Limitless Path

Beth left the room with Sabs a bit later in the morning, leaving Blood to stew in her mild hangover alone. While Sabs went out to fight and work on her level a bit, Beth returned to the forge to work on her smithing. She knew that only through a ton of hard work and practice could she slowly climb the ranks with a crafting skill, as they were honestly even more demanding than a weaponskill, and she wanted to put as much dedication and time in as she could afford. She had some goals outlined for the immediate future, and she had some more vague outlines of where she wanted to go long-term, including advancing as far as she possibly could, and crafting was one aspect that would help her achieve those goals.

They were only under a mild time crunch to clear their current objective, and they were under no time crunch to get their second remaining short-term goal done. Beth was pretty sure someone like the Lord of Traversal, both incredibly powerful and, apparently, fully immortal, wouldn't be sitting around tapping his feet for someone who had stumbled upon one of his random invitations to pop up. Still, it represented a massive opportunity for them; even if it didn't get them the kinds of experience and rewards that the Trial of Celestial Awakening had gotten, it would still be an immensely valuable experience. That, and this experience was far more likely to build valuable connections for them, especially with enormously powerful individual and factions. That was also sort of one of the whole points of being part of the White Hall of the CRA; being an elite powerhouse who didn't necessarily need a big team to do things, and a sub-aspect of being such a singular elite was having valuable contacts one could use for various exchanges or mutually beneficial scenarios.

Beth spent the whole day forging, retiring late in the evening, finding Sabs sitting on top of Blood on the couch, the wolf sprawled out over the whole piece of furniture and snoring idly. Sabs was planted on top of the lupine woman's thick thighs, watching some kind of strange program on the TV, something about a group of nobles or some such fighting off threats in the Milky Way. Beth paused for a moment before entering the bathroom to watch a second of the show, vaguely recognizing the group from somewhere, maybe an advert she had seen at some point?

She shook her head and entered the bathroom, thoroughly washing herself and drying off before returning to the living room, passing through to the kitchen to grab some grub. Afterwards, she settled down with Sabs, lifting Blood's feet up to sit under her legs, letting her lower legs flop down onto Beth’s lap. They watched some more of the wallscreen programs before cleaning up and heading for bed, Sabs and Beth taking it a bit easy that night before passing out.

The next day was cold and clear, with a light snow falling when Beth and Blood eventually made it outside, though that didn't bother them. If the snow wasn't enhanced with mana, it was nothing their END and resistances couldn't just entirely shrug off. They quickly made their way to their grinding spot, Beth tucking them back in the little cleft they had found earlier. She was glad that it seemed the overall level of beasts in the wild still wasn't particularly bad yet, at least, in comparison to her and Blood. There were now beasts scattered here and there just wandering around that were over level one hundred, but they still constituted a small percentage of the total beasts, with plenty being under that level, even down to the single digits in some places.

The level of mana overall was still increasing across the planet, and that was mostly expressed in dungeons and places of power, many of which were still increasing in strength or even popping up fresh and growing over time. She was trying to keep an eye on the overall situation to assess just how dangerous things were getting and possibly would get on her home planet, understanding that it would greatly affect those around her, as well as be a place she could possibly use to level and gather resources in the future where she might have a much easier time versus other worlds.

It was more about resources, she thought, versus money or experience. She and Blood, and anyone else she wanted to include, could farm experience and even money easily enough with her power. However, they couldn't really collect many resources with said power; beasts they killed they could harvest, which was nice, but a core of the adventuring life was gathering herbs, ores, magical artifacts, strange relics, and mysterious items that one might spend centuries studying. None of that dropped in her gate; not yet, at any rate, and there was no indication that that would be changing at any point, soon or in the far future. Understanding how Earth was developing and what they could expect from the planet would be key to their long-term growth.

That was for the future, figuratively and literally, and Beth opened the portal and ushered Blood inside. They moved out to a further area, hunting enemies well above them in level to speed up their progression even more, starting their many weeks long grind. They once again were spending twenty weeks at it, pushing as hard as they possibly could, fighting sixteen to eighteen hours a day. All that battle was certainly paying off, though, considering how their levels soared.

They took a break after two objective weeks of fighting, returning to the Hall to rest and check in with everyone before they were back out to train again. Beth was quite surprised with their progress, considering how hard they had pushed themselves the first time to two hundred and how long the later levels took. This time, they were leveling at a more rapid pace, and they would likely get to their goal just within this rotation. Beth had to say, it would be nice to move on, as even she was getting a bit tired of the endless grind, though the huge amount of money they were making from the endless farming was setting them up quite nicely to be fine for some time, depending on if they found any armor or weapons that they felt they just had to buy.

Another two weeks had gotten them to their goal, and it was time for their last quick break before they actually tackled the dungeon. Beth also wanted to quickly check with Baelvyr about a few things, but none of them were super high on her priority list for now. They returned in the middle of the night, washing up and having Beth slide into bed with Sabs without disturbing the smaller girl. It was a pleasant way to wake up for her the next morning, though Sabs acted a bit cross that Beth hadn't woken her to let her know she was back.

The first thing Beth did that morning was start a load of laundry before heading to the shop and buying some supplies from Jaq, replenishing their stock of ration bars and other comestibles. She made a quick stop up with Tazeen to check the status of the dungeon, learning that they were still fine, though Navere would have to do another clear soon. A day or two wouldn't matter, so she and Blood took that day and the next to relax and get themselves fully prepped for what could be a very long dive, depending on if they had to "cheat" and level up more after entering the dungeon. And speaking of leveling, Beth checked where they had gotten to before finalizing their plans.