Limitless Path

She was really lamenting the loss of her armor as she started on the grind, having a backup set of level two hundred armor that wasn't anywhere near as good as the epic armor that was all part of a set she had been using. She would have to try to acquire some as soon as they were done with this miserable, wet dirtball of a world, but she couldn't really do anything about that right now. She would ask the locals, but she doubted their smiths could do any better than the mismatched blues she was wearing right now. A rare set would only be a bit better, and she was doubtful anybody on this backwater world could make level two hundred epic armor, let alone epic set equipment.

It presented some danger, and losing the stat bonuses was a real bitch, her rare armor having much lesser bonuses, but she was tough enough with enough stats that she could still bull through. Her fights weren't about just surviving and killing everything, however, as she was going for weaponskill levels right now, and she was heavily focused on that. She was fighting individual orc-type beasts with her sword, concentrating on every swing and every movement. She needed training, practice, and focus to level right now, really paying attention to every movement she made, every parry, block, deflection, strike, cut, chop, and thrust important to pushing her skill to the next level.

Hours blurred together, but Beth didn't slow down, not stopping between fights for long stretches, simply dealing the killing stroke to one enemy and then teleporting right to the next. She did that for days of subjective time, fight after fight, until she was too mentally exhausted from the efforts to keep going. She would go back to near the gate, move her armor into her necklace, pop out a cot and fall on it still in her clothes and sleep. She would get up after a few hours, physically fully prepared if still maybe a bit tired mentally, have a mug of hunting spice with some redgold salt dashed in, and then head out, killing more and more orcs. She had to reset the gate a couple times to not get too far away from the center, but she mainly continued with that routine for weeks upon end.

Two weeks, three weeks, four weeks passed and she was still fighting. She didn't bother with checking her stats or stat screen, not wanting to poison herself with either overconfidence or under confidence. She didn't even bother to check for level-ups, as she didn't really care about the extra points from her free points per level. Going from forty-five hundred STR to forty-five hundred thirty STR would make basically no difference, particularly for what she was currently doing. A little more DEX would always be nice when talking about finesse and trying to more precisely control fine movements with a particular weapon type, but even that was very minimal. Another ten points of DEX or even twenty points of DEX wouldn't really make a major difference in how she was fighting or what she was trying to do.

She spent much of the time using her sword, though she used her fists and feet a little bit. She reserved that for the last couple weeks, spending the first seven or eight weeks on the sword. She spent the last two weeks or a little more just ditching the sword entirely, leaving it in her necklace as she used her body and powerful physicality to kill the orcs. She had always been better with her fists than the blade, though the difference wasn't enormous, but now she was pulling ahead a bit in Unarmed and she didn't mind pushing that. It would be more valuable for what she was doing now and in the nearer term to get one of her weaponskills as high as possible versus trying to keep bringing both up when she wasn't as good with one. Swords were still important, a valuable weapon and tool in her arsenal that combined well with her style and gave her additional range and power when needed, but getting her fists and feet to the level of Master would be a bigger near-term benefit.

It was almost eighty days of fighting, continuously battling enemies with weapons with much higher levels and much more toughness, before she was done, and only because she was pulled out of it by Baelvyr. He had come to grab them because the beasts had been stirred up and there were several opportunities for them to cull the beast population. Beth did suspect they were being used a bit as bait in that way, but she was happy to get the money, experience, and challenge, and possibly the chance to go after the plant monster a second time.

They were given two target locations to go after beasts this time, and both were on other continents, so it was more airship time. That gave Beth some time to rest while Blood flew, calming her mind as they made their way to the first location. She hadn't checked how far her insane leveling push had taken her, other than to distribute stat points, and she decided to do so now. She knew she had made at least one or two levels in her skills in those weeks, and she knew Sera had used the gate as well, though sticking to her own area, but she didn't know what their gains were.