Limitless Path

She paged through the listing of fights, selecting another at random and watching. She watched the entire fight, a duel between two young women, before moving on. Fight after fight played out, all of them incredible, including one where two teams fought against each other on an open field.

The team starting from the white side was led by what looked like a paladin, who started the battle at the ref's call by using some kind of insane ability. He held his shield before him and leaned forward a little, his knees bent and sword held up to the right. His shield seemed to grow to triple its already enormous size, but Beth quickly realized it was some kind of energy form. The man tensed himself, the ground under him cracking, and six massive streams of energy appeared around him, trailing back towards the far wall of the arena. With a sudden flex of his legs, the man shot forward toward the opposing team, appearing like a massive blue and gold meteor hurtling across the battlefield.

A man on the opposing team wielding a massive maul stepped forward, his height and musculature increasing as he did so. He swung the enormous hammer at the paladin, slamming the head of the weapon into the center of his opponent's shield. There was an incredible explosion, a blasting shockwave spreading out as if a bomb had detonated in the middle of the field, accompanied by a reverberating sound like a bell toll that signaled the end of the world.

Beth watched the rest of the four versus four play out, the paladin's team eventually emerging victorious, though not before the paladin was eliminated. The systems of the arenas kept the participants from dying, but they still experienced the 'death' before being teleported out of the field. Beth checked the teams' stats, finding them to be stronger than the first pair she had watched, but they were still just within the bounds of Awoken.

Beth pulled up more matches, watching one after the other, until she realized that it was late into the night. She roused herself from the couch after turning the screen off, Blood following her into the bedroom, where they lay down again for a few hours of sleep.

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Beth woke the next morning and checked the time, noting they had only slept about three hours, not much more than a long nap. She hopped out of bed and proceeded to the bathroom, where she got ready for a new day, including throwing on one of the new sets of clothing she had grabbed from Jaq earlier.

Finished with her morning routine, she moved back out into the main room. She stepped into the kitchen for a moment to discard the remaining bottles and packets she had in her pouch before returning to the main room and equipping her armor. Strapping on her sword, she exited the room with Blood, heading up to the front desk, where Tazeen waited as always.

"Greetings," Tazeen intoned, a slight warmth in his voice as Beth walked up to the counter.

"Uh, good morning," she replied, noting that Tazeen was alone at the counter currently. "Can I extend my rental of the room?"

"Of course. For how long would you like?" he asked in return.

"Um, what about ten days?" she asked, taking out ten silvers and putting them on the counter.

"Your key, please," Tazeen replied, taking the silver and the key. He made the silver disappear behind the counter before setting the key on a spot on the counter and adjusting something only he could see for a moment. He then picked the key up and handed it back to her, Beth placing it in her pouch when she received it.

"Thanks, Tazeen," she said cheerfully, receiving a nod in response. She turned and led Blood back down the corridor, heading all the way into the arena complex area before moving back down to their room. Upon entering she put several of her extra sets of clothes in the dresser and put her old gloves off to the side. She then led Blood back up to the lounge, where they found Baelvyr just finishing a massive breakfast in his usual spot. Beth joined him at the table, pulling a bottle of water from her pouch and taking a swig before setting it on the table.

"See ya had some results," Baelvyr said after a moment.

"Yeah, but I have a bunch of questions. And we definitely need more training," she replied, Blood tilting her head and giving Beth a look, as if saying "What 'we'?"

"Haha," Baelvyr boomed out a teeth vibrating laugh. "Anybody who's anybody needs more training, good to see ya learnin' that early," he chuckled again and took a deep quaff, today from a large tankard.

"Yeah, that's for sure. We were having some real problems yesterday in the dungeon," Beth said, wiggling her eyebrows at him when she said dungeon.

"Yeah, yeah. I get it," he replied with a snort.

"We were having trouble actually dealing damage to the enemies we were fighting," she continued. "Do you think we should get more attack skills?"

Baelvyr shook his head before taking another swig. "No, ya need to hone what ya have right now. Getting some other weak skill at copper zero won't help with the problem."

"So, what do we need to do, just train more?" Beth asked with a frown.

"I told ya before girlie, the next thing you should do is get those weapons skills to Journeymen. There's no kind of magic requirements for that, just skill and understandin'. Ya get even one, like Unarmed, to Journeyman, you'll be twice as strong."

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"It just seems like it's going so slow," Beth complained with a sigh.

Baelvyr couldn't help laughing at that, a deep boom that rattled Beth's water bottle on the table. "It's always like that, girlie, with everything in life. Seems easy at first, but once ya get into it, ya figure out it takes time and effort to master. People can spend a year to get where yer at, so doin' it in a month is really somethin'. But, and I tell ya this to make sure ya know what yer in for, it will only get harder from here. Tougher physically, tougher mentally, and hell, even tougher spiritually. If ya want to be strong, yer gonna hafta suffer more than little to get there."

Beth had her arms crossed on the table in front of her and looked down at them while frowning. Having one of the strongest people around, probably one of the strongest warriors in the entire galaxy, tell you doing what you wanted was going to be incredibly difficult was no joke. She finally sighed and took a huge drink of water before turning to Baelvyr again, "What about professions, like Blacksmithing?"

"What about 'em?" he responded, finishing off his mug.

"You think I should pick one up? What professions are there, anyway? And are you able to teach me any?" Beth fired off rapidly in response.

"Most people at least dabble a little. There's a whole slew of things ya can learn, best to read one of the summaries of 'em in the library," he replied, leaning back in his chair and settling his hands on the top of his stomach. "I know a bit of smithin', but not really enough to teach. Ya'd need to go to Elana for that, and that'd cost ya a decent bit."

"Money, money, money. It's always about money. How are you supposed to do anything if you're not from some rich family? Killing monsters gives you pennies, clearing entire dungeons a silver or two," she huffed angrily.

"That's how it is. Fight, kill shit, earn a handful of coppers, pay for dinner and a room, get up the next mornin' and do it all again," Baelvyr said with a deep sigh. "Ah, the good ol' days."

"What about arena fights?" Beth plowed on, gamely ignoring Baelvyr's reminiscing.

"I know I sound like a broken song-shifter, but get to Journeymen," he replied, patting the top of his huge stomach a few times with a thump.

"This sucks," Beth grumbled, resting her right cheek on her right hand while slouching slightly to the side.

"Ya can either mope or train. Figure out which one yer more interested in," Baelvyr grumbled back.

"Let's go, then," Beth said, hopping to her feet and starting for the door. Baelvyr stood himself with a deep grunt and followed after her and Blood, the three heading down to their typical training room.

"So. What are ya at right now, anyway?" Baelvyr asked her as he grabbed the control tablet from the front of the room.

Beth got what he meant after only a moment and shared her skill section of her stat page.