The last two days were the most hectic for them, but also their biggest win, maybe ever. Beth was just a bit disappointed that they wouldn't be able to keep anything, but they had discovered a whole seam of mithril, the vein likely containing hundreds of tons of the rare and precious metal. It would have to be mined and smelted, of course, but just that discovery alone would net them a crazy amount of score for the first half of the competition.

That wasn't the biggest or best find, though. Oh no, that came at the start of the final day, when they found a cavern the size of a large town. The place was easily over a mile across, likely closer to two, and was swarming with beasts, the vicious bastards even tearing at and devouring each other. The fight that day was long, arduous, and decidedly dangerous, as the use of their mana and energies attracted more beasts from the surroundings to flood the area. It took close to the time when they needed to head back out and up to make it back to the open for the end of the first half, but they got everything cleared out.

What they discovered in that cavern was insane, Beth not able to believe her eyes as she surveyed two giant stalagmites in the middle of the room. Not only was each of them coated in gems, but all of the gems also glowed with a powerful, intense light, mana radiating out from the largest and oldest gems at the bottoms of the pillars in visible waves. Beth's eye powers told her that they were infused gems of various kinds, with some being labeled as things such as Infused Ruby while others were labeled Enhanced Ruby. Beth made a note to look into them later, but for right now she was more concerned about accessing their prize.

"Stand back," she told Blood before taking a step forward and punching the nearest stalagmite. Her fist landed with a sound like a wood mallet hitting a steel block, the rock under her knuckles just barely chipping.

"That looked effective," Blood commented, leaning in to peer at the rock.

"This might not be doable right now," Beth muttered, flexing her right hand, several of her knuckles popping. "I hit that really hard, and it didn't budge. These pillars of rock make the stone on Luttraine look like melted butter."

"Let me try," Blood said, Beth standing back and gesturing at the rock face. The lupine woman stepped forward and channeled energy through the claw weapon on her right hand, the long, dark claws glowing the color of old blood. She didn't attack the rock face, but instead pushed the claw into it, slowly cracking apart the stone as the blades sliced into the rock. She then tried moving her arm, slowly dragging the claws across the face of the stalagmite between two gems.

Beth watched from a few feet away with her arms crossed, not at all impressed by the rather slow speed with which Blood was cutting the rock apart. It took more than a minute for her to cut between two of the smaller gems, slicing a distance of little more than six inches in that time. She then tried to turn but wasn't able to twist her wrist and arm very well due to the high level of resistance of the stone. She had to withdraw her hand, pulling the claws out entirely, before twisting her elbow and wrist and pushing the claws back in.

Several minutes later, Blood had managed to slice apart the stone around a single of the Infused Ruby gems, working her claws back in to slice it away from the pillar. It took another minute of delicate finagling before she popped the stone free, catching it in her left hand as it literally popped off the wall. She inspected the gem for a moment before handing it to Beth, who examined it before stashing it in her necklace.

"We're certainly not doing more of that," Beth said, turning to lead the way out. "We've got a couple hours left and it'll take most of that to get back to the surface. We can't stand here and carve rocks for two days."

"We'll just mark it," Blood agreed, taking a few pictures of the scene for verification.

They made their way back up from the depths, Blood's keen senses and scouting abilities allowing them to avoid most fights. It was a couple hours later that they emerged from a cave into the late afternoon light, a brisk wind blowing through the mountain ravine where they had entered the cave. Beth ran a hand through her hair, frowning at the length; she needed to find somewhere to get it taken care of. Maybe she could make a day of it and find somewhere to get treated and pampered. She would feel bad about wasting an entire day on a bunch of nothing when she could be training or fighting, but it might be good for her.

As she was pondering the spa day, a ship appeared on the horizon, likely having locked onto their badges, which were still attached to their armor. The ship flew in low and fast, pulling up right beside the ledge they were on and lowering a cargo ramp. Beth and Blood easily leapt into the small cargo hold of the shuttle, being directed by a staff member up to the seating area above. They picked seats and mostly kept to themselves as the shuttle made several more stops, grabbing more contestants with each one. When the shuttle seating area was entirely filled by teams, they made their way back to orbit, docking in the massive starship before the passengers disembarked.

An attendant with quite a bit of embroidery on her robe took charge of them, a few of the contestants complaining about not being able to go rest first. They were led to a large hall in the middle of the ship where quite a few of the contest judges were, as well as a handful of chaperones for the groups that had decided to stick around and observe. They had to wait for almost an hour as the rest of the groups were brought in from the surface of the planet, Beth overhearing several people talking about their progress. Val and her group appeared at some point, with Val walking over to stand near them, though she didn't say anything, only giving them a nod. Even that had one of the reporters making furious notes, causing Beth to roll her eyes when she saw it.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Finally, everyone was gathered, and the man who had given the briefs before the first day stood at a small speaker's plinth at the front of the room. He tested a microphone to make sure it was working before clearing his throat, getting most of the room's attention. He had to give it a moment, clearing his throat again, before everyone settled down and stopped talking.

"Contestants, what a fine showing," he began. "I have to say, we monitored your progress in mapping and fighting the entire month, and we were suitably impressed. Let me explain very briefly what's going to happen now. We are going to go over the result of the first month, determining everyone's places, before dismissing you to rest. You will have seven days to rest before the second half of the competition. On the seventh day of rest, we will send every team the information on the second half of the competition, so you all have one day to develop a plan of attack. Are there any questions?"

"Yeah, can we get on with it?" one wiseass called out.

"Very well," the host said with a slight shake of his head. "If everyone could hand over your badges to an attendant, we will record the information off of them before returning them to you. If you have anything you need to turn in, please see the four gentlemen sitting at the table to my right."

Beth gave Blood a nod and moved up to the table, having the handful of things they had bothered to collect in her necklace. Blood had also sent all her data over, so Beth was able to turn that all in at once. There was some murmuring at the table when she turned the gem in, which turned into a heated, but quiet, discussion among all four attendants when she sent them the data on the cave system. They got themselves under control after a few moments, scanning her badge right there before thanking her, the attendant she had been primarily working with turning to the next team representative.

It was a bit disorganized for the next half-an-hour, as everyone had to get their badges scanned, submit items and information, and try to get everything tabulated. Beth and Blood were at the back of the hall, leaning against the mana steel bulkhead while they waited. It took a bit of time once everyone calmed down for the results to be calculated, and Beth noticed several of the attendants with their heads together, glancing around the hall, two of them looking at her more than once. She raised an eyebrow a little bit, but didn't do or say anything other than that, waiting for the announcement.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the announcer said. "Let's see the results of phase one. We'll list the mapping results first, the battle results second, and then the teams' totals third."

The man gestured to the screen behind him at the front of the hall and names started scrolling up, listing the team and their points. This was just for the mapping, and it started with the team in place fifty-five before going up from there. Beth and Blood ranked twenty on the listing, with just over eighteen thousand points. It was an impressive showing, but not quite as much as she hoped for given their big find. The top place on the mapping list went to a team she didn't recognize, with a total of over twenty-four thousand points, while Beth noted Val and her team were at place ten.

After everyone had a moment to check the mapping rankings, the combat rankings began scrolling, with the lowest team having only four thousand points. Beth and Blood waited, watching as the names scrolled…and scrolled…and scrolled. Eventually, they caught their names when the list finished scrolling, seeing their names at place number one with fifty-two thousand points. There was an awful lot of mutters and discussion about that, as the team in place number two had just over twenty-five thousand points. Even if that team was the number one mapping team, which it wasn't, they wouldn't have as many points from their combined score as Beth and Blood got just from combat. Quite a few people in the room were looking at them now, ignoring the third list of overall places as it started at team fifty-five and scrolled from there.

There was no surprise, or maybe a huge amount of surprise, as Beth and Blood took first place, their insane combat record leaving them on top. Val had given them more than a few glances, with the two boys, D and Andryn, appearing suitably cowed for once. Val didn't have much time to come talk to them, however, as a gaggle of press was surrounding her and the other three, asking them questions about their placing and what they thought. Her team had made it to place eight with their quite good combat score added in to their mapping score.

"Congratulations to the team of Elizabeth and Blood Bell for their ranking first in the initial half of the competition," the man at the front said. "With that, you are all dismissed to your quarters. If you have any questions, concerns, or needs, please contact an administrator at your earliest convenience."

The hall rapidly emptied after that announcement, Beth and Blood two of the first out as they made their way back to their suite. Mortaine had popped away a month ago, before they even went on-world, and they had the group of a few bedrooms and the little living room to themselves. The common area contained facilities for cooking, so none of the suites had any kitchens or areas for food prep. That was Beth's first destination, and she was caught a bit flat-footed as Val appeared before her while she had a huge piece of bread in her mouth.

"Hmph ha," Beth said around the bread.

"How?" Val asked imperiously, glaring down her nose at Beth.

"How what?" Beth asked, her mouth finally free.

"Fifty-two thousand points, Elizabeth. That is unbelievable," Val said.

"We like to fight stuff," Beth said with a shrug. "It wasn't hard."

"It wasn't hard…" Val muttered, glowering down at Beth with a frown.

"Gotta put in the effort," Beth said with a shrug, taking another bite of bread.

"Would you like to do an interview-" Val started, stopping with her mouth hanging open as Beth turned on her heel and sprinted out of the kitchen, dodging around two others to make it to her suite in record time. "I'm guessing that was a no."

Back in the suite, Beth chowed down on her ill-gotten gains as she brought up some information on Mana Physiques and started to review it. That was absolutely her next goal, other than her third rebirth, of course, and she needed a lot more data to figure out what was what. It was a lot of study about different principles of applying mana to flesh, altering the body with mana by directly imbuing it into cells. The whole thing made her head spin more than a little, but it was something she couldn't get around; eventually, she would have to make a Mana Physique or get stuck. She was hoping that that eventually would be a lot sooner rather than later, but the studying showed she still had a long way to go.

Beth continued in her studying for the next few days, noting that Val somehow got away from her group not just once but twice to come visit. The tall, pale woman also seemed a lot more interested in what Blood was up to than Beth, which suited her just fine, as she couldn't really afford a distraction. The wolf and the kresnik spent a lot of time in the suite watching things on the wallscreen in the small living room, and Beth sat across from them, ignoring the dumb drama they were watching as she studied. She was happy the two got along quite well, though she would be less happy if that meant journalists and press people showing up to ask her questions and get in her way. Val had been rather good about it so far, going so far as to divert the press with some halfway fabricated story to give herself an opening to slip into Beth and Blood's room when no one was focused on her anymore.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.