Beth woke a few hours later, still technically late in the middle of the night, feeling Sera's hands grasping her tightly. They had plenty of time to get up and moving, so she didn't do more than give Sera's shoulders and neck a squeeze and nuzzle against her. She could both hear and feel Sera snoring while she could only hear Blood snoring next to them, both still deeply asleep. Eventually, she realized that the other two were not just going to spontaneously wake up without a little external impetus, so she woke them, gently but firmly.

  "It's time to get going," she said, prodding Blood to get up before picking Sera up and carrying the half-awake dragon into the bathroom.

  They went through the whole morning routine, including a massive breakfast, before setting out for the day. They left the CRA Hall and then the city, heading to an open area to deploy the airship and get underway. Their mission today was just to locate the place Laselle had told them about and get a read on the situation, not necessarily to start exploring or fighting. The speed of the airship meant Blood would have a couple hours in the pilot's seat before they were there, and Beth didn't waste the time, continuing her research.

  She was brought out of her current book when Blood alerted them that they were as close as they were likely to get. Their destination was in a small group of broken hills that was hard to navigate and especially hard to find a site to land the ship. They would have to land at the edge of the area and make their way the last mile or two on foot, which wouldn't be much of a problem for them. While there was definitely stuff out there that they couldn't deal with, they could detect most of those threats early and avoid them. Despite Beth being a super head-on type of person in handling her problems, she also well understood that discretion was the better part of valor.

  With the ship packed away, and Blood ranging ahead, they made their way through the shattered and fractured terrain. It looked to Beth like a series of large explosions had been set off in the area some time a number of years ago and the place still hadn't recovered. The place was pretty damn barren, without hardly anything in the way of plant life, and even the beasts and animals avoided it. They encountered a solitary salamander beast the size of a pickup truck on their way into the central area, Sera killing it with contemptuous ease with a flick of her spear, the tip slamming through the beast's skull in a blink.

  Blood alerted them that they'd reached their destination, though it took Beth a minute to realize it once she was there. The wolf was leaning against the side of a tunnel carved deep into the side of one of the hills, the place a great oddity. As compared to the surrounding fractured, broken, dusty terrain, the tunnel was carved with extreme precision directly into the center of the hill, the lines of the walls, floor, and ceiling straight and clean as a new razor blade. In fact, there was not a single speck of dust in the tunnel, nor the room they found beyond, the whole thing clean to a remarkable level.

  The room they entered at the end of the tunnel was little bigger than their living room in their suite in the CRA Hall. It was also carved incredibly precisely, lacking a single inch that deviated in any way, though Beth noticed that the material that made up the walls didn't seem to match with the material or stone of the hills outside. There wasn't really much she could do about or with the information, but it pointed to the theory that the whole thing was placed there as a piece, as it didn't look at all as if it were carved from the hill. The only thing in the room was a cylindrical pillar made of stone about three feet high and a foot thick. There was a red colored gemstone embedded in the top of the pillar that glowed faintly with a soft light, illuminating the room a bit.

  "The hell are we supposed to do?" Blood grumbled, sniffing around the room.

  "Probably touch the pillar," Beth said, walking towards it.

  "You're not…you're not going to just walk up and touch a strange pillar in a weird room, right?" Sera asked skeptically, both eyebrows raised and jaw hanging open.

  "Yeah, sure, why not?" Beth asked in response with a shrug.

  "I don't know, because it could, you know, be fucking dangerous?" Sera snarled in exasperation.

  "Sure, but everything's dangerous. It might be fun," Beth said with a small grin, touching the pillar.

  Sera winced, but when nothing immediately happened, she walked up to the pillar as well and inspected it closer. Seeing that no change occurred, Beth reached forward and touched the gem, but still nothing happened. Frowning, she pulled out a small bit of mana from her reservoir and pushed it through her arm, not following the pattern of a skill, just letting the mana flow through the limb and into the crystal. The crystal immediately brightened, glowing with energy before suddenly exploding with light, causing all three of them to wince. When Beth's vision cleared, she looked around to find…nothing had changed.

  "Damn, is this thing fucking defective?" she cursed. She hadn't even had some kind of message or pop-up about a trial or anything.

  "That did something," Blood said.

  "What? How do you know?" asked Sera, glancing at the wolf before looking around the room suspiciously.

  "I can feel it," Blood replied before walking out of the room.

  "Hey, wait," Sera exclaimed, rushing after her. "Why are you both like this?"

  "Like what?" Beth asked with a small frown as she followed behind.

  "Sometimes, you should stop and think first," Sera chided.

  "We'd stop and think, and find we didn't know, and then we'd eventually wind up having to do anyway," Beth replied with an eyeroll. "Why waste the extra time? Just get it over with."

  "You're impossible," Sera sighed, following the wolf out of the tunnel.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  What greeted them was a spectacular sight, a lush field stretching beyond the limit of their vision to a perfect, blue horizon, filled with flowers and plants almost glowing green with health. The whole place had an impossibly refreshing and brilliant air about it, carrying a smell of grass, leaves, pollen, nectar, and a thousand blossoming flowers. It was a truly breathtaking natural wonder, and distracted all three of them for a few critical seconds. It wasn't until Beth heard a loud buzzing that she was woken from her stupor, realizing there were bees approaching. And not just any bees, but these were all at least the size of her torso and had a feeling of great strength wrapped up within them. She hastily prepared to battle, Sera drawing her spear at the same time, but Blood, rather strangely, didn't do anything. Beth was rather worried for a moment, but that worry turned to confusion when all the beasts stopped a short distance from them. She used her eye powers to assess what they were up against.

  Level 290 Golden Blood Bee Worker

  Level 295 Golden Blood Bee Worker

  Level 310 Golden Blood Bee Warrior

  It was the warriors that had given off the sense of incredible strength as the bees first approached, and Beth now saw why. Level three hundred was a big turning point for beasts, where they underwent a qualitive transformation. Beasts' speed improved universally at that level, even beasts that were known to be rather slow, and that wasn't all. All beasts also received a large boost in their resistance to mana, which meant that not just magical attacks, but also even skills would have comparatively less of an effect. Beth and the others were only just over level two hundred, so facing off against level three hundred and over beasts was not something they really wanted to worry about right now.

  The strange thing was, the beasts still weren't attacking. After hovering and looking at the three girls for a time, one of the bees slowly flew forward, and it was clearly focused on Blood. The massive insect slowly bumped into the wolf before hovering in front of her and buzzing in several different tones. Blood hummed for a second and then growled at the bee, but the insect wasn't scared by it, rather buzzing back several times.

  "What the fuck is happening?" Sera hissed to Beth.

  "You're asking me, but who am I supposed to ask?" Beth spat back out of the side of her mouth.

  Defeat the scourge of the Golden Blood Bees to obtain rewards. Fully purge this land of their threat and wipe out their roots to obtain the ultimate reward.

  "Uh, what is this?" Beth asked, pointing at the message in her vision.

  "Likely the Trial conditions," Sera replied with a grin, all her fangs showing.

  "Looks like it might not matter, though…?" Beth replied, watching as several more bees…happily? Excitedly? Bumped into Blood.

  "Let's go," Blood said, turning and waving at the two of them before turning back. Beth and Sera just looked at each other before looking back at Blood's back.

  A large warrior bee settled on Blood's head, sitting on the top and back of her head with its head between her ears. A bee landed on each of her shoulders while several more flitted around her, staying hovering as the initial bee led her forward. The rest of the bees ignored their group, not even bothering with them as they floated around the area, and Beth realized there were an awful lot of them. There had to be thousands, or in fact, in the tens of thousands of the beasts, just within the handful of miles around them. Beth had a suspicion that this fight would normally be very difficult, considering the sheer numbers combined with the very high levels. This place supposedly restricted anyone at the fifth rebirth or above from entering, meaning that fighting a place with beasts over level three hundred would be exceptionally challenging for any group that found this place.

  The other thing she saw as they progressed further was that there were more beasts and animals present, though they were lower in level than the bees, often by a good margin. They tried to avoid the bees as best they could, but the bees only tolerated their existence for a time before attacking them. What was most disturbing was that when the bees would attack these other creatures, they would first sting them before very clearly extracting their blood with their stingers. It appeared pollen wasn't the only thing that the bees were interested in bringing back to their hive, though they certainly were harvesting a large amount of that as well.

  And speaking of bringing back to the hive, it appeared that was where the bees were leading them as, after about an hour, they reached a massive structure standing out from the wild flower realm around it. The thing looked nothing more than a massive beehive scaled up to truly titanic proportion, and the even scarier thing was that the bees here were quite different. Just the entrance guards here were three quarters the size of Beth and stood on the ground, watching everything coming and going. Inside was even crazier, as there were bees and bee-like beings that were bigger than the girls, and they had even higher levels, in the three-twenties and three-thirties.

  The bees that had swarmed Blood led them unerringly deeper, far into the bowels of the hive where a group of giant bees waited for them. In a room that towered overhead like a cathedral of eld, they found themselves met by a dozen bees the size of a small house, with huge abdomens and massive wings. Behind them were three bees of enormous proportion, the size of a warehouse and twice as thick. The first row was composed of princess bees, while the three in the back were a set of triplet queens. Beth and Sera were looking around, a bit bewildered, but Blood confidently walked forward, gesturing behind her with one hand near her hip for the other two to stay put.

  Blood first walked up to the princess and seemed to have a conversation with them, growling in response to their buzzes and gesturing with her arms, legs, and even head. Beth couldn't understand anything that was happening and, when she glanced over at Sera, got a totally blank look in response. She sidled a little to the side and grabbed Sera's hand, interlocking their fingers while they watched the strange bit of theater unfold in front of them. The conversation with the princesses proceeded for quite some time before they shuffled to the side slightly, creating a corridor that Blood walked down, still escorted by that first bee that had approached. She walked up to the queens next and continued the conversation there, though Beth wasn't sure exactly what the topic was.

  This conversation was longer, and it eventually devolved into a lot of nodding and grunting from Blood, the wolf just listening to the three beasts speak. Beth was a bit confused by the whole process, but she didn't want to ask any questions now and ruin the flow, especially since one of her main points of confusion was how the bees were thinking rationally and communicating. She just waited, watching as a long conversation played out.

  Eventually, there seemed to be some agreement, and all fifteen of the large bees nodded. Next, the princess gathered around Blood, who gave Beth and Sera a reassuring wave before the next segment of the show started. All of the princesses turned and presented their stingers to Blood, which Beth wasn't sure princesses were even supposed to have, but these were magic bees, so she was still holding her questions. Blood lifted her left arm and held it up and forward and the princesses, with surprise grace and precision, all stung Blood's arm. Sera took a step forward at that, but Beth gave her arm a jerk, secretly grinning at her massive strength being able to pull the dragon girl back. She could sense Blood's feelings and state of mind through their link and the wolf was neither nervous nor in an excessive amount of pain, so she assumed things were still on track.

  Once the princesses were done, the queens did the exact same thing, in the same way and place, Blood's arm swelling up from their stings before strangely subsiding. Her left forearm was still a bit swollen, but it had also taken on a golden sheen, one tinged with a faint mist of blood. The queens pulled back after they were done and one of them buzzed loudly, causing a bit of a stir in the hive. After a minute, several moderate-sized bees entered the chamber they were in, bringing in several items with them. They deposited all these items in front of the queens before turning and leaving the chamber, happily buzzing away to other parts of the hive.

  Beth examined the items, not understanding what several of them were, though two were pretty clear. One of them was a comb the size of her, though the compartments on it were still fairly small, not much bigger than what she had seen pre-Path bees on Earth produce. The second item was very clearly a book, as odd as that was, though she couldn't tell anything about it from that distance other than it was rather large. There were three other items and, while one of them looked a little like a honeycomb, it was entirely different than the one that was quite obvious in nature. The other two items were a box, or a block of some kind, Beth was unsure, and a large container. The block was a pure white, so white it was almost blinding, even in the relatively dim light of the current chamber, while the container was very odd. It was a crystal about the size of Beth's head and looked like a dodecahedron or some many-sided shape of the like that was made of a very clear crystal. Inside the crystal container were several cells, perhaps a couple dozen, and each was filled with a red liquid that had golden veins and swirls shot through it.

  After a rather short conversation, Blood made four of the items disappear, picking up the weird comb and walking back to Beth and Sera. The two were just staring at her stupidly, still not understanding what was happening, so she just tilted her head slightly and jerked it at them. They stepped behind her as she walked out of the chamber, proceeding to follow her all the way back to the very room that had started this whole odd ordeal. Blood led them all the way into the chamber and by the pillar before tilting her head at Beth, who shrugged and put her hand on the gem, infusing it with mana. Beth felt only the very faintest of fluctuations in the surrounding mana, reminding her rather a bit of a certain doddering Exalted and his means of traversal, guessing that they were back out.