Limitless Path Chapter Six Hundred Seventy-Three (Patreon)

"So, nothing on the surface?” Sera asked, having caught up with what they were up to after having arrived late.

“Nothing impressive,” Beth said dismissively as Bjorn led the way through a narrow tunnel. With the titan in front, none of the other front line fighters could even get to the front, the whole team forced to just trail behind and watch behind them. It would not be fun to have Bjorn taking care of everything up front and then have something jump them behind because they weren’t paying attention. Not that it was all that easy to sneak up on Beth these days, even when she wasn’t actively scanning an area.

“How much do you realistically think we’ll need?” Andrea asked, though she had glanced between Sera and Val with that. There were some advantages to being in a group with two heirs to massive clans, including their advanced knowledge of both prices and politics.

“Oh, at an auction? I expect it to be four or five neutronium by the time we’re done,” Sera replied.

“That’s a pretty big hill to climb,” Andrea muttered.

“We have around two neutronium right now,” Beth said, glancing around them. It was clear she was scanning the area and only paying attention to the conversation with half an ear.

“No easier way to get a little more?” asked Andrea.

“I don’t think we really want to pursue that,” Beth replied, shaking her head. “As much as I’m tied to Sera’s family at this point, I don’t want to owe the dragon clans or play in their politics. I don’t think we want Val or Kris getting wrapped up in more of that, either. Though I don’t want to speak for them.”

“I’m sure Ancestor-uh, Grandmother, would help if I really asked, but even she would want some stuff,” Val replied with a bit of a disgruntled expression. “She’d have me going to events and talking with her allies and a bunch of boring shit, all kinds of shit that would take up tons of time.”

“My family is…well, it’s complicated,” Kris said, shaking her head just slightly. “The phoenix clans are…well, there’s some tedious politics that are happening.”

“They still haven’t sorted that out?” asked Odorra, the white phoenix having emerged from the Reliquary. The Empyreans could pay more attention to what was happening around Beth if they chose and they had been bored lately.

“Well, it’s not really, uh, i-it’s not decided,” said Kris.

“Care to explain?” Beth asked, pinning the white phoenix with a serious look.

“Best not to,” Odorra said, holding up a hand to stop any protest. “It’s some messy busy internal to the phoenix clans. There’s some…argument around a certain legacy and something else I can’t discuss. I had figured in the, what, fifty thousand years I’ve been trapped in this damned box that someone would have figured it out. Even if the old fogies couldn’t make a decision, there really hasn’t been an exceptional phoenix or another Empyrean-level Ascended since my time?”

“There was one, but…” Kris replied, trailing off as she frowned and glanced at the ground.

“They didn’t want to deal with the bullshit and just left?” Val asked before even Odorra could say anything.

“Not really. I mean, uh, it was, uh….complicated,” Kris said, sighing at the end as she tried to convey an awful lot with just one word.

“Huh,” Odorra said eloquently. “Still haven’t sorted it out. Can’t really believe it, but considering the old bastards in charge, I’m not surprised.”

“Surely it’s not the same people?” Beth asked.

“Dragons live a long time, and phoenixes live longer than us,” Sera cut in. “And that’s just considering ‘normal’ lifespan, not what happens when you push even to the start of Ascended. Get a couple old recalcitrants to rebirth forty-nine and, well, there’s the policy of your clan or nation for the next few tens of thousands of years, if not more than a hundred thousand, when talking about phoenixes.”

“That sounds rough,” Beth commented, reaching out as they talked and grabbing something beyond the others could detect. There was a distant roaring and the cave system shook just slightly followed by a high-pitched wail and then silence.

“There is some level of security and safety in it,” Odorra said, though it wasn’t a particularly whole-hearted defense of having the same small group of geezers in charge for a hundred millennia.

“Right, sure,” Beth said, reaching out and grabbing at something else. “I can’t imagine why anyone would want to get out of such a place.”

“Yes, well, sure, it’s a bit stuffy, but it generally gets the job done,” she said with a shake of her head. “I had hoped that had all been resolved, but if it’s not, then it would be best to stay out of phoenix clan politics for now. Unless this young lady wants to try for it?”

“Absolutely not,” the usually quiet Kris declared rather loudly and firmly.

“Fine. Not something to stick our beaks in, then,” Odorra said.

“What about you?” Beth asked, making a giant corpse appear in the tunnel behind them before it turned to mana. “Sorry, can’t loot one that big remotely.”

“What about me? You mean, what about me settling the issue?” Odorra asked, frowning at Beth.

“Sure. You’re a phoenix, last time I checked, and you’re an Empyrean, or former Empyrean, however that all works out. Can’t you just get in there and knock their heads together?” Beth said.

“Nope. Wouldn’t work for four or five different reasons,” Odorra immediately denied. “Maybe, if I weren’t trapped in this box, I could actually do something about it. But, that would definitely be condition one and the biggest factor. With me tied into the Reliquary, anything I say or do will be much less valued or even just flat-out ignored. I can only really even look into this again if I’m not part of someone else’s great working.”

“Makes sense, but it was worth a shot,” Beth replied with a sigh. “So, no, to answer the questions, I don’t think we’re getting a loan or any easy money out of anyone or anything. I think we’re doing it the old fashioned way.”

“The time line is too short, but the real way to make money is to craft things, particularly once you’re at a Sage level,” Odorra commented. “And, no, there’s only so much we can do right now. Having one of us craft things would have a couple, how to say, complications? If you had a longer time frame and no other concerns, getting somebody to Sage in a profession would be your most reliable bet.”

“Ah, I’d rather be lucky than good, is my kind of mentality,” Beth said, shrugging. “Besides, we just need to kill even tougher stuff. Bag a couple level seven hundred wyrms or something and we’ve got a jackpot.”

“Far be it for me to tell you what to do. I am trapped in a box in your soul, after all,” Odorra said with a small smile before disappearing.

“Cave,” Bjorn called back, interrupting further discussion on the topic. Not that there was much else to talk about at this point, there was much more to do.

They were finally able to spread out, through with the way Beth had been attacking and killing level four hundred beasts through the wall, that wasn’t exactly a hard requirement for them anymore. Still, it was nice for the rest of them to get into a larger space and stretch their legs, including fighting a seething mass of centipede-like beasts that were covered in a kind of stone plating, very different from what standard chitin, even at that level, would look and feel like. Beth and Sera ripped one of the beasts apart, or rather, ripped one of the bodies apart to study the stone plates, but they decided they weren’t anything all that special, Beth just gesturing once the room was cleared and looting all the bodies with her power. If something like the carapace had been really valuable, they might have saved the toughest of the beasts and harvested them by hand to ensure they had some really good pieces without relying on the luck that Beth’s looting power still introduced, but without the stone plates being anything really rare, it didn’t matter.

The cave didn’t have any special features, unfortunately, nor had they found much ore or any gems so far. It was a bit disappointing, but Beth supposed that’s why they called it prospecting and not finding, considering how much searching they had to do. Her greatly enhanced spatial senses and Ideal didn’t really help at all, either, as she couldn’t really detect a lot of things of high value just through spatial magics. They had to get close and either feel it from a short distance, or just use their senses, especially sight, to lock on to what they were after.

Metals were the highest priority, considering they were here because of a job to fetch them, but they were looking for anything that was influenced by mana or unusual. Hell, even unusual rocks could sometimes be extremely valuable, as Sera spending a bunch to get those stones that she and Beth still had to make use of proved. Beth was really hoping for some kind of mana spring or something down here, but she didn’t think that was particularly likely, given the conditions, however one never knew. She had certainly been surprised by strange things, especially underground, more than once at this point, and this little jaunt was likely to be no exception.

Further moving through tunnels produced very little, other than some boredom and annoyance, though Beth was constantly grabbing things around them and attacking them or moving them around. It was both good practice and a good way to keep up a steady trickle of items into their various storage spaces. Considering Beth still had her necklace, which was rather large, and then the reliquary, which was huge, and then the medallion, which was absolutely enormous, storage was really not any kind of problem. That was all not even mentioning her gate, but she didn’t like using that for the same reason the medallion could be annoying, namely that it needed a portal opened to interact with it in any way, though Beth was pretty sure she could sync further to the medallion to get around that requirement.

They continued for hours, exhaustion not being a thing they really suffered from much anymore. Hells, nobody on the team even got tired anymore, not considering their stats and capabilities, and traveling through the underground like this was something they could do continuously without rest without much issue. It was a much bigger deal when it was boring or they didn’t find much of anything and were just pushing with ever-diminishing hope, but their physical bodies could certainly handle much more than attention spans at this point. It also didn’t help that they were moving through narrow, cramped areas that often had them going single-file, especially if they wanted enough room to fight and maneuver without running into each other. Adding Beth randomly killing tons of shit out of sight and looting it without the others even seeing it, and it was a pretty monotonous slog.

It got better the deeper they got, which is not what most teams would say, but the increased danger and increased number of beasts meant that Beth wasn’t just clearly everything up randomly without the others even seeing it. At this point, they had to proceed with a certain, if still low, level of caution, as ambushing and cave-ins were their biggest worry. Not that a cave-in would even necessarily be fatal for any of them, and Beth could pluck them out with her Ideal, but it was be very annoying and frustrating and could deal some heavy damage to their gear. Not something they wanted to deal with if they could avoid it by just being a little careful.

The first big hit they had was a massive cavern, something far bigger than a CRA Hall or giant sports stadium, something stretching for miles in multiple directions. The place was teeming, absolutely swarming, with all kinds of beasts, so much so that they were actually a tide, lapping up over each other to attack not just the group, but other beasts. Beasts even of the same species and type had no love for each other, let alone in a very mana-concentrated spot like this where tons of beasts were vying to absorb all that excess mana. The whole cavern was an absolute madhouse, and the noise, good gods the noise. It was a shrieking, snarling, wailing, whining, roaring mess of a mass of bodies and fangs and claws, and it took the group hours to clear it all out. Thankfully, this was just the kind of thing they excelled at, and they went at it with gusto, though the smell, especially as the bodies really started to pile up, was another deterrent.

What was not at all a deterrent, and was the first real bright spot, was a giant pillar in the center of the room. Not something man-made or anything like that, but it was a big mass of metal. The group noticed it fairly early on in the fighting, with not just the shine as it reflected different light sources, but the concentration of mana being something that pinged the senses. It was all mana metals, and the pillar itself was almost entirely metal, with little rock at all. It wasn’t likely something entirely natural, but where both the Path and magic were concerned, natural was just a state of mind. They had to clear the entire cavern and then guard several entrances before they could even address the pillar, and it was clear that that was one of the primary things the beasts that had been swarming were after. Beasts were drawn to precious items, not because they recognized them, of course, but because they were attracted to the mana concentrations and the overall influence of an item. Valuable things like mana iron weren’t just recognizable because they had mana sitting in them, but they also had certain extras that beasts were quite good at sensing. Such things could even smell different than something that was of low value, and beasts, even in their frenzies, could detect those sorts of things.

The pillar was massive, even by their standards, and had to be just tons and tons of material, not even including what stone and rock there was within it. The biggest difficulty was how they were going to harvest the thing, and that required some greater expertise. They had more than enough muscle, but Sera was worried about Beth just grabbing it and ripping it apart and storing it, so they recruited the Empyreans, who were more than happy to help, even if they did have a tendency to argue for an hour before actually executing any kind of even basic plan.

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