Chương 204: Limitless Path Chapter Two Hundred Twenty-Eight

Beth ended the call and then walked back over to the table, finding the six people of the town asking Blood some random questions, including several questions about how her level was so high. Blood, for the most part, ignored them, answering only a few things with simple phrases. It was rather rude of her, but then again, it wasn't their job to explain everything to these people, and the endless stream of annoying questions could themselves be considered rude.

Beth broke it up anyway, saying, "Alright, I talked to somebody back at the fort, as they say. I need some more information from you guys before we can actually determine whether this is worthy of being a mission."

"Sorry, but why does it even matter being a mission? Can't you just, I don't know, do something about it? Or have the people you were talking to do something about it?" Erika asked.

"It matters because of this," Beth said, pulling her badge out to show them, holding it out facing upward in her palm.

"This is a CRA emblem, showing that I'm a member. It's only a Copper Emblem, which is the lowest level, but I'm in the middle of having it upgraded to Silver, which gives me more privileges, and more responsibilities, including helping with more of this kind of thing. One of the two requirements to get the Silver Emblem is that I do a certain number of missions for the Hall and, if your situation counts for a mission, then we kill two birds with one stone.

I take care of your immediate problem for you, and I get credit toward my next rank."

"So, what do you need to know?" Tommy asked, pre-empting the other members of the group from asking her any other questions.

"More details about the location, the number of enemies, their levels and equipment and classes, and if they've taken anything, or anyone, that you know of," Beth explained.

"I'm not sure we can provide all of that, but we'll try," Tommy said. Beth then went through the information with them, having the group describe everything they knew about the so-called bandits. What they knew didn't really amount to too much, as they basically only had rough ideas about classes and levels. They weren't really any help describing the area where the bandits were holed-up or anything around it, as they had sent someone to scout it nearly a month ago and that person did a… mediocre job, at best.

Finally, Beth had enough, both details and of the conversation, and stepped aside to call Tazeen again.

"Ms. Beth," he said calmly.

"Tazeen, got what details they have. Group of about twenty-five men and women holed up in what used to be a small industrial park, just two warehouses and two moderate sized workshops. All range in level from thirty-five to sixty, with most of them in the low fifties. Area is pretty standard in terms of mana density, as far as they know, and doesn't have any outstanding wild beasts in terms of levels or numbers.

The group has stolen a ton of shit over the past couple months, including food and clean water, camping supplies, propane and other fuels in bottles and tanks, a handful of weapons, some ammo for old-style guns, and a bunch of other petty shit. They haven't abducted anyone, thank the Blood Star, or whatever the fuck Baelvyr says," Beth said.

"Any details on their classes or skills?" Tazeen asked.

"Some Young Thieves, a few Young Warriors, and the leader apparently finagled himself Raider, somehow," Beth replied.

"As I said, these are based on discretion, to a certain extent. Normally, I would tell you that this doesn't really meet the basic criteria necessary for a Silver-rank mission, but I will make an exception this time. The fee for such a mission would be five golds, two paid as a deposit and three paid on completion of the mission. You have my permission to act as intermediary and collect said fees and, if you so choose, you may complete the mission itself before reporting back to me," Tazeen explained.

"Thanks, Tazeen. Mark me down for this one. Blood and I will go do it and get all the payment sorted and everything. We'll report back this evening," Beth said.

"I will speak to you then," Tazeen replied before disconnecting. Beth turned and walked back to the group before addressing them, "So, here's the deal. Normally, this wouldn't be enough to qualify as a mission. However, there are some extenuating circumstances that let this qualify. Let me ask you, what is your financial situation like right now?"

"Uh, we haven't had access to any banks in a while…" Erika replied, looking more than a bit embarrassed.

"I don't really care about banks," Beth replied.

"Old money doesn't matter; what I meant was, how much of the new coinage that beasts drop do you have access to?"

"Oh, that," Erika said, blushing just slightly.

"Ah, I'm not sure how much everybody has access to, but I have fifty silver coins."

"I think," Tommy interjected, "that we have about six golds between us all here, maybe just a touch under that. Why do you ask?"

"Our help isn't free," Beth replied with a shrug.

"To commission us for this mission, it will cost five golds. It's a two golds down payment, and three golds when the mission is complete."

"So much!" said one of the people at the table who hadn't spoken much yet. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"It's not that bad," said Tommy.

"Besides, we haven't really been doing much with them yet. Might as well get this problem taken care of in exchange for some of those coins."

"Give me two golds and I'll go take care of your problem," Beth said calmly.

"Just make sure to have three more ready when I get back." The six people, including Paul, fumbled a bit to get their coins together before presenting her with a pile of two hundred silver coins, which she made disappear into her status screen with a bit of an eyeroll. Once she had the coins, she left them to their own devices as they tried to scrounge up the three golds to pay for the rest of her services. Blood followed her out as they left the building, heading outside before turning towards the south.

Beth led the way to the edge of town, finding two people on the roof of a house looking southward. Beth and Blood leapt up next to the two, getting a startled exclamation from the one on the right that caused the one on the left to spin around and raise their gun. Beth really wasn't enjoying getting shot at, and dashed forward as the person was still turning and pushed the gun almost straight up.

Predictably, the person shot, firing uselessly into the air before Beth again dished out a forehead flick, nearly knocking the person off their feet.

"Knock it off before I really hurt you," she said.

"We're on our way out right now, and we were just hired to take care of your little bandit problem. Try not to shoot us on the way back in, either."

"Wait, who are you?!" the man on the right asked as Blood casually leapt off the roof and most of the way to the edge of town with just a tap of one foot.

"Enforcers from the CRA," Beth said, deciding to bend the truth by just a hair. Technically, they could start calling themselves that even as Silver Emblems, and they were already doing silver-level missions, so…

"I don't know what that means," the man said as the woman rubbed her forehead vigorously.

"Don't worry about it. Just know that we're the good guys," Beth replied before hopping down off the roof. With way less DEX and way more STR than Blood, both her take-offs and landings tended to be a little more… forceful, and she didn't want to tear apart a building they were actively using. Once on the ground, she did put a good bit of force into it, shooting off down the street until she reached the edge of town before redirecting herself a little to follow in Blood's wake.

A distance of a few miles might be a lot for most others, such as those from the town they were just in, but Beth and Blood could cover it in a minute or two. Beth stayed behind Blood, stopping as she got near the area where the bandits were supposed to be holed up. She waited for Blood to report back, not having to crouch in the tree she had leapt into for very long.' Found them,' Blood sent.' Details,' Beth replied.' Seems like the estimates were accurate.

May in the northeast means it's warm enough for a bunch of them to be outside. Most of them are out front of a building that looks like a workshop, drinking and smoking. Couple are walking around the area. I'm moving around now,' Blood answered.' Be careful,' Beth said.' I know what I'm doing. Besides, they are weak and ignorant. Nobody ever looks up,' Blood sent back with an amused tone. Beth crouched in her chosen tree, an old oak, and waited, just out of sight of the compound.

Being above ground and in an area that wasn't particularly mana dense, their communicators were working just fine, and Blood was able to send her map updates, the high level of detail thanks to their advanced communicators allowing Beth to see individual details around the building down to a bucket set upside-down that someone had been using as a chair. Blood scouted the entire thing without getting noticed, finding the positions of every bandit and thug throughout the whole area.

Four of them were walking around outside, slowly patrolling the area, while a bunch of them were sitting around in the front of the complex drinking something that didn't look particularly appetizing, at least, from Blood's impressions and the picture she sent. When the whole place was thoroughly scouted, they came up with their quick and dirty game plan.

Blood was going to handle the guards they had posted, while Beth was going to bring her own party through the front door, likely crashing their current party quite badly. They would then hit the buildings and clean up the rest, unless the other bandits decided to stick their heads out to see what the racket was all about. Blood started the attack, though the bandits didn't even realize it, as she silently dropped behind two of the guards and ripped their heads off with her claws.

She leapt back to the roof of the central warehouse and silently ran to the other end of the building where she jumped across to one of the workshops. She leapt to the other end and dropped behind the other two patrolling guards, not managing to be entirely silent, but it didn't matter. One of the guards had turned towards her, but didn't manage to make a noise before he was dead. As the corpse was still falling, Blood killed the other guard with two swift motions.

Meanwhile, Beth had hit the front of the small industrial area, sprinting into the group lounging around outside. She might have felt a little bad about her overwhelming advantage, but she tried not to take anything for granted and become overconfident. That, and she knew that these people had taken advantage of the Path to do some all around terrible things. Blood had been able to find a large amount of stolen goods in just the small bit of scouting she had done.

Fortunately, they didn't see any signs of any kidnapped persons, nor any corpses obviously present. Beth dismissed the thoughts as she burst through the front gate of the front building, the thin metal sheets the gate was constructed from exploding into shrapnel as Beth shoulder-checked her way through. The bandits had about two seconds to react, with only one of them managing to grab their weapon before Beth was among them.

She didn't bother to pull her punches, hitting the first two people she ran into with the full force of her four hundred plus STR stat. The two men's heads and torsos blew apart, viscera fountaining back from them across the other bandits. Beth continued moving, lifting her right arm to take a bullet on her gauntlet. Better to actually block attacks, even ones that seemed too weak to deal damage, than to be surprised and have her own head blown off.

The bullet pinged off the outer edge of her gauntlet and she plowed through the next three people, killing each with a single strike. There was a lot of screaming and swearing now, but Beth ignored all of it, continuing her path of destruction through the disorganized rabble. It took her one minute to kill the entire group outside, even as three of them tried to flee.

She also didn't have to worry about more from the buildings joining in, as Blood had dropped on the first person to run out near the end of the slaughter and tore them apart. The lupine woman had then entered the first building, making sure that there wasn't anyone else left alive inside. Beth finished up outside and leap-frogged her, going to the next building and killing the two people hiding inside.

Beth felt a little bad, looking down at the two corpses on the floor, thinking about how it was a little fucked up she was killing people. It was even more fucked up that she didn't really care, having gone through so much in such a short amount of time that she felt only a bit worse than when she had killed a beast.

And these men and women had been beasts, though of a different kind, Blood having overhead some of their discussions as she had scouted, listening to them talk about their assaults on the surrounding people just trying to survive. The casual way they discussed hurting people, stealing from people, assaulting people in ways best not discussed, and even killing people weaker than them quashed the last little bit of sympathy Beth had for them as fellow humans.

The two of them cleared out the area, taking basically everything that wasn't nailed down. There were piles of loot in three of the buildings, though most of it wasn't of a particularly high value. Pieces and parts of low-level beasts, a handful of random coins, mostly copper, and a few other random bits and pieces.

It seemed that the bandits had both stolen from quite a few people, and that this group had done at least a little hunting and possibly even exploration of the area, snagging a few rare finds for themselves. Most things were just that, but there was some high-purity mana copper ore, a few healing and mana potions that the two divided between themselves, and one simple beast core, likely worth a gold coin all on its own.

None of the bandits had any gear on them that was worth a damn, nor did they have anything that resembled even a spatially expanded item like Beth's old pouch. Beth made a quick call before they left, with Tazeen answering, "Ms. Beth."

"Tazeen. I don't need to bring back their heads or something, right?"

"Assuming you have taken care of the problem," Tazeen explained calmly, "then you need only take a few pictures with your communicator before returning. I assume you have collected the fees."

"We got the down payment, but we're still on location," Beth replied.

"We're going to return to the town that hired us now, then we'll come up there afterwards. I guess we'll start on Jaq's job tomorrow."

"I will see you when you return," he replied before disconnecting.