Limitless Path

After negotiating rather fiercely with Terrimane, due mainly to how much he had aggravated Beth, they finagled a nice little pile of high tier coins out of him. It wasn't anything that was going to make them independently wealthy, but the shine of the coins was definitely an exotic metal. Beth was also privately laughing as Sera's parents just sat and looked on as their daughter's lover and their highly respected ancestor hammered out a deal in their living room. Well, too bad she didn't have anything they currently wanted, as her group was not telling anybody else about the entombed heart they had managed to swipe during the run of the Grand Palace. That would remain behind closed doors for now and might just be their secret; if they sold it at Seven Lights, Selene would be able to guarantee their anonymity.

"Shall we go?" Terrimane asked when everything was concluded, rubbing his hands together.

"Uncle-" Sera began.

"Ancestor-" Sera's father said.

"Oh, come now," Terrimane trammeled over top of them. "You've seen and been seen. You've even had a good run in our little pet instance. Time to get out there and get our feet wet, as they say."

"I'm not sure that's the right saying," Beth muttered.

"No, uncle," Sera said. "Tomorrow, we'll go."

"But, my mana…" Terrimane said, looking to deflate, which was an impressive feat for such a large man.

"Will still be there tomorrow. Trust us on that," Sera said with a roll of her eyes. "I haven't seen my dear parents for so long; how could I just up and flee now that we've gotten a prize?"

Sera then proceeded to stare at Terrimane, who was perfectly content to stay seated in the living room. The rest of the people in the room started staring at him, which didn't seem to bother him in the least, so they all just sat there for a moment giving him a decided look. Finally, Beth had enough and teleported over to him, easily lifting the large, immensely heavy man with one arm and teleporting them both out of the room. They appeared high up in the air over the Black Dragon Clan's compound, immediately starting to fall downwards.

"Hope you can fly in that form," Beth said before disappearing, teleporting right before Terrimane could hit her with a witty repartee.

"Are all the children so rude these days?" Terrimane quietly muttered to himself as he plummeted towards the ground.

"Sorry about that," Beth said, back on the couch next to Sera. She could see both of Sera's parents' eyes twitching slightly, probably due to the fact she just grabbed their Exalted ancestor and teleported him away.

"Oh, I should tell you about some of the stuff we've gotten," Sera said, proceeding to explain to her parents some of the less sensitive stuff they had gotten their hands on. If there was one thing that universally held true about dragons, it was that they really loved their loot, and Sera explaining all the wealth they had acquired in the few years she had been away was a suitably impressive tale. Hearing that they had not just an airship but had also acquired their own cruiser in the intervening time greatly impressed them to the point all their remaining doubts about Sera continuing on with Beth's group were quietly shelved. Not that that would have stopped Sera, but it was nice to consider her parents onsides.

Speaking with Sera's parents took up another hour before they could get away, and then Beth had to teleport Terrimane away from them again before they were left alone in their suite. They were all, to various degrees, eager to test their new skills out, and that precluded any of Sera's nosy family members sniffing about. They kicked Sera's servant out, which she was well-used to at this point, and then Beth opened her gate, with the enemies set to a hundred levels above theirs. The four entered the gate and made sure that nobody followed them in after a minute, ensuring that their testing was private.

"Who first?" asked Sera.

"I know what my skill does," Beth said with a shrug.

"I'll test," Val said, to which the others shrugged.

Val walked forward a handful of steps and then focused on one of the beasts in the first ring around the gate. Beth had set it to simple plains and made the enemies a kind of fat, armored boar that they had experience with killing plenty of times before. They made great targets for skills and testing, especially as they were slow, strong, and resistant to damage. Val lined herself up and used her skill, generating a sudden, explosive aura of blood and lightning around her before she shot off. Beth was the only one that could properly track Val's movement with her new skill active, and she was aided by the fact that, even though it wasn't a teleport, Val was moving so fast she was causing spatial ripples in her wake. She appeared in front of her target in less than a blink, lashing out with the claw weapon on her left hand, delivering a massive slash that tore the boar apart and sent pieces flying dozens of feet away.

Val walked back to them with a stunned look on her face, glancing down at her claws and at her legs and glancing back over her shoulder at the boar. As she got closer, Beth asked her, "What level did you get it to for it to do that?"

"It's Copper[0]," replied Val shakily. "I used the extra points that I was left with after getting a tier seven skill that matched my build to learn more about the skill and how to level it."

"You did…that, with a Copper[0] skill?" Beth asked, frowning as she looked at what remained of the boar.

"Well, I had my other buffing skills running at the same time," Val said, glancing at the bits of the boar that were left.

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

"Still…" Beth said, trailing off.

"Sometimes, I still forget you're from a new world," Sera said with one hand on her hip, looking at the results of Val's one skill use. "Remember, skills are a force multiplier that take our stats and the power from our other capabilities, such as Mana Physique, into account to multiply the damage we can do, receive, or restore. Even with the skill not being level, Val is rebirth ten and level four hundred with a Gold Mana Physique. Of course, the icing on the cake, and why it really worked like that, is that it's a tier seven skill, which is a massive multiplier."

"Well. Shit," Beth said, glancing at Val's results again before back at the others.

"The rest of us should do some testing," Sera said then.

"Have at it," Beth said, gesturing at the multitude of beasts present.

"Let me try," Blood said, walking towards one of the boars.

She made a gesture as she walked and blood from Val's kill starting flowing up from the ground, surrounding her in a whirlwind of sanguine power. The sky near them became blood-tinged as Blood continued, more of her eponymous liquid surrounding her as she approached the boar. With a gesture, the blood formed into a dozen lances, four inches wide at the widest point and ten feet long, and a flick of her finger sent the spears hurtling at the boar. Again, the speed was so fast the others had trouble tracking the spears as they rocketed forward, leaving a dozen thin, red lines in the air to mark their passage. The boar that was the target never stood a snowball's chance in hell, the spears punching through its armored hide and thick body like it was made of cheap tissue paper. The force was so great that the creature was literally ripped to shreds, great bloody chunks of meat flying off into the distance. On top of that, all the blood from the beast joined the blood that Blood had just been controlling, swirling back around her in a thicker, more powerful cyclone.

"That was…impressive," Sera said, staring at the massive vortex of blood that was making everything in their surroundings change to a red tinge.

"That seems a bit…unfair," Beth added, watching as Blood lazily pointed at a group of boars in the far distance and a mass of spears shot out to slaughter the group in a single pass, after which an even greater storm of blood surrounded Blood. The wolf then lazily walked towards a group in the distance, heading away from the three of them as she continued using her skill.

"Well, I guess she likes it?" Val said, a little unsure.

"Might as well start leveling," Beth said with a shrug.

"Before you do, hit me," Sera said. Beth started pulling her fist back and Sera quickly added, "Not you."

"Oh," said Beth, returning to standing with her arms crossed.

"Okay," Val said with a shrug and slashed at Sera. Sera tried to block, but she wasn't a speedster and Val corrected for her movement and maneuvered around her, slashing her torso. Sera just took the hit, not even putting on her armor, before grabbing Val's wrist and tossing her back over the gate. The kresnik dashed back to them after a moment and looked at Sera questioningly. The dragon showed that her torso had only white marks on it from where Val's claws contacted her.

"I wasn't using any of my other body buffs," Sera said. "Eternal Evolution makes me stronger in every way, especially my defenses, and continues to strengthen me the more I use it."

"What about you?" Val said to Beth, after giving Sera a nod at her explanation.

"What about me?" Beth asked, arms still crossed as she watched Blood murder blender a slew of boars in the distance.

"Use your skill," Val huffed.

"Fine, fine," Beth said, turning her head to look at one of the few boars remaining near them. She still kept her left arm in the arms-crossed position and pointed with her right hand, which was also entirely unnecessary, as she could control the skill with thought alone. Above the boar she pointed at, a huge column of glowing space distorted before slamming downwards, crushing and shredding the boar. Celestial damage did a kind of burning, rending damage that was very powerful against anything with dense flesh or high regeneration powers, and the spatial element of Beth's new skill would tear and rend flesh while the celestial element invaded the body and burned and rent it. The result was the boar being shredded, burnt, and rent asunder all in the span of a second, little more than part of a head and four smoking hooves surviving the attack.

"And…your skill is still at Copper[0]?" Val asked, agog at the damage.

"Yep," Beth replied, re-crossing her arms.

"And what's the range at that level?" Val asked.

In response, Beth tilted her head at a distant beast and then snapped the fingers of her right hand before resuming the cross-arm gesture. The beast, about half a mile from them, exploded in glowing golden flames and a fountain of gore, practically nothing left of it when Beth's attack finished.

"You can attack over half a mile away at Copper[0]?" Val asked incredulously.

"Something like that," Beth replied with a shrug.

"But…that would mean you could attack something like fifty miles at Gold[9], or even more, considering it's a tier eight skill," Val said, eyes super wide.

"It's a spatial skill, remember," Beth said. When Val just raised an eyebrow, she explained, "I have a good affinity with space. It's what my Ideal is based around. I can boost any spatial skill even further by combining it with my Ideal. At Gold[9], especially if I keep working on and growing my Ideal, I could hit something more like a hundred miles away. Instantly."

"Okay, I think your skill might be the best," Val said.

"Sera's skill is probably the best overall, depending on how it evolves," Beth said, shaking her head. "If it lets her continuously grow stronger, even when she's not actively using it, the ceiling might be immense. With better humanization on top of it, her stats will almost be a straight-up lie; she could have physical and magical power twice or more what her stats say she should have. And, that's not even considering all her other boosting and buffing skills."

"That's a good point, though I would make the case for Blood's skill being right up there at the top," Sera interjected. "It's like a domain or dominion skill, but even stronger, and it takes advantage of a resource and mana type that is everywhere. The only place she'd suffer is doing a dungeon full of golems or beasts that don't have blood. Even then, her skill is so far beyond even most dominion skills, which are already rare and extremely powerful, that she might be able to manipulate it and consider the golems' mana flowing in their channels blood or something equally crazy. It's both about it being a dominion-type skill, and about how readily available what her skill manipulates is that makes it insanely strong."

"And this is before we get the skills to Platinum. There's a big evolution there and another, even more significant evolution at Mithril. Once we get these skills to Mithril, their power will, quite literally, be unimaginable," Val added, nodding at Sera's point.

"Diamond isn't a big boost?" Beth asked, just trying to clarify.

"Typically it's just more raw power," Val explained. "While that is a nice boost, Platinum brings the skills up to a new level. You've experienced that several times, though a couple of yours were evolutions as well. Platinum isn't a tier evolution itself, but it's a dramatic shift in the skills overall utility, which is a huge power increase. Platinum to Diamond is just a boost in power; again, not bad at all, but it typically doesn't introduce new uses or utility. That usually only happens for a second time at the bump up to Mithril. After that, well…"

"It's not well understood because few people ever get a skill, even a high tier one, to Orichalcum," Sera added. "We'll just have to keep leveling and see."

"Understood," said Beth, watching Blood in the distance. "We might as well take a few subjective hours and get some skill levels. We'll be leaving soon and taking Sera's eccentric uncle along with us."

"Sounds good," Sera said, Val nodding along, and they both moved to follow Beth's suggestion.

They spent thirty hours working on leveling their new skills, which only worked out to three hours of objective time. After that, they took a break in Sera's suite, eating a lot of food before having a few hours of rest. The next morning, they said their goodbyes to Sera's parents, who seemed to still be reeling a bit from their performance in the Grand Palace and the thought of Sera being madly in love with a mini-Exalted. They didn't even need to find Terrimane, as he found them the second they left Sera's parents behind, eager to get on with getting the mana. They would be using the teleportation network to get back to Earth, as they obviously weren't flying halfway across the galaxy. Terrimane accompanied them even across the CRA network, and he had a Gold Emblem. Beth wasn't sure if it was surprising that he had bothered getting to that level, or surprising that an ancient Exalted had only gotten to Gold.