"That should do," Beth said.

  "No point in doing more," Blood agreed, starting to walk across the field towards the town.

  "Well, it wasn't fun, but at least we helped," Sera said, stepping behind Beth and wrapping her arms around Beth's torso.

  "Yeah, they need more people that can deal with this," Beth said with a sigh. "Maybe we should level my parents and Zack a little. If we got them a rebirth and then leveled them again, they'd have a way easier time."

  "Well, I suppose we have plenty of time," Sera replied, leaning down and kissing Beth's temple. "We can do whatever we want."

  "Someone's a little horny today?" Beth muttered, tilting her head back and kissing Sera on the lips.

  Sera let her hands wander over Beth's body while returning the kiss, chuckling into Beth's mouth when Beth's armor disappeared off her body. Sera slid a hand under Beth's shirt over her stomach, lightly digging her claws into Beth's abs before Beth broke off the kiss. Sera kissed her cheek before kissing her temple again, more vigorously caressing Beth's body, digging her claws in all over her torso.

  "Okay, Okay," Beth laughed, giving Sera another kiss before breaking them apart. "We'll get up to some fun a little later. Let's finish our business first."

  "Hmm, just showing my affection," Sera rumbled quietly.

  "I always appreciate it," Beth said warmly, leaning up and kissing Sera passionately.

  "You'll get me going even more," Sera mumbled as Beth broke off the kiss.

  "Did working in the Royal Rose make you very horny, or did you work there because you're very horny?" Beth asked as she pulled Sera along across the field. Blood and Neph had killed quite a few wolves on the way so their way was mostly clear. Beth still had to strike an adventurous level one hundred beast down, another reminder that beasts, unlike animals, were driven by a mindless anger and desire to fight and kill.

  "You could say it was a little of both," Sera replied, capturing Beth's hand in her much larger grasp and interlocking their fingers.

  "So, basically, you're telling me you are, and have always been, a hopeless case," Beth said with a laugh.

  "I can't argue," Sera said, gently squeezing Beth's fingers.

  A cold wind blew as they walked and talked, the horizon cast in a dark light, the presage of a big storm incoming. Thick clouds, black as old smoke and billowing with frigid winds, were blowing in from the northwest, bringing with them what was likely to be a huge pelting of snow. Beth supposed that both the weather and climate had been really kicked in the teeth by the appearance of mana, but she had lived in New York for…well, not all of her life, now that she had spent quite a bit of time off-world and in strange, pocket dimensions. But still, she knew New York State, and she had seen storms like this roll in from the west or, as the ones from the east were classically called, big Nor' Easters slam into the state more than once or twice before.

  "Snow," Sera said, mirroring Beth's thoughts as the dragon girl sniffed the air.

  "Yeah, big western storm out of Canada," Beth said.

  "That's a place to the west?" Sera asked as they got back to the highway.

  "Here," Beth said, sending Sera a small map of North America. "I doubt these countries are going to keep the same as they were pre-Path, but we're in the northeast of what used to be the U.S. Above us was only one country, Canada, and they're known for having quite chilly weather, especially in winter."

  "I can imagine," Sera said. "With your planet’s tilt and orbit around your star, that would make for some fairly serious winters."

  "Well, not anymore," Beth said as they walked up to the gate. "Cold doesn't really affect us like that anymore."

  "Planets that are part of the Path can have mana-influenced weather, which can be a lot worse than just 'normal' weather would ever be," Sera corrected.

  "Good to know," Beth said, looking at the town gates, which were currently closed. "Hello? Open up!"

  "Who is it?" A guard stuck her head out of the tower by the gate.

  "It's us. Who else would it be?" Beth asked.

  "You have a key?" the guard asked. All four of them gave each other a long look before just staring at the guard.

  "What do you mean, 'You have a key?' I can't believe I'm saying this, but do you know who we are?" asked Beth.

  "No, and I don't care. If you're here to attack the town, you can get lost. We have a lot more defenses than you think," the woman snarled at them.

  "Oh, you do, do you? You know what, I might just like to see that," Beth said angrily.

  "I'm warning you-" the guard said, to which the other girls laughed and Beth just snorted. Before the guard could say or do anything else, Beth took two steps forward before leaping over the wall, landing in the street behind the gates without a problem. As the others followed her in, Beth turned and leapt up into the guard tower, leaping the twenty-five feet with just a single tap of her right foot.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The guard squawked, only trying to draw her weapon from her belt after Beth was already in the tower. Beth grabbed the woman by the face with her left hand, lifting her off the ground with ease, causing the woman to flail and grasp at Beth's arm. Beth reached down and snagged the woman's weapon, a mace, from her belt and then dropped the woman, causing her to stagger back and nearly fall out of the tower top room. The guard shook her head, grasping at her face to make sure everything was still there, before straightening and starting to yell at Beth.

  "You're invading the town! Guards, rally-" Beth tuned the rest out as the woman continued shouting, inspecting her mace while ignoring her. Unsurprisingly, it took the woman a little to realize that Beth wasn't even paying attention, lunging at Beth to try to grab her mace back. Beth didn't have any skill with any kind of blunt weapon, but she was still able to easily swing the mace around while sidestepping the woman's lunge and bring the head of the weapon into her stomach with a small bit of force.

  "Blegh!" the woman made an odd noise before projectile vomiting against the waist-high wall surrounding the top of the guard tower. That wasn't going to be good, especially as the tower did have a top, supported by pillars rising from the four corners of the top platform. That was going to help keep that stink in here, but it wasn't really Beth's problem.

  "Maybe I should give you one on the head, next," Beth said, frowning a little as she inspected the guard, who had slumped down on her knees.

  "What is going on here?!" Bellowed Zack as he slammed through the doorway that led down into the tower.

  "Just a bit of training," Beth replied with a shrug, watching as Zack looked between the mace in her hands and the coughing guard on her knees.

  "Training. Right," he said before walking over to her and grabbing the mace from her. "I think I'll have a little more training to do. You just take your group and get lost."

  "We cleared the wolf dungeon a dozen times, by the way," Beth said, striding over to the wall around the top of the tower and hopping onto it with a tap of her toe.

  "A dozen-wait, when?" he asked, slapping the woman's hand away as she tried to reclaim her mace. Despite spending much of his time in administrative work, Zack was clearly still getting his levels in, as he was more than forty levels higher than the guard. There was no way the woman could compete with him, and that wasn't even taking into account Zack's years of military training and service before he started his own business.

  "This morning. Took about two hours or a little bit less. Just thought you should know," Beth said with another shrug before falling off the wall.

  "Beth! Hey!" Zack bellowed, leaping over to the wall to see her finish a double backflip and land lightly on her toes. She gave him a quick salute that was all wrong and had him muttering invectives before walking off with the other girls.

  "Sir-" the woman started.

  "Don't give me any shit, Private," Zack snapped. "I really don't know what goes through your heads."

  "We have to be careful of strangers-" the woman tried to explain before Zack interrupted her again.

  "Two points, Private. One, that woman's lived in this neighborhood all her life, so not doing great on the ‘strangers’ part. Two, she could snap your scrawny ass in half like an old twig, so maybe think first, then act," Zack barked, unconsciously shifting into an at-ease posture as he started lecturing.

  Beth, meanwhile, didn't know nor care about the ass-chewing that the woman was getting, instead walking to the town hall with her group. There was a guard at the front door now, which there hadn't been early that morning when they dropped their father off, and Beth gave him a nod as she walked up to the door. He nodded back at first before trying to intercept them, but Beth just ignored him, amused that he couldn't do anything to her. She meant that quite literally, as well, as he tried to grab her and was lifted off his feet and dragged behind her as she walked through the front doors.

  "You should let go, or it will get unpleasant," Beth said to the man, giving him a humorless smile as she dragged him along.

  "You can't just-" he said before Sera literally plucked him off his feet and tossed him out of the building.

  "You guys need to actually learn something," the normally calm dragon girl snarked with an eyeroll.

  "Let's head up," Beth said, walking to the stairs and up to her parents' office.

  "Beth! You girls are back already?" Thomas asked when they entered, looking up from his work. Rachel was not in the office with him, though it looked like papers had been moved about on her desk sometime earlier that morning.

  "We already cleared it a dozen times," Beth answered with a shrug. "We decided to come back and check in."

  "Well, that's marvelous," Thomas said, rubbing at his eyes.

  "Something up?" Beth asked, seeing how tired and worn he was looking.

  "Just going over what your girlfriend suggested," he replied. Seeing the whole group look at him questioningly, he said, "With expanding the town and adding more space, as well as building a greenhouse. It will be a lot of work and cost a lot, but thanks to all those supplies you gave us, we'll save money there for quite a few months, so we should be able to swing it."

  "If you need money-" Beth started, but he interrupted.

  "No, I appreciate the thought, but we can't just rely on you dumping money on us whenever we need something," he gently chided. "Besides, things aren't that desperate, and if we get some food production set up, we'll be in a very good place."

  "Speaking of being in a very good place," Beth said, which had even the inexperienced Neph shaking her head at the ham-fisted transition. "What would you say to an opportunity for you and Mom and Zack and a few others to level? We could help you hit two hundred really quick…"

  "Well, I appreciate the offer, but we don't really have time," Thomas said with a frown.

  "It wouldn't take very long, trust me. It would take only a handful of days, really," Beth said, scanning his level again just to double check.

  "Well, that sounds tempting…" he said hesitantly. But then he said, "But, I'm afraid we can't afford the time, and then we'd be at level one. We'd have to re-level, correct?"

  "Well, yes and no," Beth said, tilting her hand back-and-forth as she leaned against his desk. The others had taken seats behind her and were mainly just waiting for the conversation to conclude.

  "What does that mean?" he asked.

  "We could also help you level using the same method. Give it even four days and you'd be over level one hundred again, give or take a bit," Beth explained.

  "Well, again, it's a tempting offer, but we can't really afford for the whole town's management structure to just leave for a week or two," Thomas said with some interest but a slight shake of his head.

  "Well, have one person come and get some help," Beth said. "If Kim and them are going to be gone like I am, then you need somebody a bit stronger. Have Zack take a few days off; sorry to say, but it seems he can't really beat the way the world works into his guards' heads anymore. If he hasn't managed to whip them into shape in almost two years, might as well take him away for a couple weeks and train him up."

  "She's right," Sera interjected. "If you have even one extremely powerful person in a town or city, they can guarantee it for decades. If you had that guard captain train for a few weeks, he could handle any issues you guys would have for a few years, just by himself."

  "Well, we'll have to talk to Zack about it. I can't decide for him," Thomas said with a shake of his head. "But, anyway, that's for later. What are you girls up to now?"

  "We'll probably be spending a lot of time down at the CRA Hall," Beth replied. "We'll stop back in a couple times, but, uh, it's not exactly comfortable in the house for us."

  "Yes. I can see that," Thomas said, glancing at Sera's massive frame. "Well, your mother and I love you, all four of you, very much, and you're always welcome here."

  "We'll be back tomorrow, Dad, not next century," Beth said with a quick roll of her eyes, gesturing for the others to stand. "There isn't anything you need, is there?"

  "No, we're more than fine. You gave us supplies and money; we just have to make use of it now. Just figuring out who to give it to and such will take days," Thomas said with another quick shake of his head.

  "Alright, we'll catch ya later, then," Beth said, giving him a wave as she turned and led the group out of the town hall.

  "What now?" asked Blood as they left the building.

  "Back to the Hall. I have some calls to make, as well," Beth said. "We might have to do a bit of grinding ourselves. With what I've been thinking about, we probably want to get another forty levels. And there's Neph, too. We want to get her some levels and even a rebirth or two pretty quick."

  "We've got time, though, right?" Neph asked with a smile.

  "That's right. Mortaine said his next mission would take a while and that we don't have to worry about time constraints. I should check that," Beth replied with a nod as Blood took the lead in taking them out of town and back to the CRA Hall.