Megoria wasn't there, of course, as she was very actively pursuing the monsters now, but they didn't really need to speak with her. Who did show up, however, was Baelvyr, wanting to talk to them, likely about the monsters, but possibly about the weapon they had found. Well, calling it a weapon would be…generous, and Beth wasn't sure she was feeling charitable, particularly not towards the people of Red II at the moment.

"What's up, boss?" Beth asked him when she had let him in and taken him up to their dining room.

"Nice ship, girlie. Ain't space worthy, though, is it?" he said.

"It can go in space for a while, but it can't really fly through space. The drive can push it forward, but really slowly," Blood was the one to respond. "If we could upgrade the drive, we would at least be able to do interplanetary navigation, though this thing would never be interstellar capable; not without a full and complete rebuild."

"Huh, good, ya can go up to some of the moons on a planet and check if needed," he grunted. "Anyway, that ain't what I'm here for. We got a plan, and we want ya three to execute on it. Don't know about yer friend here, but I know ya three can do it."

"I can at least provide guard against beasts," Delonne said, eyeing Baelvyr up and down.

"Whatever ya said, kiddo," Baelvyr grunted.

"I-" Delonne started, but Beth interrupted him.

"Baelvyr, this is Delonne. Delonne, this is Baelvyr, the Exalted that came with us to handle the monster problem," Beth said, giving Delonne a hard look. "He has millennia of experience fighting and as a Senior Enforcer at the CRA, so we trust his opinion. Well, in most things."

"What's that supposed to mean, girlie?" he frowned at her.

"Sometimes, when it comes to matters of taste, I think you might not have any," Beth retorted instantly, giving him a big, fake smile.

"I don't know what yer talkin' about, but sure," he grunted. "Anyway, here's the plan; ya three, or four, or whatever, are gonna stir up some trouble. We got some plans for ya to do some specific fighting in certain places, and some more besides. Our goal is to draw the monsters out of hidin', and we think our plan can get that plant bastard out. We'll have ya engage with it, and hopefully kill it, which should draw the other one out."

"Especially if it's a tough fight and we're injured and weakened when we win," Sera added with a nod.

"That's exactly the plan," he said. "Megoria and I'll be watchin' and waitin' for that time, and we'll jump on the bastard. I have a sense of what that other thing is, and Megoria can handle it, but I'll be around and watchin' in case somethin' goes weird."

"You followed us underground, right?" Beth asked.

"Yeah, yeah. Not pleasant, girlie," he grunted in response. "Had to go through some underwater sections myself. Nasty little fuckers down there. Glad ya managed to make it without having to do much more than get yer tootsies wet."

"I never even knew," Delonne said, still looking a bit shell-shocked at the revelation of who Baelvyr was, not to mention the knowledge he had been near them for days and they hadn't known.

"I'd hope not," Baelvyr said with a snort. "I ain't lost my touch that badly. Not yet, and hopefully not for a couple thousand more years."

"Speaking of a couple thousand more years," Beth said, leaning back in her chair. "Just out of idle curiosity, but how far through Exalted are you?"

"Normally, people wouldn't say," he replied, giving her a glare. "But I'll tell ya this; I've made it more than halfway through. That, and I got a pretty good idea of how to break through the boundary and reach the next step."

"So, you know how you're going to become Manumitted, or what?" Beth asked.

"Yeah, girlie, I got a pretty good idea. That ain't nothin' none of ya gotta worry about for centuries, even at yer current pace," he said with a chuckle like of pallet of bricks falling down a well. "Even ya, with yer Mana Physique already, gotta go through all the rebirths to get to the peak of Ascended, and that's centuries of work, even if ya don't get bogged down in a buncha bullshit. Then, ya gotta get yer Ideal sorted, figure all that out so ya can hit Exalted. Then, ya gotta go through Exalted, which is no cake walk at all, let me tell ya. After all that, then ya gotta figure out how to remove the boundary at the peak of Exalted, which isn't a great way to describe it, but ya three ain't ready for any talk of that. Period."

"Yeah, yeah, we get it, you're a grumpy old man who can't stand kids these days," Beth said, rolling her eyes.

"And don't forget it," he grumped. "Now, here's the coords and here's what ya gotta do and what ya gotta kill. Ya can bring yer little friend with ya, it don't matter to me, but ya gotta make sure he don't get in the way. Job comes first when we're out on duty. Always."

"Yeah, I know. You're grumpy today," Beth shot back.

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"I'm always grumpy, girlie. How I stay sane when I gotta deal with so many annoyin' little pricks," he grunted, hefting his bulk up. "Get to it whenever yer ready; Megoria and I'll be waitin' for it to go down."

"We'll head out in an hour," Beth replied with a lazy wave, watching as he walked off the ship through the sensors. As soon as he was out and had taken a step away, he disappeared, without even disturbing the air around him.

"I can't believe it. A real Exalted," Delonne murmured. "And I'll be working with him."

"You Identify him?" Sera asked.

"Yes. Most of his information was hidden, but I saw the level and got a sense for what his power was right now," he replied. "Just being over level one thousand shows that he's into Exalted territory."

"Yeah, he's strong, but he's also old as fuck," Beth said, waving a hand. "Rest up for an hour and then we're off."

Blood disappeared as soon as Beth finished speaking, and she got up to leave the dining room, followed by Sera. Delonne just stayed seated, leaning back in the chair with a sigh and staring off into space. Beth had an image of him, weariness plain in his features and the sag of his shoulders, caught out of the corner of her eye as they stepped into the hallway.

"He's really feeling his years," Sera said quietly when they were in the captain's cabin.

"He looks almost despondent, sometimes," Beth replied just as quietly, sitting on the dragon's lap.

"He did say he's lost people," Sera said, nuzzling her. "It seems like he's not really gotten over everything he's suffered over the years."

"It was bad enough that the leadership of 'his' faction mentioned him as a potential problem," Beth agreed, leaning into Sera.

"I feel bad for him, but there's not much we can do," Sera said. "Let's just rest, for now."

Just under an hour later, all four of them were on the bridge, intending to use the ship to reach the first destination Baelvyr had given them. It was a large group of beasts that Baelvyr had left alone, allowing to grow over the last couple weeks so that they could become a focus of the monsters. Now, Beth and her group were going to annihilate that gathering of beasts, hopefully provoking a big response from the monsters.

They dropped in from above, though it took a bit to convince Delonne, both to leap out of a perfectly good airship, and to join them in the center. His fears were unfounded on both fronts, as the fall wasn't enough to bother anyone of their stats, even if his were far less, and he was more than safe with the three girls around him. They fought for hours, clearing out hundreds of thousands of beasts before a majority of the pack was broken. It took hours more to wrap everything up, with a couple million dead in total before they were done.

As the end was drawing near, Beth felt it again, that strange brush against her senses that had alerted her weeks before. She sent the others a message and shot off, tracing back the feel of that strange and corruptive power to the source. She found the monster the same way as last time, by getting ambushed with massive sets of vines bursting from the ground. She took note that the attack was the exact same, which led her to believe that the monster didn't have a particularly good memory or awareness. If it had been a full sapient with that kind of second meeting and a lethal attack, they would have hit her with everything plus the kitchen sink.

She was able to easily dodge the vines and send out blasts at where she felt the attacks had originated from, tracing the magic back towards the source. Just like last time, her blasts of Celestial Annihilation from a distance had caught the monster unprepared and it was forced to reveal itself to avoid taking a nasty hit. Beth didn't hesitate at all this time, but charged the monster down, attacking it directly and fiercely. The monster was caught out, again not recognizing her, as it didn't respond with nearly the level of power it had displayed by the end of the last fight.

Beth had spoken with Sera about what they were going to do, and their plan had been to have Sera and the others finish most of the beasts before moving in. They didn't want a swarm of a hundred thousand beasts left for the monster to control and harass them with while they tried to kill it. As soon as the beast numbers were thin enough, Sera and Blood were going to jump in on the fight and try to pin the monster down.

Beth was able to overwhelm the plant monster at the start, as it really didn't remember fighting against her and that it had to go basically all-out to stop her before. She was able to crack some of its armor and do it some damage, but it was so hard to tell just how much damage she was doing. One of the times she really regretted there not being health bars for the enemies like video games had, but she had started to get good at determining how hurt beasts were. Monsters were different altogether, and she didn't really have a good gauge on how to tell if a monster was on its last legs.

The monster did eventually catch on to what was up, though Beth was sure it still wasn't really remembering her. It started to hit harder and use more spells, Beth cursing that it had a Mana Physique. The amount of mana it could use and the amount of spells it could fire out constantly was more than just a bit irritating. It was even more annoying with her good armor busted up and broken, but she mostly shrugged off the lesser attacks. Her lesser armor set was still enough to shed most of the thorns, and she was fast enough to dodge most of the vines and branches. Those that she couldn't…well, Lordly Reconstruction could always use another couple levels, as painful as it was.

Her increased skills were also helping quite nicely, with her increased weaponskills giving her a bit more of an edge over the monster. She was using her sword to start, cutting at the plant parts that were attacking her while firing sword waves at the creature. The monster was also rather confused by this, unable to respond as well to the use of a weapon and confused about how to counter or dodge the sword waves. It had already started casting multiple spells or skills at once, attacking Beth with dozens of vines thicker than her thigh while also filling the air with tens of thousands of thorns. This was all accompanied by hundred of the long, thin, spear-like branches slamming into her or, more often, just barely brushing by her without impacting as she twisted and leaned to the side.

Beth forewent the sword after a while, not able to hold anything back against such a powerful foe, switching to her fists and feet, accompanied by her other powerful skills. Annihilating damage seemed to work the best, but the monster, whether from its inherent strength, its nature, its stats, its skills, or its Mana Physique, wasn't as hurt by it as she would hope. There would definitely be no single-shot kill, no glorious punch that would blow through its face and vaporize its head, ending the fight instantly. She could, however, still hurt it, and quite a bit, her punches and mana tearing into the heavy branches and bark that acted as the monster's armor and outer protection. The dark orange sap she had seen in their first encounter flowed without end, coating the both of them and quite a large area of ground around them, though much of it was lost as the terrain was continually broken and shattered from the force of their confrontation.

Beth pushed through a hundred attacks of varied size, speed, and power to reach the monster, grabbing some of its vines on its body in her left hand and starting to hammer its face with her right. She chained Spatial Obliterations over and over, ignoring the thorns and vines that were slamming into her, flexing her back muscles to break and expel three branches that had pierced through her armor. The longer she hammered the monster, the more it struggled, and the more it was desperately trying anything it could to break free, including using attacks that hit itself. The monster's attacks all did damage almost entirely through blunt or piercing force, so hitting itself could cause injuries, though it was so tough that it was very minor damage.

Beth let go of the monster, leaping back, seeing what little face it had twist in a cruel sneer. The creature clearly thought that she couldn't withstand the brutal punishment it had been dishing out, but Lordly Reconstruction had kept enough of her together that she wasn't in any serious danger. No, the reason she had let go and backed up became apparent just a single second later when a massive blast of fire washed over the monster at the same time ten gigantic claws of blood slammed into its torso, pushing it deeper into the flame. Beth added on, firing off a dozen attacks from just outside the flames, Blood adding a second set of her own attacks in as well.

Beth waved the wolf off before leaping into the flame, pulling the excess that had missed to her and wrapping herself and the monster in flame. The creature writhed and screamed, letting out a piercing wail of agony as it lashed out at her with an insane flurry of attacks. Beth weathered everything, striking back over and over until Sera made another pass in her dragon form, a fresh burst of flame washing over the two of them. The fire did nothing to Beth, just feeling warm and pleasant, but the monster was taking very serious damage. Beth gathered the flame and rammed it into the monster's chest and face as a condensed pillar, cooking away the vines and bark that protected it before burning and melting its flesh. Dragonfire burned so hot that it often melted even substances that would normally be flammable, the magic in the dragonfire turning the monster's flesh into goop.

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