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Limitless Path Chapter Four Hundred Eight
🕑 Added 2025-04-03 17:12:06 +0000 UTCThey spent a month like that, objective time, letting the other girls use the gate to push up towards two hundred. They would need two-twenty to do at least a Perfect Rebirth with their next rebirth, but once they got to two hundred, things would slow down a bit. The month wasn't quite long enough to really get them there, but the three were close, while the other three, that being Blood, Sera, and Beth, were also grinding some levels, but not worried about going as fast.
They were interrupted from their days of slaughter by a very loud knocking at the door one day, Beth and Sera the only ones in the room. Beth checked the hall camera to see that it was Baelvyr outside, hurrying over to let him in. He looked around after ducking through the doorway, though it was tall enough that he would have been close standing straight. He took a glance at the gate before ignoring it and moving over to the couch, sitting in front of it with his back to the wallscreen.
"Hey, boss, what's up?" Beth asked, flopping down next to Sera.
"Got a job. It'll count as a Gold mission for ya, possibly two. And I mean, for all of ya, not just ya," he explained. "But yer sisters and them can't be goin'; ain't get the right know-how or levels yet."
"Okay, so, we could take me, Sera, and Blood? That's what you're saying?" Beth asked for clarification.
"Yeah, that's it. Got a message from an old buddy; kinda complicated situation, but basically, we gotta go save a planet. My buddy and I are gonna be the hitters here, but we need a couple more to back us up."
"What's wrong with the planet?" Sera asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Old situation," Baelvyr grunted with a sigh. "Got a world out on the fringe, low mana, not a great destination. Got a conflict popped up, oh, 'bout two hundred years ago. Wound up releasin' some damn weapon that caused perpetual clouds and rains over the whole world. They ain't seen a clear sky for over a century, probably more. Well, shit happens, then, more shit happens. They got a bit of a problem with somethin' musclin' in on their turf, on top of all that other shit. Finally got the word we can butt in, so we gotta go over there, handle the shit that just popped up, and maybe handle gettin' that sky cleared up as well. Prolly take, oh, I dunno, two months? Other guy and I'll handle all the heavy shit, but we need some backup at a reasonable level. Since ya got the Mana Physique, and the other two are fuckin' tough, figured I'd give ya three the opportunity to get a few more Gold-level missions knocked out."
"Okay, sounds good," Beth said, glancing at Sera before turning back to Baelvyr. "But what's this new threat? Sounds like it was enough to cause a change in our position, I mean, the CRA's position, after a hundred years."
"Yeah, two monsters showed up," Baelvyr answered. "Nasty little fucks, pushin' the beasts into a frenzy. Shit's gettin' outta control over there, and it was an excuse for us to step into their little simmerin' war and get hands on. We can't necessarily just solve a war like that, but when a bigger threat pops up, we can jump in. Not only that, but them bastards'll be too wrecked from the monsters stirrin' shit up to keep pissin' on each other."
"Well, sounds kinda crazy, but I'm in. As long as the other two are," Beth said, looking at Sera.
"Yeah, no problem. This is the kind of shit I wanted to do at the CRA anyway," Sera said with a shrug.
"Let me ask Blood," Beth said, hopping up and heading into the gate.
"Ya lot just keep that damn thing open twenty-four/seven?" Baelvyr asked with a frown.
"Hey, it's her power, and she says it doesn't really hurt her," Sera said with a shrug.
"Ain't great op sec, there," Baelvyr muttered but didn't press the issue.
Beth returned with Blood in tow, and the rest of the group followed a second after, at which point Beth shut the gate. The others reacted, both to the gate shutting, and to Baelvyr's presence in the suite. While he wasn't as tall or quite as wide as Bjorn, he certainly had the titan on thickness, and not just because of his fat gut. Baelvyr was like slabs of concrete and steel layered together, to the point where Beth thought the person doing the layering had gotten a bit carried away.
"Baelvyr. Been a while," Kim greeted him, followed by Soph.
"Girlies," Baelvyr grunted.
"What's going on?" Kim asked, turning to Beth.
"Baelvyr has something for us," Beth said.
"Somethin' for them," Baelvyr said. "Sorry, girlies, but ya ain't quite got the strength. Gonna need a couple more rebirths under yer belts."
"Uh, I think we're all 'girlies,' here," Soph said. "Who do you mean?"
"Right. Those three," Baelvyr said, pointing at Beth and Sera and Blood. "The rest of ya, ain't got anythin' for ya right now."
"I guess we can take this chance to actually relax," Kim said with a sigh.
"Hey, it wasn't that bad," Beth said.
"I'm exhausted," Soph sighed.
"Well, no more easy levels for you," Beth said while rolling her eyes.
"Good. We need a break," said Sabs. "So, how long is this gonna take?"
"Could be a week, could be a couple months," Baelvyr shrugged. "Gotta contact somebody I know and get a little info. Ya got two days, unless I come get ya first, before we head out."
"Cool," Beth said, escorting Baelvyr to and out the door.
"Get yerself and the other two a couple more levels, girlie. Take the gloves off," Baelvyr grunted at her before tromping off down the hallway, his heavy footfalls echoing throughout the floor.
"Well, change of plans," Beth said, shutting the door. "Looks like we've got some work to do."
"Well, if we're done with your power, we've got other stuff to do," Kim said, waving at Soph and Sabs.
"Sure, don't let us keep you," Beth said, shaking her head.
"It's not like that," Kim said with a frown.
"Sure, sure," Beth replied, waving her hand.
"We'll get out of your hair," Sabs said, eagerly leading the other two out of the suite. Beth made sure the door was closed behind them.
"Well…there they go," Beth said, frowning.
"We have some work to do," Sera said.
"Yeah," Beth agreed to a groan from Blood. "Sorry about this, Neph, but it looks like you'll be on your own for a while."
"It's fine," Neph said with a laugh. "I'm only a couple years old, basically, and I'm almost at my second rebirth. What was that I heard a little bit ago, 'It's not a sprint, it's a marathon?'"
"Right, you're right," Beth said, taking out a crystal and tossing it to her. "Here, Spatial Step. I don't think my sisters learned it; you can see if anybody else wants to use it here, but remember, only one use a week."
"Right, got it," Neph said happily, making the crystal disappear into her storage.
"Now, you two," Beth said, glancing between Blood and Sera. "Are you ready?"
"No, but I suppose we have to be anyway," Blood said with a sigh, getting ready.
"Two days. Let's go hard," Beth said firmly, leading Blood and Sera into the gate.
Two days was twenty days within Beth's gate, allowing them to get more than a dozen levels. They were no longer restricting themselves to a pace that Neph could keep up with, allowing them to fight up eighty to a hundred levels and fight for days straight without a break. That allowed them to burn through the end of the high hundreds and into the low two hundreds in level. Beth stuck her head out of the gate after twenty days and found they still weren't needed, so they stuck around inside another hour or two objective time, getting them another close to day in subjective time of grinding.
They were interrupted when Baelvyr himself entered the gate, Beth able to feel the disturbance his entrance caused. He was so powerful that the whole place vibrated, like an invisible tidal wave rolled out in a circle from the gateway at the center. They cleaned up what they were doing and ran back to the gate quickly, finding him there, still in his armored pants and without a shirt, like usual, arms crossed and waiting. Beth gestured at him to leave first, and then the others followed behind, closing the gate after him. Neph, it turned out, had let him into the room, which would require a bit of a talking to for her about operational security, but it was fine in this instance.
"Ya got everythin'?" he asked them.
"We don't need much. Would be nice to shower, first," Beth replied.
"Ya got ten minutes, then I'm leavin', whether yer on the pad or not," Baelvyr said.
"Go, go, go," Beth said quickly, pushing the other two into the bathroom and into the shower. They cleaned up about as fast as they ever had, Beth helping Blood wash her fur to get them done even faster. They were dried in record time and back out into the common room, finding that Baelvyr had really left. The suite at least, as they found him waiting, somewhat patiently, in the teleporter room.
"Ya all clean or whatever now?" he asked grumpily.
"Cleanliness is important," Beth said calmly.
"Alright, come on, we got a long way to go," he said.
"We're teleporting. Won't this take just a minute?" asked Beth.
"We got three jumps, then we gotta take a ship there," he said. "This ain't gonna be a quick ride, so buckle up."
"Fine, let's go," Beth said, following him onto a teleporter.
"What's the destination?" asked Sera as she joined them, Blood following behind her silently.
"It's just called Red II. Ain't very creative," Baelvyr said before engaging the teleporter. When they arrived at the next stop, he continued as someone showed up to check them. "The system's way out in fuckin' nowhere. We gotta go through so much to get there because it's the ass end of nowhere."
"Emblems. Now," said the man that had showed up to check them.
"Keep yer pants on, kiddo," Baelvyr said, pulling out his emblem and showing the person, the metal clearly like nothing anyone else had.
"Is…is that a Mithril Emblem?" the guard asked.
"Ya can check it yerself, kid," Baelvyr grunted, waiting for him to recover and check all their emblems.
"Sorry, sir, standard procedure," he said.
"Yeah, yeah, good job and all that," Baelvyr grunted. "Let's go."
He led the others out of the CRA Hall and then across the city to a massive building that had swarms of people moving in and out. Beth was pretty sure other people weren't even scanning Baelvyr, it was just his sheer presence that had them subconsciously move out of his way. The building had to be at least fifty floors, and likely more, and they took a huge elevator up to the thirtieth floor, Beth pondering that most elevators she had encountered now were massive. They had to be, considering there were people like Baelvyr constantly using them, and anything that didn't have ten feet or more of head height and capacity for at least a few tons wouldn't last long. Also, considering Baelvyr's size and likely density, she was hoping the elevator was rated for quite a few tons; say, maybe twenty?
They arrived on the selected floor and followed the ogre down a massive hallway to a big room that had four very large teleporter platforms. They had to wait about five minutes to gain access to a pad, though that was really because Baelvyr had to apply for one and not because they were so busy that there was a line. When it was their turn, they hopped up and teleported to their next destination, Beth feeling the distortion as they teleported. The CRA teleporters didn't seem to rely on spatial magic to move people, though Beth had no idea what their core function was built on, but these teleporters definitely had some spatial stuff happening. Her spatially tuned senses and Spatial Resistance were both pinging, letting her know they were both detecting something. She wasn't, thankfully, resisting the teleport as it wasn't an attack, but she could feel through the resistance skill that the teleporter was altering space.
They popped up in a rather fancy room, but it wasn't anywhere as secure as Beth was used to, as nobody gave them even a cursory check. Baelvyr then led them to a CRA Hall, where they were easily allowed to access the teleporter room based on their badges. A third teleport brought them to the second-to-last destination, the world where they were going to catch a ship. Baelvyr apparently knew exactly where he was going and how to get there, as he took off as soon as their emblems were verified. He led them to a genuine, no joke spaceport, where they made way to a ship about three hundred feet in length. It wasn't the biggest around, or that Beth had seen, but it was a pretty damn impressive craft.
It was even more impressive on the inside, with both the interior and the components being rather high-end. Beth and the girls were given an impromptu tour when they met the owner of the ship, who was also Baelvyr's old contact and the other Senior Enforcer who would be helping him with the job they were about to do. She was a slightly tall, very curvy woman of some kind of species that Beth wasn't very familiar with, but she had skin that really reminded Beth of the texture of something like sandpaper. Based on her features, including a ton of large, sharp teeth, Beth was guessing some kind of shark species, though she didn't know how well one of them would do even in human form out of water, but the woman wasn't having trouble. She was close to the peak of Ascended, though Baelvyr said that was more than enough for what they were doing, and Beth was suspecting the man himself might just be a bit overkill.
"This is the engine room," the woman, Megoria, explained. "This is an old Star Shift X-5. Not the newest of the options for star drives that I could slap in this thing, but I got it very lightly used for quite cheap, only about four adamantine coins, which is a real steal. Checked the whole thing over myself and saw it had basically no problems, only a minor wobble in the fuel control system, something I could fix super easily. This thing will get us over to Red II in just under two days, and that's quick as hell."
Beth was more than happy to follow the woman around and listen to her, as was Sera, though Blood had ducked out some time before. Megoria clearly loved the ship and everything technical, and didn't mind spending quite a bit of time gushing about her baby, which it certainly was. The price of drive she had quoted was truly cheap, when Beth looked them up, and the starship itself was also extremely pricey. Whereas Beth's ship could fly through atmosphere easily, and didn't have too much trouble in space, as long as they didn't spend too long there, it wasn't up to the rigors of star travel. For a ship to be able to withstand what a star drive did, even though there were multiple kinds of star drives, it had to be better built and reinforced much more than something like Beth's ship.
They had already taken off before Megoria had even started the tour, and she finished by showing them the recreation room, as she called it, but Beth might call it the dining room. There was a well-equipped kitchen attached that could automatically cook a broad range of dishes and could be manually used to cook virtually anything. The rec room itself was spacious and luxuriously appointed, with a main table that was made of some kind of beautiful wood, surrounded by chairs of the same wood with plush upholstery. The whole place was also color-coordinated, and Beth made sure to pay plentiful compliments to their host, which made Megoria beam and Sera roll her eyes.
Comments
Clouffie
When it was there turn, they hopped up and teleported to their next destination - there should be their
PickledTink
---- "Let me asked Blood," ---- Typo: Should be "ask". ---- it had basically no problems, on a minor wobble in the fuel control system ---- Typo: the "on" should be "only" from context.
RedLeaf
Once more into the breech dear fiends. (Or something similar, especially with Baelvyr being the one "bossing" the op!)
bladepony games
Thanks for the chapter
