Limitless Path

Beth might have done her previous job too well, however, as there were plenty of others that were interested in wherever she was going and whatever she was doing. It made the acquisition of the ingredients more difficult, but she still had the easier job as compared to the others. With two smiths, a leatherworker, and an enchanter, they didn't exactly have the crafting know-how to brew a powerful medicine, but it seemed the scenario had taken that into account. There was a skilled, if eccentric, alchemist the teams could make use of for the tournament, and it didn't take much for Val to wheedle out of him some highly valuable information. The alchemist was short on beast cores and, well, Beth's group was like a clearing house for beast cores, and they were easily able to sacrifice a few more valuable examples to get the required medicine brewed.

Beth left the team to all that, going back to her job of schmoozing in the arena and distracting other teams with individual duels. Some of the teams were better informed or were more curious and had started to figure out that there were more opportunities for points than the tournament itself, but Beth's team had beat them all to the chase on the medicine. She didn't get many updates about what else was going on for the next two days, but she knew her team was working to secure more advantages in the background.

That manifested when Beth's third match was a forfeit; apparently, her teammates had gotten the team to withdraw. It was very boring for Beth, but however they did it, likely by attacking the sponsor in some way, it not only got them another win but was worth extra points. Fighting the other teams was the least valuable way to get through the tournament, as they were coming to learn. Beth was able to get up on stage, take the easy win, and then go back to watching other fights while chatting, or taking a few requests for duels herself. She didn't fight too much on the exhibition stages, as she wanted to make it seem like she was nervous about all her cards being revealed, but she made sure to put on a good showing.

After that, which had been the round of the quarterfinals, the round of eight, there was going to be several days with nothing for them to do. The tournament wasn't stopping, or not entirely, but there were two days of feasting celebrating the teams that had made it through to the semi-finals, the top four teams on the winning side. After two days of feasting, the loser's bracket was going to officially start running their matches, with time for the twenty-eight teams that had been eliminated to be paired and go through their first couple rounds of fights. All in all, it was going to be a week before the semi-finals, provided nothing crazy happened, and Beth's team was going to use every minute of that to try to get as many advantages, and bonus points, as they possibly could.

"Let's start with the feasting," Val said, as they sat in their suite the evening before the feast.

"Don't have to tell me to go party twice," Beth said.

"That's not what I-you know what? Go party," Val said.

"What?" Beth asked, looking at everyone else shaking their heads.

"We're going to use the partying to get more points," Sera said.

"Okay, but how? More sabotage?" Beth asked.

"Not this time. The king is supposed to make an announcement at the feast, which I think I have an idea of what it is," Val explained. "He's going to make a request of everyone gathered here, which is one of the reasons why nobody's been kicked out of the instance yet. That's part one.

"Part two is that we're going to try to steal something from the royal family themselves. Despite hosting the competition and being the focus, have you noticed that they aren't that strong? The most powerful among them is the current king, and I have very reliable information confirming that his twenty-one rebirths that our eye powers show is his real rebirth level. He's not a…particularly powerful Ascended, as those things go, but we should still try to avoid directly antagonizing him. We have a plan to have Blood sneak into a restricted area the heart of the palace and steal an item that is not part of the prize pool for the tournament. We intend to steal that item and either get the item itself to use or get bonus points for swiping a valuable item. Sera's explained that basically everything we could do of any kind of significance is worth points for our run of the dungeon. Stealing something worth adamantine coins out from under the king's nose should be worth a lot of points."

"Okay, what's the item?" Beth asked, glancing around at the other three.

"Well," Sera said, sharing a glance with Val, "we think it's an entombed heart. That's what we're pretty sure they're holding down there, and we think it might even be part of the scenario to steal it. They're not keeping it in the vault, which is pretty suspicious in and of itself, and it's not supposed to be used as part of the tournament. We think it's just there, essentially, to be stolen, but we still have to be very careful about how we go about doing that. That's why Val told you to just go party; we could likely use your spatial abilities, but we're split here. You're the strongest one of the four of us, of our whole team still, and that means you could create a commotion and get away with it without getting seriously injured."

"You want me to make a commotion?" Beth asked.

"Not to start, but it might be needed," Val said, holding up a many-fingered hand. "It'd be best if you just go to the party and mingle and maybe use the chance to have a few spars. Parties like this always having people having spars and betting on the outcome and if you do something crazy you can get all the attention on you. Fight four teams at once or something, whatever you can do without giving everything away. The bigger the commotion you create, within the standard social norms, the more opportunity we'll have to get our hands on that prize."

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"And the three of you will be working on that?" Beth asked.

"We'll pop in and out," Val said. "We need alibis, after all."

"And try not to show your Ideal," Sera said. "We want to hold onto that card as long as possible, and I'm not just talking about for the dungeon. The longer we can go without others knowing that your path all the way to rebirth ninety-nine is basically guaranteed, the better off we'll be."

"I don't think that'll be a problem," Beth said with a grin. "Unless the king tries to fight me, I don't think any of these other chumps have a chance."

"If everything goes crazy, just go with it," Val said. "We don’t necessarily need you to interfere with the operation if things are going bad. Since you can win the tournament basically by yourself, you trying to do something crazy if we alert everybody would be a loss on our part. Our main play is to still win the winner's bracket of the tournament; with us getting the medicine that cured the king's daughter, we're already up on points. Everything beyond you winning the tournament is just bonus, so we need to keep that in mind."

"I wonder if I'm strong enough to take the king?" Beth mused.

"That's the absolute last resort," Val snapped before sitting back and rubbing her eyes with a sigh. "Sorry, old habits from the Young Scions. You're smarter and way stronger than those chumps, so I don't need to ride you about every little thing. Just make sure that we don't spiral and wind up getting kicked out of the instance without anything. We need to keep in mind that this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance that we won't get a second run at."

"I might not fight the king, but I'm clearly strong enough that I can easily get his attention," Beth said with a lazy wave. "I'm winning the winner's bracket solo and making it look easy; no way the king wouldn't want to talk to me. I can likely distract him and even wring more information out of him about this other big job or whatever."

"Just be careful," Sera said, stroking Beth's hair.

"Watch what you say, if you approach the king," Val said with a sigh. "We don't need things to become any harder."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Beth fired back.

"You know what it means," Val said, staring Beth down until Beth eventually flipped her off with a roll of her eyes.

The next day was the start of the feasting, with a massive banquet hall fully devoting to dining and drinking while an adjacent ballroom was entirely set aside for dancing. The king was present for the kick off of the party, but he was then supposed to leave for a few hours and come back later in the day. Beth intercepted him before he could leave and offered her services, talking herself up as the clear favorite and strongest contender, just if the king happened to need anything more beyond the tournament. She wasn't sure if this was some other pre-arranged part of the instance, as not everything was like that, but the king appeared tickled by her boldness and pride and offered to give her a special mission if she made it to the finals.

That special mission was wholly separate from his other needs, as during the afternoon, he spelled out what he required of those gathered for the tournament. Everyone could participate in his challenge, which meant there were many dungeon-generated people that were going to get in on it, likely there to set a minimum threshold of quality. And threshold of quality was relevant as the king was demanding a sword or spear be made, one of unparalleled power and strength. Whoever presented him with the best weapon, judged by himself, would earn an additional prize before the end of the tournament. That was the overall time limit also, as no further entries could be submitted after the final match of the winner's bracket was complete. That still left as much as three weeks from that day, depending on how long certain events and matches ran and the overall scheduling, but to create an exemplary weapon within that timeframe would be challenging, doubly so if most of the work was to be done by the competitors.

This was an area where Beth's current team's composition was going to be a big advantage; two smiths and an enchanter working together could make some incredibly powerful items. Beth also had the idea to get Blood to make the wraps for the hilt or haft, depending on if they went with a spear or sword, with would involve her leatherworking in the project as well. She didn't know what quality standards the dungeon was expecting for them to impress the king, but, luckily, they could spy on others and assess what they were doing. She was glad the other girls were good at the social and subversive work, as she was more than happy to spend the time just punching things. And people. Lots of people.

The first day of feasting was a bit more tentative, at least until the evening, at which point enough people had enough liquor in them that some trash talk and challenges started happening. Of course, the dueling fields didn't have any properties that reduced drunkenness, at least, not before the match was over and the participants got healed. The fields were advanced enough that they could avoid removing alcohol from the person's bloodstream, which most people were happy about, if they even realized it. Some people couldn't hold their liquor.

Beth had no problem, on either front, as she had so much Endurance and such great defenses from skills that it took heavily modified, often enchanted, alcohol to get her drunk. Most of the alcohol of that type was crazy expensive, as people didn't put the time and effort into making cheap swill at that level, or not very often, and many places wouldn't even have that kind of alcohol on hand. Beth was able to drink just about anything they had at the feast and be fine, even if it was poisoned, and she did just that. Drink lots of booze, not poison.

Several teams challenged her to fights that first evening, and she took all challenges while goading everybody to take it further. The party didn't stop for the night, though many people did take at least some long breaks or rests, and the next day some people were still on a buzz before they even got started again. Beth hadn't even really gotten to buzzed, and she had only briefly seen the other members of her team during the first evening. She wasn't sure exactly what they were up to, but they all put in appearances at various times on the second day of the feast, likely still working on their alibis. She started challenging teams herself that evening, and her goading had really started to pay off. The other teams were all aggressive towards each other, but she had been insufferable enough that they were willing to team up for several group challenges to try to knock her down a peg or two.

Beth made sure to play up those fights, and she was getting pretty good at playing to a crowd after all she had experienced, even if her social skills weren't always the best. She got everyone worked up and had the place betting and gambling to excess. She was sure some of the more drunk participants from the dragon clans might be regretting some of what they put on the line when they sobered up, but she wasn't running the bets, so not her problem. She did do an exhibition match where she only used her weapon skills against two teams where they had free rein to do what they liked. She was thinking it might be revealing a bit too much of her hand, but the others had likely figured out she was a Master with Unarmed at that point, so it didn't really matter as much if they learned she was the same with Swords. The most important thing was that she avoided giving away anything too important about her power and abilities, though that was a bit of an exaggeration, as the other teams basically knew that she was going to be the overall winner if they didn't do something extreme.