Chương 587: Limitless Path Chapter Six Hundred Nine

"No questions?" he asked after a moment.

"I think we can figure it out," Beth said, not seeing anything in any of the briefs that would cause them problems or that was unclear.

"Then you're free to leave or be about your own business, but I have work to do," Tane said, standing and giving them a nod before he left. Beth assumed there might have been an issue just leaving them in one of the offices if they had had lesser emblems, but they were Golds, so access to terminals and files wasn't anything strange for them. The group then left, though they didn't have all that far to go, as they didn't have anywhere to live on Arbitus outside one of the packed Halls.

Beth didn't really want to house shop right this minute, considering they had missions already and more lined up whenever these were done. It would be nice to have somewhere to stay on the planet, but their group certainly had enough money that using the teleporter network for a few extra teleports here and there wasn't going to be a very big issue for now.

They used said teleporter network to move to a location close to where the first of their missions would take place, Beth wanted to tackle hers first as it would be the easiest. At least, based on the descriptions, her mission was going to take the least time and effort out of all of them, and it was still going to take a while, she just thought they would get it done the quickest. It had nothing to do with her having her first Platinum mission done and being able to breathe a little easier, certainly not.

Her mission was, in all fairness, the most straight-forward of all of their missions, with the target being a monster, one that was already identified and known about, even if tracking it down and destroying had proved problematic. Platinum missions were the realm of missions that could have less clearcut details and even objectives, as proved by one of the other four missions they currently had that basically just said a world was in serious trouble and needed someone to help them.

Such things happened in a more narrow sense in Gold missions, but the team had still had fairly clear objectives or problem statements to work off of when dealing with even the most complicated missions.

'Please help us,' wasn't exactly a clear problem statement or mission objective, and the scale was larger with a Platinum mission. It wouldn't necessarily be the doom of a world, but Gold missions were still dealing with more localized problems, such as a string of robberies in and around a city, whereas Platinum missions were dealing with things that threatened continents or a serious level of wide scale harm and danger.

They went through the usual procedures of having their emblems checked during the teleports and when they arrived at their far-flung destination, Beth finding that it was the Hall Master himself that did the check. The man was only a Platinum himself and most Hall Masters either couldn't or wouldn't take on missions, not until they reached a critical level, anyway, so Beth and her team were here to perform a bit of cleanup before it got that bad.

It was also strange to think, now that she had started them on their hunt for Platinum Emblems, that they were close to as strong, if not maybe stronger, than many of the people in positions of authority that they encountered on a weekly or monthly basis. Beth didn't want to inflate her own head too much, but she was pretty confident that, should the situation arise, she could take down the Hall Master with little danger to herself or anyone else.

It was a bit of a sobering thought, that realization that she was, in more ways than one, the figure of power, if not authority quite yet, in just about any room she was in. She shook off those thoughts as they left the Hall and set about their work. This was truly going to be the easiest of the five missions as they had a location, general description, and general analysis of the monster they were hunting.

Even given monsters' tendency to hide and stir things up from a position behind or far away from the beast tide they were creating, this monster wasn't that discrete or clever. It was a range, of course, and not everything would be as insidious as the monsters Baelvyr had introduced them to monster hunting with on Red II, but some were quite obvious.

The Platinum mission gave Beth three objectives, which were tracking down and killing the monster, scattering the beast tide before it could get moving, and minimizing collateral damage, which was always a concern, but it needed to be called out specifically on a monster hunting mission. There were apparently some CRA Enforcers, particularly Golds going for Platinum Emblem, that could get a bit overenthusiastic, and it was a good idea to help keep people's heads on straight in the mission briefing.

Beth wasn't concerned about her team, considering their level of both power and skill, but she could see how even a team might struggle to fight a strong monster and contain a rampant beast tide without causing widespread damage. Beth's team had no such struggles and that led to a rather simple plan, which was just to have the other four destroy the beast tide while she hunted the monster.

The general idea she had was that the monster wasn't all that clever, from the initial reports, and if they started annihilating its carefully curated mass of beasts, the being was likely to show itself and try to stop them.

Beth could then rather easily intercept the monster and take it out, with backup from the other four if needed, but she was still their strongest member by a good margin, so if the monster was giving her a lot of trouble, there was only so much the others could add, though teamwork shouldn't ever be underestimated.

That was clear as the group cleared up the beast tide, Sera transforming into her native form to cover more area with her flame breath and skills, the size and speed of her dragon form allowing her to rain down destruction in a wide area.

The tide itself wasn't currently moving through any occupied lands, which meant they could let loose just a bit without worrying about damaging someone's personal property; just, they couldn't let loose too much, as it would still be bad if they left a huge, smoking crater where vibrant lands had previously been.

Well, there was definitely going to be some smoke with Sera using her flames to take out large swathes of the beast tide, but with their group's ability to control and suppress fire, it wasn't going to run out of control and incinerate everything. Bjorn, Blood, and Val were just as effective, though in a little bit smaller scale, especially with them trying not to just devastate everything around them with every attack, more a problem for Bjorn than the other two.

Crushing attacks didn't necessarily lend themselves to neatness as much as the cutting and slicing attacks that Blood and Val used, let alone Bjorn's skills were often wide area and highly destructive, compared to Blood who could use, well, blood to attack everything around her. With precise control of her eponymous element, Blood could slice apart, smash, break, crush, or explode beasts without doing any damage to anything else, even the beast next to them, if she so chose.

Val was just as deadly and just as precise; she had to be, after all, as her still relatively new super move that she was in the process of adjusting to and leveling gave her incomprehensible speed and immense power for a few brief moments. Control and exactitude were necessary for Val not to hit the wrong thing, break something she didn't intend, or smash herself into an unsuspecting wall at a rather dangerous speed.

She had only done the latter once, so far, and she had counted that as the lesson learned and had managed to avoid the embarrassment a second time. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it All the smashing, cutting, slicing, chopping, rending, and burning did wonders in clearing out the beast tide, and it did wonders in attracting the monster's attention.

As Beth had assumed, the being was not all that clever or bright, just seemingly rather powerful for its relative youth and worldly experience. When it first appeared, Beth had thought at first it was just another beast, but the way all the other beasts stirred around it and flowed in a broad, sweeping pattern according to little more than its will was a pretty big give away.

The fact that creature targeted Beth's team as soon as it appeared and attempted to attack them was also another big giveaway that it was neither a sapient being or a regular beast, and Beth intercepted the massive monster as it surged across the battlefield. The thing was like some kind of overgrown elephant, about twenty feet high and longer than what any elephant, even at that height, should be, with four long, multi-segmented legs that would look more at home on an insect than such a stout creature.

Its hide was a leathery brown and dusky red, with splotches of dark green and gray in random places and of random sizes, and its eyes glowed a rather ominous red, though their small size on the monster's large face certainly lessened the intimidating effect they otherwise would have had.

The thing's body was quite bulky, with layers of both muscle and fat evident in its composition, and it had a ridge of thick bone plates that stuck up from its spine, reminding Beth a little of a dinosaur, though the rest of it was definitely more mutant elephant than dinosaur. She used her eye power to get a reading on it before she slammed into the side of it, having used her Ideal to fling herself through the air at the monster.

Level 440[14] Dreadbellow The name might have been a bit confusing, but the reaction to Beth slamming into its side at Mach five cleared that right up, as the monster let loose an awful, grating, shrieking scream that just went on forever and had some kind of disorientating effect laced into it. Beth was almost unaffected by the scream as her skills, plus the extra boost her Ideal gave her to basically ever factor, meant she could shake it off, but everything else was affected.

It was a good thing the surrounding beasts were stunned by it, as it had also done a number, to a greater or lesser degree, on all of Beth's team members that were present, though thankfully Sera was back on the ground at that point and hadn't gone plummeting earthwards when the cry issued forth.

Beth, for her part, was far more annoyed by the shriek than she was anything else, hauling back and giving the monster's side a heavily mana laden punch with all her prodigious strength, her Strength stat being in the high tens of thousands at this point leading to her knocking the monster onto its side with the single strike.

The monster wasn't out of tricks, nor was it particularly weak, but it was up against an opponent that a lot of Ascended would be hesitant to challenge outright, Beth pummeling it mercilessly with both her skills and her raw strength. The creature had been able to stand from its beat down pretty quickly, all things considered, but it was sluggish after just the handful of hits Beth had inflicted, likely a combination of some damage and lots of surprise.

Its size and weight worked against it, as Beth was far faster and more maneuverable than the being, darting around it to smash at one knee or another, or follow up a strike with an explosive shattering of space that slammed into the monster and sent it flying. It was, in some ways, like watching an adult bully a child, but looks could be deceiving; Beth could tell from the feedback from her attacks and the monster's behavior that many of her hits were only dealing superficial damage.

What the beast lacked in speed and maneuverability, and even a bit in strength, it more than made up for it in toughness, but that was a death sentence against someone like her. No defenses were high enough to stop her relentless assault, and without the kind of offensive capabilities to really harm her or push her back, the conclusion was foregone. Oh, the monster tried, of course, breaking out several different tricks and tactics to try to harm her or her teammates.

Unfortunately for it, both Beth and her team had seen a lot of those tricks before, and her team was too fast and skilled to get caught by something as petty as earth manipulation or sonic attacks, much less actually getting physically smashed by the huge creature. Beth continued hammering away at it, her Spatial Obliteration having a devastating effect when she pumped the maximum mana into it.

It only took a couple minutes for the monster to be limping in a quite pronounced manner and wailing in pain, blood leaking from several sections of torn flesh where Beth's attack had rent its body open. The team never let up on the beast extermination as Beth worked, clearing the tide at the same time she was slowly pummeling the monster into a massive lump of meat paste, and they had already cleared around half the tide, greatly lessening its power and danger.

Beth, on the other hand, was now having to chase the monster, as it had started using its ability to manipulate earth and unleash powerful sonic attacks, most in the forms of very annoying screams, to try to block her and push her back while it ran away. She was just lucky in that it didn't seem like it was capable of burrowing even with its ability to reshape the ground and terrain, so there wasn't really any great way for it to hide from her.

Given her spatial abilities and mastery, even underground might not have been enough, but it would have been a lot more tedious and annoying than just teleporting after it on open land. Well, land that the monster was turning into a mess of hills and walls and odd shapes, but nothing that really slowed her down.

The toughness had let the bastard survive a long time, but Beth never relented in her chase, leaving her team to clean up the rest of the tide, pursuing the monster as it returned to where it had been egging the tide on from. Its secret lair wasn't all that impressive, considering its size and power, just a big bowl-like indent in the side of an old, worn-down mountain.

The creature gave a final defense, trying to use the mountain to shore up its hiding spot and block Beth from attacking it, but she wasn't some novice Wayfarer at this point. All it did was prolong the inevitable, but she eventually killed the monster, careful after the kill notification showed up for any hidden surprises.

The mission with Baelvyr had been a little bit of an exception, as strong monsters didn't work together all that often, but now would be the perfect time for some really powerful monster or hidden danger to jump out and ambush her as she was dealing the fatal blow. Nothing happened, however, during or after her killing strike, and she tossed the monster into the reliquary for the Empyreans to examine and dissect while she returned to her group, who were well on the way to finishing off the remains of the tide.