Limitless Path

They had finished early, but that was almost to be expected based on their group and the fact that they had had plenty of time to create a single item. There was, of course, no limit on the amount of time they could spend crafting something, but their current level wasn't going to lend itself to a big boost by spending a year on a single item. They did the best they could, given the materials, time, and their skills, and then wrapped the spear up to present to the king at a small ceremony before the semifinals in another couple days. Meanwhile, they had more espionage to engage in, with Beth being roped in to help the rest of the time this time, as there was more she could do than just walk around the arena and be a pretty face.

The first thing they were going to do was rig the loser's tournament for a specific contender, which Beth thought was a bold choice. It was more about knocking out people from the competition that Sera didn't like, which was a bit petty of her, but it was also cold, hard politics. Having some of the other heirs or rivals come out of their one chance at the Grand Palace with a terrible reward would hurt them and bolster her, and she wasn't above playing dirty to ensure some people were at a disadvantage. Beth was all for whatever Sera wanted, and followed her and Val's directions in what they wanted her to do to engineer certain scenarios for the loser teams.

Beth felt a bit bad, but there were certain things that she could do with a clean conscious if it was for Sera, and intimidating a sponsor out of the competition was one of them. She enacted the plan exactly as Val laid it out, teleporting into the sponsor's room early the next morning, bypassing all her defenses with ease. The sponsors snapped awake but was unable to do anything other than open his eyes, even speak. Beth stood over his bed, looking down at the bedraggled man with a cold expression on her face, feeling as he flexed his power to try to break free. She could see the terror creep into his eyes as he realized that he was entirely powerless in her presence. She could also see the understanding overtake him as she held him there and looked down at him; whether that understanding was of his true powerlessness, or of her intentions, she wasn't sure, but it didn't really take any convincing to get what she wanted.

She let him go without even saying anything, sitting on a chair in the room and staring at him. The man slowly got up before bursting into motion, attempting to escape his bedroom, but he was horrified to find that it was pointless, as the whole room was spatially locked. The man was only at rebirth nine, without a Mana Physique, and him breaking through Beth's ability to lock down space was paramount. The sponsor then tried to attack her, which was just as foolish, and she laughed as his eyes grew wide when his powerful skill was snuffed out only half way to where she was sitting. He didn't give up with just one try, but he did give up after two dozen attacks neither harmed a single hair on her head nor attracted the attention of anyone else outside of the suite. He eventually gave up, collapsing on the bed and staring at her, his expressions morphing over the course of a minute from fear to anger to resignation to resentment.

"Drop out," Beth said coldly.

"I will not-" he started to reply.

Beth flicked a finger and spatial tears cut apart the bed around the man, and not just the bed, but cut apart his clothes without cutting apart his undergarments. Beth then pointed directly at his forehead and created a spatial blade that stopped a millimeter from his skin, close enough that it vaporized a drop of sweat that had just beaded there. The man crossed his eyes trying to look at the attack hovering just a hair away from carving his skull apart before refocusing on her. Beth lifted a finer on her left hand and a dozen spatial blades formed around him, all just a hairsbreadth from touching his skin and all vibrating with power. He was decidedly pale now and trembling, which Beth did feel a little bad about, but he was also a dungeon generated construct, so she wasn't going to be losing any sleep over it, either.

"I-I withdraw," he said quietly, Beth seeing a notification pop up on her communicator after a moment, signaling his intention to surrender. She had blocked all forms of communication, everything, when she had entered, so she scanned the message before forwarding it on herself, using a blank relay that Val had prepared for just such a situation.

"You made a wise move," Beth said, standing and making the blades disappear. Just before leaving, she suddenly stopped and turned back to the relieved man, making twice as many spatial blades appear, thrumming with so much power the space in the room started cracking. "Any mention of the real reason behind this, and you know what will happen."

As soon as she finished speaking, she and the blades all disappeared, as if they had never been there in the first place. The only sign of her passage was the ripped up bedding and the precisely sliced nightclothes the man had been wearing when she woke him. The thing that let them get away with using that tactic was that there was almost no time between a team being fully eliminated and them being removed from the dungeon. They were almost immediately teleported to a room where their final score was calculated and they could select, or be given if their performance was poor, their final prize. They went right from that room to the exit of the dungeon, getting kicked out without any more information than what was present in the summary of their points. Teams could make inferences from their points summary about things that had happened, but the points summary weren't extremely detailed. Beth had just eliminated the team that had come in with the Gold Dragon Clan, including their heir, and they would have little idea of why they were suddenly in the prize room, especially as they were in the running to win the losers' bracket.

Her next stop was a bit more complicated, as she was not directly attacking or intimidating anyone, but rather was using her spatial abilities to be a little circumspect in her nefarious behavior. The idea was that she was going to steal something from one of the other three teams still in the winners' bracket and plant it in the targeted team in the losers' bracket, sowing confusion and chaos. It also went a bit beyond that, as the teams were rivals that hated each other and were already about ready to come to blow as the team still in the top four had been talking trash on the losers' bracket team. The little job Sera had planned out would further the bad blood and give Sera a bit of a political wedge that she could use in manipulating their clans in the future. Beth was just happy that she could stretch her legs and use her skills in a bit of a novel way, especially since the fights had really become boring, both to watch and participate in.

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She managed to sneak into the top four team's suite with no issues, easily teleporting around the simple wards that were in place to keep the rooms isolated. She didn't even need to actively call on her Ideal, as the extra oomph she had from her Ideal just passively empowering her made her more than strong enough to overcome the simple defensive enchantments. She walked through their suite with ease and impunity, not that she wasn't careful to avoid notice, but even if she was caught, she had a plan B, one that involved a lot of fighting. She was almost a bit disappointed at how easy it was to bypass the security and get the item that Sera wanted stolen, something the team had foolishly left sitting in the open. Well, not as many people had spatial powers or items as Beth's team did, and it was something that more than one person on the team needed to have access to fairly consistently. Beth scooped it up, tossing it in her necklace before taking and step and appearing halfway across the palace.

She then stepped several more times, teleporting all over the place, scattering weird spatial mana patterns as she did, confusing her backtrail and making her movements hard to trace or map. She did that a handful of times before moving to just outside one of the other team's suites, where she moved around for a while before teleporting away again, as stealthily as possible. She wasn't really trying to get that third team mixed up in everything, but it could add some more spiciness if a random team was thrown into the fray. She then went to the target team's suite, almost getting caught by their team manager, but she was far too fast and powerful to get seen by somebody so much weaker without some extenuating circumstance. She dodged around their suite and placed the little box she had stolen in a hidden corner in a small cabinet that was in the base of an end table.

Satisfied with her work for the morning, she stepped over to the arena and made herself known, talking with two other teams on top of the team she had just stolen from, making it seem as normal as possible. She even challenged the team who's suite she had just come from to a match, agreeing to a difficult exhibition match to show off her skills and make it seem like she was an even bigger showboat. She beat that team, of course, but it was a bit closer thing, and she certainly played it up to make it seem like the victory was very close. She wanted to make it seem like she was strong, but not too strong, trying to give the other teams in the top four some spark of hope. That was just for her own personal amusement, and the rest of it was because she was trying to make herself super obvious in what she was doing, sowing more confusion while establishing a firm alibi to cover for her earlier crimes.

The next two days passed in some confusion, as the elimination of a team without anything having happened to them, that the others could tell, was a mystery that set teams on edge. The teams were then thrown into turmoil when both the theft, and who the 'thieves' were was discovered, putting two teams into a serious fight outside of the tournament. That caused a huge scene that took an extra day to clean up, with Beth and her team just laughing the whole time. They weren't just spending the time idly amused at the other teams, however, as there second mission was kicking in, which was winning the king's competition. To that end, they made several efforts to either eliminate a couple other teams or steal their finished products, Beth not minding taking a few nice weapons that she could launder through Selene. They were able to eliminate one other team with underhanded methods without it becoming too suspicious, and Beth was able to steal two weapons that had been finished. Blood was even better, as she stole bits and pieces for different weapons before they could be completed, even stealing three different hilts from one team that was just not careful enough about guarding their workspace.

When it was time for the official competition to be declared by the king, they all gathered in a massive hall in the center of the palace with the king on a big dais at the front. The teams went up one-by-one to present their final works to the king, with it being very clear that some of the teams weren't too happy at what they had to show for their efforts. Not all of those unhappy teams were ones that Beth's team had sabotaged, either, so there was clearly a lot more underhanded business and sabotage happening than what Beth's team had been doing. The only things that had happened to her team had been two teams trying to pick a fight with Blood outside of the arena, which they regretted. Blood had basically torn both teams to shreds, which had been an episode in and of itself, and the teams had had their gear shredded. Since they weren't on a dueling field, none of the damage was reset to its previous state, so the teams had to repair their equipment and heal themselves up on their own dime. Likely their repairs also took serious time away from each teams' project to present to the king, but word had gone around that the rest of Beth's team wasn't to be messed with, as nobody else had tried anything after that.

The ceremony didn't take all that long, but the king took some time to review all the entries and consult with a set of advisors that included a famed smith and a highly skilled enchanter. Clearly, the instance wasn't going to give the impression of any favoritism here, and Beth just hoped they could secure a high spot. The king spent time on each piece before working out a ranking with his advisors and presenting that to the gathered teams and nobles. He started at place number ten and went up from their, with the lower few places basically getting small consolation prizes for their efforts. The king also kept all the weapons, which Beth was eyeing, exchanging a knowing look with Blood at some point, one that Val intercepted at shook her finger and both of them. Beth just shrugged, already forming plans to wait until right before or right after she won the finals match to steal all the weapons. It would depend on where the king stored stuff, but she was going to make sure her team came out of this instance like bandits, and she thought some of the other teams, and even Val, were thinking too small. Everything in the instance was a real, valuable object, and they could take anything out with them; why wouldn’t she steal everything that wasn't nailed down, and a few of the things that were? At most, it might compromise their score a little if they were caught, but she expected to be able to get away with it with little effort.

The main thing she was thinking was that there was no Exalted and only a couple Ascended in the instance, all of them part of the instance framework itself. She had to remember not to get a big head, as she wasn't actually an Exalted, not yet, but there was an awful lot she could do already that even the Ascended could do very little about. She had plans on paying both the royal armory and the royal vaults a visit, and she would likely save the first for the very end of the competition and do the latter while the matches were still happening. At very least, she could get a stockpile of decent gear that they could sell for quite a tidy profit, either through other connections or through the Seven Lights. It wasn't like it was even stealing, anyway, as the armory was dungeon-generated and part of the instance; it was much more like looting a valuable dungeon or challenge out in the world than theft. That's certainly what she was telling herself, at least.