Limitless Path Chapter Six Hundred Seventy-Five (Patreon)

Nobody had dived into the strange pond, with Neph and Kris crouched by the water arguing about composition. Beth stopped next to Sera and crossed her arms, glancing at her wife with a raised eyebrow, the dragon just shrugging. She turned back and watched, scanning the area to make sure there wasn’t a second basilisk or other predator waiting in ambush to grab anything that approached the glowing pond. Visually, nothing stood out in the cave, but the basilisk had been very heavily concealed, to the point it had seemed like a skill or spell even though she was pretty sure it was all natural camouflage.  

Beth couldn’t sense anything, at least not in the way of any other beasts nearby laying in wait, so she just waited for Kris and Neph’s verdict. The two weren’t the best alchemists in the universe, but like the rest of the group, they had hit Master and worked through most of those ranks, meaning it was quite hard to fool them when it came to ingredients or concoctions. The water was more than water, which might have been assumed from the glow, though Beth was pretty sure that most of the glow was coming from something that was in the pond and not just the water. She would have just dove in if she was alone and if she thought the water was valuable after getting whatever was in it, she would have grabbed all of it. For most people, that would have been a crazy proposal, but Beth had so much storage space she couldn’t even shake a stick at it.  

“It’s…safe?” Kris said after a while.  

“You sound so confident,” Beth said sarcastically. 

“Well, it won’t kill you,” Neph said. “The properties are really interesting! Something’s influenced the water to have a bunch of mana in it, which has changed the nature of the water. If we were to use this water as a base for potions, or better yet! If we used it as a base for elixirs, we could create elixirs with some fascinating properties. It would be something worthwhile to experiment with, even if we only took a little bit of it.” 

“I hate to be that person, coming in and grabbing everything, but then again, who else is even going to come down here? Why can’t we take it all?” Beth asked. 

“Well, there’s a lot, and the storage…” Neph said. 

“Neph. We have our own solar system that’s linked to my soul. We could take an interesting planet or two if we found them,” Beth said, rolling her eyes.  

“Let’s not go on any world-napping sprees just yet,” Val cut in, frowning at Beth. 

“Just an example,” Beth said. “Anyway, the water’s fine to dive in?” 

“Well, if it’s you, it won’t hurt,” Kris said. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Beth asked.  

“Well, you know, you’re, uh, well…” Kris said.  

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Beth said, rolling her eyes. “Just watch things up top.” 

She had directed the last to the whole group before leaping into the water. She didn’t want to just vacuum up the water right away into the medallion for a couple reasons, but the main thing was if there was anything in the water that relied on being submerged in it. If there were some kinds of precious herbs or plants at the bottom of the pond, she didn’t want to suck the water away and have them start dying or losing their intrinsic properties before they could get to them. Safer to explore the pond first, then take everything all at once depending on what she found.  

The pond water was cold, but not anything that Beth couldn’t handle. Mana had strange properties that made things able to defy the normal laws of physics, and she had experienced water that was much colder than the typical freezing point of the substance while still liquid, but this didn’t really feel like that. It was cold, but it was also strange in a way, feeling like something was brushing against her while she descended, not in the way of movement in the water, but the mana in the water was stirring something that affected her a bit. The pond was only about a hundred feet across at its widest and it narrowed a bit as she descended, though it didn’t get much narrower before the bottom about a hundred and fifty feet down. The pressure of the water at that depth would have been something to be a bit concerned about if Beth wasn’t as powerful as she was, but the weight of the all the water above her wasn’t even something she could feel. 

The further she descended, the stranger the feeling she had, the concentration of mana clearly increasing. It had only taken her a little bit in the pond to spot what she was after, the bottom too distorted from the surface to see it, but now that she was in the water and swimming down, she had a much better view. Right at the center of the bottom of the pond was a strange crystal, glowing with a whitish-blue light that didn’t pulse but just provided a steady, constant glow. It wasn’t something Beth recognized, though she did immediately know it was the source of the mana in the water. She also scanned the pond and found that there weren’t any plants or animals present that they might want to preserve. Oh, there were some small grasses at the bottom and something that was like some kind of moss or something; she wasn’t really sure how that all worked, given there wasn’t enough light, even with the crystal, for the plants to be doing photosynthesis, or there shouldn’t have been. She wasn’t the expert, though, and Neph and Kris would know a lot more. 

She swam down to the crystal, a little impressed by its size, finding it about the size of her torso, or maybe just slightly smaller, but it was very close, including thickness. The whole crystal was a white color, a little difficult to tell based on the grow, but it was a bit translucent, the coloring not incredibly strong. Beth planted herself in the body and examined the thing, trying to determine before touching it if it was at all dangerous, or if there was anything that was holding it in place. She did also scan the area to see if there were any hostile creatures about, but it looked like nothing had snuck past the basilisk up top to invade the water. She gave the crystal a quick scan as well, trying to determine what they had stumbled upon.  

Time’s Great Passage 

{This crystal possesses the ability to alter the properties of time and its passage. Prolonged exposure can lead to mana fluctuations and time synchronization imbalance if not properly handled. Mana influence grade is extreme.} 

Beth knew most of what it was saying, and in fact she was pretty familiar with the description terms based on the studying she and Sera had done to know more about relics and random items. One of the things not mentioned in the description was that people, and objects, were affected based on their mana density and control. An example would be someone in their teens that had just Awoken and was now on the Path versus Beth at the peak of rebirth sixteen. The fresh level one would be enormously affected by this crystal, their mana in their own body acting weird and messing up while they started to stutter around in time, though only by a few seconds. It would be a deeply unpleasant experience for the person and could have long-term consequences if they didn’t leave the crystal’s range immediately. Compared to Beth, however, the crystal was just a bit of a fascinating item that was worth quite a lot. She had too much mana and too much control over her own mana and body, not to mention the greater mana amount and control having a Mana Physique gave versus that hypothetical level one person, to let a crystal like this really affect her much.  

The mana influence grade was the biggest issue, if one wanted to frame it like that, and why it would be highly dangerous for that level one person to be around the crystal for any length of time. Some items like this would exert, not with a conscious will, an influence on their surroundings that could greatly change and morph things around them. The crystal was a good example, and it explained the mana in the water that Kris and Neph had detected but been a little unsure of. Time mana wasn’t all that common and it was difficult to get a read on it, even more when it was just a secondary effect in some other substance or compound placed there by a secondary or tertiary system.  

Beth made sure, again, that there was nothing crazy that would grab her, whether beast or trap or whatever, before grabbing the crystal, finding it heavy. For her to say that meant the thing must weigh an absolute ton, but she was still able to lift it, finding that it wasn’t attached to the rock at the pond’s bottom or any other surface. She was even able to place it in the Reliquary, letting the Empyreans give it a once-over, though Erosh told her it wasn’t all that special. It was very rare and highly prized, to be sure, but it wasn’t on the level of a unique or unknown item; plenty of people crafted with crystals with time mana. This one was larger and more powerful than many such examples; it was, after all, powerful enough that it showed up as an individual item to Beth’s eye power and not just being labeled a piece of mana crystal. The main use of the thing, or what most factions would want to buy it for, would be a constructed dungeon, the kind of thing that did what Beth’s gate power did, the same as what factions like the dragon clan had access to. Not the Grand Palace kind of thing, but they certainly had one or more dungeons with time compression.  

Beth wasn’t sure if that meant the thing would do well at an auction on Millennia’s Echo, especially an auction that was already the talk of the town, but it would net them a ton of coin regardless of if it was worthy of such things. The Black Ships, in particular, would love to get their hands on such an item. With their intergalactic connections and ability to move goods across the stars in an instant, they would love to either act as a broker or just buy the item outright, likely for a fairly good price. Auctioning it somewhere else would also be a possibility, though getting that not just arranged, but fully completed so they had the coin in pocket, or in status screen, by the start of the City’s auction would be a bit of a bigger ask.  

Beth swam back up the surface, trying not to go too fast so as not to disturb anything else in the pond, nor did she want to explode out of the pond and soak the rest of her group, though that might be funny. She emerged from the surface to find the group all occupied with various things, crafting or reading or resting, and Sera standing by the water with her hands on her hips and tapping on of her large, clawed feet. Based on the group’s disposition, she was guessing maybe a bit more time had passed than she had assumed, which Sera confirmed.  

“You were down there an hour,” her wife said as Beth hopped up. “Anything dangerous?” 

“No, sorry,” Beth replied, kissing her quickly, but firmly, on the lips. “Found out what the mana was, and what the glow was mostly from.” 

She popped the crystal out, which had the group gathering around to examine it. Sera had understood right away when Beth showed the crystal, and it also got Neph and Kris chattering…well, mostly Neph. Kris usually just indulged the bee, but it really didn’t seem like she minded the younger woman’s company at all. They had gotten more excited about the water, however, not the crystal, as water infused with a lot of time mana was quite rare. It would make any alchemy done with it even more efficient and produce even more rare and strange results, so they were already scooping up vials and beakers of it to keep on-hand in their own storage.  

“Quite an amazing find!” Val exclaimed, gone a bit starry-eyed. “Oh, how I wish we had spent more time on our crafting lately. If I were even a Grandmaster enchanter, let alone a Sage, the things I could use that for…” 

“I thought it would be most valued for a faction to make a training dungeon or area,” Beth replied.  

“Ah, fuck off,” Val said, her coarse language when it was just them coming out. “That would be such a fucking waste of an amazing crystal. Those old bastards that head the clan would love to do stupid shit like that with it, but there are at least half a dozen enchantments I could think of that would be much better than that boring old shit.” 

“And these enchantments, just coincidentally, would greatly benefit you, but not so much the clan?” Beth asked with a smirk, understanding the logic of what Val was saying about the clan elders.  

“Well, of course, but in this hypothetical, it isn’t their damn crystal,” Val replied petulantly. “If I used a crystal like that to empower a set of armor with time altering properties, it would be so powerful! Shit, I could just enchant a belt or cloak to have an inbuilt skill to alter time flow around the wearer. It could even be reactive, those damn pests not making it happen…” 

Val trailed off into mutters as she dreamed of everything she could do with the crystal. Of course, that was given the crystal was wholly hers, though Beth didn’t have a problem with letting one of the group use even something that valuable if they could do it. Which was the second problem, being that Val was also still a Master and had opened her little huffy episode by opining for the days when she would be a Grandmaster or Sage. Personally, Beth thought that the second was probably a better bet for working with such a rare and powerful item, though she did have to remember that groups of crafters could work together. Five Grandmasters together still might not be able to equal a Sage, especially if that Sage was at more than just [0], but they could still make much better use of materials and produce something a half a step above what a single Grandmaster might create.  

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