Blood slaughtered her way back and forth across the battlefield for several hours, getting a message from Beth after two hours to burn harder. She started burning through her stamina and mana at a much faster rate, confident that Beth would have her back. After another nearly three hours she was starting to flag, and that's when Beth stepped out to take over, giving Blood time to rest as she started piling the beast bodies up like cordwood.
The tide this time seemed truly endless, and they fought and fought for hours, switching off twice more before they both took the field. It was the heaviest part of the wave, with the enemies swarming thick as locusts, driven to a towering rage by the tide's frenzying nature. The two girls were tiny dots in an ocean of madness, though they were not little pieces of calm themselves, but more like tornadoes of death. Enemies fell by the dozen, by the hundred, then by the thousand, the ground so soaked in blood that they were now wading through it as they fought.
A day had passed, and then another half-day, the hours burning away as the sun beat down overhead then the moon watched their struggle before the sun cast its burning gaze upon them once again. The corpses of the beasts were piled so high that they had started forming hills, and this provided a slight bit of blessed relief, as the beasts simply couldn't climb up the hills and throw themselves at the girls at the same speed they could use to stampede over them when the field was clear. Add to that the effect of these being piles of bodies, ones that could shift and slide and collapse, and it made the terrain quite dangerous. Beth and Blood avoided this danger largely by keeping an area around them clear, throwing corpses away from a large zone around the little house of more than a hundred feet in diameter.
So interrupted were the movements of the beasts that they gained a little time to rest, not as a group, but again taking turns. Blood slept for two hours first, getting rather a good bit refreshed while Beth held the field, the shorter girl's higher END and defenses allowing her to stay in the thick of things longer and even rest slightly less. They swapped off and Beth took a just under three-hour sleep, emerging to find Blood getting a little overwhelmed, not in terms of being injured, but in terms of keeping the area clear. Beth spent the first fifteen minutes after waking mainly tossing bodies away from them, the hobgoblins being heavy for someone of low level, but Beth's three hundred-plus STR let her send the corpses flying like frisbees with barely noticeable effort.
They settled back into their grind, with hours passing, which turned into days. They weren't even granted relief by the tide passing them by, which could happen, though it was very rare. Beast Tides would destroy everything they encountered in a sort of mindless spree, and this especially included all resistance. When a tide encountered something, or someone, that fought back, they would swarm that point endlessly until that obstacle was gone, or the tide broke. Killing one hundred percent of the tide wasn't necessary to stop it, but a vast majority had to be slaughtered before a break would occur.
That was the point the girls eventually got to on this stage; battered, bruised, bloody, but as yet unbroken, they finished after five days. The tide wasn't slaughtered to the last, but was shattered, broken in a way that no tide would likely form again anywhere in the area for years to come. As soon as the last of the beasts was out of sight, they were pulled from the stage, Beth noting that they did get a slight bonus award. They stumbled away from the array even before one of the two Warders could cough or grumble at them, heading back to their room.
"Extra day," Beth said firmly once they were inside.
"Extra wha…" Blood responded almost deliriously.
"We're taking an extra day," Beth said as she finished shucking everything off before leading the way to the bedroom. The two girls flopped onto the bed side-by-side and were instantly asleep, remaining that way for more than eight hours, only waking after the ninth hour had passed.
They got up once they had returned to the land of the living, Beth once again super thankful that her boosted END let her wake up fresh and full of vigor, even after such an ordeal. They readied themselves slowly, enjoying alternating showers while they relaxed before completing their morning routines. They rambled around the Celestial Awakening areas after that, eating a crazy amount of food before looking for something entertaining. They tried some more VR, but weren't really in the mood for it, leaving after an hour and wandering around again.
They decided to stick their heads in the array room after Blood adamantly refused a trip to the training rooms. They found, somewhat to their surprise, that the place was packed, all the people concentrated around the screens at the back. Well, packed would have been a bit of an exaggeration, as the screens only had about two dozen or so youths gathered, but it was far more than they had seen before, even when the group had been watching the young prodigy swordsman breeze his way through the boss rush.
That young man wasn't the topic of conversation this time, as it was instead a young woman who was doing something similar to the Grand Melee. It was the same level, based on what was displayed on the screen, but was not the exact same scenario, essentially proving Beth's suspicion that stages were at least partially individualized or different for different participants at the higher numbers. The woman was part of an event where several hundred five-man teams were facing off against each other, with the woman leading a team made up entirely of heavy hitters. She wielded a spear and struck so fast at opponents that it was mesmerizing, the single weapon in her hands moving so much it presented as a wall of spears to any who stood before her.
Beth and Blood had walked up to the back and listened in on what some of the others were saying, noting that they were mostly very impressed by the woman. It turned out that she had already hit the middle of Expert with her spears at only twenty-five years of age, a feat that was considered rather good. Beth gave her panel a glance, seeing that she was at the peak of both Sword and Unarmed at eighteen years of age. She knew it would slow down the further up the ranks she climbed, but she decided not to mention that to anyone, still more concerned with her privacy than bragging.
Stolen novel; please report.
The two melded in as part of the group to watch the rest of the stage, staying for two hours as the woman tore through all opponents. Standing for a couple hours without a break would have been a struggle a few years ago but having hundreds of END made it unnoticeable. The woman also made the time worth it, Beth reminded of the woman she had faced in the Grand Melee that was so skilled with the spear. The woman they were currently watching was extremely impressive, it seeming to Beth that she had at least one if not two skills in the Silver tier as well as her Expert Spears. The team she was fighting as a part of simply sent her forward first, having her break the enemy lines and tear apart everyone in her way. The team followed behind and supported her, making sure that she wasn't overwhelmed and that she had plenty of healing and support buffs, allowing her to tear the entire field apart.
Beth and Blood left the array room when the woman reached the end of the stage, having spent most of the time quietly watching, though they did chat a bit with a few of the other participants. They made their way back to the suite they had been loaned, lazing around for a little longer before catching a few hours' sleep. Once they were up and ready they next day they stopped to get food before heading to the array room and requesting the start of stage twenty-seven, asking for it to be private. They waited for a Warder to signal them to enter a dark red portal, leaping through to experience a moment of whiteout and disorientation before appearing in the next stage.
They had appeared in a room similar to stage nineteen, when they had worked with team Dream Snake to clear out the monsters. Though saying they had worked 'with' Dream Snake was a bit of an overstatement, but they had successfully taken care of the objective. The situation looked similar here, as there were several people dressed in full fighting gear alongside a number of people in more 'civilian' clothing. The two were approached by a tall man in mail with a bow strapped to his back and a quiver made of a dark leather at his hip.
"Greetings," he said in a deep voice, giving them a nod. "I'm Elias, the commander of this task force."
"Nice to meet you, commander," Beth replied for the both of them, Blood simply nodding.
"I take it you've been briefed on the situation?" Elias asked with a raised brow.
"We've been jumping around so much the last few months, I'm afraid we're a little bit lacking in some…uh, details," Beth answered.
"Alright, I'll bring you up to speed," he said before leading them over to a large central table.
"Take a look at the map we have here," he continued, gesturing at the large map on the lefthand side of the table. "As you can see, we have the city here in the valley, in the center. We have an area of semi-cultivated lands in the valley for roughly three miles around the city, with guard patrols in that area frequently. Further out we have some minor logging and mining activity, but those camps tend to take care of themselves.
"You can see our main concern to the east, here, at the foot of the Gahl Mountains. This is the castle of Count Vedrahn, a man who has been a loyal retainer of the crown for close to a century. Recently, however, there have been not just disturbing rumors about the Count's activities, but a failure of his to pay the full amount for the previous year's taxes. He has stalled the inspectors and the king's adjudicator with a series of flimsy, but technically legal, excuses. We suspect that he has either run into a financial difficulty that he is trying to cover up, or even that he is…questioning his loyalty to the crown."
"As in, you think he has betrayed your king and is working for someone else?" Beth asked.
"Nothing so…clear cut, I'm afraid," Elias replied with a sigh and shake of his head. "While we're not particularly close to the capital here at over two hundred miles away, we aren't particularly close to any of the borders or any other major faction. I'm afraid I simply can't imagine who he would be shifting his loyalty to if it were a matter of changing allegiance."
"I hate to ask, commander, but are we suspecting some kind of dark force?" Beth continued her questions.
"I fear that we can rule nothing out, at this point," the commander said with a deep frown. "I, however, based on the slim evidence we have so far, believe that this is much more related to finances. Whether some kind of cult or dark forces are involved, we frankly have no idea, but there is some kind of financial issue at the heart of all of this."
"So, what's our task, commander?" Beth asked.
"This is primarily an infiltration mission," the commander explained, pausing when both Beth and Blood winced. "Problem?"
"We're not…the best at the whole 'stealth' thing, commander," Beth replied with a slight frown, scrunching her brow as she analyzed the map.
"Well, that's why you've been requested," Elias replied with another sigh. "We need someone to retrieve information on the Count and his activities, and we don't have any kind of unit capable of clandestine reconnaissance and infiltration. We need you to figure out what the Count is doing, why he's doing it, and bring us some hard evidence. This is not a battle mission, we can't start open hostilities with the Count before we have some evidence showing what is happening."
Beth and Blood shared a look before Beth replied, "We'll do our best, commander, but you need to be prepared for this to go south. We're more the 'hit 'em hard, hit 'em fast,' kind of team than a sneak in and steal stuff kind of team."
The commander sighed yet again, "We'll prepare some fallbacks for the eventuality that you fail, but we were counting on you to be able to get information on the Count without alerting them. An out-and-out brawl won't get us anything except discovered too early; the thing we can least afford is them destroying any evidence that they still have before we can seize it."
"We'll try our best, sir, but I'm really not confident on this one," Beth replied before glancing over at Blood. The wolf in human form just shook her head with a frown, indicating her own level of confidence in the operation.
The two spent some time studying the map and the limited information the commander had about the current distribution of the Count's forces and their power levels. They had some detailed information covering the surrounding terrain and the castle that the Count used as his primary residence, plus the town that sat at the foot of the monolithic structure. The information was more detailed the further from the Count's seat of power they went, as his exact situation was relatively unknown, something that wasn't especially uncommon for nobles. He kept the exact strength of his guards and retainers, their numbers and skills, hidden even from the royal family, so they only had vague estimates to work off of.
The stage progressed from there much as Beth had expected, nay, dreaded, as they received a few more reports about the Count before setting off to scout out his castle themselves. Thanks largely to Blood, their scouting work went rather well, at least, if Beth said so herself. They were able to get the lay of the land around the Count's main castle as well as get a good feel for the primary town at the base of the Count's castle.
This was as far as their skill and/or good luck went, as the entire stage proceeded to spiral downhill from there. Beth's fears were slowly realized over the next several simulated days, as they were unable to make any progress much further as the remaining work involved a serious amount of espionage and counterespionage, something that they were not at all specialized in. They weren't able to make much, if any, headway in even figuring out who was in the direct employ of their foe versus who was only tangentially related.