Limitless Path

After a minute they arrived in a large room with several pads on the floor and a control panel near each of them. If it wasn't obvious from just that, Beth noted the huge words in Universal Standard on the back wall spelling out “Teleportation Room” in large, block-font letters. Baelvyr strolled over to the platform and control interface on the far left of the room and tapped away at it for a moment before gesturing for the other two to stand on the platform. Beth glanced at Blood, but the wolf was already moving, stepping up onto the platform while sipping her drink. Beth mimed her, starting to really enjoy the spicy, hot, savory drink.

All three of them stood on the platform for a few seconds before it suddenly glowed a bright, light blue color, Beth realizing after a second it was a whole ton of runes on the platform glowing. There was a bit of a weird twisting sensation for half a second, though not as bad as jumping through the portals in the Trial of Celestial Awakening had been, and then they vanished with a slight pop. To Beth's senses it was the absolute briefest flashes of light and a slightly weird feeling, so fast she couldn't process it, and then they were in a nearly identical room. She could tell that it was a different room only thanks to the fact that it smelled slightly differently, the air having a bit of a different taste when she took a breath through her mouth as well.

Just as soon as Baelvyr stepped off the platform to lead them out, the doors to the room burst open and the first humanoid Beth had met to put the ogre to shame stomped in. The man, as his bare upper torso helped to highlight, was nearly ten feet tall, not counting his horns, and where Baelvyr was rather fat, though Beth still suspected some of that was a trick, this new arrival was all chiseled muscle. Strangely, even though it looked like he spent ten hours a day in the gym, his muscles didn't look grossly disproportional or too bulky for his frame, retaining a slightly more compact and, even though it was hard to tell just looking, dense configuration.

The man had a thick, long, shaggy mane of black hair, with two long, straight, white horns jutting nearly two feet from the top of his head, curving out slightly before protruding straight up. He had hooves instead of 'normal' feet, and thick hair on not just his chest and parts of his back, but parts of his arms as well. He was, of course, a minotaur, and a rather high level one.

Boros Bloodhoof, Level 398 Warlord Champion

"Baelvyr! You bloated bastard! What brings you here?" he boomed out in a voice like an angry thunderstorm.

"Lookin' for work, ya lazy ox," Baelvyr rumbled back, the two men gripping each other's forearms and slapping each other on the back. Despite being at a height disadvantage, for once, Beth did notice that Baelvyr's hands didn't really lose out in size as compared to the minotaur's.

"Ain't got any work here for ya, so I assume it's for them," Boros replied, tilting his head at Beth and Blood. "Hoh, where'd you get these two from?"

"They're natives, Bloodhoof," Baelvyr answered. "Got the shorter girlie at Silver already, the other one don't have any missions left."

"Ah, ah. We got a couple Silvers that we ain't got nobody to take yet," Boros said, turning and leading them out of the room. "Good thing you came now, though. They got a group up north that's doin' the same thing already. Four of 'em over level one hundred, though just barely, and they certainly ain't got twelve missions even between the two Halls up there."

"That's kinda surprising," Beth said, the minotaur turning to look back at her with a raised brow. "Well, it's just that some of the most dedicated people in our area are only in the sixties in level. I didn't really expect anybody to be much higher, but then again I guess we got here."

"Ain't that surprising," Boros grunted. "Just a numbers game. You know, only so many people even try to be Wayfarers, then only so many of them either survive or keep pushing to one hundred, then only so many of them start doing rebirths. But the numbers are still enough that you get handfuls of talents moving through the system."

"And then, not a lot of 'em wanna do this shit," Baelvyr grumbled, getting a nod from Boros in turn.

Passing by a group of people as they made their way to the elevator, Beth was a little surprised, both to see their levels, and their features. They were all in the forties in level, meaning that they were very likely from Earth originally and were leveling the first time. They were also all Asian, Beth having a sneaking suspicion that they weren't really in Kansas anymore. Taking the elevator up to the ground floor of the arena, they found even more people gathered around, including people using the arena floor to train or spar in mock duels. She didn't see any refs present, though there were two others that she assumed were Senior Enforcers based on their levels being over two hundred. That, and one of them was a dwarf while one was some type of siren or naga-type, though with legs and not a big tail.

Several of the people in the arena threw them some strange looks as they passed, likely interested both in Baelvyr and Blood, though Beth did feel she was getting quite a few looks herself. She simply ignored it, other than to Identify everyone she saw, whether they stared at her or not. Not that she expected anything to happen, but it never hurt to remain aware of one's surroundings and prepare for any eventuality. She noted that many of the people were at the top end of what she would expect in terms of level from most of the 'regular' people on Earth at this point. There were quite a few people in the forties and even fifties, though there were some in the thirties and even twenties around.

It was a little surprising just how many people there were, Beth starting to get some understanding when they entered the lobby and she caught a snippet of conversation. This Hall was apparently located in China, or what used to be China, and somewhere pretty heavily populated on top of that. That did go some way to explaining why the Hall had so many people, as China would have a high enough population that quite a few people would be able to get the golds to pay the entrance fee, especially if groups worked together to get enough for people to sign up one-by-one.

There were two Senior Enforcers taking care of the front desk, both with lines in front of them, and one person behind one of the side counters talking to a group of people. Boros ignored most of that, walking behind the counter with Baelvyr while Beth and Blood stood in front of it, though Beth leaned more than stood straight. Boros brought a screen up that Baelvyr apparently also could see, the ogre glancing at it before grunting and rolling his eyes slightly.

"Bad?" Beth asked.

"Welcome to the CRA, girlie," Baelvyr responded sardonically.

"Bad, then," Beth said, eliciting a growl from Blood.

"We got two for you," Boros said. He continued when both Beth and Blood just grunted at him, "We got a gate clear mission, and we got a search and destroy."

"And those are what, exactly?" Beth asked.

"First one is a gate that needs to be cleared. Lots of strong beasts, possibly multiple objectives. You passed the Silver test, I don't need to explain this to you," he answered with a snort. "Other one is a dungeon or something out there, pumping out dangerous beasts, nobody in the area strong enough to track it down and deal with it, which is where you come in."

"Well, that gets us two of the three," Beth said, turning to Blood who just shrugged. "Sign her up for those."

"You good with that?" Boros asked Blood, the wolf nodding in response as she presented her emblem. Boros took it and registered the missions, Beth glancing around as he did so, seeing they were getting quite a few side-eyes, though a component of that could also be they had been speaking in Universal Standard since they had started talking with Boros. People didn't seem to mind her looking, either, staring back at her while she continued her scan.

"Alright, done," Boros said, handing Blood's emblem back to her.

"We good?" Beth asked, the two Senior Enforcers looking at each other before giving them a nod.

"You've got the coordinates," Boros said, Blood sharing them with Beth as he said it.

"Yeah, we know where we're going," Beth replied.

"Then got outta here," Baelvyr grumbled, stomping out from behind the counter followed by Boros. The two disappeared back into the depths of the Hall, likely to drink heavily, while Blood and Beth headed out of the Hall itself. The hall was within some city, what Beth would have said were the outskirts if it weren't China and the outskirts still meant fairly heavy urbanization. Their destinations weren't heavily urbanized, however, and they immediately set course for the actual outskirts of the city and the wilder areas.

There was a point where someone who looked very much like military or military police tried to stop them as they left the city but, unfortunately for him, they didn't speak his language and were a hundred and twenty levels above him, so they just hightailed it. Beth had forgotten they were both masked now, the headpiece so comfortable that it slipped her mind she was wearing it, which would go at least some of the way to explaining the strange looks and attempted stops. She shrugged a little after remembering why they might be getting the reactions they were, following Blood through an area of cultivated farmland, guessing based on what she could see that it was used for soybeans.

The land itself, once they had made it out of the dense city area, was quite beautiful, with quite a bit of greenery. Beth wasn't sure how much of that was what the area had been like and how much was what the changes brought about by the Path had altered the area. The land was largely flat, with a few hills interspersed in the area, and part of a chain of mountains just visible in the distance. If Beth's estimates were right, that would be their second destination of the day, checking her communicator to see exactly where on Earth they were and where they had to go. It appeared they were somewhat near the center of what had been China, though that was at the western edge of where most of the population lived, as most of the western half of the country was desert and largely uninhabited.

They moved into a dense forest area before finding the first stop of the day, Beth a little surprised at just how many people were still around. They passed a few people early on even after they had left the city limits, and then passed by a small town that was full to the brim with people twenty minutes later. Even after the world changed and so much danger and uncertainty had led to so many peoples' deaths or relocation, there were still people everywhere here.

Fortunately, there weren't any people in the deeper wilds, nobody around to possibly get in the way as they took care of the first of the missions for Blood. Sweeping the dungeon that was pumping out the beasts was the closer of the two missions despite Boros explaining it second, and was what they tackled first. Pretty much everybody else would have been unable to complete this, excluding the group Boros had been talking about already hitting a hundred themselves, but the level one-ten to one-fifteen enemies weren't much of a challenge for the two of them, even despite their numbers. Clearing the dungeon itself took a little longer only because it was a sprawling complex of twisted corridors and multiple floors; not a true maze, per se, but merely a dense series of rooms and halls that took a long time to even run through to get to the end.

That was the easy task crossed off the list, despite being a Silver mission, and now it was time for the hard task. The first thing they had to do was head into the mountains to the west, moving into an area of extremely dense forest filled with roaming beasts. It was fairly normal at first, at least as far as Beth could tell, but Blood unerringly led them to an area of far greater danger. Perfect for a Silver mission.

The beasts had largely been forest predators, though they had encountered a large tiger at one point, something they didn't exactly bump into daily back at home. It had been a beast and not an animal and they had taken care of it rather quickly, it only being level sixty and not particularly strong even for that level, though Beth was having a little trouble judging just how powerful something that much lower than her was anymore. Blood had ventured into a dense thicket of bamboo ahead of Beth, continuing her scouting responsibilities no matter what it was they were currently up to, so she was the first to notice the changes to the beasts. Increased levels, increased aggression, and an increased number of them were all pretty good indications they were on the right track for the second mission for Blood.

The beasts just didn't stop, the numbers only growing as they pushed their way through the dense thicket of bamboo poles, the plants spread out just enough to give some room to move without leaving any large gaps. Bamboo itself seemed to have taken to the changes with gusto, the plants growing even larger, thicker at the middle and with longer segments, than what they would do naturally. A little testing on Beth's part, with some judicious application of force, showed that they were also quite resilient, much moreso than many the of the trees that were adapting to all the mana at a slower pace.

The beasts they were fighting were like some combination of a great ape and a turtle or tortoise; massive, hairy bastards with heavy shells on their backs and huge, terribly sharp fangs in their mouths. They would fight in packs and the sound of combat would draw many from the surroundings, groups of four or five at first, turning into dozens by the time they were an hour in. The levels were nothing to sneeze at, either, as they started in the low hundreds but, by the time the two had gotten near the source of the problem in late afternoon, they were fighting dozens of level one hundred forty to one hundred forty-five shell howlers. They were tough enough that even Beth would need a couple strong hits to take them out unless she burned a ton of mana for each one, something that simply wasn't possible with the numbers they were facing.