Limitless Path

Considering Zane’s task didn’t have any kind of urgency about it (really, what kind of urgency was ‘stop by in the next decade’ supposed to be?), Beth and Sera could spend plenty of time with Selene and Alex, and they took advantage of that. They were not, unlike some of the mansions in the same neighborhood, a party house, nor did Selene and Alex desire such a thing, but Beth and Sera could both spend a lot of time with the two of them. After the first day or so, which they spent laying in bed entwined together, they finally got up as Beth wanted food and Selene wanted alcohol. Beth was first to hop out of bed, entering the bathroom to freshen up, followed closely by Selene, who always took time to brush out her hair and keep it well-groomed. Sera came in a minute later carrying Alex, who she handed off to Beth before Sera stepped in the large shower stall they had in their bathroom. The thing had, well, Beth wasn’t sure how many jets, and Sera turned on a dozen shooting out streams of boiling hot water with enough force that somebody with less than a thousand Endurance would have had their bones fractured by it.

Beth looked down at the still mostly asleep Alex in her arms, wondering what she was supposed to do with that rather large handful, when the angel finally roused herself to mostly wakefulness, standing up and immediately leaning against Beth. Alex wrapped both her arms around Beth’s shoulders and buried her face in Beth’s neck, mumbling something inarticulate before squeezing their bodies close together. Selene walked up behind Alex then, having finished her grooming and self-care, pressing her tall body against the angel’s and starting to stroke her hair, which was one of Alex’s favorite things. Beth could feel the angel’s curvy, muscular body practically melt against her as Selene scratched Alex’s scalp, Beth wrapping an arm around both of them and giving a squeeze, letting them stay like that for a minute or two before starting to move. Alex was attached to her like a limpet and wouldn’t budge, so Beth just wrapped one arm under the angel’s rather plump rear and lifted her slightly off the ground, joining Sera in the shower.

Eventually, they were all cleaned and a little more awake, though Alex was clearly weary in a way that was going to take plenty of rest to combat. They had come to exactly the right place for that, though, as Beth, despite her often frenetic activity, was also a master of doing nothing. It was something she had been practicing more with Sera, a certain skill that wouldn’t even show up in their stat screens, but one that was more important than any tier seven or eight skill either of them might acquire. The group of four put on the minimum amount of clothes necessary to be presentable in the rest of the house, though that wasn’t really much, and Beth ordered food and alcohol delivered, using the excuse they didn’t have any good booze stockpiled in the house, which was sort of true. They had received a few nice things for their wedding, but she didn’t want to crack into any of those handful of bottles quite yet, and she had a feeling Selene wasn’t looking to slowly sip something very fine. She could tell, from long association with the greater demoness, though her body language and the look in her eye, that Selene was just in the mood to get sloshed. Given that was the case, Beth ordered a bunch of cheap, relative to their wealth, standard alcohol infused with tons of mana and some juices to mix it with alongside enough food to feed a small army. That was another positive about having a wife with a high level gluttony-type skill; there was never a reason to worry about ordering or cooking too much.

Selene was more than happy to drink the alcohol straight, but Beth insisted on playing mixologist, at least to a minor degree, making drinks for the others when they ran out. The only other person that joined them, other than people sticking their head in the living room to check what was happening, was Andrea, who was always highly amenable to a party. The short woman had no problem going drink for drink with Selene, nor any problem joining in their discussions and enjoyment. The rest of Beth’s team were busy working on various different things, from crafting to leveling to doing research, including Adam working on Mana Physique upgrades, the only one of them currently seriously pursuing that field.

They weren’t interrupted by anybody that day, or the next, as most of the team was working on leveling. Beth and Sera and Andrea would have to slog through that too, and Beth wanted them to get it done before they headed to Zane’s, but they didn’t have to do it right now. And by done, she just meant that she’d like anybody who was going with them to be at least level three hundred, both for the stats they could get, and people without advanced forms of Identify would still see levels and know to leave them alone. Still, they didn’t have to get on any of that soon, and Andrea was in and out herself, spending time leveling and working on her Engineering, which was the crafting profession she had chosen to go with over all the others. Beth was pretty sure Adam also studied Engineering, which meant they had three smiths, or maybe four if Veren was a smith, but Beth didn’t count him, and then they had two alchemists, two engineers, and one each of leatherworker and enchanter. At least they had somebody to cover every profession with that setup, but Beth would have liked another enchanter, more because they were so valuable and used for so much work, rather than because she had any qualms with Val.

Once a handful of days had passed, Selene couldn’t help herself, and she had to see the key that Beth’s little puzzle cube had turned into. Both Selene and Alex put their heads together over it, the two of them currently sitting on Beth and Sera’s laps, respectively, and they discussed its few features and anything they could tell about it. Selene could see slightly more than Beth, but even she couldn’t see all of the information, which was a big surprise to all four of them, not least Selene and Alex, who very rarely encountered something they couldn’t just figure out at a glance these days. What Selene saw was mostly what Beth saw, but she had at least gleaned what the first set of question marks in the first bracket really meant, making the item description appear as such:

Eld Key[First Gate]

{???

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

?????? ?????

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Beth supposed it was nice to know it was for the first gate, which was at least something, but the first gate of what was the real question. Not only that, it raised further questions that they couldn’t possibly hope to answer, including whether there were more gates, how many gates, and if the full description could tell them anything about where the key was supposed to be used. Selene passed the updated information on to their little circle of Exalted and Manumitted, but that just brought clueless responses, nobody having any better idea what it meant with the first part now revealed. Zane just said he and Fallon could look at it in person whenever Beth came over, which was probably the best they were going to get without leaving the whole galaxy. There could, in theory, be someone who was even better at identifying items than a Manumitted, but Beth was pretty doubtful, and she also didn’t want to have to go to whatever lengths would be necessary to fish that person up. Let Zane check it and see if he knew more before they started going to even greater lengths to figure it out.

Beth eventually plucked the key out of Selene’s hands when she had felt the two had spent enough time on something that they clearly weren’t making any progress on, throwing it back into the reliquary before distracting Selene with more alcohol. Remembering they were there to relax, Selene and Alex let themselves be distracted, settling back very firmly into their current seats, Beth feeling Selene’s very ample rear squishing into her lap. They continued to generally relax, spending quite a bit more time in the bedroom, though most of what they were doing in there was sleeping, and days passed in general indolence. Beth was super happy, both overall and that Selene and Alex had thought of them first as a place to go to relax and decompress, relaxing in their company more than she had relaxed in months, if not years.

All good things come to an end, though she was very sure Selene and Alex would be back, and likely very often, but they had to go, and Beth figured it was time for her team to head out. Or whoever from her team wanted to go on the trip; she certainly wasn’t a dictator, commanding her team on what to do and when to do it and how they could do it. The team mostly stuck together and followed her lead, but she never wanted to pressure anyone into the group into doing things they didn’t want to do. She was also sure they would split for a while as she intended to continue to pursue higher ranks in the CRA and, while many of the team would likely go along and help with missions, at least to get her and Sera and Blood to Platinum Emblem, she doubted everyone would keep helping out with that all the time. That was totally fine, though, as it was yet another reason she had wanted to buy a large house on a nice, safe planet; the team had a rather permanent base they could operate out of and use as a place to gather whenever they wanted, to check in with each other and even store and transfer items and goods without going through any third parties.

The whole team was joining her on this one; it wasn’t every day you got to go to even an Exalted’s house, let alone the living space shared by two Manumitted, and just seeing the place and touring around it would make the time well worth it. The whole group was also at least marginally familiar with Zane and Fallon anyway, as they had all been at Beth and Sera’s wedding, so there wouldn’t be need for awkward introductions or anything. Beth and Sera had sent Selene and Alex off before gathering the team, the four ladies sharing more than one long kiss before they parted; Selene had business that she had to take care of, though less of what she had previously been doing since she became an Exalted. Alex, meanwhile, was still furiously pursuing her wife, trying to both get the last few rebirths and hit the peak of rebirth forty-nine while also working on realizing her Ideal at the same time. Beth had faith in her, but it was hard, so damn hard. If she had to make a comparison, creating a Mana Physique was like building some kind of complex puzzle, like one of those 3D puzzles that fit together in clever ways, without knowing how all the pieces worked or what the end product was like. It was hard, and many people just couldn’t wrap their heads around it, but it was still a solveable challenge for many. An Ideal, on the other hand, was like trying to build something on the scale of the Empire State Building by hand, without knowing how all the tools worked and without having a very good idea of what the final structure was like. It was simply worlds apart, and was why the greater universe considered the real line that separated the wheat from the chaff to be creating one’s Ideal, and not what most people thought of it as, creating one’s Mana Physique.

Still, that was Alex’s, and to a lesser extent, Selene’s problem to deal with. Beth’s team, on the other hand, was going to be working on something for Zane, and they were pretty eager to find out what that was. They were familiar with doing things for both Mortaine and Baelvyr, and work for those two Exalted could be very rewarding, on many fronts, so the team was very excited to see what a Manumitted would hand them, both in terms of challenge and reward. Beth had the coordinates for Zane and Fallon’s space station, and she led the team through two teleports to get there, which was also a demonstration of how well-connected Zephyr Prime was; starting from Earth, they would have needed to teleport a dozen times or more to get to Zane’s place, not the two that a properly connected world needed. It was that way for many other teleports, as well, including getting to Laselle’s primary resort, the Royal Rose, not that Beth had run right out to check that before deciding to buy the mansion.

When they arrived at the teleporter, they found the room empty, but Beth and Sera and Blood were already familiar with the station, so they headed to the sitting room that Zane and Fallon often used to receive guests while Beth sent Zane a message. She was sure he was already aware, both from the station alerting him and just because, with his insane level of power, he could very likely observe everything happening on the station at all times, if he so chose. She was likely right about that, as even before a few seconds had passed, both Zane and Fallon appeared in the room, which greatly impressed Beth, as she still couldn’t tell the method they had used to get there. Even with tens of thousands of points in Dexterity, which greatly aided her perception, plus her peak-Gold eye power and other skills in Gold and Platinum, it just looked like Zane and Fallon were suddenly there, as if they had always been in the room.

“Don’t have much time,” Zane said crisply. “You might have to get part of the brief from Fallon, and you’ll likely need to get the reward from him, as well. Sorry, but let me go over everything quickly first.”

“Why, what’s up?” Beth asked, glancing at her team members.

“You know I’m the guardian of the Maze of Eternity, yes?” he asked, glancing at the team.

“Yes, you regulate who gets access to the Maze, correct?” Val replied.

“Right, and sometimes that requires me to either pass people through, test people, track certain people down…anyway, look, it can be a lot of work when issues crop up,” Zane explained. “I’ve got something to deal with in regards to the Maze, and that could take a month, it could take two decades. It’s not uncommon for things regarding the Maze to take years at a time, and while I still have a few minutes right now, I’ll have to head out as soon as we’re done talking.”

“Right, then let’s go through what you wanted us for,” Beth said with a nod.