LimitlessPath
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Limitless Path Chapter One Hundred Fifty-Nine
🕑 Added 2023-12-20 18:00:04 +0000 UTCBeth returned a quick, low-powered swing that the man deflected, but she was able to quickly recover from the swing thanks to the little strength she had used. She was able to immediately return a second swing back into the man, slicing his arm before he could respond. As he moved to swing at her again to retaliate, she intercepted his hammer strike by punching out with her right hand, still wrapped around the hilt of her sword. She moved at the same time to smash her left fist into his face, getting blocked by his free right hand, which was exactly as she had suspected. She completed her sequence of attacks by lashing out with an empowered kick, hearing a distinctive CRUNCH as her mana steel boot connected with his right knee, thoroughly breaking it.
The opponent staggered to the side, Beth taking advantage of that by punching him right in the face with her left hand. He staggered even more, nearly toppling as she followed up with two more rapid punches to the face before swinging her sword in a tight arc, putting her left hand back on the hilt as the blade came around. The man tried to block, rather unsuccessfully, and Beth's sword took him in the jaw. It was a messy hit, cleaving part of his jaw away, but not actually killing the man. Beth corrected that right away, reversing her swing as the man staggered away and screamed, cleaving apart his head with a powerful strike.
Beth levered her blade free, brushing at the hot blood that had splattered across her face before she moved on. There was a woman in the next room, trying to frantically gather documents, an effort she gave up as Beth entered. She didn't give Beth any time to do anything, also immediately attacking her with a set of long, curved knives. The woman wore a chain vest and simple leather pants, her only other equipment apart from the daggers being a set of short boots. She attacked with several tight, vicious swings, trying to catch a weak point in Beth's armor.
Unfortunately for the woman, Beth was faster, stronger, and certainly more skilled than the woman trying to slice her open. Even using a much heavier weapon against the smaller woman's light, quick blades, Beth was not only able to parry her strikes, but even start applying pressure with swings of her own. It took only a handful of seconds before the woman's weapons had been knocked far enough out of position that Beth was able to take advantage of a large opening, using a Monstrous Blow empowered strike to cleave right through the woman's right elbow. The woman both flailed and screamed at the same time, reeling back at the loss of a limb, an opening that Beth used, stepping forward and twisting with a massive swing, delivering a beheading to put the woman out of her misery.
Beth moved through the rest of the offices, but it appeared no one else was either brave, or stupid, enough to stick around to face whatever elite squad was raiding the place. That the elite squad was an eighteen-year-old with a big sword and no experience didn't matter nearly as much as the force and skill Beth brought to bear. She finished with the office area and returned to the main entryway, ready to move into the warehouse area.
She crashed through the door into the main warehouse area, finding a huge, open, two-story room that was half-full of boxes and pallets. Beth's inner loot goblin twitched slightly at seeing everything assembled, only dampened by the knowledge that this was a pure simulation. Even the fact that much of the present loot was likely illegal to a degree didn't dissuade her, but she refocused on scanning the area for any other hostiles or anything out of the ordinary. Just as she was confirming it was safe, she heard Blood in her head.
'We had four flee out the back, sister. I'm tracking two of them now,' Blood said.
'I'll follow after. Update me on your position,' Beth said.
What proceeded from there was a slow chase across part of the city. The criminals had slowed down shortly after they had gotten a few blocks from the warehouse, trying to blend in with the regular traffic as they made their way to a different location. Beth was then daisy-chained at the very back, following several blocks behind Blood as she tailed the two. The two criminals led them through the streets for over an hour until they eventually sharply changed direction, moving for another two minutes before entering a large, somewhat dilapidated building. It wasn't a building that they had on their lists for the criminal gang, but they now suspected it of being a related location.
'What are the chances that we somehow found their main hideout,' Beth asked.
'It wouldn't be that strange. Based on the files, and the ones I followed earlier, many of the lower ranking members of this gang are not particularly bright. It would not be especially surprising that they ran to the main base as soon as they were threatened,' Blood replied.
'I think we move back for now and regroup. We might just complete the scenario if we take this place. Let's call up that extra help and get it done,' Beth replied.
Blood agreed and the two returned through the streets to city hall, making their way back to the same room they had been using before. Beth requested for one of the guards to get them some cloths and materials they could use to clean their gear, which they set about doing a few minutes later. Beth would also really like a shower as well, but she preferred to wait, knowing that they would be going back out in a moment. She then contacted Walter to request he have the prepared "clean" squad assembled, with him informing her they would be ready and in the briefing room in twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes later, three young women and a young man entered the room, fully armed and armored. Beth could see a few eyes widen and a few eyebrows raised when they spotted her, considering that even though they were young, they were still four or five years older than she was. Even so, they respectfully assembled across from her and came to a form of attention, waiting for her orders. Beth pulled out a map of the northern part of the district where they had just been less than an hour ago before looking across to the team. The three women all had elven features, while the man appeared to be a relatively run-of-the-mill human.
"Advisor Walter has told me the four of you are at my disposal while we take care of this gang matter. Are you aware of that?" she asked.
"Yes, ma'am. We were informed of your arrival and mission, and that we are to assist in any manner possible," replied the tallest of the three women.
"We've identified a possible high-value location used by the gang," Beth explained. "In an earlier raid on this location," Beth pointed at the warehouse they had raided earlier, "we found some documents pointing to several other locations. The key information, however, was corroborated when we followed two survivors of the assault to a previously undiscovered location, which we suspect is a key facility, if not the key facility."
"Excuse me, ma'am, but survivors?" asked the young man with a concerned lilt in his voice.
"I decided that the quickest way to get some answers was to go in, as the saying goes, 'hard and fast,'" Beth replied calmly. "Quite a few gang members didn't survive my assault. Walter has already been informed."
"Just…just you, ma'am?" asked the shortest of the three women.
"Ah, I'm a member of the White Hall, if that explains anything," Beth stated calmly, noting the definite widening of four sets of eyes when she said that. Technically, she wouldn't really be considered a full member, at least not by the Senior Enforcers, until she had a Silver Emblem, but others didn't necessarily need to know that.
"R-right, well, we're ready for whatever you have in mind," the first woman replied.
"Well, despite my White Hall credentials, I tend to go in fast and hard and sort out the details later. My plan, such as it is, is to surround the building and assault it from both the back and the front at the same time. Our objective is killing or subduing anyone inside as quickly as possible, with as little collateral damage as possible. Stopping the gang's operations is our number one goal, and making sure we have the evidence to know that we've pulled the weeds out by the roots will be important."
"And you want us to support this assault, ma'am?" the woman asked.
"Yes. Blood," Beth replied, nodding at the wolf, "and I will hit the back and front of the building, respectively. I hope to have the four of you follow in behind and play support as we clean the place out."
"We're ready, ma'am," said the young man. "Just lead the way."
Beth and Blood reversed the path they had taken just thirty minutes before, leading the group of specialized guards to the new gang location they had found. Beth split the group, keeping the man and the shortest of the women with her while the other two women went with Blood to circle around the block. After giving them a minute to get in position, Beth initiated the attack on the hideout. This place had no guards outside, at least, not visible guards, and Beth moved up to the door before smashing her armored fist into it. A little unnecessary, perhaps, but she was really starting to enjoy breaking down doors with her fist.
The dilapidated building was two floors and was not a warehouse this time around, meaning it was packed with smaller rooms and hallways. The entry was a narrow affair with three different open hallways leading deeper into the building. Beth picked a direction and executed on it, sprinting down the left hallway until she was nearly clotheslined by a door opening, likely in response to her initial entry. She converted her momentum into a single massive strike, punching apart the door and sending the short woman standing behind it staggering.
The two engaged in a quick, brutal combat, with Beth willing to take a hit, which glanced off her armor, to dish out a much more devastating blow of her own. The woman she was fighting was rather lightly armored, wearing only a few pieces of boiled leather armor over her torso, not nearly enough to stop Beth. A handful of powerful blows once the woman was staggered from the first massive hit had her reeling, and Beth took advantage of her disorientation to hammer her face and neck, a rain of blows that cracked the criminal's skull and destroyed her throat. Beth finished the fight with a partially empowered punch to the face, sending the woman's ugly mug smashing back into her own brain.
Beth continued through the first floor, hearing fighting in the distance as she ran into a half-orc warrior. This was an even easier fight than the first, as the man made use of a massive maul, which was decidedly unwieldy in the fairly small room they were fighting within. He also didn't quite have the raw strength to hammer through the walls and ceiling, the materials used to build them clearly having come from trees and stone that had long been in a higher mana environment. Eventually, the materials produced on Earth would be similar, or even tougher, depending on the amount of mana concentration the planet settled out at.
For this encounter, however, the mana infusion in the building, despite its run-down appearance, was enough to mostly stop the swings of the massive hammer the large man waved about with abandon. The wild fighting style might have been good in an open area, and if the man had others backing him up, but with the woman dead, he was alone in the room with Beth. She had drawn her blade and used it to make slight adjustments to his swings, knocking them into the walls before slashing him with quick horizontal chops. The man was wearing a chain shirt and heavy cloth pants, but the chain didn't really matter, as her blade chopped it apart nearly as easily as the cloth of his pants.
A series of three swings from the man, even more wild as his frustration grew, ended with a massive overhead slam that Beth easily sidestepped. She stepped forward with her left foot, slamming it down into the head of his hammer to further wedge it in the floor as she swung an empowered strike into and through the top of his head, cleaving off the upper three inches of his skull. The blow was clearly fatal, as Beth got a notification as soon as his head was cleaved open. She continued on through the room now that the opponent was dead, sprinting down another dimly lit hallway before entering a smoky, dark room that was larger than the others she had encountered so far. It was at least thirty feet to a side, and there was something like ten people inside in various states, several of them seeming to be using some sort of drug, likely the source of the smoke.
Beth was a little concerned that there might be some civilians mixed up in this mess, but was faintly relieved when every single person in the room rose to fight her, some of them in a much more slapdash manner than others. She focused on the ones that seemed the least inebriated first, grimacing a little at the smoke and haze in the air. She engaged in an exchange of blows with a short woman that ended fairly abruptly when Beth's left fist found its way past her guard and into the woman's neck, crushing her throat and sending her toppling. Even if it wasn't a fatal wound, she wouldn't be getting back up and returning to the fight any time soon.
The next three minutes were a blur of rapid slashes, punches, and kicks, as Beth danced around the room, crippling and killing everyone present. The two biggest and strongest within the space gave her a good run for her money, cracking a few scales on her chest armor with two heavy hits she could neither block nor deflect, but even they fell to her relentless onslaught. She noted during the later part of the fight that her two shadows had followed her into the room and had subdued an opponent, each now working on their second set of criminals. Beth provided assistance once the rest of the room was clear, taking down the last two criminals in conjunction with the specialized guards.
She didn't stop there, leaving the two guards to catch their breaths and clean up the aftermath, moving out right away to try to clear the rest of the building. She found the first floor was fully finished, Blood and her two escorts having taken care of the rest of the resistance down here, so she quickly found a staircase and joined them on the second. Most of the floor up here was empty, a decent number of the rooms around the area dedicated to sleeping quarters. Considering it was early evening, almost all of the bedrooms were empty, with only a few people on the floor total.
Comments
Garrett Byers
What an interesting theory.
hill44
Couple of things said and hinted at are giving me the suspicion that the big level 100 change for Blood might just be a humanoid form.
bladepony games
Thanks for the chapter
