The fight took quite a while, due in large part to Dream Snake, as they were much slower and more methodical than Beth was used to being in battle. She wound up, even without Blood's assistance, killing nearly half the enemies herself, just because she fought more aggressively and was willing to take more risks. She could tell just from their expressions that Dream Snake largely didn't approve, though Trish seemed much more ambivalent about the whole thing. Dean approached her after the fight was concluded to have a few words with her as the team went through the kills for anything worth looting.

"You need to fight in a more restrained manner," he started off. "I've seen young hotheads like you before, and it never winds up well. You can't just throw yourself into danger like that, especially when you're working with a team. If you fall, that puts all the rest of us in even more danger."

"Dean. I get it. I really do," Beth replied. "But, that's not how I operate. Caution is good, but there's a fine line between being cautious and being afraid. Blood and I don't fight stupid, not in our opinion, and I understand you may have a different take. But we don't fight scared, either. We fight aggressively, and push ourselves to do more, because we want to progress as far as possible. We're not content with the slow, plodding lifestyle."

"That'll get you killed early," Dean warned with a serious frown on his face.

"Or get us to where we want to be," Beth replied with a slight frown of her own.

"She's talking like an Enforcer, Dean," Natalie said while placing a hand on his arm. "You know what arguing with them is like."

Beth pulled out her emblem before Dean could respond and showed it to the group before making it disappear again. "I'm already basically qualified for Silver rank, and I intend to get it as soon as I am able. Both Blood and I are walking down that path."

"Well, I think it's a damn shame," Thom cut in as he finished cleaning one of the last kills. "You could go far going at a more reasonable pace without putting yourself in so much danger. You have a promising future."

"I think we might all have to agree to disagree," Beth said with a shrug. "Not about my future, just about the methods."

The team dropped it after that, finishing their work and moving back to the road. Beth understood that they just operated under a slightly different philosophy, so she didn't complain, but she wasn't particularly happy with their pace and grumbled to herself mentally as they continued on. The rest of the day wasn't much better, as they were bogged down with a large number of fights that Dean wanted to move through quite carefully, even taking time to split a group of enemies up with a clever trick before engaging. Beth took some mental notes on how the team fooled the monsters into dividing into two groups, but she still privately knew that Blood and she would have just slammed into the group of enemies full force and annihilated them without an extra half-hour of messing about.

The team waded through eight or nine larger groups, including two groups of beasts, as well as a number of smaller fights through the rest of the afternoon. They turned back for the city as the sun was still a handspan or more above the horizon, getting back not just to the cultivated land but to the city walls before it was fully dark. Beth went with the team to the building they were renting during their operations in the city, moving to the room she and Blood were using before hopping in the shower.

She was still in the process of washing off when the outer door opened, Blood letting Beth know it was her and not some intruder as she entered. Beth responded from the shower and Blood simply strolled into the moderate-sized bathroom before leaning on the counter as Beth continued showering, closing the door behind her.

"I take it you were on to something?" Beth asked as she finished scrubbing.

"Yeah, I found it," Blood replied with a nod, stretching so hard her back popped as she leaned against the counter before crossing her arms under her large breasts.

"The source of the monsters?" Beth asked as she rinsed off.

"Yeah," Blood answered. "There's two higher-leveled monsters that I'm pretty sure are bosses. Based on what I saw while I scouted the last two days, I think their presence in the forest is the source of the incursion. It doesn't look like it's some kind of Path generated event or anything too strange, just a set of powerful monsters that are able to spawn or quickly birth more. I think it's just that they are spawning monsters around them, from what I saw, but I'm not sure."

"That's incredible work," Beth said as she stepped out of the large shower stall, Blood handing her a towel. She started drying her hair, commenting, "I really need another hair cut."

"It's not very long," replied Blood, running her claws through some of Beth's hair briefly.

"Says the girl with hair down past her butt," Beth replied with a little grin.

"What's wrong with my hair?" Blood asked with a small frown and quirk of her eyebrows, running her hands through her own hair.

"There's nothing wrong with it, it's beautiful, sweetheart," Beth replied, stopping in her drying briefly after finishing her hair, throwing the towel over her shoulder before giving Blood a firm hug.

"Thanks," Blood growled in response, rubbing her head against Beth's despite the still-wet hair while gripping Beth tightly herself. Once again, Beth had to break apart the cuddle after a minute.

"Back on topic," she said as she resumed drying off, sliding a little way away from the shower so Blood could switch with her. "You think we could take them?"

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Blood started stripping out of her gear, quickly shucking down to her birthday suit before reaching in and adjusting the shower. She leaned part of her weight against the corner of the shower stall while facing Beth, looping an arm over the top crossbar of the shower stall while she said, "Do you mean if everyone, Dream Snake included, could fight them?"

"Nah, you know what I mean," Beth replied, leaning back against the counter and drying her legs off one-by-one.

"Yes," Blood answered simply. "We can do it."

"How early tomorrow," Beth asked as she finished drying and turned to the mirror, smirking just a little at the sight of two gorgeous beauties reflected back at her. She started combing her hair and taking care of the rest of her evening ablutions.

"The gates are open as early as five A.M. local time for people to get in and out," Blood replied before stepping into the shower. "Even if we only get up at five, we'll have plenty of time for everything."

"I'll set an alarm for four-thirty," Beth replied as she finished with her hair. "Let's plan on hitting the gates as soon as they open."

"Sounds good," Blood replied as she started working on all that hair they had just discussed.

Beth finished up and headed to bed first, having already taken care of debrief with the team when they had gotten in. Blood took a while in the shower for numerous reasons, including her large amount of thick hair and fur, but eventually joined Beth in the bedroom. They had separate beds in this room, and Beth was already asleep by the time Blood was done and had fallen into her own bed.

****************************************

The next morning saw the two waking up to the alarm that was part of the clock on the nightstand. Beth's phone was in her pouch but wasn't synced up to local time and she would have to get something better, though maybe the communicators they had received from Aytasha had that same functionality. It was something to look into another time, as they had other things to worry about, specifically their plan for the day.

They got ready very quickly, sharing the bathroom as they went through their morning routines and got dressed. They threw on their armor and gear quickly and slipped out of the room, Beth following Blood as the wolf-woman slid silently down the hallways. They miraculously encountered nobody before they left the building, and the streets of the city were practically deserted. There were a tiny handful of people moving to work or setting up shop, mainly people involved in food production getting their shops or restaurants ready for the day.

It didn't take long at all for the two to reach the wall, happening upon the gate they had used the previous two days just as it was opening. They gave the city guards stationed there a nod as they slipped out, starting to head up the road. They waited a minute or two until they would be out of sight of most at the city wall and gates before accelerating. It wasn't long before they were moving at an absolutely ground-devouring pace, both of them burning Swift at a fairly high level as they moved through the cultivated areas of workshops and fields.

They made far quicker time than when they were with the anchor that was Team Dream Snake, hitting the area that they had stopped at on day one just as the gray light of the first bit of dawn crept across the dark sky, chasing away the twinkling stars. It wasn't terribly long after that, as the sky lightened and presented them with striated hues of pink and orange, like spilled paint on a gray canvas, that they hit the marker the team had reached the previous day. It was likely that some of the members of the team and staff weren't even awake yet and already Blood and Beth had made it to the point it had taken two days of progress to reach.

From there they hopped into the trees, still burning Swift as Blood led the way on a bit of circuitous route towards they final destination. They didn't speak as they moved, in point of fact making eerily little sound, only Beth really making any detectible noise at all as she wasn't nearly as adapted to the silent scouting and stealth as Blood was. It took them a little longer to navigate this way as the trees were harder to move through and they were also attempting to avoid any beasts or monsters on the way. They didn't really need to rack up kills at this point, as leveling wasn't really a high priority nor was trying to get money or materials.

It wasn't quite mid-morning when they reached the site that Blood had found in her scouting during the previous days. They stood high in the top of a tall deciduous tree that was near the monster camp with a decent view of the place. They couldn't get a super clear look at the spawning area thanks to the density of the forest, but they were able to see enough to formulate a plan for the fight. The area had nearly a hundred monsters of level one-ten plus, and the two boss monsters were at level one hundred fourteen.

'How are we going to do this?' Blood asked.

'Ogier boss room?' Beth asked in reply.

'Risky to just go all-in like that…' Blood answered, thinking about it.

'That's sorta our style,' Beth said with a shrug.

'Do you think you can run your Presence long enough that it won't be a problem?' Blood asked.

'I think we'll have this done by lunchtime,' Beth replied with a small smirk.

'It's good that we're confident; it's not good if we get overconfident,' Blood said.

'You really think we can't handle that?' Beth asked, gesturing at the monsters. 'There's always risk, but we have the strength and skill to win, despite what the fearful say.'

'I just want to reaffirm,' Blood said. 'I don't want us getting sloppy.'

'I'm glad you're paying attention,' Beth said. 'But I think this one is going to be easier than you fear, even with it being monsters. Having a voice of reason isn't bad, but I don't want to become like…them,'

'They're not so bad, sister,' Blood said. When she noticed Beth's wide-eyed look, she continued, 'They're like your sister and mate. They don't have the drive and tenacity we do, but they're still important to how everything continues to function.'

'I understand what you're saying, but they're not quite the same,' Beth replied as they observed the camp. 'We were thrust into this a few months ago without any idea of what's going on. Dream Snake has been doing this all their adult lives and were raised in a world of magic and monsters. The fact they can't beat the two of us says a lot, and the fact Sabs and the others are where they are also says a lot about their talent and drive.'

'We've seen their movements and numbers,' Blood said, refocusing the conversation. 'Are you ready, sister?'

'Let's do this,' Beth said calmly and slightly coldly over their mental link.

On her confirmation, the two girls leapt forward, near-silent and extremely quick, moving through the tree tops until they were positioned above the area of least density of monsters. The coordinated seamlessly without even saying anything, launching themselves at the exact same time into a drop of more than four stories, plummeting down in a few seconds to slam into three monsters, Beth cleanly bisecting one while Blood tore the throats out of two more. They then launched themselves into the thick of it, wading through the monsters as the bosses roared and ramped up the entire camp’s rage.

The battle turned out much how Beth had called, as they were constantly swarmed by the weaker monsters for quite some time before the bosses actually took action and attacked them. The ability that Beth was still training to pulse her Presence and only use it in short bursts was invaluable here, as it allowed her the greater power to counteract the monsters. This fight was a little different from the ogier fight just thanks to the levels and the fact that all the enemies were monsters instead of beasts, giving them even more toughness and strength.

But it did finally come down to the bosses joining in the ongoing melee, each of the two against one of the girls. Both Beth and Blood were bloodied and tired by this point, but they were not exhausted, and Beth's spirit burned just as bright as ever, her eyes shining as she fought head-on against the boss, slamming its strikes away with massive chops of her greatsword. She grinned maniacally as she pushed all her boosts to the max and activated her Presence in but a moment, power exploding out of her in a wave that slightly cracked the ground around her feet and shoved all the monsters near her back. The boss seemed afraid but Beth didn't care, rushing forward and swinging repeatedly while imbuing her blade with Monstrous Blow, using only a partial amount of the power the skill was capable of for each swing.