Limitless Path

As exciting as a new rebirth was, and it certainly was, their progress through the ranks little short of extraordinary so far, it meant even more work. They had a house, the only marriage likely to occur in the group for a while had happened, and they had plenty of resources. Now they had to focus on getting Mortaine's job done, and they had to work on continuing their leveling spree. Beth wanted to slow down on the leveling just a bit, as she knew they would just be sprinting to max level and stuck there for a handful of rebirths, and instead work on their crafting disciplines. Pushing into Master was priority one for her, really for many of them, and she was pretty sure she and Sera could get that done within about two years. That was taking into account they weren't spending a hundred percent of their time on crafting but were splitting between various activities.

Beth's biggest challenge with the smithing was just keeping her focus on it for long periods of time, that it wasn't all that difficult. She had found that she really enjoyed fighting the best out of everything she had done, though maybe it was just slightly edged out by spending time with Sera, and some few others like Selene, but smithing had a meditative quality to it when she was shaping the metal. She couldn't actually use her meditation skill to meditate while working, as they skills just didn't work like that. Then again, she'd both heard of and experienced some crazy skills, even having a few of those crazy skills herself, so who was to say there wasn't a meditation skill that could let one work while meditating? She wouldn't really want that as her meditation skill, anyway, as it would likely be less efficient in recovering so that it was able to be used while working. She'd stick with the high efficiency the skill she'd inherited from Liveria granted her versus any other secondary benefits.

At the high end of Expert, she and Sera did have to push themselves a bit in their metal and material choices as well. Hammering away at mana steel was fine early on, but just making something nice out of that alloy wasn't going to cut the mustard at this point. Making something phenomenal would lead to both new learning and skill level improvements, but neither of them was exactly cranking out a relic every other attempt at making something. They were well beyond the level of making things like nails and hinges; they could still make all kinds of things, of course, but there wasn't really any need for them to make something like that unless they were building a special project or doing something tricky. A set of hinges that twisted and slid and were made of a very rare metal or a strong alloy would be a good experience, but Beth didn't often go in for such tricky kinds of crafting attempts. She preferred to focus, for now, on things that were fairly standard, like making the same style of sword over and over, trying to perfect the way she made the piece in combination with using rarer and tougher to work materials.

Sera was a bit different in that she went for a bit broader approach. While Beth was making sword two hundred of the same style and type, just with different metal or even metal that she had used before, Sera would bounce between pieces. She would make greaves, then chausses, then vambraces, then a chest piece, then a helm. Moving between various different pieces and styles helped her get a better feel for the metal and how to work it, as she was challenged to form different shapes or attach pieces together in different ways. The added benefit, though they weren't necessarily very focused on it, was that while she wasn't quite producing as much volume, she was making whole sets. Beth might have two hundred swords to sell, but they weren't going to be as valuable as Sera's entire sets of armor. One trade-off for another, as Beth would make less per piece, but dumping five hundred good quality swords at the Red Suns and at Seven Lights would still net a lot of money, whereas Sera would make more for full armor sets, but then she might only have made fifty sets in the same amount of time.

Still, it was all money, and good money at that, as even at the peak of Expert in a crafting skill, the things they could produce were very nice. Beth's swords were all of at least rare quality and bounced around between requiring level one hundred and fifty and level two hundred, which was fairly impressive stuff for someone still in Expert. Even at the start of Master, making level two hundred rare-grade equipment wouldn't be all that special, but doing it in Expert, even Expert[9], meant that she really did have some talent. If she could get the consistency down, and not sometimes produce a level one-fifty sword, or an uncommon level two hundred, it would mark a big growth for her comfort in the forge. Regardless that their approaches were different, the constant and consistent practice was letting the two of them hammer out, no pun intended, the little errors and inconsistencies in their techniques. Beth could tell almost every time what she was doing wrong that led to the sword being of a lower quality or level than what she was aiming for, rarely finding an instance where Erosh or someone else helping her train would have to correct her on what the issue was.

Her pocket Ascended themselves were busy training as well, though mainly working on their crafts. The limbo state they were stuck in didn't allow them to gain levels, and none of them could rebirth right now, but they could still work on skills. Well, some skills, at any rate, as some of their skills were either locked at their current level or had requirements that were locked by the reliquary. Even taking that into consideration, they were all quite powerful and Beth wouldn't have to worry about anyone really overwhelming her for a long time. Not just any beast, monster, or person could deal with thirteen peak Ascended just popping up right next to them and attacking all in unison, and anybody that could was somebody she couldn't handle in the first place. Zane or Farron were the only two who could likely handle it individually unscathed; sure, Baelvyr or Mortaine would not just survive but even win that engagement, just that they wouldn't necessarily come out without some injuries or complications. For someone like Selene, who was still very early in Exalted, it would be even more devastating, as her power wasn't really all that much greater than any one of the empyrean's power, though Beth had no intention of siccing her pocket Ascended on her lover.

Beth and Sera weren't the only ones hammering away at their crafting skill, though Bjorn was the only other smith that was part of the group. Val was buried in enchanting work, practicing very diligently; her difficulties in cracking some enchantments, particularly the ones when they visited the desert on Earth, still needled her. Not only that, but enchanting was just genuinely a very strong crafting skill; the products a high-rank enchanter could make were both extremely useful and very valuable, meaning the team could either utilize her products to great effect or sell them for quite a bit of cash. Beyond even that, Val was inspired by something, some project of her own she wasn't quite skilled enough to really pull off, and wanted to get to Grandmaster to make it. Beth wasn't sure what it was exactly, but Val was still in the middle of Expert, so Grandmaster was going to be a bit of a climb for her.

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The jump from Expert to Master was what Beth was currently focused on, something they would all have to go through eventually. It wasn't really that tough, or so Erosh had told her, but she needed to demonstrate that she was highly proficient. She didn't need to do anything crazy, like make a legendary piece of equipment or even beyond that, but she did have to have a certain level of demonstrated competency. Creating a number of different items of at least rare rarity and all over level two hundred would be the best way to show that, which is one of the reasons for her focus on her sword-making right now. Getting comfortable with that not only let her improve overall, but she was getting dialed in to make several good pieces. It wasn't like there were any hard and fast requirements to make that jump and it could even be done in a moment of inspiration, but she could essentially force it with a solid technique and demonstration of skill.

Sera had caught up to her in the meantime, the two having devoted a lot of time to just crafting for two months or so after the wedding. Now, they were just pushing through for Master, spending a bit of time here and there to get a few levels in Beth's gate, which she had running most of the time. She liked that she could take a break, go into the gate for six or eight hours, and come out with not even an hour having passed while she had gained twenty levels. Twenty levels in the first few times; she definitely wasn't gaining twenty levels in even eight hours of fighting once she was passed level three hundred, even with her fighting level four hundred and above beasts. Progress was progress, however, and she enjoyed the massive boosts to her stat points the levels brought as they continued with their training.

They were still working on Mortaine's request, having gotten in a batch of the materials needed, or rather the equipment itself, since Val couldn't make it yet, to get some of the items. The first thing they were working on out of the remaining list was a type of essence that could only be harvest from a type of lava-aspected beast of at least level three hundred. The things were like massive salamanders with heavy plates of obsidian-like stone covering their bodies and they could produce lava and gouts of a dark red flame from anywhere on their body. They had a particularly destructive breath attack as well, though Beth was chuckling on and off for a few days after one of the stupid things challenged Sera and her wife showed the dumb beast why one didn't have a breath-attack contest with a dragon. Sera's breath attack had gotten even more ludicrous after her humanization increase at the last rebirth, which was a little funny to Beth; as her wife's humanization increased, her dragon powers got stronger. Still, it wasn't uncommon, once a beast got into the rune stage of humanization, for their beastly powers and bodies to both get stronger. Sera's flame breath was the most obvious, and flashy, of those increases, but Blood and Neph also had their own boosts in power that weren't just their raw power increasing. Blood's blood control had gotten stronger and her natural claws had become more powerful, though still not at the kind of strength of her soulbound weapon. Neph's venom was more potent, and she reported that her bee form, which was now more the size of a horse, had a both longer and more powerful stinger.

"We're done with the salamanders," Bjorn reported to Beth a few weeks later.

"Already?" Beth asked, tossing the piece she was working on into the forge, letting it land just right.

"Got all four hundred essences," Bjorn said. Four hundred essences that were likely worth between one and three mithril coins each. Not a very cheap shopping list Mortaine had saddled them with, but they were only spending time to fulfill it.

"Do we have the plates for the next ones?" Beth asked, wiping her brow and pulling a drink from her necklace while looking up at the big man. Or rather, titan, but it didn't really matter that much.

Bjorn shook his head, saying, "Only ten plates. These ones are supposed to get around five essences each for the monster type we need."

"Shit. And the other plates are still delayed?" she asked, guzzling from the bottle.

"Huh," the massive man grunted in the affirmative.

"Well, we'll just make do for now. We can try to be careful with those place and see if we can squeeze everything out of them," Beth muttered.

"It's all luck," Bjorn grunted, shaking his head again.

"I know, but maybe we can, I don't know, only use them on level five fifties or something?" Beth said.

"Most of the rest of us can't fight that high up," he grunted back. "Even in a group, it's dangerous."

"Fuck me, forgot that," Beth snorted, sighing. "Well, let's just use 'em on level five hundreds only, even though the minimum is four."

"We'll have to have everybody hit four-forty first," Bjorn said. "Well, except you and Blood, but you're both working on crafting primarily. Sera can handle five hundred without being max, too, but it takes her longer."

"Right, more survivability than basically any of us but not the highest damage output," Beth agreed, tapping her chin and thinking. "Well, I can try to polish some contacts and shake something loose, but we'll just have to make do with it for now. Have everybody stop working on the shopping list for Mortaine for right and focus on hitting max first. Once everyone's there, we can go back to hammering out the list again."

"Understood," Bjorn grunted, turning and walking off right away. Beth still marveled at how, despite the man being nine feet tall and having to weigh more than half a ton without his armor included, he moved silent as a ghost. It was almost eerie, how quiet and quick he was, combined with how he could slip up almost unnoticed sometimes, though Beth suspected that was because she was often distracted and not checking her surroundings when in the mansion.

She was going have to scrounge around a bit, but she wasn't sure there was much she could do, having already leaned on pretty much everybody. Selene was still with Seven Lights, but was taking a less active role in the trading; a large firm like that needed guards and enforcers and a dozen other things besides. Mortaine had come up blank for them once and still didn't have much, and he would send anything he did get as soon as he had his hands on it. Zane and Fallon had helped her get the last beast they needed to farm, meaning it was in her list for the gate power, but they didn't have any of the equipment she needed. The two of them could very likely make it, but that was sort of the nuclear option, almost literally, like swatting a fly with an atomic bomb. Not that they wouldn't do it if she asked, but they would still charge her a nosebleed price, and it would likely take a while. The two of them were better than Mortaine, but time just didn't mean all that much to them, so it might be a couple of years to get things from them. The only real option she had was to pester the initial supplier for these plates, which was the Black Ships, but she didn't think that that tree had any more fruit to shake out.