Limitless Path

"What's the plan going forward?" Sera asked once everyone was settled in.

"Rebirths, leveling, spiked dungeons, yearly auction, finishing ref duty, all roughly in that order," Beth replied, ticking things off on her fingers.

"And what about you?" Sera asked, turning to Val.

"What about me?" asked Val in response.

"What are you up to? How's the whole Scions thing working out?" Sera asked.

"Well, it's going," Val said with a sigh, getting her pipe out and lighting it up. Beth got up with a grunt and started the fan in the room running, which she was pretty sure was there for just such things. Val puffed away for a moment before saying, "We're heading towards our fifth rebirths fairly soon, another year maybe, probably less, and they're prepping us to try to create a Mana Physique at that point. There's no failure penalty there, nothing permanent anyway, and even one of us doing it could be spun to be incredible PR. They are pumping tons of resources into us for it as well, which is both nice and annoying at once. I don't know, my heads all over the place and I'm just really tired. The people in charge don't get involved all that much, so it falls to me to babysit. It's so fucking annoying."

"It really doesn't seem worth it to me," Beth said.

"It is and it isn't," Val said, puffing on her pipe.

"Thanks, that cleared it right up," Beth said with a frown.

"Relax, I'll explain," Val said, rolling her eyes. "It's great for a number of reasons; we get tons of resources for absolutely free, which we might not have even with wealthy families. We get access to some of the most powerful people in the galaxy and some of the best training there is, also for free, which is a huge perk. On top of that, we make connections with those people and other people who are both powerful and extremely influential. We also get a lot of publicity, which is both good and bad, but I tend to think the good outweighs the bad, and that celebrity fades over time, which removes most of the negatives. On the other hand, it's a major pain in the ass and really tedious. The progress is also often artificially slow because we have all the PR commitments and the whole thing sometimes operates more like a circus than anything else. It's just life; you take the good right alongside the bad and fuck the rest."

"So, you get to quit after that, or what?" Beth asked, glancing between Blood and Val.

"Maybe," Val said, rocking a hand side-to-side and taking a deep draw.

"What's that mean?" asked Sera.

"At the very least, there'll be a bunch of wrap-up stuff we have to do," Val explained. "It's going to be a few years, if not even fucking longer, until we're done. Shit, they might want us to go all the way to Enlightened."

"You'll be stuck that long?" asked Kris quietly.

"Nah," Val said with another dismissive wave. "They've talked about it, but the ratings and viewership is already dropping and the interest just isn't there. The point of the thing was to have a big impact and get people hyped up, not to make the thing into an eternal soap opera, though that's why a lot of people tuned in. We'll wrap the main body of the filming and stuff up within two years, probably, but after that we're still going to have to do more press junket stuff for a while. It's a major pain in the ass, but at least I won't have to be babysitting the other morons after we get through the fifth rebirth and do some more stuff just to show how amazing that made us."

"How long until you're fully free?" asked Sera.

"Eh, five years?" Val replied in an unsure tone. "But two years or less until I have a lot of time on my hands. Fuck, I can finally level and do shit I want to do. And did I mention no more fucking babysitting? Blood Stars fuck off, watching the rest of them is so annoying."

"Well, tell us how you really feel," Beth said with a laugh.

"Why don't you just quit? It sounds impossibly tedious," Bjorn said, the first he had spoken since he and Kris had returned.

"It's almost over," Val said with a shake of her. "I can endure it for a little more. Besides, Ancestor said she'll take me for a special vacation followed by personal training when it's done. I'll be so much stronger after she's done helping me; that alone almost makes up for all the shit. Almost."

"Better you than me," Bjorn grunted, returning to his calm silence.

The next item on the agenda, as Beth had pointed out, were the three girls' rebirths. They had all the materials and they had some free time, which was perfect for getting it done now. Having everything, including a room, they just made sure they had all their stat points distributed before doing the rebirth. This time, neither Blood nor Sera experienced any major changes or increases in their humanization. Beth also didn't have anything out of the ordinary; she already had a Mana Physique and it would likely be quite a while for her next class evolution.

The one she had just undergone, in terms of class transformation, was a bit early, which was influenced by several factors including the person's experiences in combat. Beth was consistently ahead of the curve, but class evolutions would slow down a bit as people progressed. She wouldn't get another one until a rebirth or two into Enlightened, based on everything she knew about them. It was also possible to force one or do something extraordinary when following the Limitless Path, but Beth wasn't foreseeing anything like that with her classes for a while.

They had even less time needed to get used to their new stats after this rebirth, as all of them had every stat except Intelligence and Wisdom over a thousand, and the rest of their stats were into the territory of multiple thousands. Beth's Strength alone was scaling so hard at this stage that she had more Strength now than when they were getting ready to do their sixth rebirths. Blood was in a similar boat, though not quite to that extreme, as her last increase in humanization had been a good bump, but it hadn't been the same kind of massive leap that Beth's class evolution had given her. Beth checked their stat pages when they were done to see where they were at, noting that they had actually gained money even after buying their materials, mainly because of just how many high-level beasts they had killed over the last couple years, subjective timewise.