Chương 203: Limitless Path Chapter Two Hundred Twenty-Seven

Anyway, she twisted the knife so the hilt pushed outward against the man's thumb, always a good way to disarm someone. That is, assuming their weapon-holding arm was mostly immobile, and their other arm couldn't interfere. Twisting the handle or hilt of a weapon against the thumb was quite effective because it was much weaker than the rest of the hand holding the weapon as well as it caused rather a lot of pain, setting the full strength of someone's arm against someone else's thumb.

The man dropped the knife with a pained grunt and Beth snatched it out of the air while releasing his arm. She made a gesture with the knife in her hand, likely moving far too fast for the man to follow, and made the knife disappear. To the man, it quite likely looked like a very good bit of old-world, old-school magic, a great sleight-of-hand.

Beth, of course, had used the quick and slightly complex movement to hide the fact that she had merely tossed the knife into her necklace, storing it in a corner without anything else in it right now.

"My knife!" the man yelled, making a swipe at her, but she just took a couple steps back, at a speed he clearly had trouble even tracking.

"My knife, now," she said with a small smirk.

"You and Jeff's gang are all the same. If you're gonna kill me, just get it over with," he ground out.

"First of all, who the fuck is 'Jeff?' Second of all, why the fuck would I kill you?" Beth asked, getting pretty irritated at this point, crossing her armored arms over her chest and glaring at the man.

"Don't play dumb, girl, we know what you're about. Jeff runs the gang just down the road that's been stealin' from everybody and attacking people, especially us!" he responded hotly.

"Hey, dude," Beth said coldly, interrupting as he opened his mouth, likely to protest being called dude.

"Take a look at us and use Identify."

"Why should I-" he started angrily before Beth practically teleported in front of him, not using Spatial Step, just moving that quickly. She grabbed hold of him by the old police vest he was wearing, one that looked like it had come out of the basement of the local department, and easily lifted him off the ground. Giving him a shake, which likely rattled his teeth, she rather insisted. She didn't understand how people didn't use Identify to figure out what was happening or what they were up against immediately.

She could have been a lot more forgiving if it was day two of this strange system known as the Limitless Path influencing things on Earth, but it had been more than seven months now, and people needed to get their act together. Particularly, if someone was acting as a guard for a group to try to defend them not just against beasts but also against other people, not using Identify first and foremost was just crazy to her.

She could see the moment where it happened, as the man's face went pale and his mouth, which had been open to fire off a protest at her rough treatment, snapped shut. He had clearly seen that she was shown in a way that marked her as a sentient, as the way beasts and monsters displayed, even to a low-level Identify skill, was markedly different. He had also very clearly seen her level was well into the three digits and likely very well understood, or thought he did, just what that meant.

"So, now, tell me; who the fuck is Jeff and what were you yammering about?" Beth asked again, still holding the man nearly a foot off the ground with just one arm. Amusingly enough, that only put his eyes slightly above hers, as the middle-aged Hunter was rather short overall.

"He… he runs a, uh, gang. That's all I can call it. They operate out of the small town a couple miles south that had the only parts warehouse in it, uh, Eastfield or something like that. They been stealin' shit from everyone around and attacked people. They even attacked the town here, though it was only a distraction, they had somebody high-level steal some stuff. Ah, high-level compared to, uh, me, anyway…" he stammered out, having grasped Beth's wrist with one of his hands to try to support himself in mid-air.

Beth dropped him before saying, "Can you take us to whoever you have in charge here?"

"Uh, yeah, but, uh, can I have my gun back?" he replied, giving Blood a long glance. The lupine woman looked at the gun held loosely in her hand before looking back up at him, something that was likely rather frightening considering her mask was flat with a barely defined nose and mouth while the eyes had some kind of gems in them, though they didn't have facets. Beth would have said they were glass, but for some reason she was certain they were gems, and they were colored a dark red, matching Blood's fur.

"No," the wolf said coldly.

"But-" he started before glancing back and forth between the two of them and sighing.

"Fine. Follow me." He led them into the building they were on, and Beth recognized the interior layout as just what she had suspected, a block of apartments. They made their way down to the first floor and headed out the front door, finding that there were a couple of people outside on the street, but not many. They passed them by and headed into the center of town just a short distance over from that first building they had…' entered.'

Amusingly enough, it seemed that the old city hall or township building, or borough building, wasn't on the square or within the area they had barricaded around. Consequently, the current leadership of… whatever town this was were operating out of an Italian restaurant, or what was once an Italian restaurant, though, judging from the smells wafting out of the place, it was still operating.

They walked up a set of four steps and across a small, covered porch before entering the main door of the place, finding a somewhat open area with a counter across from them that took up half the room widthwise and a large chunk lengthwise. Beth saw that most of the seating was through a door to the right, in a separate area two steps higher than the section where the counters were. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

She also noticed that there was no electricity in the building, the cooking being done by what looked like a wood-fired oven and gas stoves, though where they were still getting natural gas from, she didn't know. The man, who she had Identified as being named Paul, led them into the seating area of the restaurant, which looked a little more like a command center than a dining area.

There were five people gathered around a table in the back, two of them standing and leaning over the table while looking at something while the other three occupied chairs pushed back a slight bit, though they were still participating in the discussion. They were quite quick to notice someone had entered the room, looking at the three with a few raised brows, Beth taking a second to remember Paul's gun was still loosely held in Blood's hand.

"Paul! What's all this? Why does that person have your gun?" asked one of the two standing people, an older man with a good bit of salt and pepper in his hair and short beard.

"Ah, well, you see, Tommy, it's, uh," Paul started before Beth took over.

"After your friend here, Paul, shot at myself and my companion, we decided he wasn't responsible enough to keep his gun," she said, drawing several exclamations from the group.

"Paul! Ya shot at this girl? Or, uh, these girls?" the same man said, giving Blood a questioning glance.

"Luckily, we have good armor," Beth replied coolly.

"Even more luckily, we're strong enough that getting shot at with a normal gun isn't a high threat so, instead of killing Paul here, we decided to just disarm him."

"Right, well, I can see you ain't part of Jeff's gang," the man said.

"This Jeff stuff again," Beth said with an eyeroll.

"I have no idea who this Jeff guy is, but now we intend to find out."

"That's quite dangerous, young lady. It'd be best if you left it to us to take care of," the man, Tommy, according to Paul, said to them. That drew a snort from Paul and a raised eyebrow from each of the members of the group.

"I don't see what's particularly amusin' about that."

"Check their levels, Tommy," Paul said, waving a hand at Beth and Blood. This time there were very audible gasps as the rest of the people in the room finally used Identify on them, seeing that they were rather out of their depth. Beth had done the same, only she had done so as soon as she had seen the people, finding them to range from level fifteen to level thirty-five.

She guessed it shouldn't be too much of a surprise, especially considering these people all seemed to be acting as leaders of the local community, but it was a stark difference compared to home, where even her father, the lowest of their leaders, had hit level thirty-eight. Beth grabbed the gun from Blood and handed it back to Paul, saying, "If you try to shoot one of us with that thing again, I'm wrapping it around your neck, and you can find somebody else with triple-digit STR stat to unwrap it."

"Triple digit?!" one of the ladies in the room, the middle-aged woman standing over the table beside Tommy, gasped out.

"Yeah, triple digit. My class, if you couldn't tell from the name, is STR-based, and I'm level one-fifty. Even if I only put one put in per level, that's a hundred and fifty points plus whatever handful of points my base was," Beth replied with a shake of her head.

"Anyway, enough about that. I hear you have a bit of a gang problem?"

"Tell me about it," replied Tommy with a sigh, reaching up and rubbing his eyes with the thumb and index finger of his left hand while he leaned on the table with his right.

"Jeff and the small group of assholes that he leads have been causing us, and some others in the area, an untold number of problems for a few months now."

"Did you guys send anybody up to the CRA Hall yet?" Beth asked.

"We heard about it, but we've been having enough trouble just keeping our heads above water," the standing woman, Erika, replied.

"We'd like to reach out to others and get some help, but there's also the problem that our highest-level person is John's nephew, and he's not always around. Even if he were here more often, he's only in the high forties, and there's stuff out there that's twice his level roaming around. Trying to have him, by himself or with a group, run off somewhere would be crazy."

"Hmm, I see," Beth said.

"The CRA might be able to help you out here and, fortunately for you, I'm a member and so is my companion. We're only Copper-ranked right now, but we're in the middle of undergoing our promotion to Silver, so it wouldn't be wrong, necessarily, to consider us part of the Enforcers, which is our end goal. I'm sure we could look into this problem for you."

"And what will that cost?" John asked.

"Honestly, I don't know. I don't know how people set up missions with the Hall to have members take care of problems and, quite frankly, I wouldn't really charge you anything anyway. I know that sounds crazy, but unless this Jeff and his goons are somehow at or even close to our levels, handling this problem will likely take a few minutes, and whatever you could pay us would be chump change compared to what Blood and I make even in one day of fighting," Beth replied.

"In fact, I can find out."

"And how will you do that?" Erika asked with some wonder in her voice.

"Cell service is basically entirely down. Are you going to run all the way up there?"

"Well, we ran down here from there. We started somewhat early this morning, but then again, we stopped off somewhere along the way with beasts from level eighty to level one-forty to train for a couple hours, so if we cut that part out, it's only really a handful of minutes for us to make the trip," Beth answered.

"As to the cellphone stuff, we have communicators that work very similar to cellphones, just they aren't blocked by mana, and they have crazy range, even without towers."

"How does that work?" Tommy asked. Blood took over the explanation there, giving them a brief lecture on the communicators, including their prices, while Beth made a call. She dialed Tazeen, and he picked up after only one short trill, which Beth remembered was the default ring noise.

"Ms. Beth, hello. How may I help you?"

"Yeah, hey, I gotta change the ring tone thing, that trilling noise is annoying," Beth said before refocusing.

"But anyway, that's not why I called. Listen, there's a group of people in one of the towns down here and they're being harassed by some asshole that's running some little gang. They said they would've come up and tried to post a mission about it with the Hall, but the only person they have who's got any levels is just about to hit fifty, and they don't want to risk the trip with just him.

I know a lot about taking and completing missions, thanks to my study and us now having done one, but I still haven't looked through the materials on commissioning missions with a Hall. Can you tell me how that works?"

"Right, not a problem," Tazeen replied.

"The overall process is rather simple; a client comes in, describes their problem, and then, based on a matrix we have, as well as our own discretion, we decide whether to accept the request as a mission, and then what level to place it at. I am sorry to say that most things currently, including what you are talking about, would barely qualify as Silver-level missions, if even that.

If you can get a few key details for me, we can maybe register it as a mission, which I'm sure you would appreciate, as that would be one more of the remaining five you and your companion require."

"Right, I can give you the full details. What about payment, how does that work?" Beth asked in response.

"Payment is fairly simple. There is a standardized scale, based on type of mission and rank. A Silver-level extermination mission will have a vastly different price than a Gold-level scouting mission. The payment is also in two parts; we don't believe it is fair to charge someone the full amount upfront, so it is split into a down-payment to request the mission, and a follow-up when the mission is complete. This only applies to external clients.

The missions you have already undertaken, for example, come from the Hall itself, and go through a different process," Tazeen explained.

"OK, got it. So, what other information would you need to decide if this even qualifies as a Silver-level mission?" she asked.

"I would label this, perhaps unfortunately, an extermination mission, with a warning on it that it is against sentient beings. I would need the amount, at least in rough terms, of opponents, as well as everything known about their levels, classes, and skills. I would also ask for details about the environment where they are beyond just the physical details of their location. Things such as mana density, known beasts in the area, and so on.

Finally, considering this is against sentients, I would ask if they have stolen any equipment or, worse, abducted any other sentients that we would be responsible for rescuing," Tazeen enumerated.

"Alright, let me get you that info and then call you back," Beth said.

"I will be here."