Chương 475: Limitless Path Chapter Four Hundred Ninety-Seven

It was a little unfortunate that the CRA didn't have a fully unified mission tracking system, but the missions were supposed to be local anyway. Anything that would cross between worlds or require dealing with multiple different factions was something that would still be above Beth's paygrade for now, and those missions were tracked a little differently. Gold and Silver missions were local affairs and, as a consequence, when they went hunting for those missions, they really had to hunt for them.

It wasn't just a matter of making a phone call and checking around, they often had to physically travel somewhere to see what was available. This was probably the worst part of the trek to both Gold and Platinum, as the mission requirements were considered rather onerous, especially with the amount of searching that traveling members who were committed to quickly increasing their standing had to do to find the work.

This began a long chunk of time for them, though they didn't quite know how long it would stretch at the start, but the next two years were them moving from place to place looking for work. It was a little amusing to look back on later, as they spent as much time hunting down the missions as they did the mission targets, though it was a lot of valuable experience.

The fact they had so much wealth at their fingertips already, were so strong, and had access to an airship not only aided them in getting around, it aided them in even being considered for the missions. Many Hall Masters were rather leery of giving any random Silver Emblem that wandered in a Gold mission, as those were more serious missions that often needed more power, discretion, knowledge, and often all three.

There were plenty of stories of a Silver taking a Gold mission and fumbling it so hard the Hall Master had to intervene, even if it was to do a rather messy and protracted cleanup at the end. Beth's team having already had plenty of success, as well as having the resources and strength they did, meant that many Hall Masters met them with relief, offloading a troubling mission to them to take care of before things got out of hand.

The first stop of their long journey was a world that Baelvyr was familiar with and had recommended to them as a place they might be able to grab one, possibly even two, Gold missions from a Hall Master. The world was a bit of an idyllic place, large swathes of farmland kept clear of beasts and trouble by numerous patrols of guards and mercenaries, keeping the edges of the settled land under control and regularly moving through the fields to keep an eye out for anything more unusual.

The cities were of a moderate size, but much of their area was taken up by expansive warehouses and shipping centers, as the planet fed not just itself, but exported a huge amount of food to several other systems by portal or ship, depending on what was cheaper. With how numerous beasts were, food wasn't usually a big issue, not in terms of people starving, but not every planet had the luxury of having massive fields of crops.

It was one of many things that lower mana-density worlds were quite good for, and older Wayfarers often retired there to watch over the place in their twilight years. Such worlds also often grew cash crops, things like versions of tobacco, including the waterleaf that Val and Blood enjoyed smoking, as well as numerous other plants used in textiles, recreation, or even as raw materials for various processing sequences.

Despite being peaceful and relatively low in terms of mana, the place still had plenty of dangers, including the ever-present threats from beasts and monsters underground. Almost every single world in existence, apart from ones that had been fully and entirely conquered, or fully manufactured, had vast underground areas with higher concentrations of mana and, thusly, much higher levels of danger.

In a slight bit of irony, some of the most peaceful places could suddenly experience high levels of danger when something brewed underground that people weren't aware of and didn't take measures against. The girls had already experienced this when they participated in the team that had delved underground into the ancient ruins that had the weird portal in that was spawning huge numbers of the weird void or extra-planar monsters.

Such things happened, and on peaceful worlds, those happenings could pose serious problems. Now, it wasn't anything like real danger zones, the forbidden zones or the outlawed areas or anything like that, but it was still a lot more danger than such peaceful, cozy worlds were used to. This meant they had Gold missions pop often at a regular interval, usually the kind that most individuals or teams really disliked.

The kind that meant delving into the underground, experiencing weeks of darkness, constant assault by beasts and monsters, and quite often terrible conditions, those being extreme temperature, strange toxins, weird anomalies in gravity, and far more besides. Such missions, almost always at least Gold in rank, were going to be a big way in which the girls got their last requirements for Gold Emblems.

Bjorn commented that he had done much the same if not worse, trudging through various undergrounds and remote regions, either nipping problems in the bud or taking them out once they were already blooming. He didn't mind the work, but he did mention that he and Kris might sit out some of the messier jobs, as he didn't have to do any of that right now and, so, he wouldn't.

The first mission they got dealt with that underground area, not something Beth and Blood were unfamiliar with at all, and Sera had some experience with herself. They could go and work as three people, but the mission was just for one person, getting them only a single credit for completing it.

Beth and Blood had dealt with similar when they were still trying for Silver, so they were used to it, but Sera did grumble a bit, something about the 'richest group in existence' being 'so unbelievably stingy to make a dwarf sneer' or something to that effect. Beth said it was fine, and they did have time anyway, even if they were under some longer-term deadlines that would very slowly roll over them.

Sera said she thought they could at least give all of them some pay for doing it even if they didn't get mission credits, which Beth thought quite reasonable, but the Hall Master didn't see it that way. He had the audacity to talk like he was facing down two dragons instead of one, but at least it showed Beth that she and Sera might be even more alike than she had thought. The first thing they did was buy a map, as that would obviously be a big help.

Some free maps or mapping tools were available to their communicators, enough for simple navigation, but Beth wanted something that had much more detailed topography as well as more advanced data on beasts, magical dangers, and such things. She also wanted the data on the underground, none of which was freely available on the Net apart from what any random person could throw on there as their trusted underground map.

Beth was not so trusting, thusly buying a good map package from a reliable source that included large swathes of the underground area of the world. It wasn't a full map of Banek, the world they were on that Baelvyr had recommended, but it was more than enough for their limited needs. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

The mission was to take care of a huge nest of scythe swarmers that had popped up outside of some fields that were used to grow waterleaf. In line with the plant's name, it was grown in a watery and wet environment, and scythe swarmers loved to hunt in that kind of territory, living in caves and slipping out whenever they grew hungry to hunt in the open.

The beasts were just as nice as they sounded, the size of a large dog but very insect-like, with a set of six legs and blunt, wedge-shaped heads with multi-faceted eyes and large, gaping mouths with jagged fangs, reminding Beth more of shark teeth than anything else. They also had long arms extending from under their heads with heavy, thick-bladed scythes at the end, of which they were named for, and which they used to slice and shred prey, often just for the thrill of it.

They would also travel in packs of up to a hundred, and sometimes far more when disturbed, which is why they were called swarmers. They were all-around unpleasant to deal with, with their tough carapaces and incredibly dangerous arms; many Wayfarers would actively avoid the beasts, even if the person or team was much stronger, as they were that feared and reviled. A whole nest of scythe swarmers was a real nightmare, as the girls found out when they waded in for the mission.

Roving bands of the beasts would constantly attack them, not so much as a defense of the den, but more because they were just so many of them constantly out and about that the girls had to wade through hordes of them just to get to the den. It was the kind of work they were exceedingly good at, even if Beth really took no pleasure in these fights, as the swarmers were strong enough, with sharp enough blades, that they could even damage the girls' equipment, and the girls themselves, of course.

That wasn't as big a deal as it might be, and the damage was even less on Sera, whose flesh was so tough with her Endurance and skills that it would take an immense amount of slashes and bites to do her serious damage. Beth could shrug off most hits and her regenerative skill was very good, meaning she had little to worry about, and Blood just didn't get hit. The wolf was fast enough now that she danced among the swarmers without a care in the world, never in any danger of a slash or bite.

The whole campaign, which is what Beth privately thought of it as, took a few weeks, as they had to clear out basically all of the scythe swarmers. The things were breeding at an alarming rate and there were already into the low hundreds of thousands of them. It was made all the worse by how many of them were venturing out of their den, which was quite deep underground as well. The girls weren't free of fighting large groups, nor had they gotten right to the nest as they moved underground.

Instead, it was days of slogging through the dark and thousands of swarmers, as well as the occasional thing that was much worse, until they reached the den. One of those much worse things was a troll the size of a small house and much, much angrier. It was also level four hundred and fifty and quite strong against them, as it had both earth and metal mana coursing through it.

Dragon fire worked against everything, of course, but it worked against some things better than others, and the difference in stats, skills, and mana types did matter. Sera could vaporize a million level fifty enemies with one or two breaths, but she'd barely scald a level five hundred. The troll wasn't much better, and the only one of them that could really hamper and harm it efficiently was Beth, and even then it was tough.

Her skills to smash and annihilate were good, but the earth element had the capability of absorbing and dispersing damage to an extent. That, along with the troll's very high regenerative ability, meant that the only thing Beth had that could really make any headway were her spatial skills. She was able to lock the beast down a bit with her domain, hindering its movements, though the thing was both durable and strong.

Thankfully, it wasn't that fast, and it also wasn't particularly bright, even for a beast, as it would try the same attack over and over before even trying a second attack. Beth meant that quite literally, as well; it would try the same exact slap with its left arm ten times in a row before trying that slap again, just with its right arm for ten times.

Beth sort of hated these kinds of fight the most; she wasn't really that upset that an enemy was powerful and took some time to kill, but the kinds of enemies that just steadily soaked up damage, especially through a combination of toughness and regeneration, were some of the worst. It was like hitting a massive ball of cotton or mud, everything they did leaving little damage, damage that quickly healed before their eyes.

It was compounded further by the fact that they were underground and near metal deposits, both of which aided the troll by helping fuel it with mana specifically of the kind it thrived on. Stuff like this was yet another good example of why very few Wayfarers were crazy enough to consistently explore the underground. A lot of people that went down there, regardless of the planet, never came back up, and few of their bodies were ever discovered or recovered.

Beth and the other two girls didn't have to worry about such a gruesome outcome, or they didn't have to worry about it too much, at any rate. They did have to worry about this immortal troll and the fact it just wouldn't die, wearing it down over the course of quite a few minutes by degrees. Beth kept restricting it and hindering it with her domain skill, something the beast was just too stupid to understand.

It couldn't understand what was binding its limbs and it couldn't understand where that force was coming from, not being able to identify Beth in any way as the source. It didn't have any of that slightly more animal cunning that some beast would develop as they got stronger; big and tough trolls like it had the distinct privilege of being so durable that few other beasts, or Wayfarers, could threaten them.

Coupled with their enormous strength, beasts like this troll were often the natural rulers of their domain and terrors of everything else around, including any Wayfarers that happened by. The beast eventually fell, not without much screaming, hollering, roaring, and whining, and not without considerable effort from the three of them.

Beth's spatial abilities cutting and pulverizing the creature in ways that even her other abilities couldn't were a key factor in why the fight only took thirty minutes and not more like three hundred minutes. They were, after all, still rather under-leveled for fighting things over four hundred, even if their power was quite high for their current levels. That quite high power level was going to help them an awful lot in dealing with the den, which would take them more than just a convenient thirty minutes.

It would take them a lot more than that just to get to the den, as even the troll didn't want to mess with a quarter million scythe swarmers even if the troll was a higher level than almost anything down there.