Chương 648: Limitless Path Chapter Six Hundred Sixty-Seven

"What's that saying from your world you like so much?" Bjorn asked when they reconvened another two days later.

"Hmm?" Beth responded eloquently.

"It's a naval thing," Bjorn clarified.

"A naval what? Oh, wait, you mean 'loose lips sink ships?' Is that what you're going for?" Beth asked.

"Exactly," Bjorn said, seeming immensely pleased with himself. After a minute of him not saying anything else, Val couldn't contain her impatience and demanded, "Well?!"

"Well what?" Bjorn replied, though he was clearly still rather pleased with himself.

"You clearly figured something out already," Val stated with a deep breath, trying to remain calm.

"People talk," Bjorn grunted.

"Sometimes, people talk about things they shouldn't." He then sent them a little document he had written up that showed exactly what he had found. There were a few people who had been clued in to what was going on; it seemed the killer, or killers, weren't being quite as thorough this time, and it was in the area of information security.

Unlike the last few times they had worked cases like this, the responsible party had talked, likely bragging to somebody about one of their 'conquests' or the like, and word had started to circulate. Bjorn had gotten it third or fourth hand originally, but he had done a good job of tracking down the source and giving the group a definitive direction to start looking.

"Then, it's my turn now," Blood said after they looked at Bjorn's results. Blood had been on the sniffing investigation for several days and she had some results to show. It shouldn't really be all that surprising, but people were never as good at covering their tracks as they thought they were.

In this case, they had done a remarkable job of cleaning away any smell in any of the places they had ambushed people or attacked people, and they had done a good job of hiding their scent going to and from those locations, but a good job wasn't perfect. It was also quite likely they just didn't expect someone with Blood's kind of nose and strength to get on their trail; Blood's humanization factor being so high enhanced everything about her, especially the most powerful characteristics of her bloodline.

The ability to smell much better than a normal person was already a trait Blood had before she had any humanization at all; now, however, her senses were tuned to an extraordinary level. Cross-referencing what Blood had found about scent trails with the information Bjorn had scouted and the findings, or lack of findings at the scenes, which was still a clue, they were able to make some deductions.

Beth really just wanted to get on with it, but these kinds of tedious cases were things they would keep encountering as long as they continued as Senior Enforcers at the CRA. They couldn't and shouldn't just do a quick rush job and leave, and despite her frustrations at the time it was taking when they had other things on the agenda, it was important to take their time and make sure they didn't let any targets slip away.

The good part about being meticulous on these jobs was they often outmatched whoever they were against, and this time was no exception to that. Blood's data had helped them narrow down a number of things, Bjorn had directed them towards certain people, and the other girls had found a number of clues, or even eliminated a number of clues, that even further narrowed things down.

Beth would have loved to have said everything just fell into place from there and it was super easy, but they never got the easy jobs, not that there were any Platinum missions that would fall into that category. Still, it took them almost two weeks to track down the responsible parties and figure everything out, which really felt like it was dragging on and on.

They still hadn't even looked at property in the City or a number of other things that Beth had as a priority, and they also needed to do their next rebirth. She was just glad they had found who was responsible, which turned out to be a group of three people that had decided that there were better paths to power than fighting beasts. Very similar to the lakeside killer they had stopped, the three had skills that increased in rank as they hurt or killed or sapient beings.

Such skilled could still be used on beasts and monsters, but they were most rewarding when they targeted other people. Figuring that out and tracking them down had taken an annoyingly long time, at least in Beth's opinion, but that was an area that Blood excelled in, at least. Once they had a bit of a scent and a bit of a pattern, the wolf could simply slip away and start narrowing it down, further and further, until they were right on the other party's heels.

After that, well, it was really hard to escape Blood, let alone Beth once she had really locked onto someone. And locked on was right; Beth could track someone from miles away just with her spatial senses, and she could even lock down space from over a mile away to prevent teleports or even some high-speed movement skills. Trying to run from her, especially when the target was much weaker than her, was like a nightmare.

Everywhere the person went, they were still exposed, and every time they tried anything, from a clever trick to a powerful skill, it was all swatted down without effort, leaving the person to just run and run and run, knowing that running wasn't going to be enough to escape someone genuinely powerful. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

The only thing Beth could say that she respected a little about the group they tracked down was they didn't go down easy. Likely it was a sort of 'death-by-cop' kind of scenario, but they did fight back, and fight back hard. Of course, they weren't Ascended or even high rebirth Enlightened, so trying to take a swing against Beth's group only had a single possible conclusion. Still, Beth was fine with putting them down like the dogs they were, making sure they didn't escape in any kind of clever way.

A lot of those clever ways were things that wouldn't work against a master of spatial magic, so they had really been backed into a corner with Beth there, and they went down swinging. Just too bad those swings didn't do anything, including a classic moment where one of them gave everything they had to strike Bjorn, only for the titan to just watch as the attack slammed into his new torso armor and stopped without fully penetrating.

There was that one second of realization on the murderer's face as they looked up and up and up, seeing Bjorn's face far above them with a decidedly unimpressed look before the titan lashed out with a gauntleted fist and broke their body in a single strike. The after action on finding and silencing the killers was finished pretty quick, thankfully, and that let them move on to their next task.

It was lucky that some of these weren't that time sensitive, though they group might have to split up, either during this one or the next, as not all the missions just had infinite time. It was also a risk to let some stuff sit just because of the overall damage it could cause; sure, they could still stop a monster outbreak and contain the monster or monsters even after it had been going on for a while, but there was a lot of damage, to both property and persons, that could happen in that time frame.

The next mission was another negotiation and Beth sent Blood, Val, and Bjorn off. She was thinking that if she and Sera together, with their power and knowledge and backing, couldn't get three different groups to agree, then they might as well just pack it in at that point. That let the other three move on to the next mission, which would be mission seven since the negotiations that Beth and Sera were doing was mission six.

Once both those missions were done they would only have two left, as they still hadn't picked up a tenth mission, but Beth was pretty sure that would be coming along soon, if not already waiting for them back on Arbitus. The negotiations were not particularly interesting, not when considering Beth had a cheat code that she didn't mind deploying whenever she felt like.

It was amazing how, getting a few minutes into some tedious debate with multiple side trying to convince her they were right, she just had to flex her Ideal and suddenly everything went smoothly. While word traveled fast, she was still a relative unknown and it still surprised people when they realized exactly what she was and what she had access to.

Beth also really wasn't worried about being found out, if that was even a thing, as she had quite a few cards up her sleeves, including one she had revealed to practically no one. If anyone tried to muscle in on her and push her around, not only was she a lot stronger than people thought, but she had this little box hidden in her soul, a box filled with peak Ascended.

Considering she hadn't been in a scenario where she needed to call on those peak Ascended, pretty much no one outside her team and a few of her Exalted friends knew about them, but if someone like a peak Ascended or a group of Ascended tried to jump her to take her out early and stop her rise to power, they would be in for a very painful, very brutal lesson.

She hadn't seen how the whole group fought, but she had seen enough, even thinking back to the challenge to obtain the reliquary, that she knew that even someone like Erosh would absolutely annihilate anyone he was set against. That wasn't a worry for right now, particularly as the three groups that had a massive disagreement all become immensely reasonable, just like the last two groups, as soon as Beth displayed her Ideal.

It was still a little startling to realize just how big the power differentials were and just how much respect being considered an Exalted in name, if not yet in function, brought about. Seasoned warriors and long-time clan heads went from obstreperous and willing to do anything to get their way to suddenly fawning and willing to accept almost any compromise, as long as what they did pleased Beth.

Something that might be hard to prevent going to their head for most, but Beth was just different than others, and used her status, or assumed status, like any other skill or weapon in her arsenal. Sera didn't even really need to be there, even as moral support, but Beth was going to shoo away her wife, and if she pulled a little bit of leader privilege to have Sera with her when she could be doing some other mission, then she figured she earned a bit of leeway here and there.

She and her wife wrapped up the negotiations in a way that made the CRA happy, which is what mattered in such situations, and then leap-frogged over their own group to head to mission eight, during the transport to which they got mission ten dropped in their laps, which was highly time sensitive. Honestly, Beth was pretty sure they could split the work for most of these last four missions, but she didn't yet want the team doing such dangerous assignments solo.

The rule, for now, was at least in pairs, and three or more would be better, and they had other help they could call on. Not to do the missions, but Beth pulled Adam off what he was working on to come over and help her and Sera with the time sensitive mission, which was a monster outbreak that had gone unreported. Things like that happened sometimes, for various reasons, but it meant the situation on the planet was a shitshow and that Beth and her team were sprinting into an ongoing crisis.

Bjorn, Blood, and Val were still working on their current mission, and the two groups would tackle things from both ends. Having been redirected, Beth told the others to move on to mission eight on their list as soon as they could finish mission seven, and then she and Sera, along with Adam or anyone else that wanted to step in and help, would do missions ten and nine.

That would wrap up the ten missions they had for now, which could then break them free to move on to some of their other responsibilities, assuming someone like Mortaine didn't just drop in on them unannounced and drop another important mission in their lap. Not that they hadn't benefited enormously from Mortaine's last job, but after working for others fro quite a bit, Beth was ready to take a chunk of time, first to rest up, and then to work on things that were priority for them on their own terms.

The monster outbreak was bad, and Beth started by calling in more of the team. The problem wasn't the monsters, the big problem was the beasts, and even at the level of power she, Adam, and Sera had, containing the swarms of tens of millions of beasts was a tall order. It was possible, certainly, but the time frame would be a big problem. The longer they took, the more innocent people were in harm's way and either got hurt or killed, all so the people who were in charge looked a little better.

Well, that had been the catalyst; don't report the outbreak, try to hunt the monster with local resources, and get a feather in the cap for doing such a good job. Unfortunately, this was a small planet without a powerful CRA member present, and the planetary government didn't have a strong military or an elite squad at their disposal, not of the kind needed for a serious monster hunt.

That meant that, over the course of a few months, things had spiraled out of control, and now it was up to Beth's team to clean up everyone else's mess. Getting the beasts under control was the first priority, and it was why she had mobilized the rest of the team. Containment could take a long time, mainly because the monsters would still be stirring up trouble, so it became a seesaw for a while as they thinned the hordes and the monsters replenished them and redirected them to different areas.

It was only after spending over a week on beast cleanup duty that they were able to turn some attention to the monsters, or rather Beth did so, leaving the whole rest of the team fighting beast tides as she went hunting. Considering both her power and escape potential, she was the obvious choice for the task, but she also wasn't a tracker, and without really be an Exalted or above, she didn't have the raw strength to scan the whole planet and track them down instantly.

That left her spending days hunting, tearing apart masses of beasts and searching through mountains and valleys, underground and the seas, trying to track what could possibly even be one small, clever little life form.