Chương 642: Limitless Path Chapter Six Hundred Sixty-One

Bjorn returned late the first day, setting a small book on the table the other three were gathered around as he sat. He did the neat trick, which he had to do, of making his chair appear as he was sitting, falling back into it with a grunt. Beth picked up the book he had dropped, a small binder not all that much larger than her hand, though it was rather thick, and paged through it. She found detailed notes, clearly in a hand other than Bjorn's, about money in and out, debts owed, and various transactions.

The little booklet was a detailed ledger, one that was tracking an awful lot of movement of money in and out, money that was owed by individual people and not companies or businesses.

"Interesting," Beth said.

"Where'd this come from?"

"People talk," Bjorn replied with a grunt.

"Found it in a small building."

"Every building is small to you," Val scoffed.

"Hmph," he grunted.

"What's in it?" Sera asked as Beth finished paging through.

"It's a ledger of debts," Bjorn answered.

"Debts that might have some involvement with the disappearances. The last person to disappear owed some money, it turns out."

"I see," Sera said, examining the booklet after Beth had put it down.

"There's a lot of information here. How much it's worth is a different matter."

"Something else to look into," Val said with a dismissive wave, sorting through other information.

"It's still something to look into," Beth said, setting it on a corner of the table and organizing some of their other notes.

"Let's do that next." Beth waited until Blood was back, the wolf with less to show than Bjorn, before taking her and going to check some of the information from the ledger. Bjorn, meanwhile, went back out, moving to a different city to try to repeat his success of earlier. There really was just something about him, something that the criminal element seemed drawn to, where he could just walk into a place and command attention and respect.

The fact he drank their shitty, enchanted booze by the gallon and didn't even frown also left a deep impression, enough that people's tongues got rather loose around him. That and the fact that his size wasn't just for show; if he was going somewhere or doing something, nobody on the planet was going to stop him, except maybe the planetary coordinator, and they didn't have a reason to interfere.

Beth and Blood headed out on a chase that she suspected would be hunting wild gooses, especially considering that scanning the ledger hadn't magically revealed any other names of recently 'disappeared' persons that were pertinent to their investigation. Beth just wanted to confirm most of the other names on the list, which was going to take some time and searching, and she wanted to do some specific research on the latest disappearance.

If this was something involving gambling debts or bad loans, it wasn't going to be something they would just look aside and let happen, but it did re-frame it from some psycho on the loose killing random people to a much more business orientated ordeal. The perpetrator might not even get all that terrible a punishment, not in comparison to what had been dealt to others they had caught, but this was still not something to just ignore.

Their first stop was a seemingly random one, but it was something that was involved in housing some of the people. The man was about as close to useless as Beth could have had a nightmare about, not even knowing who his own tenants were. He also had a bit of a surly attitude, one that didn't keep past Beth, not even using her Ideal, flexing just a little.

A small dose of power, a little running of mana through a skill without releasing it, and the man was sweating and promising to do everything he could to help them. Considering he didn't know anything, didn't have organized records, and didn't have any connections in the city, his bowing and scraping was about as useful as pissing into the wind, but Beth still did a scan of what few bits of paperwork he did have before leaving. Next, it was individuals that owed money or were involved in the ledger somehow.

Beth was a bit surprised that so many people borrowed money, and it wasn't just that they were borrowing money, they were borrowing from the kind of people that broke kneecaps if the payments weren't prompt and in full. Still, people were people, regardless of time, place, or species, and getting into debt and agreeing to a little shady dealing to just keep things going for another day or two wasn't a shock.

The fact the ledger was so thick, and so many of the listings were still active, was what was making Beth shake her head, but it gave them a lot to look into. A lot of useless running around, for the most part, which wasn't a surprise, but she didn't want to go to whoever was running the debts first. She wanted information from the ground level, and the people who owed money were a lot more likely to give away something when a powerful person showed up and indicated they were looking into the debts.

There was also that crazy hope, maybe not so crazy to such inveterate gamblers, that their debt would just disappear. Beth didn't have any intention of saving these people, other than where clearly illegal practices were being ignored, but even that was something she was going to dump on the local law enforcement and have them sort out. Tracking down a dozen minor violations of lending law or going after somebody that had been a little too…

eager to collect an interest payment was a massive waste of her team's time. As was much of their current tracking of debts, which led them to the boss of the person that Bjorn had, uh, 'liberated' the ledger from during his first outing. The person was a local criminal in the capital city, which wasn't all that crazy, having a local crime boss that organized some petty larceny and other various mundane crimes.

Finding the man had also been incredibly easy, if rather tedious; suffice it to say, his underlings were not all the sharpest tools in the shed. Thankfully, Beth spoke their specific language and spoke it quite well. After she had thrown the first big thug that had tried to stop them throw a concrete wall, and she had literally thrown him fully through the wall, the rest of the punks had suddenly become far more cooperative.

They had taken her to the boss with hardly any other persuasion needed, the man in a slightly expensive suit and smoking something that smelled rather foul in a back room of a nightclub. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Well, well, it's not often we get such pretty young visitors," he said, even as he had his arm around a young beauty and another gorgeous woman serving drinks.

"I appreciate the compliments, but this is business, Mr. Strong," Beth said, walking up and taking a seat directly across from him.

"Business, business, it's all anybody's talkin' about these days," the man grumbled, setting his cigar down in a holder and taking a healthy drink.

"So, what can I do for you? You seem to have my boys wrapped around your finger already." The last part had been accompanied by a glare at the man who had led them in, who was now sweating bullets.

"Relax, Mr. Strong, I assure you we're not going to make your life difficult. Just a couple questions and we'll be gone, no trouble tonight."

"Well, if you say so," he said, taking another long pull from his drink.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"CRA," Beth said, cutting off any other games they might have played. It might have been good to keep it quiet who they were, but it wasn't really that hard to figure out, and she'd rather have him in the right mindset. She showed her Emblem, watching everyone in the room straighten up, though there were definitely different degrees of nervousness at her action.

"I have a couple questions for you regarding a certain ledger and some gambling debts. It seems we found a young man that owed you some money, a young man who disappeared three days ago without a trace. I'm interested in hearing what you know about it."

"Oh. That," Mr. Strong said with a sneer, picking his cigar back up.

"I know exactly what you're talking about. I know how it looks, but I think you've got the wrong guy. Yeah, I do a little loan shark business, and sure, we gotta remind the poor slobs that they do need to pay, but think about it. If I whack these losers, who the fuck's gonna pay me the money? Bad business, killing debtors, even ones that are way behind on payment. I assume that's what the accusation is?"

"No accusations here, Mr. Strong," Beth replied, holding her hands up.

"Just looking for a little bit of information. The only lead we have so far is a small ledger of yours with a few debts in it. Debts which were owed by one of the missing persons and the best friend of another missing person. That's a bit circumstantial overall, but it is a link between two victims and you. I was hoping, if you don't kill your debtors, even to send a message, that you might have a better idea what's going on."

"I might, I might," he said, seeming to relax a little as he leaned back, wrapping his arm back around the first girl, who still looked very tense, and not because of his touch.

"What, exactly, is it worth to you?"

"Mr. Strong, I'm not here to negotiate," Beth replied with a shake of her head. Before he could say something, she held up a finger and continued, "However, we are going to be reporting certain things, both to the CRA and to local authorities. Maybe, if we find certain people are very cooperative, their names stay out of the report. Maybe, if they're helpful enough, we even give them a nice, shiny gold star in our final report. Something that might buy them some time without anyone else breathing down their necks.

Just a thought on my part at this point, mind you."

"Well, that's something that would be nice," he said, laughing before taking a heavy pull on his cigar.

"A gold star, even. Haven't heard that shit in years. Well, let me help you out then, if you're going to scratch my back and all that nonsense. There's a man over in Bakerston, the city east of here. It's a certain, uh, Mr. Stone, as he goes by. While I like to keep to a little minor lending and loan shark business, he likes to play a little more fast and loose. In fact, I might have it on pretty good authority that Mr. Stone likes to dabble in a little bank fraud, and he likes to do it through cutouts.

Cutouts that might sometimes mysteriously disappear. Loose ends and all that. You understand?"

"I understand perfectly well," Beth said with a smile, standing up.

"This sounds like a good lead." She walked over to the door and stopped, turning back before walking out. There was a certain flair one needed in these things, and she thought she knew just how to do it at this point.

"Just, ah, one more thing, Mr. Strong."

"Oh, sure, what can I do for ya?" he asked, giving her a cocky grin. Beth then flared all her powers, crushing everyone in the room spiritually so hard only Mr. Strong remained conscious. Even the girl he was busy fondling passed out like she had just taken a firm right hook to the jaw, slumping against the petty criminal and loan shark, though not in a particularly sexy way. More a dead weight kind of slump, one that Mr. Strong didn't even notice as he was having trouble not blacking out.

To have a force of magical and spiritual presence so strong it would instantly knock out even his top enforcers, that was the kind of level that even a lot of Enlightened couldn't touch.

"If I find out you've been fucking with me, you won't need to worry about not getting that gold star I promised in the report. Am I making myself clear?" Beth stated coldly.

"As crystal, ma'am," he replied, crushing his cigar in a fearful grip.

"You'll find out I didn't lie. There's some bad business out there, and Mr. Stone is just the start of it. You can come right back here and check with me after you confirm it."

"I might do exactly that, Mr. Strong. I hope you didn't have any vacation plans any time soon; I might need to check back in with you while we continue this investigation," Beth said before making herself and Blood disappear in a blinding flash of white fire.

"Fuck me sideways," Mr. Strong rasped, though there was nobody else conscious in the room, before hurling his whiskey glass at the wall. Beth and Blood, meanwhile, had started their long and tedious journey to the next city. A journey that involved them just appearing in the city center less than a second after they had been in Mr. Strong's presence, Beth having whisked them there with just a thought. Blood disappeared immediately, going to scout the area, and the gang that a certain Mr. Stone ran.

Beth started walking at the same time, moving at a very moderate pace, though she was using her immensely powerful senses to subtly scan the area around her. She hadn't been nearly as flashy with their arrival; she and Blood had appeared with no flash or noise in a storage room and then slipped out the back door of the building without triggering an alarm.

At the distance Beth had moved them, she didn't need to have visited the place before to get a good idea of where she was taking them; it was close enough she could scan the space with her Ideal and put them right where she wanted them. If the words of Mr. Strong were to be believed, then there was a much more dangerous criminal element in this city, one that dealt in high-profile fraud and wasn't above killing their cutouts to keep the whole thing silent.

Beth was making sure to take note of anyone that looked like they were acting in any way suspicious, though she was more interested in finding any building that looked like it had a bit of a rougher crowd. The city center wasn't going to be very good for that, but she could cover an awful lot of ground very quickly without teleporting. That and she was sure that Blood was going to do an even better job scouting and finding a place, so she was more getting a lay of the land at this point.