Limitless Path Chapter Six Hundred Ninety-Four (Patreon)

Beth and Sera left Old Tom’s, but they had accomplished more than they had set out for. They had new gear, some new enchantments, and had progressed their crafting skills even more than she had realized. They had hit Grandmaster and then stuck around for another two weeks, startling Beth when she thought about how time had just slipped away without her noticing. In that extra thirteen or fourteen days, Sera had bumped her smithing another level, which would have been unheard of for anyone but an incredible prodigy, but they had the advantage of being taught by a bunch of Heroes. Jumping an extra level in a few weeks under those conditions wasn’t nearly as surprising.

What was surprising was the chaos they came back to, with a string of people showing up at the new house to, in essence, harass them with bureaucracy. Beth had a sneaking suspicion about what exactly was going on, and it didn’t take the most astute, or perceptive, soul in the galaxy to detect the hand of a few other players at work. She had personally sensed Maximus nearby at one point, though he didn’t deign to show himself, and for good reason. The beating he took from Baelvyr was still healing, and it had been spread around that not one but two powerful Exalted had visited Beth before she even had the furniture purchased for her new home. The old fellow wasn’t eager to have his bones forcefully rearranged any time soon, but he was lurking, which Beth didn’t at all like.

He wasn’t the chief antagonist, or he was, but he was using a borrowed knife to cut at them, and Beth suspected he wasn’t the only one that wanted a pound of flesh. Their winning of the deed had stirred people up, though many were smart enough to either let a sleeping dog lie or to stand back and watch the fireworks without getting singed themselves. The first and biggest problem was one that the entire group recognized, though Beth was not at all happy about that, considering it was the same company they had dealt with where she had gotten into a scrap with an Ascended. She had known that whole thing hadn’t fully blown over, but it looked like they had perfectly picked their opportune moment to jump into the fray, considering they were based in the City of Mended Dreams and already had an issue with her.

Well, whatever, she wasn’t giving back anything she’d looted from anybody, and if they had a problem with her, they better be careful, because she wasn’t wont to settle things all that calmly, nor did she think they realized just how big her fist was. Maybe not her fist precisely, not yet, but she had plenty of allies of her own that she could call favors in from or even hire for certain jobs, allies she wasn’t ashamed to use if things got dicey. Let the company decide to escalate things one level and see what happened.

Fortunately, it wasn’t just Beth alone against the world, or the harassment would have proved a bigger issue and sparked her to do something more drastic more immediately. In fact, her own side of the equation wasn’t brand new to all this, and the amount of paperwork and legal threats someone like Val could generate was truly monstrous. The best part was that the kresnik didn’t even need to get involved herself, personally running all over, but instead had an excellent team of lawyers and PR representatives to do all her dirty…well, maybe more circumspect work might be a better phrasing.

After Beth had gotten caught up on what was happening, and what the team’s status was, she had to finally move on to what she had been meaning to do for a little, which was have a talk with the Empyreans. Not that it was a massive emergency, which is why it had already taken this long, but it was clear there was some history there she might do well knowing, and she needed to catch up on a few things. Honestly, most of the history was Abigail’s, considering she was the one that had not just interacted the most with the City, but had even ruled it for a time, though that was long ago.

Abigail, unfortunately, didn’t have much to add, though she did say that the more things changed, the more they stayed the same, which seemed about par for the course. She did have some words of warning for navigating the planet’s bureaucracy and tedium that Beth took careful note of, passing along the best of the advice to Val, who was easily handling the annoyances. Considering how the auction had gone and their already swelling reputation, she wasn’t counting on too much trouble upending them already, but it was good to have more tools to fight back.

The next check was with all the Empyreans, who were not ready to make the next jump yet, many of them still working on their Ideal. Spending so much time around Beth and, by proxy, the other Exalted and beyond she knew was a great help, but if the thing had been easy, the thirteen of them wouldn’t have been trapped in a box for thousands of years. The only thing Beth could do was wait, but she had far less call to be impatient than they did, and, besides, it’s not like they were going to be bound to her forever. If all thirteen of them broke through, the shackles would be broken, and thirteen more Exalted would be let loose on the galaxy. Thirteen Exalted with strong ties to her, to be sure, but once the reliquary was gone, the thirteen of them had no obligation to stick around and dog her heels.

Getting through all that, and making sure the headache wasn’t too big of a headache for Val, Beth had few things left to do. One of them was a conversation with Sera, who she wanted to make sure she was on the exact same page as. It wouldn’t do to have the wife discontent because of a miscommunication, though there was very little in their relationship that wasn’t solid as a rock. A high mana density rock. But, seriously, she had checked the token she had and examined it before talking to the Empyreans and she was certain this was a solo gig. Unlike when she was younger, though not all that much younger, she couldn’t even take a companion along for the ride; she was simply too powerful to fall within those rules, even if she got a brand new companion right this moment, which certainly wasn’t in the cards.

That did necessitate a few other things, however, including spending a couple months objective time in total getting everyone pushed through another rebirth. This Trial or special zone or whatever she was going to was supposed to take a few months and be filled with fighting, so she saw no reason to waste the opportunity. Better to have everyone have plenty to work on it the meantime, which meant finishing the current rebirth and then leaving immediately. That would leave everyone with the goal of leaving and doing their entire True Rebirth quest by the time she got back, which might even make her the last one to finish, considering she might not have access to everything she needed for her quest during this Trial.

The group did their eighteenth rebirth in Beth’s gate, as was tradition by now, and that was about all Beth got to experience. The team definitely had a strong connection, and it was clear that at least part of that was beyond just teammates that did rebirths together, though it still hadn’t manifested as anything more, even given their links during their rebirths. Beth didn’t have any time, as she wanted to get the token used and get back so as not to interrupt their push for Ascended. True, they had no impossible time crunch pressing down on them currently, other than Liveria’s wife, whom Beth still kept in her mind, but it was going to be better for them the stronger they got.

All Beth did was leave her gate and summon the token to hand, injecting mana into it, which was rather simple for her. There wasn’t anything fancy, something she appreciated, just a quick pulse of mana that felt like a verification and then a sense of distortion. She had to let the distortion work, as her resistance to other people or things moving her through space was quite high at this point. Not that she was immune to such things, certainly, and it only was for certain cases. If Mortaine, who used dimensional magic, which was a bit different than spatial magic, had tried to move her, her resistances and mastery of space would count for little in trying to stop it. There was also the power difference to think about, but that applied for anything, not just her spatial resistance.

There was no fancy flash, and Beth only felt a handful of seconds of movement, not even a minute at most, before she appeared somewhere else, it being very clear she was very far away from where she had been. She tamped down the urge to make a random quip about not being in Kansas anymore as she surveyed her surroundings, not having known what to expect, finding that there wasn’t any immediate danger. At least, there wasn’t anything leaping for her throat right from the jump, which she had to admit was a pleasant change of pace, though it was a bit boring.

She had found herself in a black room, which wasn’t some kind of euphemism or anything, for the room really was black. Black tiles on the floor, with gray grout between, black tiles on the wall, though smaller, and black panels on the ceiling. She might have called it a touch much, but someone was very clearly going for an impression here, or had a theme that they really enjoyed following to the letter, and she had seen a lot stranger. The most unusual part of the room was the fact that it had six doors, all of which were on a single wall across from her, evenly spaced out along said wall. There was no one else within the room, which seemed a touch unusual, and Beth waited a minute before starting to investigate the door. Without some instruction or better idea of what this was, she didn’t touch any of them, let alone go through them, but she did give them a closer look.

Three minutes later, she didn’t have all that much better of an idea of what was going on, other than all six doors were made of the same kind of dark wood and all of them emitted power. The flows of mana were different, clearly stronger from one door and trailing off towards another, which gave her a few ideas, but she really wanted more to go on than ‘this door feels powerful.’ Who even started a Trial by guessing how strong a door was, or, more accurately, how strong the opponents were based on a set of doors. And even that was an assumption; it could have just been each door was tuned to different ranks or different types of challenges and thus had different mana signatures.

She didn’t have to spend too much longer pondering these strange mysterious, as someone else appeared in the room with her, though they were facing away from her when they appeared. They started muttering immediately, which Beth had always found a slightly odd habit to have, peering around the room until they had spotted her inspecting the doors.

“I say! You ought be careful,” the man, a regular human by appearance, said to her.

“Well, I was only looking,” Beth said with a raised brow. “Considering there wasn’t much instruction to be had.”

“Ah, yes, that, ahem,” the man said, clearing his throat and looking a little forlorn. “I must confess, it’s been a little time since someone has used one of our tokens to enter the Trial, so we weren’t, ah, exactly ready to receive…well, that’s neither here nor there.”

He straightened up, straightening his crisp, very dark black uniform as he did so. “Ahem, allow me to welcome you to The Great Climb.” 

“An interesting name,” Beth said, then smiled a little sheepishly when the man frowned, realizing she had interrupted his flow. “Sorry. Do go on.” 

“Ahem, yes, right, where was I?” he asked, scratching his head. “Ah yes, ahem, I was welcoming you. Thanks to acquiring one of our tokens and using it, you’ve been brought to the Trial. Now, this is a combat Trial, if you haven’t done one of those before. In fact, ahem, have you done a Trial before, perchance?” 

“I have done several Trials at this point,” Beth responded with a nod. “I’m fairly familiar with the general idea at this point.” 

“Oh good,” the man sighed with evident relief. “I can skip a whole bunch of the boring tat then. Essentially, this Trial is simple, though that doesn’t mean easy. You pick a door, based on the feel of the mana and the level of challenge you desire, and step through. You will then proceed through a series of battlefields, arenas, and even war zones, having very clearly defined objectives in each. I apologize if you weren’t prepared, but this isn’t a Trial to take likely. You either win or you die; there is no simulation element here, in terms of ‘saving’ you from a fatal mistake. I would advise you don’t overestimate yourself when picking your level of challenge.” 

“And can I ask how much challenge the level of mana represents? Wouldn’t it just save you a headache to label each door with a plaque ranking the difficulty or something?” Beth asked, rolling her eyes.

“Ahem, yes, a sensible question, or set of questions,” the man replied. “Allow me to elaborate. The first door on the left would be a slight challenge for someone that had a decent range of skills at Gold at had their weapon mastery at Expert. The farthest door on the right is where Sages would fear to tread. In between, the range steadily progresses from one door to the next, with jumps of half a rank to a rank. You must judge for yourself what your are willing to bear. Though, judging by what I can tell, it appears that the lowest door would offer you nothing.”

“Hmm, don’t think I’ll do the highest door, either,” Beth said, shaking her head. “How strong would you gauge the second to last door? The fifth door.”

“Ahem, well, let’s just say I’m not sure you could handle it at your current level,” the man said, scratching his head again. “Unless you happen to be a Sage, that is?”

“No, not yet, sadly,” Beth said, shaking her head.

“Well, it can be hard to gauge, but if you aren’t of equivalent level, I don’t think the fifth door would be a good idea,” he said. “You can always try it, of course. There is no restriction there, but I would be very careful about what you pick. Some have surprised us, however…”

“I think I might go for door number four, based on what you’ve said,” Beth said, eying the door.

“Well, you should be able to handle it,” the man, eying Beth. “Probably.”

“That’s a vote of confidence if I’ve ever heard one,” Beth said, rolling her eyes. “Any other advice or any such?”

“Sorry, ahem, nothing else,” the man said, Beth assuming the throat-clearing was a nervous tick at this point.

“Then, I’m off,” Beth said, walking up to door number four and confidently grabbing the handle before opening the door and stepping through.

Previous

Next