Limitless Path

One of the first things she decided to check was just how much progress she had made over the past year. Well, she might have not been paying too close attention for a little more than a year, only having a vague idea of where she was at, but she wanted to do a more detailed review. She had managed to hit the level cap again, ready to do her rebirth and officially become an Enlightened, though there was going to be a lot less fanfare for her than some of the others. Fighting alone and against enemies as much as a hundred and fifty levels above her hadn't really held her back on the amount of experience she was earning, and her rapid progress through the last thirty levels, ostensibly the biggest climb in terms of experience points, really showed proof of that. Her stat page was looking quite nice:

She was up to two thousand CP on her Gold Emblem, which was rather nice. They were all basically saving their points for a rainy day, and they had varying levels of points, depending on if they had spent any, ranging from just over a thousand to a little over two thousand. She also had quite a lot of money, at least by most people's standards; a lot of teams would be lucky to have an orichalcum or two for the entire team's funds, and she had over an adamantine coin just herself. Glancing at her stats at the top of the page, she was happy to see she was well past twenty thousand points in Strength, making an unenhanced punch from her strong enough to shatter twice-forged mithril. If that mithril were in an item below level five hundred, at least, otherwise she wouldn't be punching through that without bringing her considerable skills to bear.

And speaking of her skills, Beth was very happy with her progression. Ancient World Gate basically always did its own thing; even the previous owner, Liveria, couldn't really give her any concrete idea on how to level the skill or what the levels entailed. Her Beastly Tyrant was coming along very nicely, and the amount of boost it provided her at her current level was monstrous, especially considering her insane stat pools. The skill worked mainly on Strength, meaning that when she was flooding it with mana to use the active component, she could tear a battleship in half with just her physical prowess. Her smithing had taken a backseat recently, which was something she intended to work on next; it would be nice to spend some of the time they would have while searching for or waiting for materials for their rebirths working on the craft.

Her Celestial Annihilation was stuck right now, though not because the skill needed evolved or anything. She enjoyed using the skill and had pushed it to the peak of Gold, but there was something lacking in her own comprehension that she was having trouble rectifying to get the damn thing leveled to Platinum. She would have to keep working on it and maybe find some references that explained it, or even rarer, a person that was skilled with such esoteric mana types to train her.

Her resistances were coming along nicely, though it would take a big push to get Elemental Resistance up to Platinum. She wasn't that worried about the skills at this point, as they already provided a very high level of defense at their current levels and pushing them higher was just icing on the cake for her. Her overall utility skills were doing well as well and she was in the same boat, liking where they were at and not feeling her eye power, meditation, speed skill, or mental defense skill really needed a ton of focus at this point. Many people teetering on the edge of Enlightened would barely have such skills in Gold at this point, so to be at the peak of Gold with many of them was well ahead of the curve. Other than her meditation, but Blood was the one that enjoyed sleeping all the time and thinking deeply about her skills and body; Beth was much more of an action person.

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True Life Harvest, the last of her utility skills, was moving very slowly, but she hadn't really expected any different. Years of use had only gotten it to Copper[6], though it was likely about to level to Copper[7] very soon. It was one of the reasons people didn't like investing in the skills in the first place; the pace of leveling was just excruciating. At the same time, she was turning tons of beast corpses into scrap, not able to salvage anything from them, the skill not accepting the corpse being messed with beforehand. She got lucky more often now, but with the skill still in Copper, most time she was just left with a bit of mess on the ground. The skill would get markedly better in Silver, but it would take until it was in Gold before it really started to shine, which was likely decades away.

Her weapon skills were both now in Master, but progress was slow, and it would likely take her another decade before she hit the peak of Master. Her Unarmed had progressed quite well, that always having been her slightly more favored weapon skill, and it had caught up to Swords after it had hit Master, both of which were at Master[2] now. Hitting the top of Master would be a long journey, and then making that transition to Grandmaster was going to be very tough, but she would burn up some favors and try and get some help with that. Training could only do so much, but getting the help of some Sages and even some Divines could really solidify her current place and let her understand what she needed to do to bridge the gap.

The only other thing, apart from her spatial skills, was her dominion, which was still just progressing nicely. It was still a little low level, but she was neither great nor terrible with fire, even with her Mana Physique helping her out. It would just be a steady, comfortable progress until it got to the peak of Gold, at which point she might need a bit of a bump to get it to Platinum. That was a while away and wasn't that critical, either, as the skill was already able to provide her with a good bit of extra power, especially when doubling up with her Mana Physique's control element, and she didn't have some grand plan for the skill other than to progress it.

That left her spatial skills, all of which were doing very well. Even the recently acquired Spatial Inversion had gained quite a few levels, reaching the peak of Silver, and she hadn't been using that skill all that much. The two most notable things, at least to her, were Spatial Step and Spatial Obliteration, both of which were right there at the top, with Spatial Obliteration fully being at the peak of Platinum. She had a good feeling about that one, though it wasn't something she was going to level in just a few minutes, but she was pretty confident it was going to be her first Diamond skill, and that it wouldn't take all that long. The skill was already enormously powerful, as the match against the Grandmaster had amply demonstrated, not too mention her use of it to pulverize level five hundred beasts while she was still level three hundred and fifty, but the skill would be insane at Diamond. She imagined being able to crush and tear apart just about anything with a single strike, though the skill could also grow into a slightly different form. It wouldn't wholly change without an evolution or transformation, but it could either acquire a new component on getting to Diamond, or it could be further refined. Either way, the power would greatly increase, which was just crazy to think about an already extremely powerful skill having such a large jump. It made her wonder just how crazy even a relatively simple skill at Mithril would be, let alone some of the powerful skills she had seen or read about.

Just for a comparison, Beth wanted to do a check of one of the others' stat pages, and she had access to both Blood's, as her bonded companion, and to Sera's, as Sera had shared full access to all her things a long time ago. She decided to check Blood and see what her stats were at; Sera had increased her humanization a bit over the last few years, but her stat gains were still behind Blood's. The wolf hadn't bumped her humanization very much, but in talking with Sera and a few others, Beth had gotten the impression that Blood was working on a big jump, or so Sera had basically explained it in a simple way to her. Beth was hoping that Blood might punch through after making her Mana Physique, but the Physiques were the highest priority, at least for everyone that didn't currently have one. Well, only Beth, Val, and Adam had made their Physiques, so Andrea, Bjorn, Kris, Neph, and Sera would need to complete theirs. Veren also didn't have a Mana Physique yet, or hadn't when they had helped Tazeen, but he was very confident in making one, and was off doing his own thing at present. But, back to Blood's stat screen:

Blood had one more Gold-level CRA mission completed than Beth so had another hundred CP as compared to her. Blood also had a bit more money, though it was funny to think of fifty or so orichalcum coins as a 'bit.' Her stats were also on another level entirely, as she was not only joining Beth in the twenty thousand club for her main attribute, she was also nearly there in Strength, which could be considered her secondary attribute. On top of that she was also rocking twelve thousand Endurance, which was even more than Beth currently had at the peak of rebirth nine. The only place Blood was a little behind her were the mental stats, where she was a thousand behind in each, but those stats were even less important for Blood. Sure, they would affect a move like Blood Queen's Claws by a bit, and Wisdom was good for mana regeneration, but they didn't have as big an impact as if Blood had a casting skill, like Soph's Elemental Casting, just for example.

Speaking of her skills, she had made quite a lot of progress, though Beth thought she could probably afford to grab one or two more skills at this point. Then again, Blood used the skills she had, along with her extraordinary stats, to very great effect, able to run circles around even level four hundred fifty beasts without any issues. Beth also noted, with quite a bit of surprise, that Blood had hit Platinum in multiple skills since the last time she had checked with her about her stats, including her eye power. Eye powers were quite interesting as they ascended to the higher ranks, as they got basically two benefits. The first was that they were overall much more powerful, which really came into play when seeing through disguises, illusions, secrets, and so on, all just depending on exactly what kind of eye power it was and how it worked. The second big benefit was something rather more passive, but it would help display more things in the environment, showing more of how ambient mana flowed, how various patterns appeared within various frameworks, and more besides. The second could be quite subtle, depending on the eye power and the person, but it was another way that a person could pick up good insights into the world around them and the Path itself. The sort of tertiary effect that came out of the second part, the unlocking more of the ambient mana and patterns, was that it could really boost a person's crafting skill, if only indirectly. Being able to see mana flow and patterns more clearly, and sometimes having the ability to precisely observe the interaction of different mana particles or such things, could give a crafter a huge leg up.

The aforementioned Blood Queen's Claws was the other thing that had jumped to Platinum, and the biggest change with the skill was that there was no limit to the amount of energy Blood could put into the skill. It didn't sound all that impressive at first, but Blood had discovered that it meant that she could keep dumping energy into the attack even as it was flying through the air. Without the need to charge the attack up before releasing it she was presented with a lot more options in how she could deliver an extremely powerful attack at range. Conversely, if she was in-fighting and an opponent was sticking close to her, she could take a few seconds to pre-load an attack in a hand or foot and then unleash an enormous burst of power at close range.

The only concern Beth had was Blood's regeneration skill, which was just plain old Regeneration. She had wanted to teach Blood Lordly Reconstruction, which was still a possibility, but the process of evolving Regeneration into Lordly Reconstruction was pretty tedious, and Beth herself was the one that hadn't wanted to take the time necessary to do it. At the same time, Blood had a ton of money and could buy a crystal or array system that would let her upgrade the skill, but she had been too lazy to chase that down, so they were both a bit responsible. Beth determined to make sure everybody had one or more good regenerative skills, and it wouldn't be a bad idea to get some other defensive skill other than their resistance skills. Sera was the prime example of that, as she had several skills that enhanced her body, all of which came with extra defenses. Beth's Beastly Tyrant also increased her body's overall toughness, but it was more geared toward increasing her power output, so she could also stand to have a more defensive orientated body skill.

While many of them were at the threshold where they were ready to pursue their True Rebirth for their tenth rebirth and hit Enlightened, there were still some people finishing rebirth nine or even further behind, such as Neph. They had plenty of time to rest and relax for a while, though Beth didn't want it to become a pattern of laziness, but she did take Sera away for a week, leaving the gate open, after resetting it again, so that anybody working in the suite could use if for leveling. Sera and she went out to the Royal Rose, spending a week idling in indolent luxury before returning to the suite to check the others' progress. With a little free time until people were ready, Beth checked what they had to go for their True Rebirths, which is when she actually noticed the big problem.