"How do you do that?" Beth asked as they got close to the field.
"What, walk? I use my legs," John replied.
"Move that fast while looking like you're walking," Beth elaborated.
"Stats, movent skills, and practice," he answered drolly.
"Good explanation," Beth comnted sarcastically.
John frowned but said, "It's part of developing your skills and your body. Understanding how to better utilize your stats and skills, as well as understanding much more efficient and better ways to move and control your body. It's a natural process that will happen as you train, as well as a conscious process that happens as you try to improve yourself. I'm not even using any particularly crazy techniques right now, just sothing that lets move faster, my high stats, and my skill in manipulating my body."
"What would be sothing that you would consider 'crazy?' Sothing like teleportation?" Beth asked.
"Things similar to that," he answered as they arrived at and moved across the field. A kobold was just trundling up the ramp as they got there and Blood eviscerated it with a flick of her claws.
"Nasty things," John comnted, stepping around the gore and heading down the ramp.
"To continue," he then said, "I would point to things like Blink, Teleport, Far Movent, or even Every Step A Mile."
"I don't know what the last two are, but the first two aren't hard to figure out," Beth said as they reached the bottom of the shaft and she gestured to the left tunnel.
"Far Movent is a skill that allows you to move yourself, or any object at higher levels, to sowhere you can see. There's a bunch of variations of it, including stronger versions, but the pros and cons are that it requires less skill and mana than Teleport, but is hampered by the line-of-sight requirent. Sothing like Every Step A Mile is a more complex skill that allows a person to fold space as they walk, essentially making every single step they take a small teleport. It's complex to learn, difficult to master, and very mana and concentration intensive, but it's also very powerful," he explained as they made their way down the tunnel. Blood took the lead, walking in front of the two as they talked and guiding them through the maze.
"So, this is it, huh?" John asked when they entered the room with the eighteen pillars.
"Yeah, that's it," Beth replied. "I don't know how much energy it has now, after having teleported us there and back. It might be risky to try to use it now."
"Ah, just let take a look," he said, moving over to inspect the pillars. He spent a couple minutes looking at three of the pillars, examining all the runes and their current state. He then turned to Beth and said, "This formation has plenty of mana. You'd have to use it between five and ten tis to drain it fully, and then it would recharge one use in less than twelve hours."
"Well, good to know we had a bunch of wiggle room," Beth said with a sigh.
"Alright, you ready?" he asked.
"What do you an?!" Beth exclaid. "That's a level two-fifty! I thought you were just going to go and take care of it!"
"It'll be a good experience. For both of you," John said, pointing at the ground next to him.
"Fine," Beth sighed, walking over to John with Blood in tow.
"Here we go," John said with a chuckle, touching the pillar in front of himself and injecting mana into it. There was a slight humming noise for a mont and then a brief flash of blue light before the small group found themselves back in that sa room.
Beth didn't look around this ti, instead staring across the room to see the giant chanical statue standing with arms crossed at the opposite wall. She could see it start moving this ti, the whole thing twitching a little bit before suddenly unfolding its arms and taking a step forward. She looked over to John to see what his reaction to the statue would be, but he had disappeared.
"Uh, John…?" Beth said hesitantly.
Before she could call out a second ti, however, John reappeared. Not next to them this ti, but standing on the shoulder of the titan, giving her so perspective on its size. John was just a little shorter than Beth, just under six feet in height, and standing on the titan's shoulder he was just slightly shorter than the titan's head. He didn't give the creature any ti to react, either, as the mont he appeared a long knife appeared in his left hand and, with an almost casual motion, he slamd the knife into the titan's right eye all the way to the hilt. He twisted the knife in a quick, efficient gesture before jerking it back out of the eye. Just as the titan's left hand made to swat at its right shoulder John disappeared, simply vanishing far faster than Beth could blink.
In the sa span as that blink he dashed down and around the titan's body, slashing over a dozen tis at its joints and weak points. Beth only saw it as a series of flashes of tal-on-tal and bursts of broken chanical parts from the areas where John's knives hit, with all the flashes happening, even to Beth's enhanced eyes, at essentially the sa ti. As the titan staggered, John flipped one of the knives in his hand casually before stepping forward and slashing down and to the side at the titan's left ankle. The knife seed to dig in strangely to the tal that the creature was made of, twisting and tearing it open.
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John stepped behind the titan and flicked one hand in a dismissive gesture and Beth had to rub her eyes as there were suddenly a dozen copies of John standing in a semi-circle. What happened next was even more awe inspiring, as half of the group each attacked a knee of the titan, all of them coordinating their movents and timings perfectly so that multiple dozens of cuts all landed at the exact sa ti. The multiplicative effect of so many powerful and precise strikes tore both the beast's knees apart, though they weren't fully shattered. It also seed to make the being mad, as it smashed the floor around it, the force so great that Beth and Blood, so two hundred feet away still, were pushed back just from the shockwaves.
Beth brought her arms up to shield her face, watching between them to catch what happened in the rest of the fight. The floor around the titan was totally destroyed, but that hadn't seed to affect John at all. The copies had all disappeared, but the man himself was standing on a broken chunk of the floor, still displaying a level of casualness that Beth found a little frightening. The next ti the titan swung at him, he used a series of rapid cuts that shot out waves of energy to divert the massive fist of the creature down and to the side. The blow still smashed the floor in an area twenty feet around it into rubble, but John was entirely unaffected by the strike.
The next scene seed to ingrain itself in Beth and Blood's minds, as John casually walked up the titan's arm, slicing it with his knives in an offhanded manner as he did so. The titan tried to swat at him but, shockingly, all it managed to do was smash its own arm apart, pieces of tal and chunks of gears blowing outward in a shower of sparks and oil. As the titan staggered and made a sound that was like a klaxon blaring, John remained unfazed, stepping across the titan's shoulder and slamming both knives into the sa eye. Even from the distance she was at, Beth could see energy billowing from the blades before they hit ho, the entire massive body of the beast spasming before a huge column of electricity exploded out the back of the titan's head.
John hopped off the titan as it swayed, walking back towards Beth and Blood as the massive creature collapsed with a thunderous boom. The shockwave billowed the duster John was wearing and ruffled both Blood and Beth's hair, fading out with dulled echoes as John stopped in front of them. Beth raised an eyebrow at him as he put his hands in his pockets and shrugged.
"That's about it," he said with a shrug.
"I think that might not have been the lesson you intended," Beth said.
"Oh, really?" John asked, frowning a little.
"I an, I assu you wanted to show how dangerous sothing like that is," Beth said, pointing at the corpse. "But you made that look easy. Almost too easy."
"Ah, right, that might be a problem," John nodded. "Let put it like this; I've got two hundred years of experience that lets do that to beasts like that without even trying. I don't think you've even got two hundred days of experience yet, so be careful, and run away if you see sothing over level two hundred."
"Better," quipped Blood.
"I didn't ask for the damn critic’s review," John scoffed, walking back over to the array.
"Are we leaving?" Beth asked, rather surprised.
"I scanned more of the area while I fought," he answered, gesturing them to join him. "This ain't a place even two crazies like you can handle. Not now, not for a long ti. So, get in the damn array."
"Yeah, yeah," Beth said, the two joining him in the center of the array. John activated the array when all three were within its covered area, teleporting them back to the kobold zone. The room on the other end was empty, the kobolds being rather scared of the array room. Beth couldn't imagine why.
"Alright, I've got that part covered," John said. "Just…don’t go back in there before you're over two hundred."
"Two hundred years old?" Beth asked sarcastically, her right eyebrow lifting while she smirked.
"Level two hundred, you ass!” John snapped. “If that’s everything, then I'll leave you to it," John said and just…disappeared. One second, he was there, and the next Beth couldn't see or detect him in any way, nor did he make any sound or disturbance of the air when he vanished.
"Um, other tunnel?" Beth asked, glancing at Blood.
"Eh, sure," Blood replied with a shrug.
The two made their way out of the maze, jogging back up the tunnel until they reached the shaft that led up to the field. Once there, they turned their focus, and their feet, to what they thought of as the right hand tunnel. Blood led the way, falling easily into her typical role as scout without them even having to exchange any words.
This tunnel was much more linear than the other one, though so of the secondary paths that Beth rembered were more complex than small little diversions. They didn't rush, though Beth was eager to get to the end of this path, but they had a job to do, taking their ti to map out the area and ensure there weren't any nasty surprises hidden away. It also wouldn't do to have those nasty surprises jump out behind them when they were least expecting it, so better to be thorough about the whole thing than be sorry later.
They were pretty fortunate in that their levels were more than enough to clear the areas quickly, as there were a lot of side areas and Beth could see it being a real slog to get through everything. They still didn't manage to get all the way to the end, or at least, to where the hexagonal room had used to be, if Beth was any judge of distance. It took them until the late evening just to get sowhere close, and she didn't want to keep pressing on overnight if they didn't have to. It was nice not being on a strict ti limit with things anymore, as if they were still in the Trial she would have insisted they continue through the night with only a short rest.
The big change that Beth noted, as they made their way back up the tunnel, was that the armory was gone. It was kind of sad, considering how much great loot she had pulled out of that room over the course of a couple weeks. That, and the challenge of the elite kobold guarding it had been pretty great, and now it was just a large area of offices with ‘normal’ kobolds scattered throughout.
They made their way to the shaft and started their ascent of the spiralling ramp to the surface. Making their way up and out, they saw a black, starless sky as they erged onto the field, annoyingly finding a couple kobolds waiting for them that they had to dispatch. The wind was blowing fairly hard and, as they started trotting back to the Hall, they heard the distant rumble of thunder as a storm rolled in.
They managed to make it back right before the rain hit, avoiding becoming drenched by the narrowest of margins. Adventuring how they did ant they needed to put up with a lot, but that didn't an they wouldn't try and avoid being uncomfortable as much as they could. Entering the room after making their way through the underworks Beth started stripping even as the door was swinging closed, her armor disappearing into her necklace before she started pulling her clothes off.
"Not making it all disappear?" Sabs asked from the couch, where she had been lounging.
"Not today. I need to do laundry again pretty badly and I'll forget if I throw everything in there," Beth replied. "I'm just glad sll doesn't spread in the necklace."
"I looked up the prices of what Jaq has, by the way," Sabs said as Beth finished stripping.
"What do you an?" Beth asked with a slightly confused look as a naked Blood brushed by her and entered the bathroom.
"The price of storage items, Beth," Sabs said with a small shake of her head. "Jaq has a handful in stock, but his cheapest right now is one-and-a-half platinum coins. And that much money gets you sothing that's way less than a tenth the size of yours, if my math's right."
"Well, we can try saving up to get you one," Beth said with a shrug. "I just spent a bunch on a bunch of stuff, but I still have close to twenty golds on right now. I'm sure we can make enough to get you sothing."
"It's fine, Beth," Sabs said with a shake of her head. "It's really a luxury item, in all senses. I can make do with a pouch and a backpack for the foreseeable future."
"Hmm," Beth replied before Sabs gestured at the bathroom. "Yeah, yeah. I'm going."
She joined Blood in showering off rather quickly, neither one much interested in luxuriating in the heat. Beth chuckled when Blood shook herself vigorously even in her human form to dry off before they got out and made use of several of the towels. Beth re-dressed after she was dry and gathered up the towels, including several other used ones, and took them into the living room. She piled them up with her used clothes, including the ones from her necklace, and then turned to Sabs.
"Anything you need washed?" she asked.
"No, I took care of it earlier," Sabs replied with a shake of her head.
"Alright, I'm gonna get this started," Beth said before taking the whole pile and carrying it to the laundry room. She would have used her necklace, but the warnings of the other Enforcers about not flaunting it still rang in her mind. She loaded up a machine to capacity and started it running before heading back to the suite, finding that Sabs had put food in to heat up for both her and Blood. She settled down next to Sabs and gave her a quick kiss, wrapping an arm around her shoulders before focusing on what was on the wallscreen. She changed the laundry after they were done eating, and retrieved it all after they watched a little more on the wallscreen. She laughed when Sabs got upset at her just thumping the towels in a pile on the vanity and insisted on folding them.
They relaxed for a while longer before turning in for the night, though Beth and Sabs were awake for a while yet after they went to bed. Sabs fell asleep on her stomach with Beth lying next to her, one hand under the pillows and one on Sabs's back. She spent so ti caressing Sabs before falling asleep herself, her hand gently resting on the small of Sabs's back.
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