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Limitless Path Chapter Four Hundred Eleven
🕑 Added 2025-04-09 17:00:07 +0000 UTCBeth led the way out of the camp, eager to put the place behind her, though it was really the world itself that was the problem. Damp, wet, chilly, raining, and muddy about summed it up, and that just wasn't great. There were areas that were so wet that they were just knee-deep bogs of mud and sludge. Beth was doing her best, as they approached the first group of beasts, already headed towards them, to not think at all about what they were squelching through.
That first group of beasts they encountered numbered more than a hundred thousand, which would have been a daunting prospect for an army but was just a Tuesday afternoon for them. Not that it didn't take them time to kill everything, of course, as even they had to spend a bit to kill so many beasts. In the end, however, it wasn't a huge challenge for them, and they were able to contain the beasts, keeping them from moving further. It was largely thanks to Blood, who was fast enough that nothing could get beyond the line they set in the sand, so to speak, though mud was more apt.
Beth was really the center of their destructive force, though Sera wasn't too shabby, either. The tall dragon girl could kill most things with just a single thrust, often not needing to use a skill for that kill, and she churned through the mass of enemies rapidly. That was nothing compared to Beth, though, as the leader of their little group could fire off Spatial Obliterations continuously without really worrying about her mana consumption. Every punch or kick ripped apart space near her, killing dozens, sometimes more than a hundred, of the beasts. The kind of speed they were slaughtering at made even a group of a hundred thousand enemies quick work, fully clearing the battlefield in half-an-hour.
"That was almost too easy," said Beth when they regrouped.
"Don't curse us," Sera said, elbowing her.
"Eh, I'm not worried," Beth shrugged, wrapping an arm around Sera's waist. "Let's just take it nice and slow, go steady, and kill everything."
"Such an odd sentence," Blood murmured.
"Anyway, we can clear a lot of this in the next couple days, easy. So, let's buckle down and get to it," Beth said, squeezing Sera through their armor and leaning up to give the dragon girl’s cheek a kiss before leading the way deeper into beast territory.
The world had really been devastated by the appearance of the monsters, with much of the place having been lost to beasts. The inhabitants of the only two major powers remaining after the long war were huddled in a handful of cities and bunkers spread across three continents, giving almost everything outside of those last safe havens to the two monsters and their beast army. It made perfect sense why they had called the CRA in, despite their distrust of the organization, as they wanted some planet to be left by the end of it. The monsters would totally overrun everything before eventually growing strong enough to leave, though these monsters were already at the point where they could do that, as they had arrived at the world from somewhere else and weren't home grown.
Beth had the tactical data from Adannae and scanned through it as they moved. That first group of a hundred thousand was just the appetizer, though even that group would have been a challenge for the troops at the wall. Despite being in battle for so long, Red II was suffering from two problems. The first was that the long war had been sapient versus sapient, meaning the troops weren't getting any experience for their kills there and had to go train against beasts in their free time for their levels. And troops during the middle of a war did not have a ton of free time to start with, let alone a vicious planetary war that was constantly hot and made everywhere dangerous.
The second problem was that, well…it was a low-mana world. Before the monsters showed up, there just weren't a lot of opportunities to level very high. Beasts over level one hundred fifty were rare, and anything at or over level two hundred was especially rare. The only real exception to that was deep underground, which tended to have higher mana density and stronger beasts, but underground expeditions were very tedious. People didn't like to be away from the light of the sun for long periods, there was extreme danger from the beasts and environment, and there were other dangers that mana brought, including mana-induced lava flows and other things that could spell disaster.
With those two problems combined, despite years of fighting, the people on this world were, well, not great. In the overall universe, going to max level before a rebirth was fairly rare, but people would still go as high as they felt they could. Many people had more opportunities and one big reason for that was the CRA. Before they called them in, Red II didn't have a CRA Hall, being a world that rejected the Association's 'interference' in their business. That was yet another thing that greatly hurt them and caused their people to have far less opportunities. Many people on Red II did at most one rebirth, and they did them at a low level, not carrying over many stats. The whole world was just not ready for continuous waves of beast tides incited by two very powerful monsters and the fact they had managed to hang on for three full years was a bit impressive.
Beth, Sera, and Blood were so far above even most of the commanders of the armies that it was practically a joke, and they could easily clean up much of what the armies would struggle terribly with. The only place the armies of the world had some kind of advantage was in their skills, which they had to level quite a bit to try to keep up, but even there the girls were still ahead. Training from the incredible experts at the CRA, battles against insanely powerful opponents, and tons of amazing opportunities across many worlds meant the girls' skills were higher level and more powerful than the locals' skills. An average Wayfarer that hadn't experienced quite as many things as Beth, or had the wealth and background of Sera, might not match up so well against the local of Red II, but even then, their skills wouldn't really be far apart.
All that meant that Beth and her little group could tear through tens to hundreds of thousands of beasts in the amount of time that an army division from Red II would have struggled to hold a line killing a few hundred. Hours and hours of slaughter from the three girls was enough to turn the tide on an entire front of the battle, whereas every other front was being pushed back or overwhelmed. She knew that Baelvyr was running around taking care of some of the beasts as well, as protecting the people was much more important right now than divvying up the kills or farming experience or skills.
They spent forty-eight straight hours fighting without rest, something that was quite common for them, but would be difficult even for many elite teams to do. To them, however, it was just their common grinding method, and fighting a bunch of beasts below level three hundred was nothing extraordinary. The girls got one level out of all of that, not finding much of the beasts challenging, as many were around or below their levels, and they were still only in the early two hundreds. There were quite a few beasts, in fact, that were below level two hundred, and those were less than cannon fodder. The girls could kill them with a single strike, a single off-handed blow enough to kill beasts of that level of power.
They took a break, but not to sleep, just two hours to rest, meditating and relaxing, though Blood spent a little bit of time patrolling the area. For such a lazy wolf, she was always much more active when they were out in the wilds, and she enjoyed moving around outdoors even when thinking. Beth was pretty sure that Blood was able to lightly meditate while moving, so she was likely thinking deeply and even recovering just a bit as she moved through the woods they found themselves in. Beth and Sera, meanwhile, were back-to-back, sitting on a flat, though damp, section of rock and meditating, though they were both still fully geared and ready at a moment's notice.
Once they were rested and felt good, both mentally and physically, they moved out again. They had taken care of most of the targets Adannae had dispatched them, and they cleaned up the rest within twelve hours. They weren't done yet, however, as Beth still wanted to do more, and had Blood set out to scout areas they hadn't hit yet. This led to them finding a massive area of beast presence, with millions of them built up into a tide that was starting to slowly move south, away from the battleline, towards a major city. That city had well-built defenses and a large number of soldiers manning the line, but the tide approaching them would push them to their limit. Beth decided they would eliminate the problem early.
To most people, nearly three million beasts was a terrifying, impossible challenge that they would flee from. To Beth and Sera, it was good training, and to Blood it was a simple, tedious task to be completed as quickly as possible. They used Blood's scouting data to circle around the massive tide, one that was still getting rolling, and hit it from the east. They waded in at the very center of the horde, tearing a hole into their ranks with an overwhelming display of force. The beasts died by the hundreds, by the thousands, by the tens of thousands within the first minute. By ten minutes of battle, the entire tide was centered around them and all collapsing towards the three, trying to rip them apart. Beth couldn't help but laugh, an open and honest sound in the middle of the clash of steel and rending of flesh. She wasn’t able to contain it, as she felt the best, the most alive, in the middle of slaughter. Maybe there was something a bit wrong with her?
It was three hours of slaughter, as the horde had more powerful beings present, on top of the massive numbers, before they were done. Beth looked out across the mountains of corpses, shaking her head slightly. It was such a waste, in so many senses, as the beasts weren't strong enough to challenge them, weren't strong enough to give them experience, weren't even strong enough to be worth harvesting. This would be mountains of rotten meat and decay soon, though Sera mentioned they should burn it, or get the locals to do it. Leaving too many corpses and too much death aggregated like that could lead to some unfortunate things including, in the most extreme cases, the birth of a monster, which is not something they wanted to try to deal with right now. Burning the corpses and even burning the land clean would be a good idea.
"That's gonna take a lot of wood," Beth muttered when Sera finished explaining.
"Beth, we have magic. We don't need to build pyres for every corpse," Sera said.
"Oh, right. Well, none of us are mages, so that still might take a bit…" Beth said with a frown.
"I can handle it," Sera said, moving away from Beth and Blood to find some open space.
There was a twisting in the air, a scent like cinnamon and fire-baked stone and a few other things reaching Beth's nose, a scent that very deeply reminded her of Sera. The scent was the herald of her transformation, and Beth was only a moment later looking at a massive dragon, standing incredibly tall above her. She felt no fear, instinctive or otherwise, from how Sera appeared in that form, only joy, affection, and even love. She leapt up, landing on Sera's back before the dragon took off, circling high in the sky to line up on the battlefield. Blood had already moved off, not wanting to be part of the upcoming massive bonfire, or anywhere downwind of it, either.
Sera swooped down with a mighty push from her wings after she had lined up a good flight path, bringing the ground up towards them rapidly. Beth just whooped in delight, not having to work very hard to hang on as the dragon girl’s, or this case, dragon's mouth opened wide, and a torrent of fire spewed forth. It was hot, so hot it was almost blinding just from the temperature, and more melted the beasts than roasted them. Beth didn't feel the heat, however, and instead felt an immediate connection to the flames. As Sera did her second pass, spewing even more of the dragonfire down onto the corpses and ground around them, Beth leapt from her back into the heart of the flames.
"Beth!" Sera called out in concern.
She needn't have worried, however, as she circled around the blaze and saw Beth standing within, entirely unharmed. In fact, fire and flames circled her body, billowing around her as she held up her arms in front of her and moved them slightly. Sera flapped her wings, flying in a tight circle around Beth as she watched her lover manipulate the flames, something she didn't think was even possible. Not that anything was truly impossible, but she didn't expect Beth, just using her Mana Physique, to be able to control and manipulate another person's dragonfire without any permission or mana exchange from that person. Beth had just taken over the flames, controlling them as naturally as breathing.
"Sera! More," Beth called out, waving her arms at her lover.
Sera obliged, swooping down and bathing the entire battlefield in another blast of her dragonfire that ignited and melted everything, even the rock under the dirt. Beth moved around in center of the fire, controlling it around her. Sera didn't need to make any more passes as Beth moved and swept the flames with her, coating the entire battlefield and melting everything there. After about an hour, there was nothing left of the open field they had slaughtered the beasts in but bare, slightly melted rock, Sera's dragonfire enough to melt the rock just by itself, let alone Beth's addition. Her Mana Physique let her not just manipulate the flames, but also to enhance the power of the flames where she took over control. Even dragonfire, some of the hottest and most damaging of fire one could access below much higher levels, could be enhanced by her Mana Physique.
Just as Beth was putting the last of the flames out, Baelvyr appeared, and she meant that quite literally, as the ogre was just suddenly standing next to Sera. He managed to do it without any wind or disturbance of the air, either, which was something that always impressed Beth. Sera had transformed back to her human form, and she had jumped when Baelvyr appeared, though only a little.
Comments
RedLeaf
Thanks for the chapter!
bladepony games
Thanks for the chapter
