Limitless Path

Bai Qi had not been having a very good day. Hell, she’d not been having a very good two weeks, so when the crazy American she hadn’t seen in years showed up, she didn’t know what to expect, except maybe that everything was really going to tits up. She hadn’t seen or messaged the girl and her strange wolf companion in a long time, and seeing them now, it was both demoralizing and a bit hopeful in a strange way. Bai had really thought she would have caught up to them in the intervening years; her team had been working so hard, fighting right on the line of death time after time, some of them only living through sheer grit and determination. It was humbling to see another team, just as young as they were, with just as much fire, that had so thoroughly outclassed them that Bai understood just by looking at them that they weren’t in the same league any more. It was also, in its own strange way, inspiring to see; the girl she hadn’t had a chance against all those years ago was now so powerful, she wasn’t sure if the Hall Master of what she thought of as her home CRA Hall could fight her.

“Just how did you get so strong?” Bai asked the girl in lightly accented English as Beth stopped and tilted her head for a moment, listening to the cave system around them.

“Let’s try not to use any fire in here, huh?” Beth said first, looking at the tall girl with horns and one of the others in the group before turning to her. “I don’t know Bai, and good to see you again; I just fought beasts. There’s really no secret technique, though stumbling upon rare and valuable shit like gems or metals and selling them really helps. Having a bunch of money doesn’t instantly let you level up, but buying the best gear, slots in restricted dungeons, and paying for transport off-world certainly makes a difference.”

Bai glanced at two of the members of her team before looking back at Beth and saying, “Off-world, is it? We had thought of it, but…”

“It’s really not that scary,” Beth said with a shrug, turning back and unleashing a punch that tore apart more than a score of beasts charging the group. She turned back to a surprised Bai, extremely nonchalant about what had just been a devastating attack, saying, “I went out and about when I was way weaker than your team is now. Hell, I technically went off-world the first time before I was even level one hundred, though I think that one counts as a special case. As long as you keep your head on your shoulders, you should be fine.”

“Before level one hundred? The first time? How?” Bai asked, startled at the revelation. Her team had only left the planet once, and that had been a decidedly unpleasant experience that had turned them away from further interstellar adventures.

“I was lucky enough to get a token for a Trial, one that Blood could join me in, and we were able to get well past one hundred there,” Beth explained. “It’s not exactly how we got so strong, but they were ‘safe’ levels, if any leveling could be considered safe, and we got a couple really nice prizes out of the whole thing.”

“I’ve heard about people getting in those Trials or taking them, though they haven’t all been pleasant stories,” Bai said. “I know someone who died in one of them. He was still young and, maybe, a bit too foolish, but to think it cost him his life…”

“Sorry to hear about that,” Beth said, waving at several of the people on her team, causing the largest of them to move forward. “Sorry, don’t want to take the experience or anything. Let me know if you guys want to lead.”

“We’ve been down here before and we’re perfectly happy to tag along,” commented Feng, shivering at the thought of their previous dives.

“Oof, I can imagine. Underground is crazy dangerous on every world. Just a good thing that those biomes and areas keep mostly to themselves, or places would have a lot more problems with being overrun,” Beth said, giving Li Feng a nod before turning to say something to one of the other unusual members of her team, a woman who had feathers instead of hair. Bai’s eye power said that the woman was a phoenix, but surely that couldn’t be the case. Could it?

“You’ll have to interest us to your team members,” Bai said while she was thinking on it.

“Yeah, who’s the big guy?” asked Ming, clearly overeager. The small’s girls love of drinking, fighting, and fucking hadn’t diminished in the intervening years since they had last seen the American, especially if the activity was clearly something that should have been out of her weight class.

“Bjorn, a descendant of the titans,” Beth replied calmly, though Bai lost a step when she said it. “And if you’re interested, Ming, you’ll need to beat Kris first,” she continued, jerking a thumb towards the woman with feather hair and a quiet disposition that Identified as a phoenix.

“Well, I might just-“ Ming started, getting one of those grins that Bai knew so well by now before Bai cuffed her, hissing at her to behave. “Right, right, sorry, serious situation.”

Ming’s tone hadn’t made it sound all that serious, and for once, Bai had to agree. The big man, Bjorn, had moved to the front, replacing the horned woman that, also ludicrously, showed up as a dragon to Bai’s eye power. It was really something to behold, the way the mountain of steel and muscle waded through the horde of beasts that was now constantly rushing them from further in the caves, not so much pushing through as obliterating his way forward, which was a fairly good description of that entire team. Bai’s team would be struggling at this point, setting their defenses and digging in to withstand such a furious onslaught, especially as beasts at and above level three hundred started blending into the mix of fangs and claws and venom screaming their way. The stupidly tall American’s team, all of whom but one girl were also stupidly tall, didn’t even slow down, maintaining what Bai would describe as a fast walk, at least for people that had levels and skills ranked up. For an unenhanced person, they would be moving at something resembling a run, though not a flat-out sprint.

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The tall man was more than impressive enough on his own, but the rest of Beth’s team was terrifying, not least of all the woman herself. Bai watched as the aforementioned ‘Kris’ threw out a blast of lightning that just straight up killed more than forty beasts, all of them well over level two hundred and fifty. It was to the point that she got the distinct impression that Beth’s team was treating this more as a Sunday lark than an actual serious, life-or-death battle, and it made her feel a bit weak. Her team couldn’t have pushed so far, so fast, with so little damage done to them and been totally fine, not even out of breath. Watching the kinds of skills and spells that Beth’s group slung, and did so in such a casual manner, by the way, a manner which left Bai a bit in awe, even if she tried to make sure it didn’t show on her face, was almost mesmerizing. Everything they did killed a slew of beasts, not just one or two, and the power differential was very clear to see; every time one of her team members stepped forward, even Ming, the difference was startling. Ming could kill one of the level two hundred fifty beasts with a couple punches, but it was almost farcical watching Beth then step forward and punch, a punch that shattered space, though in a very controlled way, and caused a dozens beasts to explode into bits of bone and flesh and gore.

“Are you seeing this?” Mei Mei asked her, the calm girl’s eyes wide as she watched the foreign team obliterated hundreds of monsters in a handful of seconds.

“They’re far beyond anything we’ve encountered,” Bai replied quietly, not that she thought the other team wouldn’t be able to hear them. Her own senses, even without her skills taken into account, were so good that she could hear a conversation on the other side of the arena of her home Hall without even trying. Luckily, adapting to those changes didn’t take much effort, as her senses had very slowly gotten better over years, mainly as her stats had improved and she had undergone rebirths.

“Are we…safe?” Mei Mei asked, glancing at the other group out of the corner of her eye.

“It’s fine. They’re CRA Enforcers themselves; they’re not going to do anything to us that could get them in trouble,” Bai replied with a shrug. Mei Mei still looked nervous, but that was enough to put her mind at ease for the time being, Bai able to see some of the tension leave the other woman’s shoulders.

It was only a few moments later when the large group emerged into a massive cavern, Bai realizing that they had come quite far. Her team had managed to make it down to this cavern once in the last two weeks, but the beasts were just too numerous and high leveled for them to be able to clear it out and push deeper. The cave itself didn’t appear special in any way, just another place where the beasts gathered before heading to the surface. That also meant, unfortunately, that it wasn’t the area where the disturbance that caused the whole thing in the first was, as that was what they really needed to get to. Something was still enraging the beasts, more than what was typically for beasts, which usually just killed without any thought or reason, nor with any real need, everyone on the team having plenty of examples of beasts killing people or other beasts and just leaving the corpses alone. It was tough that they didn’t have any better clue what was happening, but the team that had come down here that had kicked, or more like punted, the hornet’s nest hadn’t survived the experience, and now the rest of them were left cleaning up the aftermath.

Again, this cavern would have been her team’s limit, but Beth’s team didn’t even look concerned or strained, killing their way to the center with what appeared to be great ease. The short member of their team, Bai wasn’t great with names but thought it was Andrea, was even joking around and not fighting seriously at all. Bai would never stand for her team to act like that in a combat situation, the discipline, or lack thereof, potentially leading to serious, even fatal consequences. That did lead to a conclusion she didn’t want to ponder, however, with the entire other team so relaxed; they didn’t consider this a combat situation. The ease with which they were killing everything in their path and the fact that none of them had suffered so much as a scratch was testament to that. Oh, the big lad had gotten hit, and more than once, and the dragon woman also took a few blows here and there as she very much seemed like a frontliner, but both of them were so armored that it barely scratched the paint of their gear. She was also pretty sure, having watched the dragon woman in some fascination, that her scales were already at a level that few things they had encountered so far would be able to pierce them. Hell, she watched as the woman blocked a vicious claw swipe with the back of her left hand and the scales just absorbed the attack without scratching, making her think the dragon didn’t even need the heavy armor she was wearing to be safe in this kind of fight.

It took them about twenty minutes to clear out the cavern, and that included dealing with everything that was nearby that had run towards the sounds of battle, eager to fight and kill just from the rage. Luckily, it wasn’t some that the beasts found real pleasure in, as that was territory that was very much in line with monsters, and Bai didn’t even want to think what a cave system with tens of thousands of monsters would be like. That was a nightmare better left unprovoked, and she gave herself a small shake as she pushed it out of her mind. She turned to survey her team as the last of the beasts was casually killed, making sure they were all uninjured and focused. Just because the strange and fantastical team that Beth led could stroll about without even having to worry about wearing armor, it didn’t mean that she and hers were in the same boat. She would be just as glad to be back above ground, fighting the smaller numbers of weaker beasts that their team had been dealing with for months before having to come down here.

“What’s the plan?” Beth surprised her by asking, looking at Bai for guidance.

“I had assumed you knew what you were doing?” Bai said, her tone a mix of unsure and slightly indignant. This stupid blockhead was still the same as she had been years ago.

“Well, I mean, we could just wander around for a day or two and kill everything down here, I suppose,” Beth replied, tapping her chin and looking like she was seriously considering it. Was she seriously considering it? “Or, we could try to go directly after whatever the source is, but we don’t have any information. We were just told, ‘Problem underground. Handle it.’ Or something to that effect. I don’t really know what triggered whatever’s happening here in the first place.”

“Well, I certainly don’t want to be down here for days or weeks at a time,” Bai said, shivering at the very thought. “We have rough coordinates for where the team that was exploring down here was headed when things went to shit. I think we should press on towards that location and see if we can what’s driving the beasts wild.”

“Oh good, that sounds like a much better plan,” Beth said, nodding while several members of her team laughed. They were clearly all lunatics, at least in Bai’s mind, and nobody should be that cheerful to be under so much rock and dirt with tens of thousands of powerful beasts swarming towards them. “Lead the way.”

“It’s down here,” Bai said, sending Beth a communication. “And we’d much prefer if you and your team led the way. I don’t know if you’ve noticed at all, but you’re much stronger than we are at this point. There’s a lot of stuff down here that we simply can’t deal with at all.”

“Right, no problem. Like I said, let us know if you want point or want some time to just kill the beasts where we’re not interfering. It would be pretty great experience,” Beth replied with a nod.

“We’re just fine,” Bai demurred, shoeing the taller and stronger woman off.

“Okay, just holler if you change your mind,” Beth laughed, making a gesture to her team to get moving, heading further into the tunnel system.