Limitless Path

Joyrides and lengthy cruises aside, it was time to buckle down and get a little serious, which would also line up nicely with Kim and her team being back for a while. Everything that Beth's team needed had been found, or had already been available to them, such as with Bjorn's case, and they were ready. This would be the eighth rebirth for everyone but Val, as she had just completed her sixth rebirth and was still working on catching up. She wasn't always waiting to stay in lockstep with the others as she was behind, so she had already done six and was over halfway to seven, even counting the ever increasing requirements for experience gain at higher levels.

Beth, Sera, Blood, Kris, and Bjorn would all be undergoing rebirths, and just about the safest place for them to do it was within Beth's gate. They could pick an area in the 'backyard' that was behind the house and all activate the upgrade at the same time, which would add some helpful resonance, though they did have to walk a bit to get away from all the massive piles of dreadnought pieces and bits that were taking up a huge amount of space in the yard. The five of them took places about equidistant from each other, with Val sitting on a pile of titanium plates to the side and watching over them, not that there was anything to protect them from within Beth's gate. All five of them got the items necessary ready, a pile of treasures stacked neatly around each of them, so many of them together with such intense energy that the mana in the space around them twisted and vibrated. They all selected to undergo their rebirths at the same time, all of the materials and resources they need lifting off the ground and swirling around them before dissolving into streams of mana and powerful energies and piercing into their bodies.

The eighth rebirth wasn't really anything special, though Beth could still feel some resonances; she could feel Blood nearby, for one, but she also felt a very strong resonance with Sera, energy gliding back and forth between the two of them as their bodies were remade and reformed. It wasn't very dramatic for this rebirth, but the mana and aspects of the items was still doing reconstructive work on them, allowing them to even further surpass their limits while also retaining some of the strength they had already built up. The last part, combined with a bit better expansion of mana reservoir and a slight bit of increase in mana density, was why the True Rebirth required the quest and materials, though Beth had heard from others that the quest could be different, even not requiring any gathered materials right at the time of rebirth. There were a lot of things about rebirths they hadn't personally encountered yet, but much of that happened higher up the ladder, though people with slightly unusual bodies or constitutions could experience different True Rebirth quests even as an Awoken.

Beth felt something stir as their rebirths completed, though she had a hard time putting her finger on exactly what the feeling represented. She had a vague sense that something had changed within her, maybe with her soul, which was a bit of a scary thought, but she didn't feel at all bad or disturbed in any way. She remained seated as the others got up and stretched, though they were compounding their stats to much at this point that Beth had stats a lot of early Enlightened would have a bit of envy over if they saw them. She pulled up just her stat sheet, interested to check what her exact numbers were and see if anything unexpected show up in the raw data.