Limitless Path

It had been a while since Beth had done it and, come to think of it, she had gotten at least a little bit of an upgrade since then. Beth brought up the options to see what she could do and what had changed and was pleasantly surprised by what was available. She poked around in the menu for a minute to view the new features and see what all was available before making her selections. When she was sure, she entered the all the parameters she wanted and flowed a little mana through the skill, waiting for the effect to start.

A beam of marble and crystal rose from the ground behind Beth on two ornate pillars. She kept her eye on the wyrm as the edifice rose up and, thankfully, the high-level beast didn't so much as twitch. When the skill had finished its work, she turned and confidently stepped through the arch, Blood just a few paces behind her.

Beth had, of course, used her Ancient World Gate power to once again try to save them from the sticky situation they had found themselves trapped in. She had seen there were several new options, including a new time multiplier of ten X, as well as an option to randomize the enemy type and level. She had chosen the randomized settings option, which had let her know that the enemies still started at her current level and went up from there. She had also selected the terrain to be a forest, adding in some variety to what was about to be a brutal session of grinding.

Beth had to say, after they had spent a few hours fighting, that the ability to randomize the enemies, in terms of their type and level, really helped to cut down on the monotony of the grind. It was also good that no beasts approached the gate area, as was usual, allowing them to have a safe area to rest without needing to leave the gate. It was also more dangerous elsewhere in the gate, however, as they could just randomly stumble into a level one-forty or one-fifty beast with the random option, but that did help keep them on their toes.

This was the first real taste they got of what it was like to level past one hundred outside of the Trial and Beth had to say; it sucked. She had already thought it was slow in the Trial, where they might spend days to get a single level, only balanced out by being rewarded bonus levels at the end of the stage. Now, they spent days and days, a week or more, just to roll a single level, resting for as little time as possible whenever they were exhausted, just enough to get their stamina and mana back.

They were trying to do something pretty crazy, even with Beth's power, considering they were looking to gain twenty-four or more levels, post level one hundred, before re-emerging from the gate. Twenty-four levels might not sound like that much, considering their progression through the levels so far, but that was a bit of where the deceptiveness of the Limitless Path started. People got used to early gains and rapidly flying through levels and then became immensely frustrated as that really slowed down at later levels, one of the many factors that led people to rebirth early. Going through rebirths at a relatively low level greatly reduced the person's future potential, though many people were either happy with one or two rebirths or simply lacked the will or skill to strive for more.

The time didn't decrease, either, taking seven days, seven days and a few hours, eight days, and so on. Weeks turned into months getting the levels they wanted, and this was in a basically ideal environment where they had an infinite number of high-level enemies to fight. Beth couldn't imagine being someone, even on a frontier world like they had experienced in the Trial during stage twenty, trying to quickly level up. It must just take ages to level up, especially going for level two hundred. Beth shuddered to think what going beyond that level must be like, when someone's maximum level they needed to hit for a Perfect Rebirth was two-sixty or even three hundred.

The only saving grace for them was Beth's bit of a cheat power dilating time, meaning eight months of grinding for level one-fifty turned into twenty-four days of objective time, which was the absolute flow of time in the universe indifferent to magical or technological modification. She did feel a bit bad about not telling anyone they would be out for a while, but she figured they would probably be used to them disappearing for long times at this point. If they weren't, they would just have to get used to it, as Beth wasn't planning on sitting around and resting any time soon.

The level up to the Gate skill did also seem to slightly lessen the strain on her, though it was a bit hard to tell considering how much she had leveled and grown stronger since the last time she used the skill. She did emerge from the gate thoroughly exhausted; even with them spending plenty of time sleeping and resting in the gate, she was weary from the strain the skill put on her soul. They found the wyrm was still sleeping, or was sleeping again, for who knew what it had gotten up to in the past few dozen days. They moved just slightly away from the center of the top floor of the tower; even though it was strangely windless, they were a little concerned about being close to the edge. Blood set up one of their tents before Beth crawled in and passed out, Blood sitting outside on the ground and watching the wyrm with one eye. She was starting her own little mental list of things to get, especially with their necklaces giving them so much space to store things, and she was definitely adding a comfortable chair to her list. Maybe she would just take her favorite chair from their living room, though the CRA might have protections to stop stuff like that.

Beth slept eighteen hours, Blood watching over her the whole time. Being in the gate did nothing to stress Blood's soul and with well over one hundred END herself, she was able to stay up for several days before getting tired, so an extended shift on watch wasn't a problem, especially as she lightly meditated the whole time. She crawled in the tent when Beth was out and moving, sleeping a couple hours herself to be back at peak condition before they tried the boss. They had both hit level one fifty and had improved several of their skills by a decent bit, and Beth observed their stat screens before they did anything else.