Limitless Path

They returned to the Hall, Beth grumbling more and more as the claws and tail of the corpse kept constantly getting stuck on everything. She didn't give up because she knew that the whole thing would be very valuable. It was just annoying that it was too big to fit in a necklace, and way too tough for them to cut up in any reasonable amount of time. That, and Beth was a little scared of cutting apart something valuable that had survived their fairly brutal killing of the beast.

She dropped the corpse outside the back of the CRA Hall before making a call. After a handful of the same annoying rings, that she actively went into the settings and changed as the call connected, Jaq picked up.

"What?" he demanded.

"Uh, can you come outside by where the garage lets out?" she asked.

"I can," he replied calmly and then waited.

"Jaq. Just do it," she huffed angrily.

"Fine," he said, hanging up. A single second later, with a *whoosh*, Jaq appeared beside them. "A beast corpse. How fascinating."

"How much would it be worth?" Beth asked him.

With a "hmm," he jumped up on the beast's back and began to examine it. After a minute, he returned to beside them, commenting, "I'll give you ten golds for it as it is now."

"Can you help us harvest it?" Beth then asked.

"I could, but I won't," he replied, raising a hand to forestall her objection. "Get Elana or Tazeen to help you. They'd enjoy the work and teaching you the details far more than I. They also have far less to do than I currently do. Is there anything else you need?"

"Yeah, can you take a look at this?" Beth asked, pulling out the heart.

"A low- to mid-level alchemist would give their right arm for this," he replied after a moment. "They could concoct a pill or elixir that gives a permanent bonus to someone's willpower and mental strength, likely also greatly increasing their WIS stat."

"How much?" Beth asked, glancing between him and the flower.

"I would recommend keeping it," he replied calmly. "But I would buy it from you for three platinums."

"Eh, as much as I love getting more money, I really don't need it right now," Beth replied with a shrug, putting the heart away.

"If that's all, I will return to what I was doing," he said, waiting a moment before disappearing with a slight bang.

Beth hadn't gotten all the Enforcer's contact links yet, and she left Blood to watch the corpse, not that she thought anything would happen to it. Nobody but any of the Enforcers could lift it or even cut into it, nor did she think any of the few beasts near the Hall could do anything to it. Still, better to be in the habit of good practices than forget and screw up some time when it was more important and far riskier.

She made her way down to the forge first, deciding to check the farthest location and go from there. It was a good decision, as it turned out, as Elana was down there, coaching two people on the basics of Smithing. Beth frowned a little and gave a bit of a slight wince, thinking that her Smithing had been really languishing. She'd gotten a little practice in after coming back from the Trial, but that was just keeping her skills from degrading. Not that skills ever actually de-leveled, but she didn't want to get out of the habit.

Shaking off the thought, she got Elana's attention, the Smith signaling her to wait a moment as she finished going over something. When she was done, the other two moved back to their workstations and started on something, something that looked suspiciously like hinges, while Elana walked over to her.

"Whaddya need?" she asked. "Here for more lessons?"

"Not right now. Was actually wondering if you could lend me a hand? Oh, and if I could get your contact info?" Beth asked, a little surprised as Elana immediately reached her hand out to shake.

"What do you need a hand with?" she followed-up.

"Hauled in something big. Dead. Need help cutting it apart," she explained.

"Let me get John, and we'll look at it," Elana replied.

"John? Not Tazeen?"

"Yeah, John," Elana explained. "Tazeen knows his stuff, but we shouldn't pull him from the front desk too much, for now. John's actually the best at taking stuff apart, anyway, and I'm sure he's shirking responsibility somewhere."

Beth just shrugged, turning and heading out of the forge as Elana signaled with her hand to lead the way, likely already sending John a message. They trooped back up through the building, walking out through the garage, which had several more accesses than just through Jaq's shop. Beth turned her head as they got near the ramp that one would normally drive up, starting only a little as she saw John walking behind Elana.

"Holy hell, when'd you get here?" she breathed, turning to walk backwards, a trick easily accomplished with her DEX.

"As soon as El messaged me, I walked over," he replied non-chalantly.

"I kinda hate that everyone here can just walk and basically teleport," Beth muttered, earning herself two snorts. Neither of the senior Enforcers actually said anything, though, and she left it at that, leading them up the ramp and over to the corpse.

"This is it?" John asked, but it seemed rhetorical, as he immediately began examining the corpse. "Not a bad haul."

"We've usually been a lot more focused on killing them versus harvesting them," Beth commented. "Neither of us really know what we're doing here."

"Firstly, you have knives?" John asked. When both the girls just stared at him blankly, he sighed and produced a bevy of knives that somehow floated in front of him. "Grab one."

Beth stared at the knives a little suspiciously for a moment, but then stepped over and grabbed the hilt of one, finding it didn't resist being picked up at all. She looked at the knife, not at all familiar with them as either weapons or tools, and then looked back at John. He just stared at the two of them for a second before sighing and rubbing his eyes. Grabbing a third knife, he said, "Watch what I do."

A knife also appeared in Elana's hand, and the two senior enforcers moved over to the corpse, the two girls following after. John pointed a section between the heavy plates, explaining how to cut into the hide in the gap before demonstrating. Even though he was purposefully moving slowly, Beth almost couldn't follow what he did, as his movement was so precise and efficient that he completed it very quickly even without putting much force into his arm. He demonstrated again on a different seam between two of the plates, Beth at least understanding that he was focusing on cutting one of the heavy plates totally off the thick, rubbery hide underneath.

After he had demonstrated several times, with even Elana watching his technique the first couple, the dwarf moved around and continued the same work, starting to cut the plates free. Beth and Blood, meanwhile, worked on one plate together with John watching on, guiding them on how to do it. It wasn't exactly the first time they had taken apart a beast corpse, but it had mostly been Blood doing it before, and she had usually just been digging for beast cores. Having a corpse that was highly valuable, where basically everything could be used and needed to be carefully removed, was a bit of a new experience for them.

"I'm surprised there isn't a skill for this," Beth said, wiping her brow as they set the first plate aside and started on the second.

"Well…there sort of is?" John replied, drawing the answer out a bit as he waggled his hand back and forth.

"What does that mean? There's sort of a harvesting skill?" Beth asked.

"There's no harvesting skill, only what you might get as a bit of knowledge from something like Leatherworking or Alchemy," John denied with a shake of his head. He continued, "But there are looting skills. Those would basically do the work for you, though they're total dogshit at lower levels. Pricey, in all senses."

"You mean, there are skills that just automatically harvest everything?" Beth asked as the two girls got a second huge plate free.

"Eh, yeah, basically," John said, again non-committally. "There's some powers, including subsets of eye powers, that let you analyze what exactly is valuable on a corpse. Then, there's powers that let you split a corpse apart and pile up all the good shit. The second kind work in a couple different ways, but they're rare, so not many people at all have one. Besides, they're super wasteful."

"So, they're just not good?" Beth asked, cutting through some skin to get the third plate free.

"Nah, I didn't say that," John shook his head. "Early on, they do a piss-poor job at…well, their job. They don't take the beasts apart that efficiently, or even quickly, and you wind up ruinin' more than what you salvage. That's why I say they're a big waste. Sure, later on a lot of them do a great job, even better than some skilled harvesters, and some of them can sometimes get you a bit of extra loot, but they ain't popular."

"I'm guessing nobody likes having somebody on the team that turns hundreds of valuable beast corpses into chopped liver?" Beth asked as she set the third plate on their growing pile.

"Hundreds? Try tens of thousands," John replied with a cackle. "You got it right on the first guess. Now, don't dig the knife in that deep, girl."

They continued chatting and dissecting, John showing them what to do for every part, including claws, fangs, skin, tendons, bones, organs, blood, and even how to efficiently spot the beast core location, if there was one, and harvest it with minimal fuss. In the end, they had piles of stuff, mainly chunks of beast spread out on a tarp, as well as some large bottles of blood and other items. It had taken a couple hours to get everything pulled apart, sorted, and now stored, and Beth was seriously tired, though it was more mental than physical.

"Is this even worth it? We've just been grabbing beast cores as we go and ignoring the rest…" She said, sighing as she sat on the bloody grass. Stealing a comfortable chair to put in her necklace was still on her to-do list.

"Hella worth it," John scoffed. "Sure, you prolly got a couple silver for killin' this bastard, and sure, you probably get a couple gold coins for ripping its core out and sellin' it, but this," he gestured at the 'loot' as he finished speaking, "this is worth way more. You're talking at bare minimum fifteen, but probably closer to twenty golds worth of stuff. Now, you had to spend time harvesting it, and you gotta sell it, which will take a little more time, but think about all the stuff even just over level one hundred you'll be fighting. Pulling out just a fraction more components from all those beasts is diamonds-no, scratch that-mithril coins worth of extra dosh."

"I guess it just depends on how much time you have," Beth said with a shrug.

"Money can save you time in a lot of ways," John replied, crossing his arms with a firm nod.

"Well, I'm not that worried about time, though I do really like money, but I hear you," Beth said with a shrug, getting only a grunt and a shrug from John in response.

"Go ahead and put all this away," John said then. "There's no one watching."

Beth and Blood stored the materials in their necklaces, making everything disappear in a few seconds. They thanked the two for helping them, both of the senior Enforcers refusing any payment for the hour's worth of help. John did, however, disappear immediately, quite literally vanishing before their very eyes. The two followed Elana back inside, now that they were done with everything, wanting to head back to the room and shower. The butchering had not been anything other than a total mess.

"Should stop by the forge soon," Elana said.

"Yeah, I know," Beth sighed. "I really need to push into Journeyman in Smithing at this point."

"Yes, you won't really be able to use those materials until you're at least Journeyman, if not high into Journeyman," Elana explained before parting with them.

"I'll hit you up later," Beth replied before walking down a separate hallway.

The two returned to the apartment and washed off, showering before heading out into the living room. Beth sat on the couch to write up a quick report, wanting just a couple paragraphs to document what they had found at the first location. She would have to do something similar for everything they found, and then turn it all in as a final report to clear the mission. They had another five locations to explore to complete the initial request from Jaq, and she was hoping they wouldn't encounter anything too crazy at any of them. She was always up for a challenge, but she just wanted to get her qualifications for Silver and then start working on Blood's. Besides that, they also had lots of other interesting things piled up, including whatever the dome and portal in the kobold area were.

They relaxed for the rest of the day, finding that Sabs had stirred herself at some point, but only to go up and sit in the lounge for an hour or two and chat with a few people she had befriended. She was very much in break mode, which Beth could appreciate, and they all spent some time together before Beth and Sabs spent some time with just the two of them.

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