” Zane called to them, having them both leave.

Beth walked back to her team, or rather, Baelvyr’s team, several of whom, including all the students, were looking at her in a new light. She just shrugged, giving Baelvyr an open-hand gesture as if saying ‘what did you expect?’ to which he just shook his head. They had to wait a minute for the other team to discuss something, and part of it was the way Beth had rung her opponent’s bell. She assumed they wanted her firsthand account of the fight to try to better gauge Beth’s skill and see if the woman had a better idea of how much Beth was holding back. Beth herself was content to let them plan and assume; she would still win the next fight rather handily, anyway, and it might bring her a decent challenge if they set up a whole strategy.

Others were not as content, and Zane least of all. It appeared he was rather bored, which Beth didn’t doubt, but she knew he was also usually quite busy, and his business was often at the level of galaxy-wide threats or similar kinds of things. She still didn’t understand much of the business about the Maze of Eternity, but from the descriptions she had been given, she knew that that thing was a whole different ball game. The way it was described, even the Eternal Depths, a special instance so large it was accessible from multiple planets and was considered the centerpiece of the Milky Way by many, wasn’t even a pale shadow by comparison. Whatever the case was, some combination of boredom and time crunch, Zane gave the other team five minutes to collect their wits, saying that whatever team didn’t have someone on the field five minutes from now would lose.

That was Beth’s signal, for sure, and she was able to dodge away from Baelvyr, who was giving her a lecture about holding back and appropriate use of force that she was patently ignoring. She went back out into the field to wait, only there for two minutes before they other team seemed to have their strategy worked out. The way Baelvyr had put it, they weren’t exactly competing for a team win, but they were splitting an important access between the two groups based on how the students performed. Her two victories basically meant Baelvyr and Tazeen could spend longer pillaging the place for all it was worth rather than having a small window and the other doing the same with a big time block, so she was planning on bringing home a second win.

The man that walked out to confront her was of a kind, not with her, but had a similar vibe to the woman she had fought. Beth got the impression from his plate armor, his stance, the way he walked, and other, more subtle hallmarks that she analyzed as he approached to stand across from her. He also used a bit more traditional gear, having a large shield and a mace instead of a slightly less practical weapon like a greatsword or just his fists, but Beth wasn’t all that much impressed. Zane didn’t really wait for them to have banter or anything, just asking if they were ready and then immediately starting the fight when they signaled they were both prepared.

Apparently, the strategy was to let Beth set the pace, as the man didn’t even try to approach, just turtling up behind his shield and waiting for her to make a move. She would have been fooled if she weren’t so powerful and sensitive to mana, though it was still a struggle for her, given that she was a little too specialized in spatial mana and had more trouble detecting and reading anything else. The other problem was that the man was an Ascended, so he had a bit more power to work with given his mana would be at least a bit more concentrated.

He had tried to sneak some threads of mana through the ground towards her, and they had set up a trap if she just charged at him. Beth couldn’t get an exact read on them, but it felt like something liquid and she thought it might have just been plain old water mana that he was using. That would be a bit annoying, considering they were on an icy moon and there was plenty of water around for the man to play with without having to spend too much mana, but Beth wasn’t all that concerned. She took a step forward and disappeared, teleporting right behind the man before teleporting again the instant she appeared. It was good that she was so cautious, as spikes made of hardened water, still liquid but stronger than mana steel, exploded around him. It was a very good, omni-directional defense that Beth was going to have a little difficulty getting through. Her teleporting worked much better on people who still had trouble visualizing the entire battle space around them and attacking anywhere; someone who was confident with attacking beside or behind themselves was a tougher opponent.

Even though the spikes had been powerful and dense, she wasn’t overawed by what she saw or felt. It wasn’t like a single hit was going to take her out, or even do much damage, but it would be really annoying to fight through. She tried a few more teleports, trying to gauge the man and see if he had some kind of cooldown or if it was really taxing to fire out the spikes in rapid succession, but he wasn’t bothered, at least to her observations. She also nearly got caught on the ground, finding he had continued extending threads of mana outward and had made the whole area into a landmine. Unfortunately for the man, Beth had both enough power at her level already that she could fly if she needed to, and also the skill and power to continuously teleport without getting exhausted or overtaxed on resources or focus. If he wanted to make the ground unsafe, Beth would just fight him from the air, which might actually be more annoying for him, considering she didn’t have the normal weakness of low maneuverability in the air, the classic weakness that Baelvyr had taught her about years ago when he told her not to jump so much while she was still early on her Path and just learning to fight.

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