Limitless Path

For a Beast Tide, it wasn't really all that big of a deal, especially considering the kinds of situations that Beth and Sera had found themselves neck-deep in over the last couple decades. The Monster problem Baelvyr had had them go and help out with saw far larger Tides, even for the smallest and most easily managed, than this little defensive measure they had done. It was literally a long afternoon's work to get the tide cleared up and then they moved back to the city wall, finding both the Hall Master and a man that Beth was unfamiliar with standing there. Considering the strange man with fiery red hair and glowing yellow eyes radiated quite a bit of power, and even the Hall Master was acting moderately respectful, Beth assumed he was the Ascended that was still administering this frontier city.

"That was…impressive," the Hall Master said, casting a critical over the two girls before glancing out at the battlefield. "You took out a couple hundred thousand beasts in short order while only allowing forty or so thousand to even get anywhere close to the city walls. By the time the ranged damage dealers had thinned the herds, we only had to kill a thousand or two up close at the wall itself."

"It wasn't that hard," Beth said with a shrug, earning a snort from the Ascended.

"Don't try an play it up that much," he said snidely. "You are not even Enlightened yet; I'm sure that was quite the effort."

"It really wasn't," Beth said. Before he could say more, she cut in again, "And if you think that's a lie, let's head over to the arena floor right now. I'd be happy to prove it to you."

"Dead Stars," muttered the Hall Master, shaking his head.

"Do not get cocky," snapped the Ascended. "You don't have the qualifications to challenge me."

"Don't tell me how matches work," Beth snapped back, briefly flashing the man her Gold Emblem, knowing someone with his stats and power could easily see it even in that fraction of a second. "I know perfectly well who can challenge who, when they can do it, and for what reason."

"Ladies, ladies," Sera said, getting between the two of them. "Why don't we calm down a little."

"You're just as bad as her," the Ascended snapped, pointing a finger at Sera.

"Stop pointing at my wife before I snap that finger off," Beth growled over Sera's shoulder.

"I want to see you try," the Ascended retorted, power swirling around him.

Sera looked over at the Hall Master with a helpless look on her face, but the older man just shrugged. Sera sighed and stepped out of the way, not wanting to get caught in what was about to happen, but still being a witness, as was the Hall Master. Beth had challenged the man to a duel, and on the arena floor, so if the Ascended struck first, the judgement later would go heavily against him. Sensing an Ascended and somebody who had just practically soloed a Tide about to start fighting, everybody else, including two fresh Enlightened, decided that it was a good time to make themselves scarce. Or at the least, it was a good time to retreat to a safe distance, one where they could watch the show without getting blasted by an errant spell. Sera wasn't sure exactly what it was, but it was very clear that a fight would happen, as both the Ascended and Beth seemed to be rubbing each other the wrong way, and quite a bit. Still, she wasn't super worried, as while the Hall Master was still Enlightened, he was close to Ascended and was quite strong for his tier. If things really spiraled, he could step in and stop them from going too far overboard.

Thankfully, it didn't actually kick off, despite how much the two were rubbing each other the wrong way, which Sera and the Hall Master might have found funny. Sera was less than totally amused as she didn't want to have to get into a random dustup with some no-name Ascended, and the Hall Master was now sweating because the administrator backed off when Beth flared her power, so much power that she felt like a later-stage Enlightened even though she was clearly only in rebirth nine. Considering the Ascended was at rebirth twenty-one, and not that exceptionally strong compared to his overall rebirth rank, it had given him enough pause that the tension started to slowly bleed off. It was all fine and dandy when he had a grievance with the attitude of some upstart Empowered that was overstepping her bounds, even if she was strong and had a Gold Emblem, but it was another thing when that upstart cycled enough power that space around her was bending and twisting on a high-mana planet. Beth hadn't even been using any of her spatial skills to add to the intimidation factor, either, as she was just that strong that running all her boosting skills at max and fully summoning her Presence, all that in conjunction with her Mana Physique, made her emit quite an insane amount of power. It was a pretty stark lesson, at least for the Ascended and the Hall Master, as, while prodigies were rare, they were labeled as such for a reason.

"Even given your attitude, it is fine, but I will not have you trying to curry favor in such a manner," the Ascended said even as he took a metaphorical step back.

"The fuck does that mean?" Beth asked, letting her Presence go but not dimming her power any more than that.

"You are not the first to do some great feat in this city to try to gain excess favor with myself and the administration," the Ascended said. "I take a dim view of such things. I appreciate the help to the city in taking care of the Tide, but we will not be giving you any favorable status."

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"We didn't take care of the Tide for a reward, asshole," Beth snapped back, though she fully dismissed her power. "We did it because it was the right thing to do. Try thinking of that next time."

Beth had had enough of the guy, who had grated on her from the start, and with a microscopic movement disappeared in an instant, using her mastery of space to appear back in the forge in the Hall. Sera, meanwhile, gave the man a bit of a glare before nodding at the Hall Master. The dragon walked off after exchanging a word or two with the Hall Master, leaving the Ascended and the Hall Master standing on the wall.

"Children," the Ascended scoffed.

"I hear one more word outta your sorry ass, I'm getting a Diamond over here to beat you six ways from Sunday," the Hall Master snapped.

"I-" started the Ascended, clearly angry.

"Shut up," the Hall Master snarled. "Those two, who are already Gold Emblems at their age, need I remind you, are part of a larger and more powerful team. Not only that, the little I know about that team's backing includes a boatload of Ascended and one Exalted, if the grapevine is right. Oh, and the Exalted is the mentor and coach of the one you were about to brawl in public, so stick that in your damn pipe and smoke it."

The Ascended turned an interesting shade of green; he had known the city's Hall Master for twenty years at that point and knew that, regardless of all else, the man was a genuine straight shooter. If that was true, that meant he had just about started a street fight with somebody that was trained by, and likely held in good favor by, an Exalted. As the Hall Master stomped off to take the stairs down to the street and head out the gate to coordinate the cleanup, the Ascended wiped off some sweat and thought a bit about not making so many assumptions going forward. He was far too used to the people in the local sector that liked to try to get ahead by kissing ass and had maybe become just a touch too jaded. Well, at least he had a good reminder given to him without having an Exalted smash him through the local star. Such things were rare, but they did occur enough that people learned not to mess with the handful of Exalted in the galaxy nor the people those Exalted kept close.

Beth, meanwhile, was back in the forge, where she remained for a couple days, hammering out a bit of frustration in the metal, though that wasn't a great way to smith. Eventually, she went looking for Sera, both to spend some time with her, and to apologize to her. The dragon, normally very chill, was only a bit annoyed, but not much directed at Beth. Despite Beth being a little too hotheaded and pushing too much, it was more at the Ascended making assumptions and acting like an ass. That and the fact that the Hall Master didn't do too much to help, though she was slightly mollified having heard about the dressing down he gave the administrator after the two of them had left. Still, it was just overall annoying to have someone in power act like a fool and then have to really show them up by invoking the names of their backing or even just their strengths. Sera had done a little of that from time to time, but she didn't really like relying on just who her family was to overawe people, nor did she want people calling her bluff, considering how much of a black sheep of the dragon clans she also was.

The two spent a couple days together as the team was still mostly caught up in grinding away on levels, though people were getting closer to where they wanted to be. Neph in particular had made the biggest improvements, rocketing up in levels as she threw herself into the grind. It also helped that the bee had several skills that specialized in dealing extremely high individual damage and crippling opponents. She was comparatively weaker against large groups or massed numbers, but Beth's group was one that focused on fighting fewer, tougher enemies rather than slaughtering masses to progress, so Neph's skills worked well with the team. It helped her a lot in her leveling endeavors that she could just fire off two or three attacks and seriously injure a powerful beast and inject it with her venom, often enough to secure the kill. The only problem she was still having, which would get a lot better with a Mana Physique and hitting Enlightened, was her mana pool capacity and regeneration. That was only really an issue because of the speed she was trying to maintain for very long periods of time, but it was less problematic at a more normal pace.

Beth and Sera both returned to the forges, waiting on some items they had ordered for their rebirths while Beth was also waiting for a good time to work on the kill quest. She wanted to do a refresh of her gate again before committing herself to trying to get most of the kills required, and getting the kills now or later didn't matter. It would be nice to have it done, but it would be months or more of objective time before even the handful of items she had on back-order arrived, meaning she'd still have tons of time twiddling her thumbs. To that end, she and Sera were both spending a lot of time pushing for Expert in smithing, as they wanted to use up Beth's token at some point, and before visiting Sera's family after they all hit Enlightened seemed like as good a time as any. Beth also had to say, having her thirteen pocket Ascended really helped with a lot, especially with their crafting efforts, as members of the cohort like Erosh and Zel were able to provide huge numbers of highly valuable insights.

The progression was slow, but they had a couple free months, as the others that were waiting at the peak of rebirth nine, mainly just being Blood and Kris and Bjorn, had other things to occupy their own time. Val was the next finished, at least getting to the peak of rebirth nine, and she already had her Mana Physique, so she was in the same position as Beth. Adam would also be in that position, but he and Andrea were still behind, though they were catching up fast. Neph was further behind, but it wasn't as bad as it had been, and the bee was catching up even faster thanks to help she was getting from the others, including some training.

Beth and Sera, after just under two months, left the group for a while, which tested Beth's control over the gate, but it turned out she could leave the gate open over extremely long distances. They left because Sera had suggested they double up, using a little money to make up for their time, as time compressed dungeons or areas could be rented out. They were expensive, but this was a group where individual members had one or more adamantine coins to their name, so renting some compressed time was worth it to help push them to Expert. The two of them rented a space for crafting that accelerated the timescale by five times, not nearly as good as Beth's gate, but matching her gate meant spending serious money. The five times acceleration was right in the sweet spot where it would give them a lot of extra time to work but not break the bank in terms of rental time cost. That acceleration was also just enough extra time that they could push into Expert with close to four months of near-continuous use, which totaled up to a year-and-a-half of time they were smithing. That also totaled up to fifteen mithril coins, each, but Beth thought it was well worth the price, allowing their team to level like mad while they also quickly finished out Journeyman tier and hit Expert[0] in smithing.

The only thing that Beth was worried about was Blood, considering that she wanted to take the wolf along with them when they visited the crafter, as she could take up to two observers. She wasn't sure how the recalcitrant wolf was doing in terms of her Leatherworking, only knowing that she had been working on it a bit in their downtime. If Blood wasn't ready right now then it wouldn't exactly be an emergency, but she would have to force the lazybones to get off her butt and do some crafting so when they were eventually ready, they could just go right there. In the meantime, everyone was returned to the suite they had been using and Beth reset her gate, taking a couple days to rest before opening it again, after which she started on her quest, which necessitated her Spatial Stepping quite a long way out. The rest of the team was either still leveling or hunting their rebirth materials, so Beth just dunked herself back into the combat mindset and got to fighting beasts far stronger than her, at least on paper, focusing on her skills while she slowly filled in the quest requirement.