Limitless Path

It had been a long day. A long week. A long everything.

Chen Xuan had had a very long month by this point, and it looked like it wasn’t going to get any better for the foreseeable future. Some team of idiots, likely after fast riches and a quick ticket to the easy life, had stirred up something they shouldn’t have under the earth, and now everyone was paying for it. They had hundreds of the highest level people from China, Korea, and parts of eastern Russia at this gods forsaken network of caves that led deep into the bowels of the earth. Every day, tens of thousands of beasts were pouring out of caves, a continuous swarm of ravenous, howling, destructive teeth and fangs and claws and stingers and so much worse.

Chen had called for help, his request having been forwarded through the chain, and he had been assured that people were on their way. He didn’t know who else they had to throw at this problem, as the best four teams in the area were already here and they were contributing as much as the bottom twenty teams combined. The people he had passed his requests on to had said they would be bringing in international, or maybe even interstellar, help to sort this problem out, but he had his doubts. The top team in China was currently here, led by that rather notorious Bai Qi who, alongside her crew of maniacs, were some of the strongest fighters the whole planet had produced. Supposedly, there was a team from Africa that was much stronger, but Chen didn’t really put much weight into those kinds of rumors, especially since he had yet to see any videos, or any verified listing of stat sheets, that showed that team performing in any way that matched up to the top Chinese teams. He had seen a European team, one that wasn’t here now, of course, that had performed at an adequate level, certainly more than he could handle, but he still didn’t believe they lived up to Qi’s team, or any of the other top teams.

He was roused from his wandering thoughts when a wave of surprise passed through the surrounding soldiers, though there wasn’t all that much of a military presence here. When anyone could go out and become an adventurer, a Wayfarer, as they were called, and earn fame and fortune for themselves with just as much risk as military service, who would sign up for the army? It wasn’t like any of the governments had managed to fully re-establish themselves after the world had collapsed at the start of this. His musings were cut short when he saw what had started the unrest, a set of people walking into the camp they were all gathered in. In the lead was a young woman with pitch-black hair and glowing silver eyes walking hand-in-hand with a very, very tall woman who was…well, calling her curvy would be an understatement. So much so that it took Chen an extra few moments to notice the horns on her head and the thick, extremely long tail emerging from the base of her spine. Behind those two came a tall, lanky young man that seemed to be in a bit of a haze, but Chen felt there was a dangerous air about him nonetheless. Behind him were two women that passed as normal at first, but Chen quickly realized one of them had either fox or wolf ears on top of their head while the other’s limbs had too many joints.

As if all that wasn’t strange enough, there were several others with more oddities apparent the longer he looked, but nothing was like the man at the end. He was a real titan of a person, towering taller than anybody Chen had ever seen, though he had heard of some of the workers at that business, the CRA or whatnot, being rather monstrous in size. This man had to be close to three meters tall, if not a full three meters, and wore enough armor to make a battleship blush. The most disturbing thing about him was that, despite his size and armoring, he produced next to no sound when he moved, walking at the back of the group silently and almost stealthily.

“Are you Chen Xuan?” the woman with the raven hair asked as the group stopped in front of him, her pronunciation of his name just a bit off.

“Yes, that’s me. Who, uh, are you?” Chen asked, not making the best of first impressions, likely.

“Name’s Beth. This is my team. We were told about some problem in the underground that needed help. You’re supposed to be our contact, right?” the woman said, though Chen got the impression the last bit was more a statement of fact than a request for confirmation.

“Right, yes, that’s me. We’ve been at this for a few weeks now, and any help you could provide would be great,” Chen said.

“Help?” the woman snorted. “We’re not here to help; we’re here to solve this. Tell us what’s been happening.”

“Right,” Chen said, trying to gather himself, only to be interrupted by a screaming roar from one of the caves.

“Mauler!” came a scream, and people started running, some to set up defenses, some to the medical tent, and some just to cover.

“The hell’s happening?” the woman said, quirking a brow at Chen as everyone scrambled.

“It’s a type of powerful beast that sometimes emerges! We need to get to cover, unless you’re team thinks you can help take it down?” Chen shouted, already starting to move.

“Easy,” the woman said and disappeared. It took him a few moments to realize she had teleported away, reappearing within the swarm of beasts that always heralded the arrival of a mauler.

“She’s in danger!” Chen shouted over the roars and cries of battle as he reach one of the massive barricades that had been erected at the front of the camp. It was only then that he noticed his all-out sprint for the barricade had only elicited a quick walk from everyone on the team, even the rather short woman with the highly muscular arms and heavy gauntlets. He was still trying to process that when there was an explosion of noise and force from the front, the shock wave enough to send him stumbling if not for the timely intervention of the heavily reptilian girl, who grabbed his upper arm and easily lifted him off the ground, setting him back on his feet once the force had passed.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from NovelFire; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“What was that?” Chen cried out, grabbing one of the Chinese defenders and demanding an update.

“That strange woman,” the defender rattled off in Mandarin. “She appeared in the middle of them and just…she just…killed them.”

Chen stared out over the top of the barricade, having run up the handful of steps at the back to be on the watchers’ level. What he saw in front of him was a scene of devastation out of some kind of story book, or perhaps describing it as a nightmare might be even better. The raven-haired beauty was standing in the midst of a flood of beasts, or what had once been beasts, but was now much more a collection of blood and body parts. He watched in awe, and more than a little terror, as the woman lazily punched out to her left, a wave of force extending from her fist, one that it took Chen a minute to realize was shattering and crushing space itself, destroying everything in its path. She repeated that punch several times, both to her left and right, and afterwards, there really wasn’t much left of the horde of beasts that had been pouring forth from underground. That was only the first wave, however, and Chen knew that what was coming next was going to be even worse, but he soon saw that all his worry was for naught. The next wave swarmed the woman and she fired off attacks that ripped apart the space around her without needing to rest or slow down; it was only when he felt the air greatly heat next to him that he looked over and saw the woman with the horns with fire gathering around her mouth. He was putting it together at that point; horns, scales, a long tail, claws instead of nails, strange pupils, large and clawed feet, and breathing fire from her mouth. This wasn’t just some odd adventurer, but instead was a dragon in human form!

The wave of fire the dragon unleashed covered a third of the huge area in front of the caves, billowing across the raging beasts with a roar like a dozen jet engines screaming at max output. When her exhalation ended, the bright gold fire, fire that sparkled with a strange light, fading out over the course of a handful of seconds. When it eventually cleared up, everything on that side of the battlefield was just gone, nothing but ash and a few fragments of bone too thick and sturdy to be burned in that amount of time remaining. None of the rest of the mysterious team was even paying attention at this point, or they seemed to not be, as they were gathered around talking about something in some kind of ongoing argument. Chen didn’t think they were quite as distracted as they appeared, but they looked entirely unconcerned with what was happening in front of the massive barricades.

The raven-haired woman had, in the time Chen was boggling at the dragon standing next to him, both from the destruction she had unleashed and the fact she was, well, a bloody flipping dragon, destroyed all the other surrounding beasts. The second wave, which was usually where they had gotten tested to the limit, was nothing before just two members of the team. Right when he was starting to feel a bit of relief, the roar of the Mauler rang out again, terrorizing the battlefield as the air trembled and the minds of everyone present went a bit blurry. He suspected, based on how the new team continued discussing something about plates, though he didn’t think they were talking about dinner plates, that they weren’t really affected by the horrifying roar. That suspicion was proven when the woman standing amidst all the bodies calmly walked forward to greet the Mauler as it emerged from a large tunnel mouth, the beast shrieking yet again with a terrifying scream that made Chen shiver and crouch down a bit, withdrawing in on himself.

The woman amidst the corpses was entirely unbothered, walking forward to confront the massive beast, twenty tons of muscle and armor plates and claws and teeth, oh so many teeth, all waiting to tear apart their flesh and destroy them and maul them-his spiraling thoughts were interrupted by the dragon, who gave him a bit of a firm shake before turning back to where the other girl was still striding towards the black and brown monstrosity. The thing was surprisingly quick despite its mass and enormous, pillar-like legs, charging across the ground in just a few seconds, meeting the woman in the middle of the remains of all the other beasts that had come before it. The impact was explosive, with a resounding crashing sound as the Mauler slammed into the armored woman, another shock wave coursing across the battlefield and being stopped by the barricades.

The Mauler roared triumphantly, which chilled Chen’s heart for just one moment, a frozen instant in time where he thought that the brave girl had been slaughtered, but his heart started beating far harder when the roar turned into a shocked and frightened scream. He watched in awe as the woman lifted the Mauler off the ground, the huge claws on all four of its legs scrabbling and fighting for purchase but failing to stop the immense force the woman applied. There was a sound like a bomb going off, Chen realizing it was the sound made from the woman punching the Mauler and its heavy armor plates cracking. He watched as she proceeded to pound the beast into so much meat beast, the terror of the deep wailing and screaming in agony as it was pulverized into bloody paste.

When the beast was well and truly dead, she turned and walked back to the barricades, nodding to Chen before flicking her head at her team, just a slight movement of her chin. The rest of the team took off, heading into the caves, including the dragon woman, as Beth, that was her name, turned to him. “We’ll take things from here. Just clean up any stragglers that get by us and wait. It shouldn’t take too long.”

“R-right, will do,” Chen mumbled, staring at her in shock.

“I knew it was you!” he suddenly heard a familiar voice exclaim.

“Well, well, I didn’t know if you would be here,” Beth said, turning and greeting Bai Qi as she walked up with one of the members of her team trailing her.

“I thought we had managed to bridge some of the gap, but it looks like we’re not even in the same league anymore,” Bai said with a shake of her head, staring at the tall woman.

“You haven’t done so bad yourself,” Beth said with a small grin, looking at Bai. “You want to bring your team down with us? We’re going to clear out all the stuff they messed up down there.”

“I don’t know that we could keep up with you,” Bai said, glancing at her teammate behind her.

“We could always watch them and learn,” the teammate said, giving Beth a critical eye as they discussed.

“Not to interrupt, but, shouldn’t you, um, be going down with your team now? What if they run into another Mauler down there?” Chen said, hating to stick himself in the middle of everything, but his first concern was that the mission got done and the place was made safe.

“Nah, they’re fine,” Beth said with a shrug and a laugh. “I really, really doubt there’s anything down there that could actually challenge my team, and if there is, so much the better. We’ve been pretty bored of the routine lately.”

“You shouldn’t be so cavalier about such things,” Chen bit off before realizing what he said and to whom he had said it. “My apologies, my apologies. It’s been a long few weeks, and I think we’re all a bit tired. I didn’t mean to question your judgment or the way you run your team.”

“It’s fine,” the woman said with a shrug before turning back to Bai. “We’re going to easily handle it; could be valuable training for your team.”

“Fine, fine, you’ve convinced me. Give me one minute to get them all here,” Bai Qi replied with a small smile, quickly leaving to get her team gathered up.

“Anything else you need?” Beth asked Chen, the man immediately shaking his head.

“Whenever you’re done down there, we’d like a full report, if you would be so kind,” Chen said quietly, not quite daring to look at the woman who had singlehandedly, and easily, killed a beast that the entire defense would have struggled with.

“Don’t worry, we’ve gotten really good at reports over the years,” Beth said, waving to Bai’s team as they walked over. “Ready?”

“Yes, let’s go,” Bai said, leading her team as they fell in behind Beth. The last view Chen had of them was the massive cavern entrance the Maulers came out of swallowing them all into its inky maw.