Limitless Path Chapter Six Hundred Seventy-Two (Patreon)

Beth gathered the team and sent Sera a message, not wanting to interrupt her wife’s little jaunt, taking everyone to the planet. Now that Beth had the medallion that could store basically anything they ever came across, they could take and use the cruiser anywhere, which is what they mostly did these days. The airship was nice, make no mistake, but it was a bit slow and a bit weak, which was pretty crazy to think, since Beth had used it even in areas with beasts over level three hundred without much issues in the past. Now, though, the cruiser was just all around nicer; it was larger, faster, more luxurious, with better defenses and offenses than the airship by far.

Beth’s looting power would come in rather handy, but the real prize in this little outing was going to be finding rare resources. Metals, gems, rare herbs, unique beasts that didn’t show up elsewhere, rare mana formations, and so much more. It couldn’t be underestimated how valuable those random formations and bits and pieces in the wild were, considering that Beth had sold the location of one to one of Sera’s relatives for quite a tidy sum. A world that was only a little explored, dense in mana, was rife with possibilities, and the possibilities that Beth cared most about right now were the ones that made them money. They would, even given that they were technically on a job for someone else, have to pay some tax on what they extracted, which did happen from time to time, but Beth wasn’t all that worried about five, or even ten, percent shaved off what they made. The planet had adamantine coins worth of stuff just sitting there waiting for the taking, and it wasn’t like they would destroy the planet doing it, either. The high mana density meant the little they took would be back within just a couple years, and besides, not like there were all that many teams of Ascended strength free to just swoop in and gather what was laying around.

The mountains were always the place they started in such situations, considering the kinds of mana concentrations that could happen there, not to mention the routes that usually were open into the underground from mountain ranges. The biggest concern in the mountains was made largely moot by a combination of the team’s strength and the cruiser, that being the flying beasts and occasional monsters that would harass anyone airborne, and often those on the ground. The cruiser could easily deal with just about everything they encountered, and anything that might prove too much for its weapon systems was the reason why they had a Beth on-board, the greatest weapon of all.

They didn’t have to worry about too much dogfighting on this trip, thankfully, as that usually slowed things down a lot. Fighting off flying beasts was often slow and time consuming, both because they were tedious to fight with their quick movements and varied attack patterns, and because a lot of flying beasts came in massive swarms. Even with land-based beasts that swarmed, one was limited in the directions one could be attacked from, given the nature of fighting on the ground, whereas flying enemies didn’t have the same kind of restrictions. Fighting through even one or two swarms of flying beasts could take a few hours, and the whole time they weren’t really making much progress, either in terms of distance traveled or places explored.

Fortunately, they were able to get through the airspace without too much disturbance, which brought up the question of where to go and, more specifically, where to land. They didn’t have a lot of good data about the world, surveys from the initial explorers not having been all that great, so they essentially had to just pick somewhere and go with it. They opted for a flat area that was more like a plateau than anything else, though it looked like it might not be an entirely natural formation. It looked like one of the mountains of the range had had its top blasted off by some incredible force some time in the distant past, considering the weathering that was present and the way the area was covered by a moderate forest. It certainly wasn’t an event that had happened recently, though the surrounding mountains and terrain still bore some scars of the event, including a jagged wound in the side of a tall mountain that looked like a whole mountain peak had been slammed into it, which may very be what had occurred.

After setting the ship down, they disembarked and surveyed the area, finding the place thick with beasts. This being a mana dense world, it was no surprise that nothing out here in the middle of nowhere was lower than level two-fifty, and a lot of what they encountered was well into the three hundreds. Even a team of ‘regular’ Enlightened, at least based on what Beth thought of as the typical level of strength for the Enlightened bracket, would really struggle here, and that was just with the random trash. They weren’t close to any truly valuable resources on the plateau, and they certainly weren’t underground, and they were still fighting through waves of level three hundred fifty beasts. Well, not waves; the beasts weren’t consciously attacking them in particular or being controlled by a powerful monster. It was just that there were so many beasts in this untamed area that it felt like they were being swarmed as soon as they left the ship, not even leaving the clearing they parked in before the bodies were piling up.

Piles that promptly disappeared as Beth used her looting power. The rest of the team didn’t need her participation to kill the waves they were facing; hell, the rest of the team could have rested and taken in shifts soloing the beasts they were finding here and been totally fine. The downside to that was the loot was less than impressive, with it mostly being beast cores of moderate value and some bits of bone, blood, and meat that would sell for modest prices. Well, a lot of it was modest for them, but an awful lot of teams out there would view just what they were harvesting here as a treasure trove. Then again, the vast bulk of teams were below rebirth ten, so fighting through a few thousand level three hundred fifty beasts was a bit out of their power range.

A reason they were all, except Beth, fighting was so they could actually explore and not just be stuck in one place for hours. The ship was perfectly fine where it was, Beth more worried about other Wayfarers stealing the thing than she was about beasts wrecking it, but then again, she would like to see somebody try. Maybe it was also time to spend some time in the arena; she found herself itching for a good fight against something, or someone, that could think and use strategy lately, and even monsters didn’t really cut it. She supposed that would happen from time-to-time, but she should also work on her arena rankings and her position on the Ladders. It was a bit embarrassing that she was going for Platinum Emblem and didn’t have anything really great to show in the fighting ranks.

That could happen later; priority one was money, two was using that money to get a house, and three was pushing for the Eternal Depths. They had plenty to do there, not least of which was try to find Liveria’s wife and free her, or rescue her, or whatever that whole situation turned out to be. The woman had been trapped in the depths for over a century at this point, possibly a bit longer, so hopefully she could hang on another few months to a couple years, depending on how long the search took. At the same time, she had been down there for more than a century and hadn’t been found yet, which was also a little discouraging. But yet, on the other other hand, Beth had both the book that was linked to her and, well, Liveria herself on her side, so maybe they could do some things to guarantee some success in the search early on.

For that, they would need funds and power, which is what they were working on right now. They were all on the short track for another rebirth, only a few things more needed for them to hit rebirth seventeen, and Beth was looking forward to climbing through the last few ranks of Enlightened and getting into Ascended. Not that the transition between the two was a massive, dramatic thing, at least for most people, but the increasing power in Ascended would be nice, and the requirements people had for at least one Ascended to be part of a company or team could finally be met. Met and smashed, since the whole team would hit Ascended at the same time, or roughly so, but that was just a bonus, in her opinion.

Anyway, it was time for some treasure on this world, something they could both grab to fulfill the job for Val’s connection, that needed a bunch of precious metals, and things they could either directly sell or auction. Beth wasn’t particularly hopeful about finding something to auction, as the auction occurring on Millennia’s Echo would be the premiere of the premiere, something that the elite of the elite would be attending, and anything being entered into that kind of ordeal would need to be absolutely top notch. As crazy as it was to think, long gone were the days where she and Blood could bring back a sack full of uncut gems and present them to the auction house and be guaranteed a good spot and extra rewards. They would need things like the spear Sera recently acquired just to be considered, and that was sort of a minimum threshold.

Speaking of her wife, it was some time before she showed back up, not that Beth was really complaining. They had cleared out a lot of the plateau and moved down into the valleys around it before Sera flew in, demonstrating in a way the strength of a dragon. Even the beasts, mostly mindless balls of rage and hunger, generally stayed away from her, and dragon fear was a real thing. Just being in her dragon form intimidated lesser beings, even if she didn’t have a skill in her stat screen that reflected that, and both beasts and monsters would tend to stay away, especially if the fear was reinforced by power. Sera certainly had the power at this point, to the point even level four hundred beasts were nothing compared to her, so her flight was much less disturbed than what the cruiser had faced. Not that she didn’t have to fight anything, but she was much less harassed on the way.

She transformed back into her tall, beautiful human form when she got to the group, practically landing in Beth’s arms, who gave her plenty of kisses while the others continued clearing out the area around them. They had found a small river, more a creek really, in one of the valleys, and it had quite a few nice plants with a lot of mana coursing through them around and in it. Diving in the waters was a bit of a daring expedition, considering anything could be lurking in the murky waters, made dirty by the number of beasts running through the river and by its turbulent nature. Less dangerous, and much funnier, was when they found the water wasn’t quite Bjorn depth for much of the creek’s length, as the titan waded to the center of the creek and the water was still only at about shoulder level, the massive man standing on the bottom and staring at them, just his head and the tops of his shoulders showing, which was rather amusing.

“You had a good time?” Beth asked Sera, wiggling her eyebrows as Neph tried to skip stones at Bjorn as he walked upstream in the middle of the creek.

“Oh, very much so, and, yes, before you ask, she wouldn’t mind,” Sera replied in a sultry voice, giving Beth a wink and another kiss before joining the others.

“Music to my ears. I hope you got her contact information before leaving…” Beth muttered, using her senses to try to detect anything unusual in the area.

“Got a little more than that,” Sera teased before the two refocused on fighting the beasts and looking for loot.

Sera returning didn’t change much, not to diminish her strength, but the eight of them were already overpowered even for this mountain range. They would face a lot stronger opposition once they delved underground, but they spent the next two days exploring the valleys around where they had landed and some of the mountain slopes leading away, seeing what they could find interesting on the surface. Beth was constantly cranking her looting power the whole time, though it was barely making a dent in the experience the power needed to level. She could loot a hundred thousand beasts of a decently high level at this point and that still wouldn’t get her one rank in the looting power, but at the same time, every single little bit helped. It might be a long, slow process, but it went by in the background, Beth sometimes even surprised when the power increased in rank because she barely even thought of it most of the time.

It was on day three they decided to descend, much to several of the group members’ chagrin. Traipsing about the mountains was all fine and dandy, and it was, a rather relaxing and refreshing holiday for them, though most people wouldn’t say that about fighting through tens of thousands of level two-fifty to four hundred beasts, but the underground was a different story. Dark, cramped, damp, wet, smelly, echoing, and narrow, it was not a pleasant place to navigate at the best of times, not to mention when it was swarming with powerful beasts and possibly even strong monsters laying in wait. The one small comfort the team had, besides their strength clearly being up to the task, was their fearless was a good ‘oh shit’ button. Beth could grab the whole group, without even needing to touch them, and move them back to the surface with her Ideal. Moving more people made it much more straining, but the whole team was still something she could handle, especially if they weren’t trying to move to a different planet or solar system with the jump. A ‘short’ jump, if moving a few dozen or hundred miles could be considered that, wasn’t all that challenging or tiring, but anything that involved any real distance was going to be a real strain, if not downright impossible, until she was stronger, both in rebirth and understanding of her Ideal.

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