Limitless Path

Beth was sitting in the dining room with her parents when Zane walked in and sat at the table, lampshade still firmly atop his head. He set his hands on the table in front of him and interlaced his fingers, looking like he needed a second or two to process the actions. He then calmly turned and looked at Beth, or so she assumed; it was a bit hard to tell his current state, and state of focus, given the lampshade blocking his whole head, though she knew it wouldn't affect his perception at all.

"Haven't been at a party that good in a decade," he said, his voice echoing a bit from the lampshade.

"Are you alright?" Beth asked, giving him a concerned look.

"What? OH-" he said, the lampshade disappearing to show his hair disheveled and his eyes just a bit bloodshot. "Sorry about that. Got a bit carried away."

"Well, good that we managed to not have any Exalted or Manumitted die at our wedding. That would have been just a touch embarrassing," Beth said with a shake of her head.

"Come now, we're made of a little sterner stuff than that," Zane said, a pulse of incredibly powerful mana washing over him. When the mana passed, he looked right as rain, even his hair looking nicely done and washed.

"Neat trick," Beth said with a nod.

"You learn a thing every few thousand years," he replied with a cheeky wink.

The last hour of the morning was the rest of the guests waking up and getting themselves sorted, though some people were in much better shape than others. Sera's family had, amusingly enough, been a little overawed at the guest list and consequently held themselves back a bit, meaning they were right chipper that morning. Selene and Lasalle appeared at some point, both looking much the worse for wear, the Blue Queen quickly getting involved in something that sounded like the continuation of a long-standing argument with Fallon. More people woke up, stirred about, got food, and discussed the happenings before starting to trickle out. People left individually or in groups, with Sera's family being some of the first to leave, which surprised Beth, who had thought Sera's parents and siblings would try to schmooze a little more. Sera explained that her family liked to make connections but also were a bit touchy about their prerogatives, and they also considered Sera as their point of connection with all those powerful people anyway.

Eventually, Beth's team were the only ones left, apart from Selene and Alex, even Beth's family having been sent back home safely. Beth knew why the demon and angel were sticking around and was happy to oblige, though she and Sera had some other things they also needed to take care of in the next few days. Still, they could take care of some things during the day, and handle some other things during the night, and it would all work out. She summoned her gate again, having shut it down while others were there to not have too many questions pop up, and now the others could resume hunting for the necessary materials within.

It took a couple days for things to really settle back into a routine, but they eventually got back to their current work. Now was a good time for them to knock out gathering some materials and doing a bit of skill training, so that's what the group focused on for a few months, getting most of what Mortaine needed in terms of the two items they could gather easily. They had the golem cores done really quickly and followed that up with a kind of horrific poison gland from a type of scorpion that Beth had fought briefly on one of their missions. The scorpions were rather rare themselves, so fighting one was already lucky, and being able to set her gate to them was a huge advantage. They spent quite a bit of time farming those beasts, as the venom sacs and the venom itself would always sell for a hefty sum regardless of time or place.

They couldn't continue with the farming for now as Beth either hadn't met the beast or monster they needed to summon in her gate or they needed specialized equipment. The equipment was stuff like the plates they had used when killing the devils to get their essence, except nothing could ever be easy with Mortaine and the equipment needed was far rarer and more valuable. Beth messaged him to see if he could actually contribute to that, considering it was his request they were devoting heaps of time to, but he sadly had to disappoint her by informing her he had none of the stuff she needed in stock. He did give her information on where they could go to find, or possibly find, the beasts and monsters they needed to harvest. Beth just needed to fight and kill one of them, though that was sometimes easier said than done for some of the monsters, but they were still able to find and kill four of the required creatures over the next couple weeks.

They still needed equipment for almost all the rest of the harvests, except one beast Beth still didn't have access to for her gate, so they started sourcing that. That was added onto them trying to get rebirth materials, which they had mostly collected at this point, but the rarity and price went up every rebirth. They were starting to gather their own materials more often at this point, not that that was particularly easy, but their outsized level of strength compared to their overall rebirth let them get some things that might not otherwise be possible. That included harvesting minerals from underground, which was very dangerous, depending on the planet and the depth, but was something that they were going to need to do more of as time went forward. Beth didn't really mind exploring underground, but she wasn't much of a spelunker herself and preferred fighting out in the open in the light of day rather than crawling around through caves to find what she needed. Luckily, money could always solve that problem, though the amount of coin needed was only going to go up, especially as the depth and mana density the minerals were found at increased.

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Speaking of mana density, that was one thing Beth, and the team, could handle very well that other teams sometimes struggled with. Her team's powerful Mana Physiques and high resistance skills allowed them to handle areas with very high mana density, as well as esoteric types of mana, some of which could be very damaging, without much issue. Their level of power and enormous offensive capability also meant that the very strong beasts that inhabited such areas were much easier for them to defeat. Other teams would seriously struggle to deal heavy damage to many of the beasts that Beth's team could handle rather easily, those teams having to adopt strategies that focused more on attrition fighting or wearing down the beasts over time. A lot of teams relied on things like poison and traps, though the traps were more ways to slow and funnel beasts rather than anything that could truly stop them in their tracks. The use of poisons, curses, and other debilitating skills and equipment did also mean that certain parts of beasts, or even the whole beast, were too damaged or corrupted to use. Beth's team didn't run into that issue as strongly, more having the problem of their overwhelming damage annihilating parts of a beast they killed that they would rather remain intact.

Beth had faced that problem more than the others, at least to a certain extent since Bjorn wasn't exactly leaving the smallest injuries with his massive maul that was the size of a small car and hit like a runaway freight train. Still, with her spatial skills, Beth could now focus a lot more on cutting attacks rather than smashing attacks, which all tended to leave a much more intact corpse. She could also ensure that by working on her Swords skill, but she was still working on Unarmed, trying to push that as much as possible, though that also conflicted a bit with leaving intact corpses. Well, her looting power didn't need the corpse to be in good shape, just for her to have not started actively harvesting it before she used the power. The looting power itself was just now ticking over into Gold, which brought about a greater chance of a successful loot, though it was only in Platinum where the power would really shine. Beth using the looting skills on so many beasts over level five hundred was giving it a slight edge in leveling faster than what those things would typically take, though it was still slow going.

Acquiring the equipment they needed was also slow going, and Beth and the others were discussing sinking money into hiring high-end instructors for Val to make up for it. If they could have Beth and Sera forge any metal components needed for the devices they were lacking and then have Val enchant it, they would be able to just fully create the devices themselves and avoid having to buy anything but metal stock and enchanting reagents, both of which they had on hand in quantity. On top of that, they could, of course, sell extras that they made for quite a profit, since such specialized equipment was hard to produce and fairly rare on the open market. The demand wasn't extremely high, as most teams couldn't afford the high prices for the equipment and didn't really need the specialized materials, but there was still demand. Some teams would need the materials, and other teams just knew that the materials were so rare that they would more than make up for the cost of the equipment.

Val seemed ambivalent towards the whole thing, trying to be a bit demure and say that her enchanting skill wasn't anything too great. Beth, without missing a beat, told her that that was obviously true, which is why they were going to pay for someone to teach her. Val didn't find that very amusing, but the rest of the team found it entertaining enough, and they didn't have a problem spending some resources to shore up the team's weakness, which was crafting. Unlike Veren with his weapons, they had no crafting prodigy in the group, which was rather a shame, and even Beth and Sera and Blood were only a bit ahead of where most would be after their training with Old Tom. If they really took a big chunk of time to just concentrate on crafting, they would see some pretty big gains, but they were getting pulled in several different directions at the moment and didn't want to slow down their progress on other fronts any more than they had to. Besides, their current level was near or at the peak of Expert, which would be more than enough for the things they needed to handle over the next couple objective years.

Something that they wouldn't be putting off for years, or even days, were their next rebirths, the team having spent another month or two both hunting and buying what they needed. Well, it wasn't like they went to more stores or anything, they just had the last of the orders that they were going to be getting arrive. This was also a place where expanding their network really showed its worth, as they had goods coming in from several different trading firms and individuals that all added up to what they needed. The Black Ships had been particularly helpful as they had a plethora of contacts they could work through to get just the kinds of things that were most often needed in rebirths. Beth was pretty sure Illiem had gone out of his way to expedite a little of the shipping and delivery on some of their goods, likely trying to make a good impression after a little birdie told him about the kind of people that were gathered for Beth's wedding and who sometimes made appearances at her manor. Where surroundings properties often had party boys and girls showing up and the odd hanger-on trying to leech off the rich young snobs, Beth's mansion had peak Ascended and Exalted popping in and out at various times and staying for varying lengths of time. It was certainly something worth noting.

The rebirth, which took them to twelve, wasn't anything unusual, though Beth felt an even stronger connection with Sera as they did it. She was now sure it was wholly distinct from something like her bond connection with Blood, and that there was something about it that ventured into the realm of the metaphysical. She had a strange feeling about it, but she felt like the connection was both being reinforced by the two's closeness as well as their constant working and spending time together. It was something that had existed from when they had very first met, possibly even before, but was also something they were clearly building up together and was influenced by more than one or two predetermined factors. Beth wasn't at all worried about it as it was not just benign but very clearly beneficial in nature, speaking to a special bond and interaction that was nothing but positive.

Beyond her and Sera's connection, the other thing to pop up was class evolutions. Well, class evolutions for her and a few others while several of the members of the team had increases in humanization. Why the humanization increases only showed up at rebirths was still a little bit of a mystery, but there were some convincing explanations about the growth of the soul and the expansion of both the physical body and mana pool that made a lot of sense. That meant that several of the members of the team were going to be getting more stats per level, but that was almost a secondary effect. Humanization increases were a direct, tangible, if not numbers-compliant increase in a sapient beast's power. The further someone like Blood pushed their humanization, the more power they could exhibit in both forms, though it mainly affected their human form, and the power increase was not small. It acted as a constant multiplier, something that wasn't as strong as a Presence, but something that still gave an overall boost. The boost was much more significant when it got to the territory where runes were expressing themselves on the person's skin, but still not quite at Presence level. Not until the whole body was covered in runes, and even Blood, their resident humanization savant, was far from that level.

That left Beth's class evolution, which was something she had to think about a bit. She wasn't going to just recklessly pick something, and she had quite a few options this time, but she didn't need hours to decide. There was something in the list that just really called out to her, something that she was sure would be the choice from the moment she read it, but she took her time in deciding. This class was very likely going to last her all of Enlightened and even a little bit into Ascended, depending on how things went, so a bad pick here was going to have some negative effects she would be feeling for decades, potentially even longer.