Chương 205: Limitless Path Chapter Two Hundred Twenty-Nine

Beth and Blood made sure the area was stripped of anything useful before seeing to the bodies. It was a bit of grim, dirty work, but wild beasts would take care of the corpses, and Beth and Blood moved the bodies out of the complex and dumped them in a nearby field. Once again, the necklaces came in super handy, as they were able to gather up all the corpses without getting themselves any dirtier.

The necklaces also had enough room that they were able to store the bodies without having them touch any of their gear or other items. Beth signaled to Blood to return to the earlier town after they had take care of all the corpses, following behind the wolf as she ranged ahead. Luckily, for the town citizens, nobody shot at them as they approached this time, Beth and Blood easily leaping onto the roof with the two people.

Both of the citizens gave them suspicious looks, but Beth just ignored them as they hopped down on the other side of the building and headed to the center of town. They made it to and into the Italian restaurant without anyone stopping them, making their way into the dining area to speak with the city council.

"You're back!" Tommy exclaimed, having noticed them as they walked in.

"Was there something else you needed?"

"Nope. Job's done," Beth replied, walking over and holding up a hand. An image of the dead bandits appeared above her palm, causing gasps and the entire group to recoil.

"You killed them?!" Erika gasped, horrified.

"What did you want me to do?" Beth asked with a raised brow.

"I don't know, capture them…?" Erika replied a little breathlessly.

"How?" Beth asked, then continued before anyone could answer.

"And how would you hold them? Did you think the CRA would hold them? We're not a jail, we don't capture people and hold them long term. We could capture people and have them sign a Contract, but that's not a great way to do things, especially as there are rules about making people sign things when under duress, even if they're criminals."

"But surely, there was a better way," one of the others asked, face pale and eyes pinched shut.

"You want to keep close to thirty people, all as high or higher than your highest level person, imprisoned here? I could have brought them all back to you, or most of them, only somewhat injured," Beth replied.

"It's a different world now," John, the uncle of the strongest of the town, said.

"John-" Erika began but he interrupted.

"No, Erika. We had a problem we had absolutely no way of dealing with, and these young women took care of it in under an hour. The fact that their version of justice is much harsher than what we are used to is just part of this new world," John overrode her.

"Glad you could sort that out," Beth interjected.

"How about the other three golds?"

"We have it here," Tommy said, placing three gold coins on the table. Beth stepped forward and made the coins disappear before turning and walking toward the exit.

"That's it?" asked Erika.

"Did you want something else?" Beth asked, stopping and glancing over her shoulder.

"No, it just seems so…cold," Erika said.

"You had a problem; we solved that problem. Simple," said Beth, shrugging before turning and leading Blood out. They left the town fairly quickly, heading back north towards the CRA Hall. They encountered a handful of beasts on the way but dealt with them easily, the average level of what was out and prowling around outside dungeons or special zones still well below their one hundred and fifty. They returned to the Hall without incident, looping around the front to enter through the lobby.

There they found Tazeen manning the main counter alone, walking up to speak to him about their little outing.

"Ms. Beth and Ms. Blood. You have returned," he said.

"We're back," Beth replied with a nod.

"Job's done.

"Tell me."

"Thirty miles south, four buildings, twenty-seven occupants. Blood scouted, marked all targets, started by eliminating scouts. I breached the front gate, moved in on a large group scattered around the front of the building. All targets eliminated with Blood handling any extras in the building; full group of twenty-seven dead, I'll send you the class and level details in a file. I also have a list of the goods they had, including what we suspect was stolen.

We returned to the client and collected the three golds for the mission completion. What else?" Beth explained before turning to Blood with a raised eyebrow.

"Cleaned up the bodies," she said with a shrug before returning to silence.

"We have a standard report form," Tazeen said, spinning a floating screen to face Beth. She saw that he had started a report for the mission and, as she scanned through it, had quite professionally filled out almost all the parts based on her information. Beth took over the form and filled in a few gaps, as well as attaching the images she had taken with her communicator and the list they had come up of recovered goods.

It took her about fifteen minutes to finish filling everything in, after which Tazeen took back the screen with a flip and double-checked her report. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"Everything seems in order," he said.

"I'm already hating the paperwork," she replied with a sigh.

"Apologies, but you will have to get used to it," he said calmly.

"Everything around here runs on some form of paperwork and, if you continue to rise through the ranks, you will be dealing with more of it.

"On a happier note, I have credited you with another fifty contribution points and updated your records. If you complete the mission assigned by Jaq, you will have met all the pre-requisites for taking your Silver Emblem test. Ms. Blood will, of course, need to complete three missions credited to herself before she will be able to take the test."

"Hey, question," she said, continuing at his slightly raised brow.

"About how much is a long-range teleport, in terms of the fee?"

"I am assuming you are inquiring about an interplanetary teleportation?" he asked in return.

"Yeah, I recently found some kind of chit that lets me teleport to a specific place. I showed Baelvyr and he was just disgruntled, and Jaq was plain insulting. I never actually got the price. I don't wanna spend the money I have then not have enough to actually use the token," she explained, crossing her arms and frowning slightly as she thought about it.

"It really depends on the distance," Tazeen began before Beth made the token of the Lord of Traversal appear.

"Ah," he said, interrupting himself.

"That is a slightly different matter. Based on our current location and his likely position, I would say it will likely be between one and three platinum coins for the teleport, though my guess would be just under two."

"Wow! That's expensive," Beth replied with some surprise, her eyebrows climbing towards her hairline.

"A reason why quite a few people never leave their home worlds," he replied.

"Though it is not quite as small a percentage as you may think. Many will book passage on interstellar transport vessels, which are often rather cheaper than teleports, and a few will pool their money to have someone powerful enough transport them with a skill or some such, usually still done as a favor."

"Well, the money isn't a huge issue for us," Beth replied, glancing at Blood and only getting a shrug in response.

"Is there anything else we need to do right now."

"Perhaps you could hand over the five golds for the commission?" Tazeen asked with a very slight smirk.

"Ah, right, sorry," Beth said with a slight flush, making the five coins appear on the counter. They disappeared without her seeing Tazeen do anything, though she just chalked it up to something built into the counter itself.

"Anything else?"

"I have nothing else for you. Not unless you wish to take up this still pending diplomatic mission?" he asked in response.

"I think we'll keep thinking on it," Beth replied with a small shake of her head as she turned to leave.

"Thanks for the help, Tazeen."

"A good day to you both," he said, returning to calmly scanning the empty lobby.

"Not looking forward to that," Blood grumbled as they walked down the hall.

"What, the diplomatic mission?" Beth asked.

"That, too. But I meant all the paperwork," Blood responded.

"Life seems to run off it, whatever is controlling this crazy universe," Beth said.

"Hmph," Blood grunted non-comittally. They made their way into the arena section and down to their floor, moving to their room with Beth popping her key out of her necklace and opening the door. They tromped in to find Sabs slumped on the couch, the wallscreen playing some random program while she rubbed at her temples. Blood immediately slipped into the bathroom while Beth made her bloody armor and dirty clothes disappear before sitting down next to Sabs in her small clothes.

"Sabs," she said, hugging the other girl and kissing her temple.

"What's up."

"I'm just tired, Beth," Sabs replied with a sigh, leaning into the taller girl.

"Like, really fucking tired."

"I know the feeling," Beth replied with her own sigh.

"I'm not sure you do," Sabs muttered.

"What? What's that supposed to mean?" Beth asked, a little bit of a petulant tone creeping into her voice.

"I've been trying to imitate you and Blood for the last couple weeks. Fight and train and explore as much and as hard as you do, and I can't. I don't know how you do it; I'm ready to collapse and it's only been two weeks or so," Sabs grumbled, giving Beth a small kiss on the cheek to show she hadn't meant anything with the earlier comment.

"Hey, we take breaks and stuff too," Beth said, squeezing Sabs tightly before returning the cheek kiss.

"As if," Sabs said, leaning her cheek towards Beth to encourage another kiss.

"The two of you spent a month out fighting who-knows-what, and as soon as you came back you wanted to do it again."

"Hey, we took a couple weeks off," Beth interrupted her light kisses to protest.

"Beth, you lazed around for exactly two days and, when I got tired of the two of you piling up trash in the apartment, you were immediately back to training and fighting eight or more hours a day," Sabs scoffed, rolling her eyes.

"I don't know what part of taking what amounted to a single weekend off before going back to working just as hard is 'taking it easy,' but I'm not buying it."

"Some people are just workaholics," Beth replied with a shrug.

"Especially if they find something they really enjoy doing."

"Well, I hate to admit it, but maybe I can't keep up with you," Sabs said with a long sigh, leaning further into her.

"You don't need to keep up with me, Sabs," Beth replied quietly.

"Just having you here is enough."

"But it's not enough for me," Sabs replied a bit despondently.

"I want to be able to be with you, spend more time with you…support you."

"It's alright, Sabs," Beth said, pulling her in closer and stroking her hair.

"It's gonna be alright." She was a little tempted, and even opened her mouth for a second, but then closed it again. No, better not to tell even Sabs about the powers she had inherited from Liveria. It would really help her catch up in terms of level, but it was still something she didn't want to share with anyone else, even her girlfriend.

It also felt a little wrong, to share something like that with Sabs when she was at a low point after just having a realization that she might not be cut out for constant, twenty-four/seven fighting like Beth and Blood often did. Giving her something that might be more of a false hope, and a huge disruption to her current life, might not be the wisest thing. She chuckled a little at that.

"What? What's so funny?" Sabs asked, still leaning against her but pulling back to look at her face.

"I just realized I had a smart thought. Then I thought if I was thinking it was smart, maybe it wasn't," Beth replied with another chuckle before leaning in to give Sabs a very warm kiss on the lips. Sabs opened her mouth to reply afterwards but wrinkled her nose at the same time, saying, "Whew, you kinda stink, hon. Maybe time to shower?"

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Beth replied with a quick eyeroll before disentangling herself from her girlfriend and entering the bathroom. Blood had already made use of the shower and was now sprawled out in the tub, her arms draped over part of the wide rim, causing her rather generous breasts to hover mostly above the surface of the water.

The lupine woman didn't seem to mind though, likely not noticing it much considering it seemed she had the water just about at boiling temperature, if the massive volume of steam was anything to go by. Beth hopped in the shower and scrubbed very thoroughly before rinsing and hopping back out, padding across the handful of steps while still soaked to hop in the tub.

"That's damn hot," she hissed as she slid down into the water.

"Feels good," Blood grumbled, not lifting her head or even opening her eyes.

"Are you happy with our pace?" Beth asked.

"I know you're a lazy bones."

"You're the leader," Blood replied gruffly.

"Besides, I like to hunt." Beth waited for a moment, but that summed up everything Blood had wanted to say, apparently. She relaxed back in the hot water as well, basically mimicking Blood's pose opposite of her. They stayed like that for a time, until the huge amount of water in the tub cooled from boiling to merely scalding. They emerged slightly pruned and feeling greatly refreshed, finishing the rest of their nightly cleanup routine before heading out for bed.

Blood still seemed perfectly happy sleeping in the living room and didn't care to entertain the idea of them getting a different room, so Beth just left it as it was at this point, heading into the bedroom with Sabs. The two didn't really make it much beyond some serious kissing before Sabs started to really fade, certainly not having lied about how tired she was.