Limitless Path

Beth quickly inserted the spike, a process she was well familiar with at this point, and let the spike charge the next instance of the dungeon. The whole process took about ten seconds, after which the spike was basically scrap, though expensive scrap, which is why she pocketed the remains before stepping into the portal. She didn't mess around at all with this run, instead blasting through the dungeon in just a few minutes, vaporizing whole rooms of ants with a single attack or even a single gesture. Even with the spike and the bit of excess mana the dungeon was currently running on, it had only generated a level three hundred instance for her, and that was the boss' level. The ants at the start were only around level two hundred and eighty, and she blew them away without even thinking about it. The boss itself wasn't any different, some level three hundred queen with a ton of guards, which was supposed to be the real difficulty of the fight. Beth just sliced the whole room in half, quite literally, a little concerned at the end because, while she hadn't gone all out, the instance itself trembled a little from the cut she made. She would have to keep in mind to tone it down even further when going into lower leveled instances, even ones that were overcharged with mana and more sturdy.

The prizes weren't anything to write home about, and she tossed them in her necklace and exited through the exited portal without bothering to inspect them too closely. She found herself back on the top of the nest, with only a couple ants having been produced in the time she was clearing the instance. She killed all the ants with a simple thought and then took a step, teleporting down the nest to where her family were still standing around and in deep discussion. Soph was in the middle of what sounded like a very long, detailed explanation about Ideals, and her father was taking notes, though not on a notepad. He had adjusted to the times and changing mores and had started to get quite good at taking notes on his communicator, which she could tell he was doing by the specific way in which his eyes twitched. Beth's appearance out of nowhere startled them just a bit, but even her parents were hardened warriors by now, and after having assessed her as not a threat, they relaxed.

"So, how long does this spike take to set up, sweetie?" her father asked.

"It doesn't take any time," Beth said, glancing at him with a raised brow, some confusion in her voice. "I already used one and cleared the instance. We can head back home now."

"You…you cleared the whole dungeon? Just like that?" Kim asked, more than a bit skeptical at Beth's claim.

"Yeah, it wasn't hard," Beth said with a shrug. "Look, here's the loot."

She pulled out four items, each of which was at level three hundred, with two of them being rare, one being epic, and the fourth item being a legendary dagger. She tossed the items at Kim and Soph rather carelessly, all four of her family members exclaiming at her, though in her mother's case it was for carelessly throwing weapons at people that might not be ready. Kim and Soph examined the items, able to tell that they came from the dungeon as the ant dungeon often had a theme in the items it gave, with what item, what the item looked like, and the items' properties leaning heavily towards certain motifs. It was also clear that Beth had done whatever it was she was saying she had done, since they hadn't heard of anybody pulling out a level three hundred item from the ant dungeon up to this point. One of the rare items was a set of leather gloves that Kim passed to her father, who was rather interested in examining a piece of dungeon-made high level armor. Well, high level for them, though quite a few people would find level three hundred gear out of their reach their whole lives. Hell, even with level requirement modifying items, level three hundred gear was more than most people would ever get their hands on. Many people never made it to level two hundred, even the ones that did a few rebirths, and getting level modifying items that lowered requirements more than a hundred levels was difficult and very expensive.

"You really cleared it in less than ten minutes?" Kim asked, though it was more just plain wonderment than a serious inquiry.

"Yeah, it was easy," Beth said with a shrug. "I'm waiting on a rebirth right now sitting at max level, which means over level four hundred right now. My stats are through the roof, I have skills between Platinum and Diamond, and I already have my Ideal. I regularly kill level five hundred and fifty beasts, which are insanely tough and powerful; killing a couple hundred level three hundred beasts, even including a dungeon boss, isn't really all that hard."

"It's still shocks me, how much farther ahead you've managed to get," Kim said, both of them ignoring Soph begging to see Beth's Ideal again.

"It's not out of reach for you. For any of you, even Mom and Dad," Beth replied, turning to lead the way back to the house.

"Don't you want this stuff back?" Kim asked, hurrying a few steps to catch up.

"I really don't care. It's worth some decent money, but I have plenty of stuff to sell right now. I can get stuff at level three hundred really easily these days," Beth replied with an idle wave of her hand. "The kind of people I'm selling to or trading with want things that are a lot more complex, a lot more rare, and certainly a lot more powerful than that stuff. I mean, it's good to make a quick buck, and it adds up over time; vending machine theory and all that."

"What the hell is 'vending machine theory'?" Kim interrupted to ask.

"Simple one. Lots of little purchases still make big money," Beth said. "Even if I'm only making a gold coin off each thing I sell, if I sell a million of whatever those things are, I make the equivalent of one mithril coin, which is quite a lot. As long as you can move volume, even small sales add up."

"Oh, right, I think I've heard that before," Kim said. "But, doesn't that just mean we should give these back? Lots of small sales and all that."

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"Nah, it's fine. I'm really not so hard up that I'm counting every gold coin I could earn. Besides, you guys might get some use out of them. Oh, but speaking of, if you need leveling modifying items, or just anything at all, I have connections. A lot of connections. Just message me," Beth said.

"We're not without our own resources," Soph replied a bit haughtily. "We don't need to rely on you for everything. Not anymore."

"Aw, my little sisters, all grown up," Beth said, laughing as Soph tried to swat at her, something Beth dodged so fast it looked like she hadn't even moved.

"Beth," Her father cut in then, moving up beside her to take Soph's place as they approached the walls. "Can you explain more about this 'Ideal' that you have now?"

Beth attempted to walk her family through what an Ideal was as they returned to the house, her parents insisting they go over to the gate. There was now a gate in what she still thought of as the rear wall of the town, allowing easier access to the ant dungeon. As they walked from there to the house, she explained the basics of what an Ideal was, but the more complex aspects eluded them. Then again, the more complex aspects eluded pretty much everyone before they actually fully grasped their own Ideal, but she did her best to explain the general concepts. She wasn't exactly sure how much of what she said stuck, but her family did pay attention and ask good questions, so she guessed they got something from the mini lecture.

She was tempted to stay the night, but her house wasn't the house she remembered, and she was feeling all family-timed out at this point. She made her excuses shortly after they had returned and finished going over a few things about the dungeon. She didn't need to take precautions when leaving and simply walked a step, teleporting not just out of her parents' house, but out of the neighborhood and to the walkway leading up to the lobby of the CRA. It had been some time since she looked upon the statues, what she now knew as the dozen Council Enforcers that were in charge of the White Hall at this time. Now, with her much greater perception, not to mention her Ideal, she saw and understood far more from what had been imbued into the statues than she had years ago. She didn't want to got lost in staring at some statues forever and so shook herself loose from their influence and entered the Hall. There were more people here than usual, making her wonder if there was something going on, but she hadn't seen anything about any events. She wasn't close with the new Hall Master or the workers, though they did have an understanding; mainly that the Hall Master wouldn't poke their nose into her team's business and she wouldn't do anything to interfere with the Hall.

Speaking of her team; while she had been out and about, she had left her gate open, something that was becoming ever easier these days, and they had continued working on whatever was their highest priority. With the lulls caused by getting stuck at max level, they either spent time finishing secondary component of their True Rebirth requirements or working on honing their skills. Beasts weren't always the best to practice against in terms of leveling weapon skills, but even those could be pushed higher with some focus against higher leveled beasts. So far, Beth was the only one who had managed to push a skill to Diamond, but several of the others were right behind her and it was a bit of a race to see who would be second. Bjorn, Kris, Sera, Blood, and Adam all had one or two skills at Platinum[8] or Platinum[9] and were working on pushing them to Diamond. Beth already having her Ideal had also given her a bit of an advantage, helping her push skills of the same mana typing higher with greater ease.

Beth herself was still focused on her spatial skills, especially with her Ideal helping her understand them better. It was a compounding effect; she had a good understanding of space, leading to her getting and mastering many spatial skills, which in turn led to her Ideal being spatial-related, which then created a greater connection to and understanding of spatial mana and the whole thing looped back on itself. She was now rocking three spatial skill in Diamond, and she was trying to push for her fourth, while also remembers to work her other skills, including the tried and true Celestial Annihilation. She had pushed that into Platinum a short while ago and it had received a massive boost in power, though a big part of that was from the skill now being able to be cast anywhere. It used to be that she needed to blast the skill out of her body, but now, within a limited range, she could summon a blast of celestial mana with an annihilation as an explosion, beam, slice, or other permutations. It was interesting to compare it to Light Beyond The Edge, which she had just pushed into Silver; that skill started with the ability to hit anywhere, any time just as a basic part of the skill. Celestial Annihilation, on the other hand, needed to hit a big milestone mark, Platinum rank, to exhibit the same kinds of effects.

As she was fighting through endless hordes of level five hundred beasts, well out from the gate at this point, she was passively working on skills, too, in particular her Spatial Domain and Spatial Step, both of which she used while using other skills. Her Spatial Domain was a bit odd, as she didn't necessarily need to actively use the skill itself, but she could make use of it to passively boost her other skills. It was one of the biggest reason domain and dominion skills were so sought after; someone who had several ice skills who then got an ice dominion could boost all their ice skills through a positive interaction of the two skills together. For Beth, that was even more true, as she had very powerful spatial skills, a spatial domain skill, and an Ideal based around spatial concepts. When using all three together, she could boost an attack to a frankly horrifying degree, enough that she had to be careful in low mana concentration areas about not destabilizing space too bad. She was certainly not at a level where she could do permanent damage to space, but she could cause quite a bit of secondary devastation to things, and people, around her without meaning too if she went too wild in an area that wasn't strong enough. Areas that had higher concentrations of mana were much tougher, in all respects, and she could go wild even in most on Earth without worrying all that much about the secondary damage she was causing. Some of the worlds she had been to, for example, the dingy one with the pathetic trading firm she had just visited, weren't very high in mana concentration, either overall or in specific parts of the moon. She couldn't just go wild in a place like that, as she might rip apart space for a large distance, which not only would cause a lot of damage, it could lead to some…unpleasantness, to put it mildly.

The other thing she was working on, besides just incorporating Light Beyond The Edge and getting it some levels, was pushing her Unarmed. It seemed like everyone on the team was working on a bunch of things at once, everybody having more than one plate they were juggling, and she didn't want to fall too far behind with her weapons. Unarmed had always been easier for her to level and understand and so she was leaning on that a little more than Swords at the moment, though Swords wasn't all that far behind. She had an ambitious plan of pushing both to the upper ends of Master, though pushing on Unarmed a little harder, thus breaking into Grandmaster with Unarmed first and then still having Swords at a high level. She was hopeful she would be able to do it within a couple years, subjective time, of course, as she was already midway through Master with both skills.

The other skills she was currently practicing a bunch, and still generating a bunch of waste, was her looting skill. It was now at the very peak of Silver and she was hoping it would tick over into Gold very soon, as that would bump the odds of a successful harvest a nice bit. She had a sense of the skill after using it for a handful of years, and she felt that a successful harvest gave her a bit more experience towards leveling the skill than a failed one did. That would mean the skill would really start rolling faster in the higher levels, as the success was much greater. Even factoring in the increased experience requirements, the constant successes would outweigh that and see the level speed rise, a strange inverse of many other skills, where the leveling speed always slowed as mastery increased. Gold wouldn't bring any other big bumps to the skills, but she could hopefully grind it up to Platinum a little faster, which would bring a large improvement. Honestly, at this point, she was just hoping that she got a major bump to the success rate at Platinum, which was not a very exciting growth, but it would be the best for her, further increasing experience gain.