This was another of the big problems that slowed peoples' advancement: numbers. A big reason why groups would form and operate together, people like Team Dream Snake, was to simply handle the overwhelming numbers. Not everyone was a prodigy, nor an elite, nor even a generally skilled fighter, and even the best of the best often had gaps or weaknesses they were still trying to iron out. Most people simply weren't as determined, as experienced, as insane as Beth and Blood, to throw themselves alone at a beast tide, fighting for dozens of hours straight and even…winning. The situation they were currently in was similar, with the number of enemies multiplying into the hundreds as they got closer and closer to their goal with no end to the swarm in sight, feeling again like they were fighting a Tide.

Beth was glad they were here, then, as they were rather proficient in these kinds of fights and, if whatever they were approaching wasn't handled properly, could have led to likely the first Tide seen since the changes started on Earth. She was doubly glad for their new armor, having seen just how many attack were shed by the silverite pieces as they waded through a shrieking mass of enraged beasts. The force multiplier on her gauntlets was especially nice, as spending a truly tiny amount of mana to increase one of her two primary weapon's mass gave her so much extra impact for so little investment that it enormously aided her in tearing her way through the howlers and remaining fresh.

The only good thing was that the monkeys were damned stupid, not often utilizing the thick shells on their backs to block or redirect attacks, making the girls' jobs that much easier. It was still a difficult battle, however, the numbers threatening to outweigh even their experience with such scenarios. The two had to stop and stand their ground, fighting through the very late hours of the night and into the beginning of the next day to thin the numbers enough they could push forward again, leaving a charnel house of hewn limbs, blood-matted fur, and cracked shells in their wake. It was a little annoying that they had teleported forward twelve hours in time, but when they teleported back home they would regain the time back. Damn time zones.

The deeper into the area they went, the greater the numbers, but this is where they thrived, Beth realizing at some point that she had a dark grin, almost a snarl, plastered across her face. They had surprisingly left the bamboo forest already, moving into an area of tall, thick trees that crowded together like stalwart old men. The howlers had totally saturated the area, pushing any and every other kind of beast and most animals out of what was clearly the heart of their territory.

And what a heart it turned out to be, a massive grove of seemingly ancient trees, though that could just be the mana's influence, towering over a lush glade filled with bright blue and golden flowers. The air was sweet and crisp, the wind a gentle breeze blowing a scent of grass and pollen across the clearing, swirling past a glowing sphere the color of old rust and the size of a large shed, pulsing with a warm, yellow light. They had found not just a paradise, apart from the hundreds of screaming monkeys, but those same screaming fool's spawn point, it looked like. The only problem was the hundreds of said screaming fools, all over level one hundred fifty and rather upset, pouring towards them like a frothing, maddened rain.

It didn't matter how many drops that rain had, however; Beth and Blood would obliterate it all. Moving through the clearing, they coated the blue and gold flowers in a new palette of reds and greens, blood and bile from the torn corpses of the shell howlers splattering everywhere. For hours they fought, the bodies stacked up in great heaps at the edge of the clearing as one of the two would kick the corpses away as they moved, keeping the field clear of tripping hazards. Despite the length of the fight, both of the girls were still sharp, with Beth paying careful attention to their surroundings; it was how she noticed the problem not that long into the battle.

The question that they had before them now was what they could do about it. The portal was pouring out more howlers than what they were killing, the beasts strong enough they couldn't just rip a dozen of them apart in a handful of seconds anymore. The more they killed, the more everything continued, stuck in the same rut as the enemies swarmed out of the sphere-like portal, filling the clearing faster than just Beth and Blood could clear them out. The problem was, Beth had no idea how to deal with it, other than hope they somehow outlasted the swarm of beasts, something they had some experience in. That, or…

'Blood, on me!' she commanded through their link, the wolf needing no other instruction to be near-instantly beside her. Beth turned and led the way, Blood right on her heels as the Brawler dashed forward and leapt, slamming a howler out of the way as she dove into the sphere. The wolf was as split second behind her, firing out ten bloody beams of energy across the field of flowers before disappearing into the sphere with a slight *pop*.

There was a screaming, swirling maelstrom that assaulted them as they fell through what should have been just a blink of nothingness. This was far different from any other gate transition or teleport they had gone through, the feeling of the movement wrong and strange, Beth's senses twisting and distorting as colors and shapes blurred past in strange, jerky movements. They tumbled for what seemed years, but could only really have been a second or two, before suddenly bursting out of that in-between realm and into a totally different world.

Beth tried to recover as fast as possible, staggering to her feet and pulsing her powerful healing skill as she tried looking around, almost vomiting from the vertigo as she swung her head to the side too fast. She forced herself to ignore it, ready to fight at any moment, knowing that the place was likely swarming with shell howlers. She noted they were in some kind of enormous room, a great hall of some kind with massive columns supporting a heavy stone roof high overhead. Braziers burned throughout the area, providing both plenty of light and quite a bit of heat, though it wasn’t unpleasant as the air otherwise seemed quite cold.

The expected attack never materialized, however, as no shell howlers came screaming forward to tear them apart. Nothing of any kind came forward, in fact, something Beth was thankful for as it gave both of them time to settle. Blood had been impacted by the portal somewhat worse than she herself had been, and the wolf took quite some time to be back on her feet and ready to continue.

The rest period had done them good, as they had been able to recover a little of the stamina and mana they had burned in fighting so many of the shell howlers before leaping through the strange portal. They could have still gone on for quite some time, but it was nice to get a bit of rest and refresh themselves, and especially give their overtaxed brains a chance to cool off for a few minutes. Battling so many enemies so aggressively for hours without more than two or three seconds rest was very mentally draining and even ten minutes of rest was a great relief.

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Beth hopped up after just a handful of minutes of sitting and observing the place, ready to get on with it. Blood was on her feet a moment later and in the lead, moving towards what appeared to be the only way in or out of the massive hall, a large set of double doors at the far end. Blood was able to easily push those doors open, the only resistance in the form of the weight of the doors, not nearly enough to resist Blood's well over two hundred STR stat.

The doors opened out open a hallway, not as large or impressive as the massive hall they had been in, but still quite high and wide, with a row of columns down each side. Whereas the columns in the hall had been fully carved from floor to ceiling, these columns merely had embellishments around the base and top, something that looked like flowers wrapped in vines. Beth glanced back into the hall to see the flower and vine motif was present therein as well, noticing for the first time, now that she wasn't scanning for an attack quite so aggressively, that all the walls were painted with scenes of flowers as well.

It was a strange place, one that got only stranger as they walked through what appeared to be a massive palace. The flower and vine theme continued through the hallways and rooms they passed, everything either beautifully carved or painted or both. The whole building was beautiful, truly, a work of art that had been crafted over years or even decades, made all the more eerie by the fact that they encountered no one within. Not a single living soul was present to greet them, or challenge them, or give them any hint of where this was or, more importantly, what was actually happening.

Blood signaled Beth then, only the length of a short corridor ahead of her. Beth tried to move silently, Swiftly rushing up the hall to crouch by Blood at the doorway at the end. Peaking through the slightly open door, she could see what Blood had noticed, a broad and long causeway stretching out starting some little distance in front of the door. The door wasn't anything special or massive, but apparently was one of the ways in and out of the building they were currently exploring. There was a courtyard in front of the door, with the paving stones carved with flower and vine symbols, though they were still flat and smooth, the shapes in the stones filled with some kind of lacquer. It was an enormous amount of time, effort, and expense on something that people would be walking and driving across, an extravagant display of wealth and influence.

Blood gave her a look and Beth nodded in response, the wolf then carefully slipping out the door and moving across the courtyard, keeping her head on a swivel. Beth was hopeful that something, anything, would happen, but it remained quiet, no matter that Blood paced the courtyard or even ventured onto the causeway. Beth followed her out as the lupine woman stood on the edge of the causeway, her blank mask revealing nothing as she stared down at the ravine around the palace.

Joining her companion at the end, Beth stared down at what Blood was looking at, finding corpses at the bottom of the ravine in grotesque stacks. Bodies were piled up in random heaps and mounds, as if they had been tossed off the edge all around the palace, the broken armor, torn clothes, and mostly decayed flesh turning the whole place into a an unintelligible mess. She couldn't tell the species or type of being; she couldn't even tell genders or rough ages, considering all the damage.

"I don't like that," Blood muttered quietly.

"I like the implications of that even less," Beth replied with a grunt.

"It fucking stinks," Blood grumbled, Beth just shrugging in response.

"How long do you think its been?"

"Dunno," said the lupine woman. "Based on how the bodies look, weeks. Based on how they smell, months."

"People or beasts?" Beth asked, kneeling down on one knee at the edge of the causeway and peering closer at the charnel pit.

"People," Blood answered definitively, and immediately.

"I agree," Beth said, standing. "You can see clear weapon marks on a lot of the bodies, even with their current state. The question is, who did it? And why?"

"The better question," Blood interjected, "is where are they now?"

"True," Beth muttered, glancing around them as if to find a deranged army leaping from the shadows of the grand old building. When nothing terrible appeared, she refocused on what they were doing, though something had been nagging at her for a minute. As they moved to the end of the causeway the thought came to her, 'What happened to the damned monkeys?'

That question would only be answered at a later date, it seemed, as there had been absolutely no sign of the shell howlers anywhere so far. That continued to prove true as they crossed the old bridge and set out into the area around it, finding the flat plain and handful of hills in a large area around the palace eerily quiet. No people, no beasts, no animals, nothing but the noise of a light wind causing the plants to gently sway. Beth had them return to the palace, the towering structure of eight stories visible for quite a ways around, the two making their way back to a different bridge. This appeared to be the main entrance, though it wasn't a drawbridge, similar to the other causeway, merely a solid structure stretching across the ravine that surrounded the palace.

"Anything?" she asked Blood.

"Nothing. Literally nothing," the wolf replied while shaking her head. "I can't smell or hear anything out of the ordinary, other than the fact that there doesn't seem to be a single thing left alive out there, not even an insect."

"Apart from the plants," Beth noted.

"Just so, sister," Blood said. "The plants, whether it's trees or bushes or flowers, all seem perfectly fine and healthy. Everything else is just…gone. Other than these bodies."

Blood took another glance down into the ditch, likely wrinkling her nose under her armored mask as she did so. Beth's senses were much less sharp, other than her sight, and even she found being a good distance away from the piles of corpses extremely unpleasant. She turned away and led Blood inside, the wolf following immediately, eager to leave the stench behind. They hadn't really explored the palace to any extent before, merely moving through it to try to find some way out or something other than empty rooms and corridors.

Beth was once again impressed by the beauty of the building, beauty that all seemed wasted with no one else to observe it. They walked around for several hours before finding anything of note, that being a strange room in the height of the palace. There was a small space, about fifteen feet to a side or less, at the far corner of the eighth floor, concealed behind a hidden door. The door wasn't particularly well hidden, at least not with the help of Blood's senses and the two girls' experience at finding and solving secrets, but it would've likely fooled many others.

Inside this secret room was some kind of mural or complex painting on each of the eight walls. In the center of the room was a lone pedestal, carved to appear as a set of intertwined vines rising from the floor and opening up into a large flower. Upon this finely carved pedestal was set a single object, something that looked like a cube made from emerald, four inches to a side and carved with impressive rune-work on each side. The disturbing thing was that Beth got a distinctive sense of danger just from looking at the cube, not aided in any way when she used her eyes to Identify it.

Fell Heart of Golden Roses

{The heart of a golden rose that has been corrupted by magic and manipulation. Beware ye who approach; a dark light waits within.}