Limitless Path Chapter Six Hundred Ninety-One (Patreon)

When the armor set was set aside, it was finally time for the end, and after the hours, and the fights and spectacle, Beth would be glad for it to just be over. She was pretty sure nobody had gotten word about what was coming up, but she was also sure there were some heavy hitters, beyond Baelvyr, with plenty of coin waiting for just these items. If anything, she expected the items to be something crazy along the lines of a starship the size of a small moon or a fully developed world or something, but she didn’t really know what to expect.

What she hadn’t expected was for the first item to be wheeled out on a cart under a cloth. Unless it was a starship that could fold up far further than her airship could, then it definitely wasn’t a ship under that little cloth, unless it was just the ignition key. She doubted that, however, and when the auctioneer started the introduction for the item, that supposition was put to rest quite thoroughly as she started listing off the properties of the item. The thing that became instantly apparent was this was an extremely powerful artifact, and Beth truly meant that quite literally, as what was described was something that housed an incredibly level of power. It was a level of magical power and concentration that made a level seven hundred beast core look like a double-A battery, if Beth was to make a slightly crude comparison, and that was just from the initial description.

When the cloth was pulled back, what lay below was an object about the size of a basketball or slightly larger, and it thrummed with power, Beth able to feel the pulse of the magical energy from where she was again seated on the second floor. The empyreans had all returned to the reliquary, and she was sure there was going to be a lot of questions and demands around that later, but she was more focused on the auction finale. The item that was pulsing with power on the cart was referred to as a heart, though it didn’t look like one, and it’s description didn’t really help all that much, either.

Heart of the Eternal Mountain

{The Mountain stands eternal and unshaken. Power that wells from the intangible depth. The strength of stone past the edge of time. Only the heart’s beating can truly be harnessed by one unconnected.}

It was almost a guarantee at this point that a very powerful item, especially one that hadn’t been crafted by a sapient being, would have a mysterious and vague description. This particular item was rather worse than many Beth had encountered over the years, but that didn’t stop the bids, not by a long shot. Everyone in the whole venue was eager to throw their hat in the ring, and the price climbed so rapidly, it was almost moot trying to figure out what the current bid even was. Beth also, while being impressed at the rarity and power of the item, didn’t have any plans to build a fortress-sized starship or anything else that would need such a power source. Not any time soon, at least, which made the second-to-last item of the auction more an idle curiosity than anything else.

The bidding for the item lasted quite a while, which gave Beth and the team some time to go over what they were going to do after the auction wrapped up. The strategy mainly involved getting away from the area without getting into a fight, which was going to be easier said than done, and then checking out their new house. Oh, and talking to Baelvyr at some point, but Beth assumed he would find them rather than them finding him. It would be especially easy since it would be pretty obvious where they were going versus her having no idea where he would be.

When someone eventually bought the heart, for eight black ruby coins, they were finally ready to move on to the last item of the whole auction. Beth thought that this one might be a little more impressive compared to being wheeled out on a cart, and she was right about that, considering the information displayed on the screen. Her guess of a starship hadn’t been too far off the mark, considering it was a space station…a space station that could be relocated, under its own power. As the final item of an auction, it was extremely impressive, but it wasn’t anything that Beth and her group were interested in. Owning two houses on expensive worlds was already too much, in her opinion, and she didn’t need a somehow mobile space station on top of it.

Not that the station wasn’t impressive. Room for thousands of people, an integrated defensive system that was highly reactive and incredibly powerful, enough armor to stop a supernova, luxurious interior, and an insane level of armament. Not to mention teleportation network connections and the crazy ability for, with enough power, the space station to teleport. Beth idly wondered if the heart was meant to go with it, or had been taken out of it, or if the two items being the final items was just some kind of cosmic coincidence.

The bids were certainly indicative of the value of the item, as the price wasn’t going up at an insane speed like the other big ticket items, but was jumping by huge increments. It shouldn’t really be a surprise that the end value was far greater than anything else that day, even the heart, as the full list of the station’s capabilities was longer than Beth’s arm and unbelievably impressive in its own right. The final price of thirty-two black ruby coins made even the deed look like chump change, but she supposed that was why Tarvek had given her the hints about the two ‘secret’ finale items and having plenty of coin to burn.

Instead, her group had plenty of coin to keep. While their item sales hadn’t fully covered their purchases, they had covered a lot of that ground, and the whole group still had quite a bit of liquid funds, which was rather good, as they had a few money-intensive tasks coming up. True, they did have a lot of resources to play with, but crafting was a total money pit, especially once one got out of the early ranks and was doing some serious work. On top of that, many on the team could use a few upgrades, whether that was pieces of armor or enchantments or weapons or so on, everyone would need to drop a little coin on their gear. Looking into a new skill, like Neph had just gotten, could also be on the docket for a few of them, so having the extra cash to splash around was rather nice.

Beth had a different set of priorities right now. Well, she had the same priorities, but extra ones, too, which had less to do with her being the group leader and more with her own projects. She needed to speak to Baelvyr, she needed to go pay Old Tom a visit, she had to talk with the empyreans, and she had that token for the Trial or special realm still burning a hole in her pocket. On top of that, she was sure there were a few more items that it might be nice to get sorted out right now before starting anything else serious, and then she also wanted to push her crafting to the next level. Gear and skills she was mostly fine on, though her armor was a little bit old for her at this point. She basically was rocking a bit of a hodgepodge, with the legendary, but lower level, set she had made by the dwarves being supplemented by her more powerful gauntlets and crown, plus her sword that had the death properties.

In terms of blade and fist, she was still set for some time, and the newer crown she had was nice, but she could use new torso and leg protection. She wanted to get to the point where she could make her own stuff, but that was going to be Grandmaster work at this point, at the very least, and she still wasn’t there yet, which circled back to her needing time to craft. A thousand things on the to-do list, and all of that didn’t even include spending some time with Sera. She knew the dragon was eager to try the stones they had gotten at that last auction, and had even held off on using them, though Beth really wouldn’t have been upset if Isoldorra had been the first. She’d love to have that memory of the first use with Sera, but she was still a bit suspicious of the stones’ meditative powers; a victim—er, first trial participant, would have been kind of nice.

So, order of operation was going to be somewhat important, especially because that token she had for that random Trial had talked about it taking months, and she was pretty sure it was speaking about objective time, though time did get a little wonky when one traveled all over the galaxy at a moment’s notice. Still, that was a block of time, so she better get a few of the more pressing things done first, then get that done, then work on crafting. Sera was always present, but she’d squeeze in bits of time between it all, though they could probably try the stones out sooner rather than later.

First was going to their new house, which was a black and red brick building with some tasteful external decor located in a quiet district in the City of Mended Dreams. It would have plenty of room for the team with their current roster size, but it wouldn’t fit all that many more people. Not that Beth was all that worried; hell, the next people that might reasonably be joining the team would very likely not need an extra bed, considering the two of them would be using the same bed she and Sera did.

That was neither here nor there, and she entered the gate first. Other than Bjorn and Sera, she was the most durable, and that was debatable, whether she could take a hit even better than the two of them or not. No surprises were present, which had been a bit of worry with how easy it had been to get out of the auction house without getting caught up in anything. The front of the building had a small front garden behind the gate and low wall, though the area wasn’t all that big. Despite the price and the expenses, space on Millennia’s Echo was at a premium, and in the heart of the city, even an outer district, all the more so.

They entered the manse next, finding an open foyer that led into a central room with a single, sweeping staircase that provided access to the second floor. The first floor was mainly living areas like the kitchen, dining room, living room, a library, an office, what Beth assumed was something like a smoking room or lounge, and a couple open rooms that could be offices or work spaces. The second floor, once they had finished exploring the first, was entirely bedrooms, which was a bit different than the place on Zephyr, which had some working rooms upstairs and a couple bedrooms downstairs. Not that they were hard constraints; an office could be transformed into a bedroom and vice versa with a few furniture changes.

And furniture was the next task, one which the others could pitch in with, considering the place had not come furnished. In fact, there wasn’t so much as a spoon in the kitchen, though Beth was just glad that the previous owners had at least left the spoon drawer itself. With how expensive everything here was, and how miserly many seemed, she wasn’t all that sure that that had been a guarantee. Getting a fridge hadn’t been, clearly, as she inspected the space where a fridge would go, if they had one.

The consortium of Val, Kris, Neph, and Adam put their heads together for furniture. The Mana Physique expert might be a strange choice to most, but he had an eye for quality furniture and a head for interior layouts, if not quite interior decorating, that made him a good pick for picking out beds and chairs and tables. That group was given a generous amount of coin, but they also weren’t quite going to be buying furniture that exactly matched the level of wealth of the mansion and the planet. In fact, considering the size, the literal physical size, of many of their members, not to mention their impressive physical strength, sturdiness and durability, followed closely by comfort, were the main points of order.

That left Beth free to answer the door for their very first guests, which were not a shock at all, considering the scene at the auction house. It was Baelvyr and the mysterious woman, with Tazeen nowhere in sight, though seeing the elf there had already been odd. Seeing him not doing some kind of work had kind of been like Beth meeting one of her high schools teachers out in the wild, just shopping at the grocery store or something like that. She supposed the elf didn’t work all the time, but that was certainly the impressive he gave, and thinking of him very calmly bidding during a bidding war at the auction house with his stoic face made her chuckle.

“Come in! Take a seat anywhere! Like on that bit of floor, or that, or those tiles over there,” Beth said cheerily, the slight sarcasm of her tone not lost in the process.

“Anybody who’s anybody got their own furniture, girlie,” Baelvyr corrected her mildly, making a chair appear in the living room and sitting in it.

As if to prove or reinforce the point, everyone else that was still in the house did the same, with a circle of chairs forming the in living room centered around the ogre at the head. The woman that Baelvyr hadn’t introduced yet also joined them, pulling out her own chair, which Beth couldn’t help but notice was extremely finely crafted. Again, she wasn’t an expert in such things, but she was pretty sure the wood alone was worth a handful of diamond coins, and even for a richey rich, that was a helluva lot of money to spend on a single chair, one that one kept in their spatial storage.

Now that Beth had the chance to look closer at the woman, it was clear at a glance that she was an Exalted. Considering how ‘poor’ the Milky Way was supposed to be, they were encountering a lot of them, but then they were on the planet to be on at the same time. If there was anywhere to meet dozens of new Exalted, it would Millennia’s Echo, especially when talking about someone as rare as this. Beth didn’t know what it was, but the woman had a mysterious aura about her, something that was calm and deep, like a wellspring that had gone perfectly still, an untold depth lurking below a placid, smooth exterior. An exterior that was quite beautiful, by the way, with long, golden hair, bright green eyes, soft but pretty facial features, and slightly elongated ears, the woman certainly painted a picture.

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