She put word to deed as she summoned her Presence, knowing this was another round where she would need to go all out from the very start. She felt the weight of the crown settle on her head as her power surged, time seeming to slow slightly as even her chronoception was boosted by her new ability. She utilized her newly boosted speed to the max, layering Swift and Beastly Body over top of her Presence to maximize everything right away. All five of the wyverns could have been siblings, standing atop two thick legs with large, scaly wings and long, heavy tails that counterbalanced the weight of huge, blockish heads on the end of long necks. Their jaws were massive and filled with rows of dagger-like teeth that dripped with caustic saliva.
Beth dodged a bite, the huge head extending towards her surprisingly quickly as she darted under the jaws before punching upward. She didn't use Crush on the very first strike, wanting to test her fully enhanced physical strength without the additional power of her attacking ability. She noted that her attack did some damage, cracking several scales and causing the wyvern to rear back, but it wasn't anything devastating. She corrected that on the second strike, sliding out of the path of a downward bite before punching the beast in the side of the head with a maximum strength Crush.
This time the blow was much more destructive, cracking the beast's jaw and causing it to stagger a step to the side. Beth's power was so great with her Presence burning that she was able to send one of these massive beast's staggering with a single strike. She followed up before the wyvern could recover at all, hammering it several times in a row with empowered punches to the point she shattered its skull, turning its brain to mush. She then had to dart back and to the left to avoid a bite, a second wyvern having leapt upon her as she dealt with her first opponent. She wasn't able to retaliate, however, as a third wyvern breathed out a wave of coruscating electricity directly at her, forcing her to sprint out and to the side of the second wyvern to move from the path of the blast.
She ducked under a swinging tail whipping by her with a whistling noise before leaping back to avoid biting jaws, frowning as she saw a wyvern facing her and inhaling deeply. She ran to the side, attempting to put the wyvern she was next to in between her and the one getting ready to exhale, but it was only partially successful. The wyvern didn't seem to care about its fellow's breath attack, just shrugging off the wash of fire as it continued to attempt to bite her. Beth was a little singed, but the large body of the closer wyvern had blocked much of the blast. Of much greater concern was her spending a ton of time running around dodging, all during which her stamina drained away rapidly.
She batted the nearest wyvern's head away with a backhand before punching it right in the jaw, causing it to sway and take a half step before twisting to swing its tail at her. Much to the dumb beast's surprise she didn't dodge but instead, likely to its even greater surprise, caught the tail with both her arms. With all her buff skills at the maximum and her Presence running at full strength, she had the raw power to pick the multi-ton beast up off the floor and swing it around by its tail before slamming it back down. There was a cracking, snapping thud when she smashed the beast down and it let out a mewling cry of anger and pain, but she showed no mercy, leaping upon it to rain down a cavalcade of blows into its skull, smashing its head into a meaty pulp.
She had taken just a little too long and was greeted by a blast of lightning almost directly to her face as she straightened up. Her Lightning Resistance saved her from taking critical damage, but the electricity and lightning mana flowing through her body, causing her muscles to spasm and heart to stutter, was still extremely painful. She managed to shake off the effects and get moving again before the wyvern could separate her head from her body rather messily, taking note that the fire-breathing beast was now tangling with Blood.
Beth ran in a wide circle, maneuvering around the lightning enemy at a moderate distance before tightening the turn and closing with it quickly. Her enhanced speed allowed her to circle around so fast that she was able to catch it in the side, batting away a wing that slapped at her before having to block a side swipe from the wyvern's right leg. She let her new, even heavier mana steel gauntlets absorb the impact before returning a kick of her own, shattering scales and dealing heavy damage to the beast's leg. The wyvern tried to spin to bite her, but Beth moved with it, hammering the leg with another snap kick.
The wyvern suddenly spun back the other way, slamming its tail into her with monumental force. Beth snapped her arms up in a guard pose while at the same time smashing her right foot down, punching it into the floor to brace herself, stopping the tail swipe of the creature dead. She latched onto the thick appendage then and hauled down and to the side, pulling the wyvern so hard it toppled onto its flank. She leapt nearly a dozen feet to just behind its head, grabbing the thick plates of its spine in her left hand before jackhammering a series of empowered punches into the weakest point at the back of its skull. It survived for an admirable amount of time, but soon succumbed as its brain was pulped into a bloody slurry.
She jumped from the corpse, staggering a little as she felt her energy ebbing low. She couldn't stop now, though, as Blood was still tackling two of the creatures alone and if Beth stopped, she likely couldn't get started again. She ran over to where her companion was to find she had been doing quite well in the limited time Beth had been giving it her all. Both the remaining wyverns had at least some level of damage, and one had a rather thoroughly shredded leg, though Blood wasn't able to take nearly as much advantage of that, in particular since the beasts seemed to be almost accidentally covering for each other as they fought.
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Beth evened the odds and then some, slamming into the less damaged wyvern with a vengeance, lifting the beast a foot or more off the ground before they both went down in a flailing heap. She felt a huge talon tear into the joint of the armor over her left shoulder but ignored the burning pain to grab hold of the beast and lift, twisting it off the ground before slamming it down on its back. The creature flailed as it screamed, Beth wincing as she felt like her eardrums were being ripped apart, but she still persisted, lifting both arms above her head with fists entwined before slamming them down on the center of the wyvern's chest, injecting Crush into her arms as she did so. The first strike didn't do it, so she did it again, and again, and again, until she had shattered its rib cage and started to crush its organs. Even though they couldn't have been fighting more than three minutes at most, she was flagging rather badly, but she grit her teeth and buckled down, slamming her fists into the chest of the wyvern yet again.
This last time something vital broke, namely the wyvern's heart, as she received the kill notification. She was starting to think that she maybe hadn't needed to use her Presence for this fight, or at least, they could have spent some time fighting before she activated it. Then again, finishing a fight more quickly did lead to more safety, as the longer they were locked in battle, the more chances for injury, and the more tired she would be even before activating her new power. She staggered away from the fourth dead boss, looking over to see Blood had not only toppled the fifth beast, but was currently tearing its heart out of its chest. She also still seemed to be underestimating Blood a little, as the wolf wasn't nearly as strong as her when Beth was using her Presence, but she was perhaps more powerful than Beth in her human form. Or at least, she would be, once she had improved her Unarmed and several of her other skills, including her new claw skill.
They weren't immediately kicked from the stage, and Beth took the opportunity to rest for a little. She didn't fall asleep, but she definitely felt like it, the weariness of overusing her Presence carved into her bones. Eventually, Blood pulled her onto her feet and they moved over to the projection, which was simply waiting for the signal to send them back to the array room. They showed up mostly healed but not at all rested, Blood giving a small bit of assistance to Beth to help her get back to their suite.
They rested and slept, Beth aware they would be burning into their extra time but not really caring, needing eight full hours of sleep to be back in top shape. Even so, they rested the rest of that day, going down to the bar where Beth sampled some drinks and spent some time chatting with the staff member about inconsequential things before they returned to the suite for another, much shorter rest. They were up and ready the next morning in short order, not having quite used a full day of their extra seven when they stepped back into the array room. They asked for stage seventeen to be made private before waiting for the signal from the Warder to enter the portal.
After the moment of disorientation passed, they found themselves in a moderate-sized, bustling city, people hurrying about their business for the day. As usual, they were approached by a person of authority, a woman wearing inscribed armor and with two swords strapped to her waist, who greeted them and explained the situation. They were apparently tasked with hunting beasts in the surrounding area, something the woman said indicating they had a week for the task. The more they killed, the greater their rewards would be, and they were told the further out they roamed, particularly to the west, the stronger the beasts. What was near the city wouldn't be close to them in level and wouldn't count much for their progress, so they would have to roam much farther afield.
They decided to get started right away, heading out of the city to the south, making their way through cultivated fields of grains and vegetables, passing the farmed area rapidly by using Swift. It didn't take long for them to find an area that was a bit marshy, the ground soft and wet, with trees and bushes creating a dense grouping of foliage. The further out they moved, the wetter and warmer it got, with more standing water sitting in larger and deeper pools. It transitioned at some point into a full swamp, with twisted old banyan trees sitting in hip deep water and connected by swathes of thick, ropey vines.
The beasts were starting to get stronger as well, with the handful that they saw as they entered the swamp being in the low eighties. It wasn't anything that would be worth it for them in terms of experience, money, or the stage objective, but at least they were heading in the right direction. As they continued further on, the enemies became less frequent, though Beth suspected that was just because they weren't seeing many of them.
"Any luck?" she asked Blood.
"No, sister," Blood replied from the boughs of a tree next to where Beth crouched in her own treetop. "The whole place smells of dank, rotting wood, moldy rock and stone, and this tepid, stagnant water that just reeks of disease. It makes my nose hurt and my throat burn, and scent is one of the most powerful things I use when I'm tracking beasts or people. There could be a dozen monsters right under us right now and I wouldn't know it."
"Don't jinx it," Beth huffed in response. "We need to figure out what's around us. We're gonna have to tackle stuff over level one hundred just to get score. Is there anything you can see or detect at all?"
"That log seems to be moving…" Blood replied, pointing to what looked like a chunk of moss-covered log drifting towards them, which was strange considering how still the water of the swamp was. It turned out to be less strange when a six-legged crocodile beast burst forth from the water to try to grab Blood, though the wolf was too high up with too powerful reflexes for the beast to actually catch hold of her.
It turned out to be in the upper nineties in terms of level, which Beth saw with a quick glance before they dispatched it. Blood was stronger than a normal human at her level would be thanks to her bestial bloodline, and Beth had been sinking quite a few points into STR, so anything even a handful of levels below them was usually no great threat. Couple that with it not even being some form of elite variant, and they handled it easily.
They decided to keep moving forward, wanting to explore the depth of the swamp or see if they could find anything interesting on the other side of it. It appeared that nobody lived or even worked here, as there weren't any paths carved through the trees or muddy waters, and they saw no signs of civilization. It didn't mean the territory was unexplored or unknown, just that nobody saw any value in actively working the area or even enough value to keep some kind of residence there.
The swamp, it turned out, was quite massive, and only grew deeper, darker, and hotter the further they went. The waters were now covering almost the entire area around them, the two girls sticking exclusively to the treetops to maneuver which, fortunately, was easy to do as the massive trees were plentiful and grew close enough in many areas to traverse as a road. There were open areas in the trees that allowed sun to shine down on the waters, but there was no real land to speak of and few plants grew in such a harsh environment. There was something that seemed like a kind of wild rice, and the areas around the sunlight had thick sections of reeds that grew ten feet high and so densely there was practically no room between the stalks.