They all cycled through the shower quickly, able to get into a fully filled tub thanks to Soph's foresight. Beth continued as they relaxed, Sabs nestled on her lap, "That means Blood and I need to hit two-twenty this time, and I am not looking forward to those extra twenty levels above two hundred. We'll also have to see just how crazy the demands for the True Rebirth are this time."
"What did it cost you last time?" Sabs asked curiously, idly playing with one of Beth's large, long-fingered hands, massaging the fingers with both her hands.
"Uh, what, like two-and-a-half diamonds? Something like that," Beth said, glancing at Blood for confirmation. The other three gasped and choked at that, though Blood nodded simply in confirmation.
"How do you have so much money?" Kim hissed out the question.
"Well, we fight. A lot," Beth said, holding up her hands and pulling up both of Sabs's with her right. "Oh, sorry."
"It's fine, Beth, just keep explaining," Sabs giggled.
"Right, anyway," Beth said after clearing her throat. "We fight a lot, and that means a lot of money. It might not seem so crazy right now, but once you're fighting level one-fifty and beyond beasts, they're dropping a silver coin or more every time. And we kill thousands of beasts a day, seven days a week, for months at a time. If you do the math, you get hundreds of thousands of silver coins, which is thousands of gold coins, which winds up being dozens of platinum coins. Do that a few times and boom, you're at a diamond coin."
"It's just so much money," Kim said quietly. "And to think you spent all that to get a better level-up."
"Eh, saying it's a 'better level-up' is a bit reductive," Beth said. "Sure, it was a lot of money, I get that. But at the same time, it let us keep twenty percent of our stats at level one instead of fifteen. That's across the board, too. That kind of difference, especially if you do the math over even just a couple rebirths, is way too good to pass up. I mean, at the end of the day it's just money; we can make more."
"You're weirdly dismissive of some things," Sabs commented with a chuckle. "Especially with how obsessed you get with making money."
"I just like having options," Beth defended herself half-heartedly.
"Right," Sabs replied, totally unconvinced.
The group left the tub behind after that, apart from Soph, who had no fear of pruning when it came to a bath. She did eventually join the rest of them, as food was the next priority, and they all had burned through a crazy amount of calories that day. Kim made it through dinner just fine, but was quickly asleep, curled up between Beth and Blood on the couch. Sabs was on Beth's lap and Soph had taken Blood's chair, and that was mostly where they stayed for the rest of the night, the couch being more comfortable than most pre-Path beds Beth had used.
The next morning the other three had other things they could focus on, with Beth reminding them again that it would be a great idea for them to get some serious training time with their instructors in the use of their Presences. While the rest agreed, Beth and Blood got them all prepped and out the door before heading down to the shop. They needed another restock of supplies, and Beth was buying the ration bars by the pallet at this point, throwing huge packs of them in her necklace. They still had the infinite water canteens, which they had both gotten a couple copies of some time ago just as backups, and they really didn't need much else. They had two rather nice tents between them and several sleeping rolls, as well as quite a few blankets, but the two were just as liable to fall asleep on the ground, maybe by a small fire, as actually use the tents and equipment.
After concluding their business with Jaq, who was just as surly regardless of it being early in the morning or not, they headed out and away. Today, they were starting several objective weeks, which would be subjective months, of grinding out levels. They would be able to go pretty damn quickly at first, especially since they were already over level fifty and climbing towards a hundred, but Beth suspected their pace would slow somewhat at a hundred. They would still likely climb to one-fifty much quicker than last time, even counting the effects of dilated time, but then it would be a real slog to get close to two hundred. After they managed that long climb, they still had the dungeon looming in front of them.
Beth had agreed to continue their pattern with Sabs of stopping every couple weeks and returning to the Hall, and so she planned a two week session of combat, which would be twenty weeks in the gate. With how quickly they would be leveling at first, that likely also meant a couple times closing and reforming the gate, as she still couldn't set it to have enemies start any more than at her own level, though maybe she would get finer control the next time the skill leveled. Having to go so far from the gate to get enemies they could use was annoying, but their speed let them cover a lot of ground rather quickly.
The first week they spent blazing towards one hundred, ten weeks in the gate of fighting sixteen-plus hours a day, seven days a week seeing their levels soar. That was the point that they reset the gate the first time, the two of them having just continued running further and further out to continuously fight higher level enemies for the first ten subjective weeks. It was so bad, in fact, that they had to spend hours, nearly half a day, running back to the gate to get out.
Beth was starting to dislike resting outside, at least during a leveling session, though she tried not to let that thinking affect her time spent on their 'weekends' with Sabs. She removed the gate and rested for fifteen minutes before summoning the new one, feeling just a bit taxed, but not too much, especially after having had a full week off with the other girls. They entered the new gate and immediately headed out, sprinting for an area further out that had much higher-leveled enemies.
They spent the next ten weeks the same as the first; killing as much as they could while resting as little as they could. For all that Beth was worried about their speed, they made remarkably good time. She supposed it was also the difference in that the first time she ever leveled, she had been worried about training and using her power too much and even been involved in trials that weren't entirely ideal for farming levels. This time around, there was nothing, absolutely nothing, else that they had to worry about or that could interfere with them, so they flew through the levels. One hundred came and went, and they continued grinding. The ability to fight up levels was a huge help, and even persisted after one hundred, though they did slow down. Not as much as Beth had feared, but they were definitely not on the kind of rocket speeds that they had been at first.
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She supposed that that would always hold true to an extent. The early levels would get easier and easier, and what constituted the 'early' levels would change as their power grew, but there would always be brackets. Eventually, even level one hundred wouldn't matter, but at that point two hundred might still be a big gap, and when that ceased to matter, four hundred might be the point they were really struggling. It made her excited, quite frankly; to keep pushing their limits, to keep discovering more, to have even bigger and more intense battles.
The time was finally up, though Beth was a little bit happy that they had to take this break. She had sort of reconnected with both Sabs and her sisters during the longer break they just took and was a bit missing of that contact. Blood was, of course, wonderful, and she would never say otherwise, but she enjoyed the comfort of a small, tight-knit group that functioned well together. Maybe someday they could bring the others in on her secrets, or they could have a group they trusted explicitly form around them.
She shook those thoughts off as they made their way back to the Hall, ready for some serious downtime. She was even thinking of extending it to three days, but she really needed to check in with Tazeen and see if he had an update about the situation. None of the Seniors had called her while they were grinding to inform her of anything Earth-shattering, so she assumed things were still relatively fine, but she wanted to check and make sure. She also wanted to check their progress, pulling up their screens as they got close to the Hall.
Name
Elizabeth Anne Bell
Class
Brawler
Level
112[1]
Strength
440
Dexterity
220
Endurance
212
Intelligence
50
Wisdom
50
Free Points
0
Titles
Silver Flame Empress' Inheritor
Skills
Acid Resistance Copper[8]
Ancient World Gate[2]
Beastly Body Silver[9]
Blacksmithing Journeyman[0]
Celestial Annihilation Silver[7]
Crush Silver[9]
Earth Resistance Copper[8]
Flame Resistance Copper[9]
Focused Meditation Silver[0]
FrostFlame Eye Silver[5]
Ice Resistance Copper[8]
Indomitable Heart Silver[4]
Lightning Resistance Copper[8]
Lordly Reconstruction Silver[8]
Monstrous Blow Silver[3]
Pain Tolerance Silver[9]
Spatial Step Copper[9]
Swift Silver[7]
Swords Journeyman[9]
Toxic Resistance Silver[2]
Unarmed Journeyman[9]
Wealth
1d 11p 65g 24s 88c
Emblems
CRA Silver Badge (150CP)
Bonds
Blood
Name
Blood
Race
Red Wolf Queen
Level
112[1]
Strength
230
Dexterity
460
Endurance
180
Intelligence
50
Wisdom
50
Free Points
0
Titles
-
Skills
Acid Resistance Copper[3]
Blood Queen's Claws Silver[9]
Earth Resistance Copper[6]
Eyes of Hallowed Truth Silver[1]
Flame Resistance Copper[8]
Ice Resistance Copper[7]
Leatherworking Apprentice[6]
Lightning Resistance Copper[6]
Meditation Copper[9]
Pain Tolerance Silver[6]
Regeneration Copper[9]
Rending Bite Copper[9]
Spatial Step Copper[9]
Swift Silver[9]
Toxic Resistance Silver[1]
Unarmed Journeyman[4]
Wealth
0d 66p 67g 12s 4c
Emblem
CRA Copper Badge (100CP)
They had made damn good progress, and their stats were coming along nicely. Beth had been just below fourteen-hundred stat points when they did their first rebirth, and she was now already sitting at nearly a thousand. Considering they had over a hundred levels to go till their next rebirth, her stats would be quite high by the time they were even at two hundred, and keeping twenty percent of what they had at two-twenty would mean they would be crazy strong at level one.
She dismissed the windows as they got to the Hall, entering to find the lobby deserted as per usual. The only person present was Tazeen, and Beth stopped to chat with him as Blood continued on. The wolf didn't really need to stick around, especially when Beth would just tell her later that they were good or that they needed to do something else.
"Ms. Beth," Tazeen said calmly.
"Tazeen," Beth greeted, leaning against the counter. "Just wanted to check to see where we're at."
"Everything is still holding fine," Tazeen replied, glancing at her with an appraising eye. "I see by your current level that it will still be a little time. I would like to have Navere clear the dungeon again soon. Please let me know once you think you are fully ready to take care of it."
"Thanks for the extra help, Tazeen," Beth said. "We'll make sure not to take too long."
"Let us know if you need any other assistance," he said simply.
"Will do, thanks," Beth said before heading down one of the hallways, waving at him over her shoulder.
She joined Blood in cleaning up before they spent the rest of the evening relaxing, eating a massive dinner before Sabs showed up. Blood definitely relished the food, the wolf not being quite as big a fan of ration bars as Beth, but never complaining about it either. To be totally fair, they weren't that bad, but they also weren't ever hot, not unless Beth had kept one in her pocket for a while. She did remember they had cooking supplies that they could use when they camped, but that sounded kind of like a pain in the ass to her, especially thinking about doing that after fifteen or twenty, or even forty, hours of continuous fighting.
"Should we cook?" Beth asked, Blood giving her a look.
"I mean, we can cook when we camp. Should we?" Beth clarified.
"Who would do it? You?" Blood asked.
"Hell no," Beth denied emphatically.
"Then no, we don't need to cook," Blood said dismissively.
"Alright, just checking."
Once Sabs had returned and joined them, they relaxed for the rest of the evening, not wanting to do anything much. That pattern continued for the next two days and, though Beth had thought about it, that was all they took off before they were back out and fighting again. She might need to take a longer break next time, as using her gate power was still draining, particularly exhausting her soul, but that meant they could still do another twenty or so compressed weeks before taking a longer break.
Beth really wanted to get to one-fifty during this next run, though she wasn't sure how realistic that was, as they weren't fighting quite as high up-level as they had been. That, combined with ever increasing experience requirements, made things a little difficult to estimate, but she would just push on and see if they could make it. She was glad that her gate also seemed to act like a giant trash disposal, as she had tested leaving things in the fighting gate before closing it and, unlike the forge room she now had access to, none of the stuff ever showed back up when she re-opened the gate. It made these fast grinds towards higher levels just a bit more bearable, not having to worry about carting around trash or, uh, waste of any kind.
Two weeks flew by in a blink, at least for them, though she knew everyone else was just struggling to take it one day at a time. She really did feel like she needed a bigger break this time around than what they had taken last time, and planned for at least a good handful of days off, though hopefully not a full week. It wasn't so much her mental state, though she knew it would be nice to give Blood more time to reset mentally, but it certainly was straining her soul to operate the gate so much. Advantages came along with the disadvantages, however, as that strain was making her just that little bit stronger.
She noted that it was starting to get pretty cold on the way back to the Hall this time, it being early evening with the sun just setting. She double-checked her communicator to see that it was already November, which was a little surprising, and also meant that Blood was already a full objective year old. Not that it mattered too much; the wolf was both physically and mentally very mature, having seemed to skip basically all of childhood and puberty, and their time in the gate was adding years onto both their ages.