Limitless Path Chapter Seven Hundred Thirteen (Patreon)

"So?” Beth asked as they moved, eating up ground quickly. 

“Got a fight for ya,” Baelvyr said. It looked like he was going to be content with that, but just before Beth could protest, he continued, “We got a team we’re, uh, competin’ with, would be how I would put it. One of the ways people like to settle this shit is duels, of course, and one of the ways to settle those that don’t destroy everythin’ is by bringin’ in students and the like. Ya aren’t strong enough to do all that much damage to this moon, so we called ya over cuz we need ya to fight some of their people. Could be one, could be three, just depends on how things go. Ya ain’t gonna be the only fight, or fights, that happen, either. In fact, ya kinda get to be the ringer, but don’t let that go to yer head.” 

“I just have to fight somebody? That’s it?” Beth asked as they walked, giving Baelvyr a skeptical look. “You brought me to the ass end of nowhere for a simple fight? Why couldn’t we just do this in a CRA Hall?” 

“Couple a reasons,” he said. “Not really important either way, to be honest. The only thing ya really need to know is that we got a little bit of a special case and there’s gonna be a ref here not from either team that will officiate. Ya just need to focus on the fights.” 

“Who are my opponents?” she asked. 

“It’ll be decided here in a minute,” he answered. “Ya either gotta match up against their youngest ace, who’s a fresh Ascended with plenty o’ combat experience, or ya gotta take on three of their strongest Enlightened. We’re still workin’ out the details, but it’s students and mentees facin’ off and that puts you in against their students. I don’t think ya’ll have any trouble with any of ‘em, least of all their Enlightened, but the Ascended could actually be interestin’. She’s got quite a lot of duelin’ experience and is pretty powerful for a fresh Ascended.” 

“Has her own Ideal fully complete powerful?” Beth interrupted to ask. 

“Well, ain’t that I know of, but I could be outta the loop,” Baelvyr grunted in response.  

“Well, it’s not going to be a problem either way,” Beth said, giving him a nasty enough grin that even the big ogre shook himself.  

“Don’t get too cocky, girlie. Ya got a long ways to go,” Baelvyr grumbled as they approached the waiting group. 

It was really two groups and an independent person that they walked up to, with Baelvyr’s team closer to them. It included Tazeen, Jaq, Lyrissa, Elana, John, Navere, and the other Exalted that Beth had only very briefly met, Tia. Beyond those eight, if Baelvyr were added in, there were five people waiting with them, though Beth hadn’t met any of the five before. She was guessing these were students or apprentices of the others she hadn’t bumped into yet, which made a lot of sense; all of Baelvyr’s team were pretty old, apart from Lyrissa and Elana, who were rather a bit younger. Tazeen, for example, was a known quantity even among Exalted and had been around for a very long time. It wouldn’t be a surprise if the taciturn elf had a student or twenty running around that she had never encountered or even heard about.  

The other team was just as impressive, though Beth wasn’t sure that they had two Exalted on the team or part of the group or whatever they were. They did at least have one, and they had another nearly dozen members there that were over level six hundred, some of them close to level eight hundred, so they were all pretty clearly Ascended. Beyond that, they had nine of the younger members that were clearly the students or mentees that were there to participate in the fights, and, while they would have been a strong showing other places, Beth was not particularly impressed with them. Mainly Enlightened, and not even at the peak of the tier and ready to enter Ascended; several of them were rebirth sixteen, so she assumed they would not be matched against someone like her. For other teams, a sixteen rebirth against a nineteen rebirth might not have all that lopsided, depending on a few factors, but Beth was at the point of beating some Ascended ass around the block; a sixteen rebirth Enlightened wasn’t going to be able to cut it.  

Beyond the two groups, sitting between them but off to one side just slightly, was Zane Farstrider, which rather surprised Beth. Then again, if one was talking about two teams led by Exalted, and strong Exalted at that, having a dispute, one would want a Manumitted, and a strong one (not that any Manumitted was weak in any way), to oversee the proceedings. Still, having Zane there felt like a bit of overkill, as he was far, far more powerful than some Manumitted that had just reached that level a thousand years ago or some such, which was a crazy sentence to even think on multiple levels. He was also playing it up quite a bit, lounging on a literal throne of obsidian and black jade, cushioned by red and gold upholstery that was probably worth more than a large city, legs cross and cheek propped on his left fist while the fingers of his right hand drummed on the armrest. He also wasn’t hiding his level, rebirth, or even class, which was apparent with a very quick inspection using her eye powers.  

Zane Farstrider, Level 2855[197] Human King Beyond The Asymptote 

That was certainly a mouthful, and the fact he wasn’t hiding that he was close to reaching the next bracket of power after Manumitted, which was at rebirth two hundred, said something about both his personality and his general level of boredom, considering her was likely doing it just to fuck with people. She hadn’t seen him in a couple years, but he was such a recognizable figure, even without using her eye power, that there was no mistake who it was. She went up to Baelvyr’s team first and greeted them, getting some pretty standard responses; Navere and Tazeen gave stoic nods, Elana and John shook her hand, Jaq crossed his arms and glowered, and Lyrissa pounced on her and wrapped her in her arms and hugged her while making happy noises. Tia just nodded, acknowledging Beth on a level as an equal, which was high praise, considering Beth’s rebirth still didn’t match her presumed powers.  

After that, she walked over to Zane, which seemed to startle everyone, and said, “Old man. I see that you finished that business sooner than you thought.” 

“Ah, well, if it isn’t you,” Zane said, uncrossing his legs and sitting up. “My, how you’ve grown in just a couple years. I was quite bored, having to come out here to arbitrate a fight involving a dispute between Exalted, but now I’m not. This will be quite interesting.” 

It wasn’t lost on Beth that not just the enemy team, but even her team had shifted uncomfortably, first slightly at her marching over to Zane, but more when they realized she was very familiar with the unbelievably powerful man. They didn’t even really understand, either, since what Beth knew of Zane put him almost in a position like her; despite being at the peak of Manumitted, one of only three, at most, in the entire galaxy, his level and rebirth didn’t do justice to the kind of power and skill he had. Based on what she knew of him, on what he had explained to her, what Fallon had said, and information she had scrounged up, Zane hit well above his weight for a Manumitted. 

Those crazy thoughts aside, she said, “I’ve been working pretty intensely. Sold Fallon some interesting stuff a little while back, too. He had small thing we took care of.” 

“Ah, good, glad he thought of you,” Zane said. “I’ve not bothered checking with him, though that’s partly because I got pulled into this bullshit almost the exact second I was free of that stupid fucking shit with those people trying to circumvent the process to become Delvers of Eternity.” 

He cast a harsh glare at the other groups as he said so, almost everyone there shrinking or shirking his gaze in some way, though he didn’t follow up on it. 

“Go on and join your team, girl. We’ll chat after this idiocy is over,” he huffed, waving one hand languidly in a gesture of dismissal.  

“Right,” Beth said, just agreeing and moving back to Baelvyr’s team, who almost all gave her questioning looks. “I help him out with something a while ago. Guess we hit it off, and I’ve been to visit him and the other Manumitted he lives with a few times.” 

She had said it casually, but was still loud enough to be heard clearly by everyone on both teams, which had many on the other team going pale or looking nervous. That was mainly their younger fighters, but who could blame them? Getting roped in to fight the young talents from another, opposing, well-known senior team in the galaxy was one thing, but knowing one of those talents was very familiar with two Manumitted and interacted with them casually was a whole different ball game.  

“You’re just full of surprises,” said Tia to her, giving Beth a critical eye. 

“Don’t get any ideas, girlie,” Baelvyr, the only one out of the whole crew who had been entirely nonplussed by the whole thing, though Beth had barely caught the fractionally raised eyebrow from Tazeen, said to her.  

“I still don’t know what you mean by that,” Beth replied to him, putting a hand on her hip and leaning a little to the side while she glared up at him.  

“Ya know what I mean, girlie,” he rumbled before turning to the other team. “Alright, last of our little students is here. Ya sure ya got all yers ready?” 

“We have everyone, Baelvyr,” said an old woman, or old-looking woman. Beth knew that looks were quite deceiving, or could be so, and that was especially true considering the woman was absolutely an Exalted, no question about it.  

“Fine. How we doin’ this, then?” Baelvyr asked, crossing his massive arms over the top of his prodigious gut and looking around at both teams. 

“Alternate picks?” asked the woman mildly.  

“Fine by me. Ya want me to go first?” he asked.  

The woman hesitated for a few moments, looking directly at Beth, who smiled back with a very broad grin and waved slightly, causing a stir in both teams, at least among the ‘students.’ The older team members just gave her considering looks, but it was clear that she had thrown a monkey wrench into the whole works, just by knowing Zane. She couldn’t help chuckling, thinking they really didn’t have any idea what they were in for, unless they had done extensive research ahead of time. She was started to become a known factor a bit in the galaxy, but she was still barely a blip overall, and she was a rather recent student of Baelvyr’s. Some of these students would have been training under these older members, or would have been trained by them, for a few hundred years. Her couple decades, total, time on the scene was nothing compared to that.  

“Fine. Let’s just get this over with,” the woman said.  

“Alternating fight picks by team lead. Is that the order?” Zane asked, having returned to lounging on his throne.  

“Yes, senior,” the old woman said, giving him a shallow bow.  

“Fine, fine. Just try to keep it amusing a little, would you kindly?” he replied, flicking his hand in a small gesture.  

“John,” said Baelvyr first.  

“Always the first, eh,” John muttered before it devolved into a stream of cranky grumbling. John turned to a short, petite woman that was only a slip of a thing, dressed in dark leather armor and barely having a noticeable presence even when just standing around. “Go ahead and give ‘em the full treatment. Just, you know, don’t let it get too out of hand. We don’t to scare ‘em too bad, the dumb bastards. Can’t believe we gotta go through this shit again…” 

John once again devolved into muttering, but his student had already received the command and ventured forward onto the field. Both teams backed up a bit to clear the space, and Zane’s throne was suddenly a couple hundred feet further back, and Beth really meant suddenly. She had been watching him, not really interested in what two moderately strong Enlightened were about to do, and she hadn’t been able to detect how he moved in any way, shape, or form. It was truly like one instant he was there, and the very next instant, the next picosecond, he was somewhere else, as if he had always been the second place. It was kind of a little trippy and made her head spin a bit, but she refocused on the fight in front of them.  

John’s student, who was named El, walked forward and confronted a student from the other team, who had been chosen in response to their pick. She thought that kind of gave the second team more of an advantage, considering they could at the very least get a class from the person sent out first, and some Identify skills could get more, but if all they had was an obscure class, then it wouldn’t help all that much. Hell, the girl’s dark armor, lack of presence as if she was a wisp, and the way she moved were all bigger indicators of who she was and what she could do.  

Zane, still looking rather bored, made his voice easily audible to everyone there without shouting or raising his volume, a rather neat trick, and asked if the two combatants were ready to begin. When they both signaled that they were ready to fight, he gave them a three second countdown to prep whatever opener they would lead with before commanding them to fight. Despite his being further back than anyone else, she was sure he could see what was happening more clearly than anyone there, even the Exalted, so she had no fear the ref was going to make a bad call or miss anything. She was also a bit concerned they weren’t in a proper arena, but Baelvyr just nodded at a set of pillars that were in the distance, eight of them surrounding where both groups and Zane were. It was, apparently, a very high-end version of the tech that the CRA used, a version that Zane had casually pulled out from a storage space before Baelvyr could even get out his temporary ring for them to use. The Manumitted, from what it looked like, had a very, very good version of what CRA arenas used just tucked away in a back pocket in case he needed to have some kind of massive tournament or official matches at any point. Maybe not all that bad of an idea, considering how often random fights that weren’t supposed to be lethal seemed to come up, but then again, the CRA arenas could and did handle almost all of those.  

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