Limitless Path

Beth leaped off Blood and landed in the yard with a thump, straightening up and making her way over to the far side of the right-hand table. The group was looking at her with expressions ranging from mild questioning to near shock, but she ignored them for the moment. She stopped beside Sabs and reached down, Sabs managing to get out a, "Beth, you-AWK!" before Beth grabbed her by the waist and picked her up. She then sat in the chair and plonked Sabs down in her lap to another stifled, "awk!"

Beth grabbed the forearms of her gauntlets and twisted them slightly, which loosened their hold, and then she tugged them off. Once she set them on the table with a hearty thump, she circled her arms around Sabs' midriff and squeezed her lightly. Sabs was an interesting shade of red at this point, and she grabbed one of the gauntlets and grunted as she lifted it.

"What the hell are these?" she asked.

"Gauntlets," Beth answered with a slight smirk.

"Thanks, I couldn't figure that out myself. I meant, where'd you get them?" Sabs said with a quick elbow back into Beth's side, followed by her immediately rubbing said elbow.

"The CRA Hall, which leads to good news," Beth replied. "I happened to stumble on a pot of gold today, in a manner of speaking. We have enough for emblems for everyone."

"May I just interject to ask, what emblems? And who is 'everyone?'" their father cut in, clasping his hands on the table before him.

"I think I might have shown this before?" she said a little confusedly, removing her right arm from Sabs' waist to make her emblem appear in her hand. She tossed it to her father, who caught it with a surprisingly adept movement. "That gives me access to the CRA, which has a bunch of resources I can use. They're two golds a piece, and I have enough now to get Soph, Kim, and Sabs one each. But they have to come with me to the Hall and sign up themselves."

Her father looked at the emblem carefully but wasn't really able to glean anything from it. It was just a heavy copy badge in his hands. After inspecting it in detail for some time, he returned it to Beth with a quick toss. She held a hand up and touched the emblem with a finger as it flew through the air, making it disappear back into the section in her status page. Sabs, meanwhile, had finished inspecting the gauntlet and set it back on the table with a heavy thump.

"How can you even lift these, let alone fight in them?" she asked as she leaned back against Beth.

"I have really high STR stat now," Beth replied calmly.

"And what constitutes high STR now?" asked Zack, sipping on a brown drink of some kind that Beth guessed was whisky.

"Over sixty now," she threw out casually, causing Zack to choke on his whisky and several people to exclaim in shock. Right as the noise died down, she said, "Is there food, by the way?"

"Yeah, come on," Sabs responded as the rest were still recovering, standing up with Beth letting her go as she did. Sabs led her into the house, where Beth stopped to take off her boots and armor in the mudroom. She went to throw on a pair of old shoes, but stopped as she realized they were rather too small thanks to her recent spate of growth spurts.

Sabs was already pulling food out of the fridge, and Beth joined her as they prepared a huge amount of food, making sure to brush against her at every opportunity. As they worked, they talked, Sabs asking about her day. Beth gave a quick overview of the trial, not going into too much detail as she knew the others would likely ask about it.

"So, you got all this money from fighting those enemies in the trial?" Sabs asked after a minute.

"Nope, not at all. Killing beasts makes you pennies. I got it by wandering around on the floors after we cleared them and finding rare stuff that I sold to Jaq," she replied.

"Rare stuff like what? And who is Jaq?" Sabs replied quizzically.

"We found these fruits that were really good that we ate, which reminds me…" Beth replied, pulling out the seeds that she had transferred from her destroyed jeans to the new pants.

"Those pants are really nice, by the way," Sabs said as Beth put the seeds on the counter, giving Beth's butt a quick squeeze as she walked by.

"I’d tell you to stop that, but I don’t mind it," said Beth. "Anyway, there was a bunch of mana silver ore, some flowers that were mana herbs, a poisonous flower, some weird mushrooms, some monster plant crystal hearts, and some golem cores. I think that was everything?"

Beth put a huge bowl of water on the ground for Blood, who had followed them inside, before continuing with the food prep. "Jaq is one of the people at the CRA Hall. I'll take everybody there tomorrow and you'll likely meet him then. He runs the commissary, which basically just acts like a shop."

"And we'll buy our stuff from him?" Sabs asked.

"Well, if by stuff you mean armor and weapons, yeah. The emblems we'll take care of at the front desk, probably with Tazeen. And before you ask, he's an elf. Like, a really stoic elf, like, the kind of guy for whom a raised eyebrow tells a whole story," Beth replied.

"Sounds pretty interesting. Can't wait for tomorrow," Sabs said, putting several plates on the island. Beth, at the same time, pulled several trays out of the oven and set them on the stovetop to cool for a little. The two of them finished with everything else, Beth dropping a couple pieces of fruit with soft skin into a bowl for Blood. A minute or so later she felt like she had waited long enough, grabbing the stuff from the oven and putting some of it down for Blood. The rest went on the island for her, and she sat next to Sabs to start eating.

Sabs scooted her stool closer to Beth and leaned against her while she was eating, leaning her forearms on the table at the same time. Beth tore through the food quickly, devouring pretty much everything they had prepared in a handful of minutes. As she was finishing, Sabs lent a helping hand in starting the cleaning, taking a number of the plates to the sink. Beth finished the last of the food and took the last bowl she had been using for a salad to the sink, stepping up behind Sabs as she put the bowl down. She then snaked her arms around Sabs' waist and leaned down, nibbling on her ear a little while she rinsed everything out.

"Hey, come on, stop that," Sabs muttered, very little force in the command.

"But you're so short and cute, how can I resist?" Beth mumbled in her ear, kissing her earlobe before moving up the curve of her ear. Sabs continued to quickly clean what she was working on, but Beth could feel her shudder as she kept kissing. When Sabs had finally rinsed everything off, she turned with a sharp movement and planted her lips firmly against Beth's, holding it for a long moment before breaking off and slipping out of Beth's arms.

"Let's go back out for now before they send a search party. We can continue that later," she said with a wink, a slight pink color in her cheeks. Beth grinned wolfishly as she darted after Sabs, Blood trailing leisurely behind.

The three returned to the tables outside, Beth getting more glances now that she was rid of the armor and her new clothes were on display. They sat in the same place, with Beth pulling Sabs onto her lap, and Beth went over some of the information she had on the CRA to explain what they would be doing and getting into tomorrow.

"So, this is some kind of para-military police force that you are getting involved in?" asked their mother skeptically.

"Sort of, but it’s a lot more than that. It's one of the biggest and most respected organizations in the universe, offering training and instruction in basically everything. Yes, acting like police and lawyers is something they do, but that's only entrusted to higher ranking members. I don't think even Silver members are at that level, I think you have to have a gold emblem to get involved in that kind of thing. And upgrading all the way to gold is expensive, difficult, and time-consuming," Beth replied adroitly.

"I would still like to check this place out myself," Rachel replied.

"I mean, you can come along tomorrow. It's just that you won't be getting an emblem, so you can only take care of some things in the lobby. I'm sure Tazeen and/or whoever is there will answer any questions you have," Beth said.

"And why won't I be getting an emblem?" Rachel asked, arching a brow quite pointedly.

"Because I can't afford it?" Beth answered with a slight bit of sass, raising her own brows in response.

"How much could it be? We're not poor," Rachel continued, with both Thomas and Zack nodding as well.

"Uh, sorry to shatter your hopes and dreams mom, but we're hella poor. Guess we should have this talk now," Beth responded with a sigh.

"What do you mean, sweetie?" Thomas interjected, seeing the early signs of his wife building up a full head of steam.

"You know there's new money, right? The coins we've seen?" Beth asked, raising her right hand from Sabs' waist to take out a copper and display it to the group. Zack and Thomas had been sitting at the second table, but they pulled their chairs over so everyone was around the right-hand table, looking at the coin Beth displayed.

"Yeah, we've been training up some people with the other girls' help and a few people have some coppers, but not much to use them on," Zack replied with a firm nod.

"Well, OK, so, how hard do you think it is to get money?" Beth asked the group.

"It's been OK for us, but we've had to pool our money a couple times in the past week-and-a-half to afford just one thing each time," replied Kim.

"Right. It's like this; we've cleared out the two dungeons by here several times, and each time we each get one silver. We've had to pool together all that money, and Blood gets a silver too, just to afford one simple, low-quality item," Beth explained. "A membership with the CRA costs two GOLDS minimum per person, which is like two hundred silvers. So, we were thinking that just to get one more person an emblem we would need to farm dungeons as much as twenty days. Two dungeons a day, five silvers for all of us a dungeon makes ten silvers, then two hundred divided by ten is twenty."

"Alright, I am already starting to understand," said Thomas with a nod.

"Right, and you have to consider the dungeons are pretty difficult. At least, for the group before we had levels and skills and even skill levels, it was a pretty risky thing to clear them. So, this is by no means easy money, and its barely even chump change. And there's so much else to consider, like equipment, and healing items, and weapons, and new skills, and so on," Beth continued driving her point home. "That fancy new armor I had on earlier was fifty silvers. Excuse me, the pants and shirt were fifty silvers, the heavy gauntlets were another fifty silvers, so a total of one gold coin for just a basic set of simple armor. It's a lot better than what I had, but it's considered rather low-level, low-quality stuff, and it's only three pieces, counting the gloves as a single piece."

"OK, sorry, I am starting to understand what you are talking about now," her mother replied. "So, you only have enough for the other three right now?"

"Yeah, basically. I have just over eight gold right now. Getting them memberships is six flat-out, then armored pants and shirts like mine or something similar that suits them would be another gold and fifty silver. Now we're down to fifty silver and we haven't done anything about weapons, healing items, camping or survival items, and on and on. You get the idea," Beth replied.

"I would still like to go with you tomorrow. How do you get there, anyway; just walk?" asked Rachel.

"Well, I usually ride Blood there, like you saw, but I figured we can walk as a group tomorrow. It's really not that far away," Beth answered, just remembering to put the coin away and wrap her arm back around Sabs' waist.

"Alright, I'll tag along tomorrow then," Rachel nodded firmly.

Having wrapped up that conversation somewhat neatly, they moved on to discussion of what the rest of the group had been doing. It was really a resumption of what they had been discussing when Beth and Blood made their grand entrance earlier. They focused on the training efforts Zack had been undertaking with other members of the neighborhood. Beth mainly listened in on what they were talking about, the former military man having far more experience with training and organization of a fighting force than her. She only chimed in briefly with a few pointers on this new style of fighting, explaining a couple things about beast strength versus level that she had learned the hard way so far.

It got a little late, though most of the group seemed content to keep talking for a while, but Beth needed to turn in. "Alright, I need to head to bed," she said in a moment of pause in the conversation.

"Are you OK?" asked her father.

"Yeah, I'll explain more later, but trust me when I say Blood and I had a very long day," she answered, Sabs hopping up off her lap, allowing her to stand as well. Sabs gave Beth a quick hug as the others departed or headed inside before slipping away to head home herself. Beth tiredly trudged inside and made her way to her room, Blood tagging along with her. The wolf flopped down on the floor while Beth took a quick shower before turning out the lights and tumbling into bed.

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Beth woke up quite normally, only to find it was still completely dark out. Reaching over and picking up her phone, she found it was only a little after four in the morning. Considering she had dropped into bed and passed out at about nine the previous night, she had only needed just under seven hours of sleep to fully recover from such an exhausting ordeal the day before. She was very grateful, for the umpteenth time, for her rapidly growing END stat, taking waking up and getting started in the morning from a painful chore and making it into a pleasant experience.

Beth quickly and quietly darted out of her room and down to the mudroom first thing, having simply shed all her gear the day before, pouch included. She grabbed the belt and pouch and made her way back upstairs, taking care of getting ready before she pulled on a set of the new clothes she had gotten the day before.

Being up rather early, she found she had nothing to do with herself, and decided to make an attempt to find anything useful on the internet using her computer. After powering it up and browsing around for a few minutes fruitlessly, she wound up where she normally found herself, playing video games. The old RPGs that used to be her favorite didn't quite have the same appeal, at least, not from a mechanical perspective. The stories were still quite interesting, but there hadn't been anything new released that she found interesting in quite some time.

Having burned away a couple hours with some mindless entertainment, she finally made her way down to start getting breakfast ready. The usual routine swiftly proceeded, with Sabs showing up first before Beth's sisters made their own way downstairs. They continued with preparing breakfast, being joined quickly by their additional member for the day, the sisters' mother.

Once the entire team was fed and watered, they continued with the standard routine, making use of the mudroom before heading out the back door. Beth suited up in her new armor, last out as she had more than the others to equip.

Soph made a leap to try to get on Blood's back, nearly tumbling off the other side in her eagerness. Beth caught her casually with a hand and set her right-way round on the giant wolf, Soph practically melting into the slightly thicker fur of Blood's mane as they started out on their journey.

They crossed the berm and ditch, Rachel the only one who struggled in any way with the obstacle, and then they started circling around the neighborhood. They left the dungeons for now, content to have Zack and the people he was working on helping get some levels and fighting experience clear the lower-level monsters nearby.

They crossed the old highway in front of the development, even less cars out now than there were a few days ago. The dangers in the world were mounting, and travel in unmodified and/or unarmored cars was becoming rather dangerous. The group moved at a brisk pace from there, led by Blood, who loped along in front with Soph buried on her back.

The trip definitely took longer than normal, but then again, normal for Beth and Blood now was essentially racecar speeds the whole way. The group still made reasonable time, arriving in front of the Hall in around ninety minutes, it still being fairly early in the morning. They circled the building from the northern side, which did have entrances, but only Beth could likely currently use any of them. They moved around to the front entrance on the western side of the building, the others almost immediately distracted by the statues.