Limitless Path

"Right, so, goes like this," Baelvyr said. "Got us a little problem, ya probably can guess some of the details when I tell ya it's in the same vein as what ya did for Tazeen. Nice piece o' work that, by the by, ya really helped us out in that situation. We gotta get some certain items for a, uh, certain project we're workin' on, if ya catch my drift. These are some real rare, some real premium grade shit, and it's not something we can get through other means. We gotta go after these guys and bet somethin' equally valuable, which we got covered, don't worry. Havin' some people that are at the appropriate rank to participate will make this a lot easier. Well, we got some people that can participate without causin' issues, but yer team will, how do I say it? Bolts for brains would say 'expedite the process' or some shit like that."

"How many people do you need?" Sera asked, practically sitting on Beth to keep her from piping up.

"Well, we need at least five, but ya can bring all yer little buddies. It ain't gonna be no problem," Baelvyr said with a shrug, even his custom chair creaking under his weight as he shifted position.

"They'll be here in a two days, at most," Beth said, rubbing her hands together in a move imitating what Terrimane had been doing. "Do you want us to try to get our only Grandmaster? What's the other team or the roster of other fighters looking like?"

"If ya can get that little sword boy, get 'em, though I don't think ya need 'em. I think they only got, like, one Grandmaster, and even without including Navere, yer group should be able to handle that. 'less ya think ya can't take down a Grandmaster with yer crew, but I heard different from last time," Baelvyr said.

"No, I think we can manage. I'll send him a message, anyway. He'll be pissed if we do something so important and he doesn't at least have a chance to get credit," Beth said, composing a message to Veren and firing it off.

"Ya got any other pressin' questions for me?" Baelvyr asked, looking at the three of them.

"What's our timeframe?" Sera asked.

"We got a week," he answered. "That's 'til it starts. Then, it's gonna be a lot longer than the last one; we prolly got five days of fights to do. After that, yer prolly gonna need to stick around for another day, maybe two at the outside, to wrap stuff up. So, two weeks from today for the total time? Somethin' like that? Ya ain't got any important missions yer doin' in the next two weeks, eh?"

"We didn't have anything to do," Sera said.

"Other than getting your money for the bet," Beth said, pointing at Sera.

"That's a separate thing. Either Barnabas sends the money now, or he gets berated by the Elders and has to pay a fine on top of the bet loss. That's why I didn't care about leaving; those bets are tracked very carefully," Sera said.

"What's this?" Baelvyr asked.

"Just a little bet at the dragon clans," Beth said, waving a hand.

"Don't go gettin' into gamblin' on me," Baelvyr grunted.

"Only if I know we can win," Beth said.

"Attitude like that'll have ya broke in no time," Baelvyr said, thumping the top of his stomach to emphasize his point.

It was at that point that Val returned, with Terrimane in two. Interestingly, the dragon Exalted made to split as soon as he saw Baelvyr sitting there, but the ogre grabbed him without leaving his chair and pulled him into the center of the room. He then proceeded to smack the dragon around a little, though he wasn't really doing any damage with the hits, but he had made good on what he had just said a minute ago. Eventually, it was Terrimane that apologized and begged for mercy as he couldn't take anymore and was getting quite dizzy. The dragon bent over with his hands on his knees, panting and trying to regain his equilibrium after Baelvyr had made him see stars.

"Not a word," said Terrimane.

"Oh, I won't say anything," said Sera. "I did, however, take plenty of video and pictures of that. Just, you know, in case I need to use it for something later."

"My niece. My favorite niece. My niece that I love so much," Terrimane started.

"Ya need me to smack ya around again?" Baelvyr asked, glowering at the dragon.

"No, no. I'm quite alright, I can assure you," Terrimane said, holding up his hands and backing up, which cause him to trip over a chair.

"Ya ain't lookin' alright," Baelvyr grumbled. "Maybe I didn't knock enough sense into ya."

"What's that all about?" Beth asked, ignoring the dragon Exalted fumbling around and trying to right himself and furniture at the same time.

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"He knows what 'e did," Baelvyr said, glowering at the dragon a second time.

"Did. Did is the operative word there," Terrimane said, getting the chair with himself sitting on it at the same time, somehow. "That's all in the past now, and we can just move on. No more questions, thank you."

"I'm definitely getting this story later," Sera said, giving Baelvyr a nod, to which he just shrugged.

"I'll tell ya when he ain't around," Baelvyr said, ignoring Terrimane's hurt look.

"Anyway, are you going to stick around now, or give us the coordinates, or what?" Beth asked, turning back to Baelvyr.

"What's this now?" Val asked.

"Job like the fight series for Tazeen," Beth answered. "Fights start in a week, last five days, probably have to be there another two days."

"Oh, that won't be too bad," Val said, settling down next to Blood.

"The others are on their way back," Beth added, getting a nod from Val.

"Alright, enough sittin' around. Let's see what ya got," Baelvyr said, gesturing at Beth.

"Here?" Beth asked, nodding at the floor before making a gesture.

"Here's fine. Won't be after a handful of more rebirths for ya, but we can still use this equipment," he said, getting up and making the chair disappear in one motion. "Let's see where yer at."

Beth followed him out of the suite, the others remaining behind, though Beth thought Terrimane wasn't going to last long. Baelvyr, meanwhile, took her down to a training room, Beth amused as many of the people they passed gave the ogre some wide-eyed looks. It had been a while since he'd been around and the workers at the Hall now were very standard human, with slightly pointed ears or maybe a bit of extra hair the only thing setting them apart from total standard human. They entered a standard training room and Baelvyr himself stepped up onto the stage and gestured her up, Beth realizing this was going to really hurt.

Baelvyr took her through a lot various fights and attack patterns, testing her and probing to see how much she had improved since he'd last tested her. He didn't make any comments at first, just going back and forth and mainly focusing on her weapon usage, but he did push her to use her skills and to eventually go all out. The training stage was still able to handle it, even when she used her Ideal, which spoke to the quality the CRA built with, but she knew she would eventually have to start carefully controlling her power so as not to damage things unnecessarily. Baelvyr forced out everything she could do and, as usual, looked like he was barely trying while he did it. It was just a touch disappointing for her, as she thought she could at least make him put a bit of effort into it, but he was vary blasé about the whole thing the entire time. Beth suspected she was going to have to get much stronger before he was required to put in some real effort, but it did give her something to chase.

"Got a lot of work to do, girlie," he said after about an hour.

"I think I've made pretty good progress," Beth replied. "You gotta give me that I'm ahead of the pack, at least, right? Very few people my age or experience or a dual-Master."

"Eh, shouldn't compare yerself to others, but more like ya shouldn't be satisfied that yer just barely beatin' a bunch of wealkings," Baelvyr said with a shrug. "Ya could put some more effort into yer weapons. I know I told ya that before. Just look at what Tazeen can do if ya need a motivation to focus on it."

"I mean, I have my other skills and my Ideal as well," Beth said with a frown.

"Look, don't use yer Ideal," he said, holding up a hand to clarify. "I mean, don't use that as somethin' ya got makin' ya strong. Like, sure, girlie, it's really givin' ya a big boost of power, others don't have it, it's unexpected, yadda yadda. I get it. But, yer gonna get to the point where yer with the rest of us, actually in Exalted, and then it ain't gonna be an advantage at all. Don't rely on those things that ya need to advance as a trump card over others. Yer always gonna hit the point where the people yer commonly competing against, for resources, for honor, for whatever, have those same things. Compared to that, there just ain't that many people that even get to Sage. If ya can eventually push beyond Sage with even one weapon, that'll be a way bigger advantage than havin' yer Ideal early or something like that.

"In terms of skills, well, ya might be ahead of most, but it's the same thing. Ya really need to push them to at least Mithril to really rely on overwhelmin' people with them, and Orichalcum is where yer gonna be in a league of yer own. Right now, ya, most Enlightened and a chunk of Ascended out there ain't gonna be able to do shit to ya, but ya gotta keep in mind what happens as you climb the ranks. Plenty of Ascended out there are ancient, and ya eventually get to Exalted, where ya run into immortals. Sure, the Milky Way only has a handful of Exalted, but some galaxies have hundreds, even a couple thousand of 'em. If yer in a bigger pond, yer gonna run into more of those bigger fish, and somebody that's been around for eighty thousand years has had plenty of time to get a weapon skill to Sage and a dozen regular skills to Mithril. Sure, yer doin' good now, but just keep in mind that yer gonna start runnin' into some real monsters sooner rather than later."

"Well, that's depressing. You got any real word of encouragement?" Beth said with a sigh, finishing a drink and some protein bars.

"I ain't gonna sugarcoat this stuff," Baelvyr rumbled back. "Ya got plenty of time, though, so I'm just tryin' to get ya to think ahead. I don't care how much ya use that dungeon generating power of yers, it's gonna take you a long time to climb up to the top of Ascended. Hell, it's gonna take ya a long-ass time to do it even if ya give up on always doin' True rebirths, let alone if ya insist on doin' those all the way up. Ya can be usin' all that damn time to work on yer weapons."

"I got it, I got it," Beth said, taking up position and getting ready for round two.

Baelvyr had basically unlimited stamina; certainly, compared to her and the level she was forcing him to fight at, he could go for weeks without stopping and not tire in the least. Beth used the opportunity to focus on her weapons which she had been resting on a bit, as she had definitely been a combination of obsessed with her Ideal and focused on her skills recently. Her weapon skills had languished a bit, but she hadn't really had anyone or anything that was pushing them to excel, something Baelvyr was more than happy to do. She wasn't going to get a level out of even the ogre pushing her to her limits, not in one day, but she could get herself refocused on weapons and her fighting style and try to figure a few things out. It was good to have the ogre there as well as she could bounce some ideas off him or try some things that he could comment on or give some advice covering that she just wouldn't have gotten fighting on her own or with the others.

After another handful of hours, they stopped, and Baelvyr disappeared to go do, well, Baelvyr things; whatever the hell he did when he wasn't beating people up in the training room. Beth returned to the suite to find she was right about them, Sera in particular, having a low tolerance for Terrimane's antics and wheedling. The dragon was nowhere in sight, and only the other three girls were there. Over the next fifteen or twenty hours, the rest of the group started to trickle in, and Beth took that time to make a quick stop at home, though she thought of the Hall she was currently in as home more than anything. Still, she should check on the neighborhood and see how they had been doing and what they were up to, as well as if they needed anything else from her. She wasn't just going to rain resources on them this time, but she could toss them a couple of diamond coins if they were short on funds.

Before entering the neighborhood, now a town in its own right, she did want to do one other quick check. It was more a general check around the area, making sure there were no nasty surprises brewing, and that included underground. She figured some of the people from her home might be ready to venture into the depths, but that would still be too much for a lot of people and there could be just about anything brewing down there. She did a very quick check of the dungeons before branching out further, and both dungeons were fine, or so they appeared; she wasn't sure what them being not fine would look like apart from a mass of beasts gathering in preparation for a tide, but that wasn't happening, so she assumed they were good. The general area was also fine, with no new dungeons or instances that were anywhere close by, and there weren't any massively powerful beasts or strange objects that could cause a problem, either. The biggest issue would be how much everybody else in the town had pushed themselves; she did talk with her parents a bit here and there, but she didn't really have a good sense of how people had been continuing to adapt. The only way she was going to figure that out was to head in and check what things were like and what everyone's progress was looking like.