Limitless Path Chapter Six Hundred Eighty-Three (Patreon)

After that, it was back to searching for a while. The city had divulged all its secrets, at least for now, and Beth frankly didn’t want to spend weeks or months combing through it looking for anything else. They had gotten all the big, obvious, extremely valuable loot out of it, and now Beth was of a mind to sell the location to somebody, probably somebody in need of a nice, fresh city to move somewhere else, as unlikely as that sounded. The team continued wandering underground for a while, heading away from the city, but they didn’t find anything extraordinary over the next couple weeks. They still had two months until the auction, so Beth exerted some effort to grab the entire team and teleport them back near where they first landed.

After that, it was in the ship and off to another destination. They had a second lead that they wanted to check out before they made their final prep for the auction, and that was a place where there was a high-level dungeon that hadn’t been explored yet. Better yet, Beth had a pocketful of spikes, and by that she meant she had over a hundred of them in her storage. Never leave home without a good spike ready to make a dungeon unreasonably difficult.

The very first order of business, however, was to get their next rebirth done, which had been a long time coming. They would be stepping into rebirth seventeen, which put them within spitting distance of Ascended, with only another two rebirths of Enlightened to go before they hit the big milestone. Beth didn’t anticipate leveling to take more than a few weeks, if even that, depending on just how hard they went in her gate and the dungeon they were about to explore. The biggest hurdle was getting their quests done, but they would just have to see what the difficulty was like once they reached the top of seventeen and got those quests.

First was actually doing the rebirths themselves, which they did within Beth’s gate, as always, all as a big group. They felt a deeper connection when they did them, and Beth could feel the connections far more clearly than any of the others, except Sera, who could also feel how deep her connection with Beth was. Beth felt the two of them had a bond that transcended words at that point, which didn’t really surprise her; they had basically been meant for each other, not that she believed in fate, but it had felt that way the moment they met. What had been a combination of a crush and love at first sight along with a deep connection, a surprise given how free and uncaring Sera had been at the time, had blossomed into a powerful and abiding love that linked them on a fundamental level.

Such things were easy to feel during the rebirth process, and Beth could feel a connection they all shared. Her connection to Blood was quite deep, though not nearly as powerful as the massive and unshakable link between her and Sera, but it was not just present but powerful as well. The others were all connected to her and each other, though at much more tenuous levels, which only really made sense. Neph and Blood were linked strongly, as were Blood and Val, and Kris and Bjorn shared a deeper link than most. Beth wasn’t quite sure how that last one was going, but the two seemed happy together; it was difficult, at times, getting anything out of the two most recalcitrant and quiet members of the team.

The process took just a bit longer than the last few, but that was to be expected. It wasn’t anything like hours, but they were making some major changes here, and every time they completed a True Rebirth, they underwent just that much more change, considering both the upgrades to their baseline as well as their man pools and strength. It would get even crazier as they entered and moved through Ascended levels, as the concentration and purification of mana that happened there would take some time. It wasn’t going to be days, but by the forties, rebirths would take dozens of minutes, if not up to a couple hours right before they hit Exalted. As to Exalted itself, she had no idea, but she brushed those thoughts away as she checked her progress of the last couple years.

Things were really coming along nicely, though she wasn’t happy with everything that still said Master on her sheet. That was going to be the next task, depending on a number of circumstances; she hoped to push their crafting through the final bit and into Grandmaster, but that was a pretty big hurdle. Not that she thought any of them incapable or any such thing, but it was just going to take time. However, if they didn’t devote time to it now, when would they? Better to plan to do it after the auction; if they got a place in the City, so much the better, but they could just keeping using their place on Zephyr to do everything.

In point of fact, they likely would keep using their place on Zephyr for a lot of things; the relaxed atmosphere and access to so many wonderful amenities made it a great place to live, and they hadn’t spent so much on the place or invested so much time into the house and the planet to just abandon it. Despite how crazy it sounded, Beth was already thinking of the place they wanted to buy on Millennia’s Echo as more a temporary housing unit, or somewhere they stayed occasionally, only when they had business on the planet or in the depths. The house they would buy, even if it was nice, was a lodging, while the manor on Zephyr Prime was home.

Shaking those thoughts off, she glanced back over her status. She was at the point where she was hitting six figures at level one; not just that, as that had happened with Strength already, but this rebirth she was now hitting that category with two stats, with her baseline Endurance over a hundred thousand. She was powerful enough now that a lot of things below level four hundred couldn’t hurt her, at least in terms of beasts, regardless of her armor or equipment. She wouldn’t fight naked any time soon, but most things below three hundred couldn’t even scratch her. It was a different story for both Wayfarers and monsters, as both had rebirths to factor in, which threw all the calculations off, but beasts and anything that followed their more simplistic leveling system she could factor.

She had seen some good improvement on a lot of skills as well, and a couple had hit Platinum, the only real new milestones she had reached recently. Light Beyond the Edge had just hit Platinum not all too long ago, and the power jump was quite significant. If she were any weaker overall than she was, she might have said the skill was limitless in range now, which was the biggest thing that she got out of the jump to Platinum, but she knew that wasn’t true. Between her stats and other skills, as well as her Ideal, she could sense things millions of miles away, so she knew that the skill wasn’t limitless in its range, just able to hit a decent chunk of the solar system she was in. That did bring up that she’d like to get another sensing skill; she was muddling through fine right now, but she’d like something that was very precise and that had a very high range. She’d also like the sun, the moon, and the stars while she was at it, but that could be put off for now.

The other big upgrades had been True Life Harvest, which she had already noted some time ago, but it was slowly plodding its way through Gold, and Tyrannical Destruction. That second one had been a huge jump, all focused within its ability to hold and crush. She hadn’t gained much range, less than she would have expected even a standard jump to Platinum might do, but the power that the skill had gained was unreal. She could easily, after performing a few test, grab Sera in her dragon form and toss her around with just the skill, let alone that she could do some real damage. And, again, that was using just the skill and nothing else; to be able to crack Sera’s insanely tough physique with just one skill showed just what kind of power they were talking about, and it was enormous.

The last thing she checked was Beastly Body, which was still sitting at the top of Platinum. Normally the jump between Platinum and Diamond was just one of the skill gaining more power and not a whole lot else. The first real big change was the jump to Platinum and the second was the jump to Mithril, but Beastly Body was behaving a bit differently. Despite how much she used it, and pushed the skill, often quite hard, it had refused to budge for over a year now. In fact, it was close to two years, and it had been stuck where it was at; she knew it wasn’t a tier problem, as the skill should be able to get all the way to Mithril before it had any issues, but it just wasn’t making the jump to Diamond.

“You look worried,” Sera said to her after they had finished their testing and cleaned up a bit. The rest of the group had all participated; the changes were enough now that they always took a bit of time after every rebirth to sync up and gauge where they were at in terms of power.

“Just looking at Beastly Body,” Beth answered. “I know it can grow, but it’s stuck at the top of Platinum and has been for quite a while.”

“Normally, I’d give you a little lecture on just how exceptional you are, considering how fast you’ve grown in every way, but that is odd,” Sera replied, wrapping her arms and tail around Beth. They were in the ‘house’ portion of the residential area of her gate, resting for a few minutes before heading back out. “You use that skill a lot and are quite good with it. You don’t know of any kind of extra requirement or restriction on it? I would think it would have made the jump to Diamond by now.”

“There’s nothing in the skill description and my deeper understanding of the skill after getting it to Platinum isn’t giving me anything,” Beth replied, leaning into Sera and shaking her head. “I don’t think it’s that there’s something all that special about it, but I do think it’s a little special itself. I think it might have a really big upgrade at Diamond, even though there isn’t a special requirement, and I might have to truly push the skill. Yeah, I use it a lot, and I’m really good with it, but I don’t ever push it beyond it’s capacity.”

“Which is a dangerous thing to do with a skill,” Sera said, shaking her head before nuzzling against Beth, lightly nipping Beth’s skin with her sharp fangs. For anyone else, that nip would have been a devastating bite leaving a gaping wound, but on Beth it barely even left a little mark, not even enough to call a hickey.

“I think we should take some time off after this,” Beth said, twisting a little to kiss Sera’s neck. “We’ve been going pretty hard for a while, so it would be nice to take another little break. I want us to do some crafting after the auction anyway, so a little downtime won’t be that bad. Besides, we’re both basically immortal, aren’t we?”

“That’s very true,” Sera said, chuckling into Beth’s neck. “The others, even if they’re not technically immortal, or not yet, have hundreds and hundreds of years of lifespan already. Given our rate of progress, well, there’s plenty of time for us to play around.”

“I know some playing around I want to do right now,” Beth growled, feeling in a mood after Sera had been clinging to her for a while.

“Let’s go!” Sera said excitedly, pulling on Beth.

“Hold on, hold on. Let’s wait just a day. Let’s get set up right where the dungeon is and then we can take a two day break,” Beth said, laughing. “Though, I’m glad you’re so fired up, especially with how often we’re together these days.”

“I want to take a decade off and spend every minute with you,” Sera stated firmly before getting a mischievous glint in her eye. “All of that in bed, of course.”

“Don’t think I’d protest that,” Beth fired back, a broad grin on her face. “Though, it would boring if it were just us for the whole ten years.”

“Oh my, already thinking about abandoning me?” Sera said, feigning hurt.

“Come on, you’re worse than I am, and that’s on your good days,” Beth laughed, rolling her eyes at her wife.

“Oh, I’m not that bad,” Sera said, pouting just a bit and jutting her lip slightly. “Am I?”

“Maybe, maybe not. Who can tell?” Beth answered, grinning before dragging Sera out of the house and to the others, despite how much they wanted to jump each other right there and then.

They finished making their way to the dungeon after that, managing to avoid notice, which was something Val was pretty insistent on, and not just because of her celebrity. If they were going to encamp for an objective month, or close to two, the less that people knew about where they were and what they were up to, the better. Beth thought it a little too paranoid, considering the strength of the team, but a little extra precaution didn’t wind up hurting them any. It also gave them a chance to practice moving without being detected or showing up on anybody’s radar, so to speak, and, well, they really did need some practice at it. Luckily, they weren’t going to be there long, or Beth might have thought that they really were in some kind of danger, given they were a bit sloppy.

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