Limitless Path

None of that would really be necessary, it seemed, as they found the portal at the back of the huge cavern to be perfectly intact even after all their messing with the shielded dome and the pyramids. Pyramids, by the way, that Val had snatched up for later study, or so was the claim, Beth giving her a slightly critical eye as all the enchanted objects disappeared. They entered the portal without any issue and moved over to the tower, getting there in just a few steps. Beth remembered when she and Blood had first entered and had to spend quite a bit of time moving at an appreciable speed to reach the tower; now, she just stepped, moving through space with little effort and arriving at the base of the tower. The others all either had Spatial Step or some other teleporting methodology and so were able to easily catch up to her, all of them ascending to the top without having to rely on the little transporter in the lobby of the tower.

The steel wyrm was still at the top of the tower and, amusingly enough, still asleep all this time later. Beth checked just to be sure there were no additional traps or anything else, but her senses, much sharper and more experienced now, detected nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, nothing was there at all, other than the wyrm, as their work with the shielded system had removed its restrictions, though it hadn’t awoken. Beth could tell from its breathing, mana flow, and several signs from its body that it wasn’t faking it, nor was it injured nor dead. The wyrm was, quite simply, taking a very long nap and even its bonds being broken hadn’t woken it. The only she was a little concerned about was that the thing had talked about waking a sleeper to be released, and they certainly hadn’t found anyone, or anything, sleeping that needed to be woken up, in the shielded area or elsewhere. Well, hopefully the way they did things didn’t screw anything up too badly, though everything so far was looking just fine. Beth examined the creature again, now with much better eyes, to see if there was anything new or different.

Basil Banden, Level 150[5] Steel Wyrm

Last time, there had been some junk about it being a heroic being, which was gone now. In its place, the wyrm showed up as a regular, sapient being, including that it had undergone a whole five rebirths and, considering it was at level one-fifty, had likely gotten to a decent level with each of them. Someone with some strength and skill, to be sure, but not a being that could challenge any of Beth’s group individually, setting aside them all being there together at the time.

“You’re just full of surprises,” Sera muttered, looking at Beth.

“Hey, this wasn’t me, we just found it a while ago. Why, what’s up?” Beth said.

“Steel Wyrm’s don’t exist in the Milky Way anymore,” Val was the one to answer. “Don’t know about outside of it, but they haven’t been seen, as a sapient species, at least, in a couple thousand years. Not the same as the mysterious disappearance of the giants and titans, though; their clan fell on hard times a long time ago and there were a bunch of, uh, let’s say issues? It’s a long story, but this guy is one of the last of his kind in the whole galaxy.”

“That’s kinda sad,” said Neph, always a bit more emotionally involved than most of the rest of the group. “Maybe we could help in some way?”

“I don’t know that we want to stick out noses in that business,” Sera said. “We could help him, individually, yes, but we shouldn’t go meddling with big clan affairs like that. Not until we’re much stronger and wealthier, at least.”

“Sound advice,” Val cut in. “In any case, we should wake him and see what he knows.”

Beth started forward and was wrapped in Sera’s tail, hauling her back as her wife knew exactly how Beth intended to wake the sleeping wyrm and clearly had disagreements with her methodology. It was left to Val, the diplomat of the group, to send a small and gentle pulse of magic to the wyrm, something that would wake him without startling him and causing an incident, conveniently letting them all stand back at the same time. The wyrm took to it right away, stirring before opening his eyes and examining the group before him, his eyes shooting wide when he realized it was no lost kids in front of him but a team of proper skill and power. That startlement was enough to get him on his feet, which led to only more surprise, as he very clearly hadn’t been on his feet in a long time, even his steel visage conveying an expression that said he was a bit overwhelmed. Beth thought it would just top the day off if he managed to stagger off the top of the tower in his shock.

“Heavens! The dreamers…” he said, making several of the team frown a bit in response.

“What dreamers is that?” Sera asked before Val could say anything, which gave the wyrm a whole new round of surprise.

“A dragon! And one of the Black Dragon Clan, no less. An honor,” the wyrm said, his voice hitching and grating in his beast form, but still understandable.

“I don’t want to overwhelm you,” Val said to Basil, shooting Sera a glare over her shoulder, “but you should be fully free now. You can humanize, if you wish, or converse through mental link.”

“Quite right,” the wyrm rumbled, transforming with that moment of blurring and dissociation that always happened with sentient beasts. He had clearly been in human form before, which would be obvious from his rebirth levels as well, as he was wearing both clothes and armor. Beth noted with interest that the armor was dented, bent, and even torn in places, displaying a significant level of damage for what looked like very good quality mana steel.

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The man himself, or wyrm, as the case may be, was just over six feet tall with gray hair, skin that resembled fresh forged steel, and eyes with silver sclera, steel-colored irises, and red pupils. His armor, though much-abused, was still mostly there and somewhat functional, and he wore a sword at his waist and a large shield on his back. His clothing appeared almost military in nature, the kind of stiff pants and jacket that Beth much more associated with military dress uniform adorning his body, though she couldn’t see anything that looked like medals nor signs of rank.

“Apologies. It has been so long…” Basil said, his eyes adopting a thousand-yard-stare as he trailed off.

“Focus for a moment, please, Mr. Banden,” Val said. “What strange circumstance happened to lead you to being trapped here?”

“Ah, yes, sorry,” Basil said, refocusing. “It was an experiment we were conducting. We, I should say, was my clan, the steel wyrms. I don’t want to get into all the details of our troubles, but we didn’t have any powerful elders left and the clan was on the verge of collapse. No, in fact, the clan was in collapse and almost gone; I should be realistic about such things. We were trying to preserve some of our strength through a very complicated ritual, having a member of the clan act as a nexus while many of us slept. I hope you have finally freed her…”

The group all looked at each other as he trailed off, which he most certainly caught. Beth said, “Maybe we should relocate now. I’m afraid that wherever you went to sleep, Mr. Banden, you aren’t there anymore. My home world was integrated into the Path a few years ago and that’s where you’ve wound up. We have accommodations where you can stay for a time and figure out what’s going on.”

“Indeed, I would be honored,” Basil said, and that was that. The group left, Basil the last out of the portal into the cavern, the portal collapsing with a quiet hiss behind him, which startled a few of them, though Beth just raised her eyebrows. Likely that Basil had been tied to the last bit of magic left in the place, and now that he was free and walking about on his own, no need for that portal or that little pocket dimension. If they needed to examine the dimension again in any great detail, Beth just happened to know a specialist in such magic that could give them a very detailed report on everything involved in just the blink of an eye.

They took Basil to the local CRA Hall, renting a room just to have somewhere to sit and talk, though several of the members of the team started using the kitchen as soon as they were in the suite. Basil sat in the living, drinking something that Val had provided, and told the story of what exactly happened, and what a tragic tale it was. Without the funds or power to reach beyond the galaxy, the failing clan had tried to preserve some of their strength by linking together a bunch of warriors through a ritual that strengthened them and put them in a kind of stasis or deep sleep. The nexus, as Basil had hinted, had been a young girl of the clan, and not just anyone, but the next heir of the clan, a young woman of extraordinary strength and potential. One of those classic stories of someone with immense personal strength using it for their family and friends rather than focusing on themselves. Beth would have found the whole thing inspiring, if she didn’t find it so downright stupid. If the heir had that much potential, she could have risen to Ascended, or even Exalted, and given the clan a very powerful, possibly terrifically powerful, backer with thousands or tens of thousands of years of lifespan, if not longer. She really got the impression, which she was sure some of the others of the group shared, that Basil wasn’t exactly telling the whole story, but this really also felt like one of those classic cases of ‘not my circus, not my monkeys.’

“So, that’s the tale. I had assumed that you had woken the young princess, and that was how I was awoken,” Basil said with a weary sigh and a tight frown.

“No, we had to solve a puzzle of enchanting, essentially, to free you,” Val said, quickly explaining the shielded area and all the work they had to run through to get the system to shut down. “There was no sleeping person there, and there was no sign of a link to an external source. Sorry to say, but whatever happened to the future leader of your clan, she wasn’t there and there wasn’t a trace of anything other than the enchanted system.”

“Now, that is troubling, though the Path does things such as this from time to time,” Basil said, still wearing the frown. “I believe I would like to rest for a time and then head to where our clan hall used to sit. If things have gone this far wrong…well, I need to see if any signs or traces survived.”

“We’ve got other stuff to take care of at the moment, but if you need help, we’re a powerful team,” Beth cut in, offering Basil her communicator details. “I’m sure, if you need some muscle to help deal with an issue, or somebody who can figure a complex problem, we can easily lend a hand.”

“I would much like that,” Basil said, sighing again. “I have been asleep for at least a couple centuries, if the Universal date isn’t lying. I’ll need to check in with a few people…contact the one broker…track everything in the list…”

He had started muttering at the end, having quite a task before him of things to do, and none of that even seemed like it was related directly to investigating the old clan hall. Beth and the others wished him luck before they took off, having plenty of their own business to focus on. First, they had rebirths to do, which was going to continue to be a constant process. They were also really getting to the point where Beth was considering just having them do Perfect Rebirths and not True Rebirths, though she was holding off for now. There were two things that had made her a bit hesitant to start pushing the group towards the less valuable rebirths, the first of those being that they still weren’t that expensive or time-consuming. Maybe by the time they hit Ascended, that would have changed enough that they would have to rethink, but they could keep soldiering through Enlightened without wasting an unacceptable amount of time. She would have added or money, but money was literally just a bit of time for them, given their capacity for farming coins at a prodigious rate, including farming rare materials that they sold, thus winding up with massive wealth.

The second reason she was holding off was the nature of the quests was changing. For others, this might have been far more of a problem and pushed them to change their strategy sooner, but for her, and the rest of the group, it was almost the polar opposite. They were finding they were all skewing towards a much bigger combat component in their rebirth quests for the True Rebirth as their rebirths went on, which would have been trouble for most other groups. A team as powerful and skilled as Beth’s, however, relished the combat challenges, and could easily defeat basically anything thrown at them. Beth did have some worries about how some of the members, such as Neph, who was still rather young and a bit on the weaker side thanks to her skills not being as developed, would handle the increased combat burden, but overall, their team would rather have to have difficult fights and do crazy feats to obtain their True Rebirths versus the endless lists of goods. She felt this was a second reason a lot of people stopped doing True Rebirths, as the combat challenges and feats were quite difficult, even for her team, and many would have found them genuinely impossible, meaning taking the Perfect Rebirth at best would have been the only option.

As eager as they were to get going with their rebirths, they were still lacking some items for the quests, but these weren’t nearly as big a problem as usual. Beth had the beasts or monsters they needed, or rather, her gate did, so it was all down to a bit of grinding. Several of them hadn’t finished their combat components for their quest anyway, so a few objective weeks went by while they finished that all up, Beth having messaged the people looking into the key that they were busy. More importantly, she had messaged Zane and let him know the plan, that they were doing a rebirth they were just about ready for before investigating the stuff he had messaged her about, to which her told it was only time-critical on his sort of time scale, meaning it needed to be investigated within a few decades. Beth couldn’t really wrap her head around thinking in such time frames, living for so long where a decade could be an urgent request’s time scale.