Limitless Path

That big problem was that she had made some assumptions and hadn't really looked at her True Rebirth requirements until now. That seemed like a minor thing, but she had read about this and been warned about this and was now experiencing things herself. True Rebirth requirements weren't always just a shopping list of incredibly rare and valuable items that the person had to require; oh no, that would make it too easy by far. Sometimes, the requirements could be all kinds of different and difficult conditions, some of which ranged from nearly impossible to the downright bizarre. It was another reason why people would also give up on doing the True Rebirth quests or fulfilling all the requirements, as some of the things that were demanded of them could venture into the ridiculous.

Thankfully, Beth didn't have anything too crazy to do, though it certainly wasn't going to be any kind of walk in the park. When she read the requirement line, she was also just a bit pissed, considering the thing seemed designed to waste her time and efforts. Besides still needing to get quite a few very rare and expensive materials, she was required to kill a thousand beasts that were at least a hundred and thirty levels above her. That meant that she had to go solo kill at least a thousand level five hundred and ten beasts, which wasn't impossible, but it would be a major time sink. She had just been doing it to get skill levels, but she had also been getting an immense amount of experience at the same time. The prospect of going back into that same grind while getting a lot less out of it wasn't exactly the most appealing, though she could use it to keep honing her skills.

Still, it wasn't something that she was going to be doing right now, considering that she had only taken a week off and that she had a lot of other things to do. She would work on some of the items that she needed, including doing the research to see how to acquire some of them, rather than just throwing herself back into battle again. The easiest thing she needed to acquire were some gems that she could buy, though it wouldn't exactly be cheap. Then again, expensive in this case would likely be a handful of mithril coins for all the gems, certainly an increase in price compared to earlier rebirth materials, but just a drop in the bucket compared to her overall wealth. That was going to be the only really easy of the things she needed, but she took care of that while everyone else was still working on leveling and researching.

The other thing she was going to work on, while they were in a bit of a stalled time concerning leveling, was her blacksmithing. She had made some progress over the years, but she was also a bit embarrassed that she was only in Journeyman after all this time. Then again, she had just beat a Grandmaster through overwhelming might and combat experience just a few objective months ago, so there were always tradeoffs. While she was sourcing materials and acting as a leveling beacon for her team, she spent some time hammering metal and studying runes. The only bad part was she was giving all her gate time over to the others for leveling, which meant she was stuck in regular old objective time for her work. It was when she was forced to not use any compressed time that she really realized just how tedious and time-consuming working on something at the standard time speed really was.

Weeks passed, which was months for most of the others inside her gate, though Blood and Sera were already finished with their leveling. Bjorn and Kris were finished shortly after Sera, which was right after Blood, meaning the gate was hosting Adam, Andrea, Neph, and Val at this point. Bjorn and Kris disappeared for a little while, likely taking some time together and also using their own contacts to try to get a lead on acquiring some of their items for their rebirth. So far, Beth was the only one that had been assigned a different quest other than just gathering resources for their next rebirth, which was annoying, but she had plenty of time to clear it. Getting the materials she needed was still going to be the more difficult and complex part, even with the kill requirement, so she wasn't particularly worried, spending more time hammering away in the forge. She had Erosh pop in a bit to give her some coaching on her technique, glad that there were very few other people in the forges due to the backwater world they had picked to spend time leveling on.

She was hammering in the forge one day when a ringing klaxon sound was suddenly broadcast through the room. Beth was too inured to such craziness to let it interrupt her swing, finishing the last few blows on the piece she was working on before looking over at Erosh. He just shrugged, raising one eyebrow and glancing at her before tilting his head at the door. Beth sighed and put the piece in her necklace, where it would stay in its exact current state, and then damped the forge she was using before heading out. Not that there was much chance of it starting a fire, but she didn't want to leave it burning hot and have something happen, or something else happen, if the sirens were any indication. She walked up to the ground floor and out to the lobby, moving quickly and quirking an eyebrow as one of the couple low-level people in the Hall sprinted by her, barely moving faster than her walking speed even though they were pouring on the steam.

When she reached the lobby, she found the current Hall Master, an older Enlightened with salt-and-pepper hair and a thick, bushy mustache standing in the center of the lobby and barking commands. As far as Beth knew, he was technically the second strongest person in the city right now, though she also privately thought she could probably take him in a fight. The only person stronger than him, at least that was known publicly, was the city administrator, the city not even having an elected mayor yet, as it was both too new and under too much threat. Threats like what was happening now, as the Hall Master was barking orders, getting people assigned jobs and promising mission rewards for anybody of at least Silver Emblem that was willing to pitch in and lend a hand. She listened in, learning that there was a massive, and very unexpected, outbreak from a nearby dungeon that was swarming towards the city. The numbers were pretty bad, according to the Hall Master, and they were desperate for help, though Beth thought they might be blowing things a bit out of proportion.

"Alright, give me a spot," she said, walking up to him.

"This is a serious situation, kid," the Hall Master snapped. "Some of the beasts are close to level four hundred fifty. We haven't seen an outbreak this bad on this world yet; getting to the bottom of this is going to be a nightmare."

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He had muttered the last part, and Beth just rolled her eyes before saying, "Just point me to where they're the thickest and I'll take care of it."

"Fine, I'm not your chaperone; here's the map data. If you think you can hold back level four-fifties as an Empowered, you're welcome to throw yourself into the center of the efforts at the west wall. Any other questions?" he barked.

"No, I got it," Beth grunted, taking the map data and turning on her heel. She headed out of the Hall while reviewing the current threat assessment, seeing the estimate of between three and five hundred thousand beasts. For a small city like this, that many beasts, with almost all of them above level two hundred fifty, would be a major problem. Even having an early Ascended as the administrator wasn't a guarantee that everything would be alright, but they didn't really need to worry now that she was on the job. She thought about calling in the others but scoffed at herself; she could wrap this up by herself in a day. She wasn't going to interrupt everyone else's training and relaxation for such a minor issue, and she immediately Spatial Stepped to the city wall when she made her decision.

Looking out, she saw the front of the horde of beasts was a couple miles away, quite easy for her to see with her eye power. Several people on the wall startled at her appearance, but before anyone could say anything, she disappeared just as fast, startling the handful of nearby people yet again. Somebody that was that easily startled by something that small wasn't somebody with a whole lot of experience, which was to be expected with a smaller city like this. The area they were in was generally pretty safe and, ironically enough, the only dangerous thing nearby was the dungeon that had just broken, made all the more ironic by the fact that was the whole reason the city was sited where it was, for ease of access therein. Beth teleported to a position on a small rocky outcrop on top of a hill a few hundred yards in front of the beast tide, if it could even be called that, having ignored everything else as she scanned the area. What she saw was a bit annoying, but she could easily handle a lot of what was to come, and had already laid out her plans.

The annoyance factor came from the fact that the terrain to the west of the city, and for a stretch northward, was open, rolling hills. It was open enough and flat enough that there wasn't a great way to funnel an attacking horde into a smaller area, but the hills gave enough of a difference in height and variability that it would be difficult to track all the beasts and what they were doing. The only real thing she could do was throw herself into the horde, well before it got close to the walls, and try to break up its momentum as much as possible while starting to rack up her kill count early. She didn't care so much about her total kills in terms of contributions, it was just something that would be useful, given the numbers estimates, in tracking how much progress she was making in reducing the problem. She wanted to deal with the problem, but she also realized it might be a problem on several fronts if she gobbled up most of the kills and didn't let anyone else participate or earn rewards.

Well, the only people in the city that could likely challenge her, in terms of strength, were the Hall Master and the administrative person. Even then, she wasn't certain on the Hall Master, leaving just the administrator and, while she wasn't going to get into a fistfight with them, relative power did matter. Authority mattered, and she would sometimes do what someone like the admin said, and often do what a Hall Master said, but her demonstrating her own considerable capabilities would make it much less likely that anybody would raise an issue. When the only people who it mattered if they raised an issue or got pissed were the two previously mentioned, she wasn't worried. Others could bitch and complain about her taking credit or doing her own thing or whatever, but their voices, in the grand scheme of things, didn't really matter all that much.

On those pleasant thoughts, she threw herself forward, her Spatial Step skill allowing her to traverse the large distance in a single step. She was instantly among the first of the beasts, large cow-like monsters, if cows were the size of semi-trucks and had hide about the thickness, and twice the toughness, of forged steel plates. The beasts' horns were about the length and thickness of her arms, and Beth certainly didn't have small arms, and ended in wicked, curving points that could be used for both goring and slashing attacks that would be terrifying to a regular Empowered. The beasts' hooves were like heavy hammerheads, ones that were wickedly sharp along the leading edge, and each hoof probably weighed three hundred pounds if they weighed an ounce. To put it rather bluntly, these beasts were about as far from a normal cow that one might get some milk from as the sun was from a candle.

All that being said, it mattered very little to Beth, who slammed a fist into a bovine beast head with the force of a falling star. She used Beastly Tyrant to actively increase her strength, but hadn't used any other skills or powers, and the skull of beast cracked with a mighty snapping sound. The thing, slightly surprisingly, wasn't dead from just that, but if it had been by itself, it would have already been dismissed by her as a threat. As it was, she lashed out with a backhand to finish it off at the same time her sword appeared in her left hand, thrusting into the massive head of a bull that tried to gore her. She nimbly dodged the horn even as she recovered from the thrust, stepping away from the two corpses and starting a whirlwind of death and destruction that was quite the spectacle to behold. She tried to also be precise with what she was doing, despite the urgency of the outbreak, as she wasn't really planning on using her looting skill on these beasts. It would be a big waste of highly valuable materials, and whether she could claim a good chunk of it, or the city would commandeer it and put it to use, it wasn't necessary for her to turn most of the horde into excess mana particles and little bits of bloody grass just to work on her slowest-leveling power.

She lost herself in the fighting, able to almost go on autopilot; the bulls were big, tough, and durable, but they weren't the kind of enemy that could stand up to her Strength stat, especially when she tossed out the occasional Spatial Obliteration. Beyond that, despite their power and toughness, they were a bit…well, simple-minded wouldn't be inaccurate. Beasts, of course, were driven to rage and destruction by how mana ran rampant in them compared to 'regular' animals, but these bulls and oxen were a bit dumb even as compared to other beasts. Even the ones over level four hundred displayed very little of the animal cunning that higher leveled beasts would start to develop. The bulls stampeded, tried to headbutt and/or gore anything in front of them, and otherwise tried to trample things and body slam them. Something the size of a small house with limited Dexterity did have slightly limited options, of course, but even so the things were just not at all that bright.

In the end, that just made her job all the easier, allowing Beth to mow the things down with ease. She looked around at one point to see Sera flying by in the distance, the dragon apparently having also responded to the klaxon warnings. She was in her full dragon form and was picking up two or three bulls in one of her massive hands at a time and shredding them or smashing against the rocky summits of the hills. She was largely refraining from using her powerful fire breath, likely to both save it for anything really bad that might pop up and to help preserve the corpses. She was very much thinking along the same lines as Beth, that the corpses were valuable, not least of all because the bull monsters had quite a lot of very tasty meat that the city could either use or export for a tidy profit. And if a couple dozen of the house-sized bulls disappeared while the fighting was still happening, well, who would notice twenty or thirty beasts missing from piles of tens of thousands of corpses?