Limitless Path

A subjective year, or a bit more, later she was done with the quest requirements and decided she needed more time with Sera. She had basically not stopped, barely even resting, for more than fourteen months, and so she took her fiancée out for a little vacation while they were waiting on Adam, Andrea, and Neph to continue catching up. Beth had gotten just a bit of improvement in her skills in the time she was in the gate, but one of the disadvantages of spending so much time in compressed time was that not much actual time passed. Normally, that was a great thing, but when she was waiting on things like merchants to get new stock, or dungeon delvers to get the components she needed, spending fourteen months fighting only for six weeks to pass in objective time was a bit frustrating. It was just one of those things that could mess with her head sometimes, where it felt like she was spending years working, which she was, but then days or weeks had passed for other people, the rest of the universe moving at a much lower speed.

A week of genuine vacation was just what they needed, or at least Sera really appreciated it, and Beth was very happy making her happy. Not only was it good for their moods, and their closeness, but they got to meet some people they had talked with in a while, including Laselle, considering they went to the Rose at a time when Laselle herself was physically present. The Blue Queen had been busy, very busy, fighting in two separate wars, though her rank and station meant she got to pick and choose not just who to fight for, but where and when to fight. Not to mention her frankly ludicrous pay scales that saw the people hiring her mercenaries bleeding themselves dry to afford her. The teams she deployed, however, got results, which is more than even a lot of professional armies could say in the Milky Way; amusing for Beth to think about, the kingdoms winning their wars by bankrupting themselves for Laselle's services.

Spending time at the resort, and discussing battles and politics with the Blue Queen, was a nice break, but they had to get back to work after a time, though Beth and Sera were a bit stuck. Laselle offered them positions in her company, which amused Sera and slightly exasperated Beth, but they declined the poaching offer and returned to their own pursuits. Those pursuits were mainly training and practice, as they were still in a waiting pattern. They were giving lots of time for people to catch up in terms of level, and they still needed time to order or hunt their rebirth materials. The first was going to take longer than the second, though some of the things both Beth and Sera needed were extremely rare. Beth's overall power and the complexity of her skills and Mana Physique rated extremely rare treasures for a True Rebirth, while Sera's void affinity was coming more into play now, making her True Rebirth requirements shoot up in price. Still, void stuff was more common than spatial stuff, at least at the level they required, so Sera was having a slightly easier, and slightly cheaper, time of it than what Beth was going through.

Beth had nothing to do for a while other than honing her skills, so she and Sera spent a bit more time smithing, though they didn't throw themselves into it twenty-four/seven they way they had when they were buying compressed time. Eventually, taking copious advantage of Beth's gate and the entire group's connections, the slowpokes caught up until they were only waiting on Neph. That was more than a year for Adam and Andrea to get up to where they were, and then Neph was just at the start of rebirth eight. They could push on and keep Neph with them for the time, as she was close enough that running a large group of Enlightened and one Empowered wouldn't have been a problem, but the others took the opportunity to either train or take care of some business of their own. The group didn't break up, but they let Neph proceed at her own pace for a time and even take a break, the rest of them working on gathering materials, honing their skills, or just handling things for their families, clans, or other obligations.

Eventually, the bee caught up, which still gave them even more time, as Neph's rebirth materials were neither common nor cheap. They would have to spend a lot of time and money getting all her materials to take her through to Enlightened, but that was still the least of their worries. The biggest thing looming over the group was the creation of their Mana Physiques; Beth wasn't really worried about anybody in the group, as they were all highly skilled, but it could always be a chancy thing. The break in gathering Neph's materials also gave time for the bee to study more, as her frantic sprint to catch up had meant she had spent less time studying and understanding as compared to the rest of the team. Neph was still behind a bit, though it was more a comprehension thing as Beth had noted, but Beth wasn't that worried, as Neph had a lot of both knowledge and instincts from her bloodline that would give her some extra help. Somebody like Neph or Blood or Sera or even Kris couldn't just rely on the strength of their bloodline to do the things required to continue advancing, but it could help with some of the earlier hurdles. Mana Physiques were really where it would help the most, in terms of big hurdles, so that would give Neph a bit of a leg up. It wasn't necessarily fair, but Neph had been born at the right place at the right with the right lineage; some people were just lucky.

Things progressed at a steady pace for a few months until basically everyone was on the same page; all pre-requisites had been completed and everybody had everything they needed. Now, it was all about picking a time and a place and getting it over with, though it was important that the people who would be putting in effort were comfortable. The first thing the whole group did was agree on a day before taking three days off; no professions, no crafting, nothing, and even Beth followed this rule. She didn't have to, but it was about the team effort and everyone being on the same page, so she spent a whole seventy-two objective hours doing a whole lot of nothing and generally enjoying it. That time was well spent, and everyone had some drinks, took some walks, watched some shows, and blew off some steam in whatever fashion they enjoyed. Once the fourth day was there, they reconvened and Beth opened the gate to the residential area, frowning as she walked through the house and saw all the spaceship components they still had to sell or offload. That was something for a different day, as they were focused on their rebirths, and besides, Selene had been flooding the market with parts as much as she could and they were still ahead of schedule on that front.

The whole group sat together in a loose circle in the backyard area, having moved away from the piles of ship armor plating and support struts that took up quite a bit of area. Luckily, they weren't cramped for space, as the open area behind the house in the gate's residential mode extended for several miles, if not more than a dozen miles or more, and they had taken up less than a mile with parts and pieces. They sat far enough away that they wouldn't disturb things, or, more to point, get any interference from any bits and bobs as they went through the process. The whole team pulled out their items and got everything organized and arranged, waiting until everyone signaled they were ready before starting the process. Beth didn't really have that much to concentrate on and was thus able to observe the group through the whole process, though everybody but Adam and Val closed their eyes and focused.

The treasures and materials disappeared as the rebirths happened, melding into people's bodies and souls as they process started. Beth was rather calm, feeling her overall power drop a bit as her stats crunched down to their new level one baseline, but otherwise it was a remarkably smooth rebirth. The only sensation, apart from a fiery chain that linked her and Sera, though it was a metaphysical thing as no chain appeared in the air, that she had was a bit of a burning sensation in her chest. It wasn't heartburn or a heart attack, but she could feel her mana reservoir increasing and changing, as the jump to Enlightened itself really swelled the mana reservoir noticeably. It was why she, and Adam and Val, weren't really considered Enlightened before even with their Mana Physiques. The tenth rebirth was a bit special and increased mana capacity and the speed it could flow through the body; that all happened in conjunction with building the Mana Physique, with those few who built one early just experiencing the secondary mana changes when they did the rebirth.

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The burning and twisting sensation disappeared after just under ten seconds and Beth felt like a new woman, or just a slightly stronger woman. The stat decrease wasn't too bad, and the new mana capacity was really nice, but it wasn't a radical change. She kept sitting, however, waiting along with Val and Adam as the rest of the group put in the work, and the time, to get their Mana Physiques. The process wasn't going to be fast or easy, as nobody there was trying to hit the point of just good enough; most of them had said even a Silver Mana Physique would be considered something of a failure, though they wouldn't grumble too much about a Gold-level construct. Beth was hoping one or more of the team would pull out something really impressive, as she and Adam had set the bar, and the others wanted to at the very least match them when it came to level and quality.

Beth just observed as mana and energy fluctuated around all of her friends, waiting to see if anybody had any problems. It was a bit nerve-wracking, watching them all just focus so intently on something so important and having to sit and hope that nothing went wrong. The minutes ticked by, turning into hours, with everybody still intensely focusing. She also had no idea if this was normal or not; she had gone for something kind of zany and odd when she made her Mana Physique, something that was also pretty complicated, meaning she couldn't really use herself as a great measuring stick. If anybody finished at this point it could be totally standard, it could be a huge failure, or they could just be really good at it, though perhaps not to the level of Adam. She wanted to ask Val something about it, but didn't want to speak, and she didn't want to start a private conversation while they were watching their friends and miss something, so she bit her lip and waited.

The first done, sort of unsurprisingly, was Andrea, who fell back and sprawled out on the faux grass of the open area with a big sigh. Beth got up and walked over, checking on her to make sure she was okay, but other than being exhausted, it looked like the short, feisty woman was otherwise fine. Building a Mana Physique was a grueling effort and even a small error that led to a slight failure could still cause a lot of damage. That damage being more concentrated on the soul and the spiritual body of the person was far worse as soul damage wasn't something most people could heal with spells, though it was possible. Unless the damage was severe, it would mean the failed build would put the person in recuperation for a couple weeks, maybe as much as three months, but they would otherwise be fine. Just a total and complete fuckup, which would hopefully not happen here, could severely cripple a person, requiring all kinds of crazy methods to heal. The worst case scenario was death, but that didn't bear thinking about, especially because Beth didn't think any of her group would be so sloppy as to fudge it that bad.

"Good result?" Beth asked her quietly, Adam and Val focusing on them.

"No, but I did it," Andrea said with another big sigh and a tiny smile. "Silver Mana Physique, but just barely. Doubt it would have the same output as yours if you had made yours at the Silver level, but it's still better than Copper."

"Good job. Rest up and let me know if you think something's off," Beth said, resuming her own seat.

The rest were still working and it appeared that they were too focused to notice a bit of quiet conversation. Beth watched them intently, trying to see if she could glean anything from the fluctuations around them, more interested in learning anything of the process than trying to see what their results were. It was damn hard to see what somebody was doing at a distance inside their own body without specialized skills, of which she had precisely none, but she could pick up a couple small hints of what they were doing by the mana that swirled around them. It was very obtuse and hard to parse, but she had a couple hints based on how it flowed, the pattern of swirls conveying a certain knowledge. She was interrupted from her musings when Neph groaned and staggered to her feet, walking out of the circle to pace around before sitting back down.

"Good or bad?" Beth asked.

"Good but not great," Neph said, frowning at the empty air. "Probably peak Silver. Only consolation is that I think I might know how to upgrade it to Gold without spending a king's ransom and having to study for a millennium."

"Even getting Copper here is fine, so don't you worry about it, either of you," Beth said.

"Silver?" Neph asked Andrea.

"Yep," the short woman replied, taking out something from her storage and starting to eat it.

The next done was Kris about twenty-five minutes later, not having even as muted a reaction as Andrea, just slowly opening her eyes and letting out a deep breath. It had clearly been taxing on her, as she was absolutely coated in sweat and looked rather pale, even paler than her normal coloration, but she looked happy. Before anybody could asked, she filled in the gap, explaining what she had gotten.

"Gold," Kris said quietly. "And that's using my family's old method. Silver would have still been fine, but I managed to follow the method exactly."

"Good job," Beth said, waving for her to rest.

Bjorn was next, fifteen minutes later, saying immediately, "Gold. What I expected, honestly."

"Rest," Beth told him, the big making a tankard appear and starting to drink rapidly.

Beth, Val, and Adam had already been done, and now Kris, Andrea, Neph, and Bjorn were all successful. Just because Sera and Blood were still going didn't mean they would automatically succeed, nor that they were guaranteed something good, but Beth had some high hopes. They had to wait over another hour, which was stretching the time pretty far, before Blood finished, and it was quite noticeable. The mana around her pulsed heavily for two seconds, the wolf releasing a wave of dense spiritual pressure before her rebirth and Mana Physique both completed.

"Platinum," Blood growled, not saying anything else and starting to eat slowly.

That left one of their number and Beth was on the edge of her seat, or would be if she had one. Sera was clearly struggling, not that that was unexpected, as she had been going for hours and was clearly working on a very difficult form. The dragon hadn't consulted with Beth at all, just assuring her she had a very good design and plan for the Mana Physique build, and Beth had trusted her. The fluctuation of mana intensified about twenty minutes after Blood was done, but Sera went another twenty-five minutes after that before she finished, and with a bang, releasing a burst of mana that swirled around her and shot upward into the sky.

"Nice job, all," Beth said before even asking, having been able to see that Sera had rebirthed, meaning they had all been successful.

"That fucking sucked," Sera growled, panting and pouring sweat everywhere. Beth, unbothered by her stinky state, sat with the dragon, wrapping an arm around her while the tall woman recovered.

"Good or bad build?" Beth asked.

"Diamond," said Sera.

"No shit?!" Beth exclaimed, the others expressing their surprise.

"I had a plan even crazier than your batshit rune blend and managed to complete it," Sera groaned, stretching a bit while staying seated. "Worked out just as well as I hoped, but I feel like my brain and soul are both blended paza bean mush right now."

"Everybody take two, and by that I mean two days, and then we'll circle up," Beth commanded, dismissing the team to their own devices.