Chương 602: Limitless Path Chapter Six Hundred Twenty-One

The first part of tracking down the rebels' leadership structure wasn't all that difficult, considering they were tracking people still rather low on the totem pole, but it did involve them wading through active battlefields. Beth wasn't at all squeamish, not after years of doing what she did, but there was something particularly distasteful to her about people throwing their lives away slaughtering each other when there were so many other dangers and opportunities out there.

She knew that people did have grievances, and some of the people involved in this rebellion had very valid problems with the way the government was being run, but having Beth's team having to get involved showed that it had really all spiraled out of control by this point. The first place Beth went was a little town in the North, a section of the main continent of that world that was home to a high range of mountains and bitter cold.

As usual, few people lived within the chain of mountains themselves, but many people made their homes next to the mountain range, living off the wealth and power that such a dangerous place could generate. Beth was on her own, though she wasn't sure they would keep operating like that. Despite their being no threat here, certainly to her, she was still having a bit of a strange feeling about everything, which was another reason she was in this frigid city.

The locals were nervous and on edge, but there wasn't any fighting or even any signs of battle, showing the rebellion wasn't running hot across the planet, or not in the way that one might expect. She was searching for an old man that was supposed to be key for holding the allegiance of the northern people, but that search proved fruitless.

Sometimes, she really cursed that she was much better at smashing things than finding things, or make things, or discovering things, but then again, her smashing had gotten her to her already ridiculous level of power, so it wasn't all bad. She nosed around the city for six hours or so, not able to get much help from anybody local, which was hardly a surprise, before she left and headed to her next destination.

It was a smaller, even more remote city at the eastern end of the mountain range with a bay that was frozen over almost the entire year, though a couple great icebreakers could still get in and out. Sailing the oceans was not quite as dangerous as mountain exploration, or certainly cave exploration, but it was still more dangerous than many places on land, and one didn't want to move under the waters.

Not deep, anyway, as oceans had a tendency to create some powerful, and horrifying, beasts that would tear apart most vessels without a second thought or a chance at escape. Their cruiser could handle it, Beth was pretty sure, or something on that level, as the ship wasn't exactly designed for the deep sea, though it could handle not just atmosphere but also high-pressure environments as well.

They had flown it around rather low in more than one gas giant at this point, which gave enough pressure to replicate at least a few hundred feet under the ocean. That was something to play around with later, if at all, and she shuddered a little thinking of the kind of strange terrors that could lurk underwater. Fighting underwater didn't real bother her all that much, but the oddly shaped fish with teeth far too big for their mouths were just so off-putting that she'd really rather not.

Plus all the stuff with tentacles. She was really not a fan of tentacles or most things related, despite her enjoyment of Sera's tail. Getting back on track, she focused on using all her senses to scan everything around her. While she, and much of the team, didn't have specific tracking or hunting skills to find a single target, it couldn't be understated just how powerful Beth's senses were.

Increasing stats, doing more rebirths, and increasing her understanding of her core powers, that being her Presence, Mana Physique, and so forth, all greatly aided with heightening her senses. It shouldn't be underestimated just how much Dexterity alone pushed someone's perceptions, as that was the main stat that helped with things like proprioception and even the ability to sense, track, and react to high-speed movement.

Intelligence, the stat, was also involved a little bit, but not nearly to the degree Dexterity was, which is why Dexterity was a very important stat for close range combatants and even most mages would drop a handful of points into from time-to-time. Beyond her insane Dexterity and other stats, as well as her core power, was her eye power, which was now at the peak of Gold.

She wasn't as good with sensory powers as Blood, especially her eye power, but a peak Gold eye power was still extremely strong and could detect even the faintest of traces. All that combined to help her in spotting a few anomalies, but she didn't have anything really concrete to go off of, just meandering around a certain area by the docks.

It was a bit cliche, she had to admit, the trope of criminals and rebels hiding in and around docks and the warehouse district, but she was just following her eyes, and maybe a little of her gut feeling. The real break came totally randomly, and if it were anyone else, at least, anyone that was as mediocre at tracking and hunting single targets as Beth was, they would have totally missed the signs.

Beth, however, just happened to be the exact person in the exact place that the opposition really didn't want to be there, as her head suddenly snapped around and she started moving fast, though still quiet, towards a certain location. She slipped down narrow alleys between the large warehouses, running and jumping and making very good use of her Spatial Step, which she was able to use so well even most other space focused mages, a rare breed indeed, would have a lot of trouble detecting it.

Her haste quickly brought her up to one of the smaller warehouses, a building on the far western side of the port that was about a hundred feet on one side, maybe even less, and about fifty feet wide. She estimate that the place was probably not even forty-five hundred square feet in total, and it looked like the building had some offices in part of it.

It was the kind of place a small business that was expanding, or a medium-sized business that was only needed a set amount of goods shipped in or out would use, and she quietly appeared on the roof with a silent, invisible teleport. She crouched down by a vent housing, not trying to listen to anything inside, as she didn't really have the hearing for that, especially not the ability to filter out the noises of the dock around her and the fan in the vent, but she was focusing on the feeling that had set her off.

She breathed in deeply through her nose before exhaling slowly and quietly, then breathing in slowly through her mouth, almost sticking out her tongue as she ran the freezing air across it. That just confirmed what she already knew, the heavy tang of salt and the taste of fresh fish present in the background of the afternoon breeze. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

There had been a teleport in the building, which wouldn't have normally been all that crazy, but it had used a lot of energy, enough that she had easily detected it from more than half a mile away, enough that she had felt it wash over her like a strong wind. The space around her had been a little disturbed, and she followed her senses to this building, those senses much sharper when specifically tracking and looking through spatial related matters than more mundane kinds of investigation.

The way the space had been disturbed, and being present on the roof of the building absolutely confirmed it, that was more than close enough for her, pointed undoubtedly to the presence of a teleportation pad or formation or machine or something. There was definitely something in the warehouse that was meant to move a large number of people, and possibly a large amount of cargo, and it was sending that stuff or receiving that stuff from pretty far off.

If Beth had to hazard a guess, it was a nearby solar system; the amount of power that had been used wasn't really enough to be moving stuff hundreds or thousands of light years, but it was definitely enough to move a few dozen light years in just a few seconds, if not maybe close to a hundred light years.

That was a rough estimate, but it was better than almost anyone could do without examining the pad or array in detail, and she was pretty sure she was accurate to guess about ninety light years max range to with less than ten light years error margin. That was extremely unusual for so many reasons. First of all, this was a small warehouse in a small port town that would likely be used to hold goods for transporting on the icebreakers or through an overland line to the southern cities.

To have a warehouse like this, likely run by a small company, have not just a teleporter pad or array in it, but one that was powerful enough to be sending and receiving over interstellar distances was fishy to the extreme. More than that, and she wasn't trying to be an asshole here, but the whole planet wasn't exactly the wealthiest place around, let alone this little backwater port with its small shipping center and half dozen docks.

The teleporter that was about thirty feet under her feet right this moment, while not at the level of what the CRA usually used, was way, way better than something anybody but a planetary government should have. Planets were usually settled by a polity that owned multiple solar systems and was branching out to get a small piece of new territory; this led to the 'new' planet having one or two teleporters that were linked into that government's network.

The building she was crouched on top of right now certainly didn't look like the planetary administration center. Hell, it didn't look anything like the city hall of that port city, though she could be wrong about that, and there was no way they should have such a teleporter in such a place. The second reason it was suspicion was the location, and not just the building, or even the poor port city.

Teleporters like the one she suspected she would find when she broke in, and she was going to break in, were extremely expensive to build and highly expensive to maintain. Take the CRA network, for instance; the teleportation pads they used had a construction cost measured in the low mithril coin range, including both materials and the labor to build and install them.

Then, those pads often took anywhere from a few dozen gold coins to a handful of mithril per week to keep running and maintained; the fact Beth and the team could teleport all over the galaxy for just a few gold coins was basically a display of the CRA's own power and wealth.

For members, their teleportation network was subsidized, essentially allowing any Emblem-holder to teleport at a discount, higher rank Emblems to teleport even cheaper, and people teleporting for the express purpose of taking up or completing a CRA-assigned mission yet cheaper still. It really did circle back to wealth, but even a small, planet-only pad would cost platinum coins to build and install, if not into a few diamond coins depending on circumstances, and it would cost a couple gold a week to run.

The pad or array that was in the warehouse, while not quite at the CRA level, was far more than just a planetary pad that could take somebody to a nearby city, meaning the expense of building and installing was definitely well into the diamond coin range and the maintenance into the multiple gold coins per week range. Price, location, timing, mana usage, and a clear pattern the she could read in the air and the building.

All of it together, plus all other factors, added up to something very suspicious, something that she sent to the team before carefully moving along the roof, looking for a way in that wouldn't be quite as obvious as the small shed on the roof for the roof access stair or ladder. She could maybe tear a vent off and slip in like that, and do it fairly quietly, but she wasn't the best at stealth and her destructive capabilities were hard to do precise demolition work without making a big mess.

She was much more a bulldozer than a hand shovel, and that didn't exactly lend to quietly digging up a small patch of dirt, to stretch the metaphor a bit. She was hoping there was something better she could use as an entry point, as she didn't want to just teleport inside without any visual confirmation of what was in the building. Visual confirmation that was going to be very hard to get considering that all the windows were blacked out and couldn't be used to peek at what was happening or the layout.

While that alone wasn't all that suspicious, it did form another link in her hypothesis, and she carefully walked the edge of the roof, able to keep herself upright while leaning over and looking at the exterior walls. She had a lucky break when she got to the area that likely had the offices, the corner of the building that was closest to the water of the bay. Somebody had apparently gotten stuffy in the room they were working in and decided to break security protocol to get some fresh air.

She had seen the like a number of times before; people became used to not having any security incidents and became lax with their procedures, committing small violations that weren't all that harmful. The problem with a world of both highly advanced tech and incredibly magic was that even a tiny gap was more like a pit the size of the Grand Canyon, one that someone with a little skill and ability could easily exploit.

Beth was such a person in this case, though she wasn't an expert infiltrator, and she slid over the edge of the roof slowly, keeping an eye on the window the whole time. It would be a little silly if the windows were one-way coated and somebody standing at a different window were already staring at her, but she didn't sense anybody else's presence, nor did she detect someone watching her, which she had developed a decent sixth sense for.

The window she was aiming for was clear and, a bit more surprising but not at all unheard of, whoever had opened it had left the room with the window still open. She quickly slid through, using just the briefest and tiniest bit of her Ideal to fly inside without touching the frame or even the glass, thankful that the windows were tall and she could store her equipment in her necklace with just a thought.