Limitless Path

Beth was a bit disappointed that she didn't have another moment to grandstand, but at the same time, just getting the opportunity to privately get the rewards and get out was also fine with her. She would have been grandstanding to the equivalent of a bunch of NPCs in a video game, anyway, considering everyone left was generated by the dungeon itself. Better to get their reward and move on to their next tasks, or even their next vacation, as time wasn't immensely pressing for them right now. Beth never forgot Joanna and her whole situation, but she had survived being trapped wherever she was for a few centuries, another couple decades wasn't likely to kill her. Even if it did, as cold as it was, it wasn't entirely Beth and her team's problem; they were going to help her because it was the right thing to do and because Beth felt she owed it to Liveria, but it wasn't something that was required of them.

Shaking off the more morose line of thinking, Beth looked around at where she and the other three had wound up. There were in a rather plain room, one that looked like the dungeon was now trying to save as much energy as what it had put in to run their instance of the Grand Palace. The place had four screens, just the absolute most basic of stations for them to use to select their skills or skill upgrades. Beth was thinking about doing an upgrade at first, but that really felt like a waste of the reward, especially once she had seen the list of possible skills that she could claim. Their team had not set an all-time record, which was a bit of a surprise for her, but they had done very, very well in their points total. Whether it was her dominant performances, their victory in the smithing contest, their saving of the princess, or their espionage efforts, it all had added up to an immense amount of points. Each of them had a slightly different points total, but they were similar enough that they would all be getting something really nice.

Beth browsed through the list just to see what was available before she went for a more specific search. As she browsed, she saw all kinds of crazy things, though some of it wasn't all that helpful for her. There was a skill on the list that put most spatial storage skills to shame, as it would create an entire dimensional boundary that the person had exclusive access to, very similar to what Beth's reliquary did but all coming from a skill. There was something similar to Beth's dominion skill, but it granted the user absolute control over any electricity in the surroundings, though it had a fancy name with lightning in the title. There was a skill that looked like it had a basis in Crush and had been altered and improved many times over, now being called Tear Open The Sky, which was a bit pretentious, but the skill promised the ability to rip apart the very fabric of reality at higher ranks, so maybe not quite that pretentious.

She continued to page through the skills for a bit, noting just how esoteric some of the skills where, including one that would make a hundred hidden illusions in the surroundings and allow the user to switch places with one of those illusions in an undetectable manner. As fun as it was to see the full list of what was available to them, they really should get to picking what they wanted, and Beth narrowed her focus to fire, celestial, and spatial skills. She had a pretty good bevy of spatial skills and had quite a bit of power and utility with fire if her Mana Physique were added in, but she could always use more. Celestial Annihilation was still one of her most powerful skills, and if she could get another celestial attack similar to it, she could greatly increase her power.

The problem was, even with the filters, Beth had so many options that it made her head spin. Well, she could add more filters, and that's the first thing she tried, cutting out an tier one, two, or three skills, but the options were still insane and she then trimmed tier four and five skills. That brought it down to something more reasonable, but she still had quite a list to go through. She was thinking about trimming a third time, but that was a bit crazy, as cutting out tier six skills would be cutting out extremely powerful and useful skills to try to save some reading. The list that she was reading still had just over a hundred entries, but she thought she could knock out a few entries just by skimming the descriptions. Luckily, she was able to remove things from showing up in her list without entering any weird parameters just by selecting hide on the skill.

That first real pass of reading skills took about an hour, as she found that skimming wasn't really a very good idea, but she was able to knock out fifty choices that she just felt wouldn't be amazing additions to her kit right now. Truthfully, she would love to grab a dozen of the skills, or a hundred of the skills, but she was likely only going to be able to grab one skill. Based on how they had done, they would be getting one skill each and then either upgrading that skill to a higher rank or getting a much deeper understanding of that skill's function. Beth was now down to a list of fifty-one skills and she had to take a much closer look at each of them to figure out ones she could eliminate on another pass.

She narrowed it down to seven skills after much reading and soul searching, having a lot of difficulty deciding between the seven. The first thing she did was look at the only two tier six skills left in the list, trying to decide if they were really, absolutely, totally something she needed. One was a skill that let her shatter space at a distance without affecting intervening space, which would be a useful part of her kit, but she was able to do something similar with training with her current skillset, not to mention her Ideal. The other tier six skill created a miniature sun which would both usurp fire mana in the surroundings and could be easily controlled by the caster to shoot out fiery beams and lances of solar power. She liked the sun skill, but again, it wasn't really adding a whole lot to her kit; that, and it just wasn't as strong as some of her other options, and she'd rather take the highest tier skill she could if she was going destructive options.

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That left her with five skills, but at this point she sort of knew what she would be deciding on even if it was going to be a tough choice. Of the five skills, one was a fire skill, which was pretty much out because it didn't really add anything that great over her Mana Physique, fire dominion skill, and Ideal. That really left four, two of which were spatial skills that Beth was quite interested in the effects she could wring out of them, one of which was a pure celestial skill, and one of which was presented as the only skill out of the full selection which combined celestial mana and spatial mana typing in one. The two spatial skills were tier seven skills, but it was the last skill that Beth basically had known for a while was what she was going to pick. Just to confirm, she looked at the other skills, quickly eliminating them from her decision process, leaving her with just one choice.

Light Beyond The Edge

{This skill calls upon the light of stars from beyond the edge of the boundary of the universe to act as both guide and judge. The light ignores causal laws to highlight that which is present but fragmented, allowing for the discovery of What Was Never. The same power of illumination can purge the wicked and the damned. This tier eight skill represents the power of a light lost when beauty of a universe unfurled into a Greater End.}

Beth had spent some time reading the description, both to make sure she was actually seeing a tier skill, and to try to figure out what the skill did. When she learned the skill, the memories and information of the skill conveyed directly into her mind would clarify things quite a bit, but she had a rough understanding of the skill. Essentially, she could create beams, lines, spheres, or even diffuse clouds of celestial power conveyed as an attack that could ignore distance and wards to strike whatever she desired. The skill implied there was a greater possibility for damage to things that were wicked or damned, likely indicating that it did more damage than otherwise would be thought based on mana input to monsters. The talk about the light finding hidden things could be interpreted several ways, with the simplest being that it could highlight illusions and hidden objects, and a more nuanced understanding leading to the conclusion that it could discover or even create objects that had not fully materialized in the physical plane.

Those were just her interpretations, and she needed to fully learn the skill, in which she had a choice. Even with picking a tier eight skill, she did have a bit of leeway with her point total in what to do with the skill, but she had long come to learn wisdom was the greatest gift. Rather than starting with the skill at a higher rank, she would settle with the skill starting at Copper[0], and instead use her remaining points to get an even deeper understanding of the skill than what the normal skill impartment from a regular skill crystal could give. She wouldn't be getting anything too crazy, as she didn't have the points to experience the teachings of someone who had raised the skill to Adamantine or anything like that, but she would get a much better idea of how the skill functioned and how to grow it as it ranked up and moved through the various stages.

She glanced around to see the others were still contemplating their screens, likely meaning they hadn't finalized their skill selection, but she was quite sure. The skill combined two of her current power sets and was just ludicrously strong, regardless of how one interpreted some of the description. Choice made, and options for extra knowledge selected, she chose to learn the skill, experiencing the same download of the skill as she would with a skill crystal, but with heightened clarity and a deeper conveyance of meaning. She was glad, after having experienced a subjective ten minutes learning the skill, much longer than the typical one, that she had picked the extra info. She was sure there could be a rather good argument made, especially with such a high tier skill, to start with it a much higher rank than the baseline, but she was already very powerful. It just didn't make sense, in her particular situation, to get that extra boost of power versus getting a good bit of extra knowledge and understanding.

When she came to, the other three were still browsing, so she checked to see if they had earned any other rewards apart from the skill. She had expected their to be nothing, but there were two boxes that they had earned with their points beyond the rewards of skill selection or improvement. One had four small vials in, and Beth recognized them, at least in general, before she even used her eye power to confirm that they were elixirs. She was so elixir-ed up at this point that she probably sweat elixir bits in her sleep, but the things were always crazy valuable with a demand through the roof. As a consumable that took a lot of rare, pricey resources and tons of skill and effort on a good alchemist's part to craft, they were a real money sink for everyone, especially the wealthier families. Beth's team would be able to sell the four elixirs, which all provided a boost to Strength and Wisdom, alongside making a single skill easier to level for a time, at a very high price.

Beth glanced over and saw two of the others absorbing skills, Val and Blood, while Sera was still paging through the lists. She then checked the second box, interested to see what was inside the rather small container, nearly passing out when she realized that it was a very small ingot of refined white adamantine. The metal was worth its weight and then some in neutronium coins, and just having it could give them enormous bargaining power. Not only that, her and Sera would continue to improve as crafters, and the metal certainly wasn't going anywhere, nor did they desperately need a bunch of money. They also had plenty of ways of making money and plenty of connections and skills they could already rely on; selling something that was practically one-of-a-kind in the Milky Way would be rather foolish, if the price weren't incredible.

After carefully stashing both items, putting them both in the reliquary for now, as that was safer than just about anywhere else, she turned to see that Sera had entered the trance-like state to learn a skill. That just meant she was waiting for some few minutes for the three to finish, wholly dependent on what they had selected for extra assistance. If they had chosen immediate levels, they'd all be done within a minute, but if they had taken the extra training, it could be as much as half an hour, assuming they took a lower tier skill and used more points for the training aspect. AS the time started really ticking away, it became clear that they had all picked the extra training, and when Val and Blood emerged within a minute of each other, it was pretty clear they had chosen either tier seven or tier eight skills. Sera was a few minutes behind, but that was because her selection was a couple minutes behind, and it was likely she had picked at least a tier seven skill as well. As soon as Sera was aware again, they were all teleported out of the instance, arriving back at the entrance to the Grand Palace, where most of the people who had entered and most of the curious were waiting. The instance was pretty heavily time-dilated and most teams had emerged within a few minutes of each other, so everyone was still gathered and waiting.