Limitless Path

Like Beth had said, the other two items weren't nearly as worthwhile as the cube, one of them being a rare chest armor and the other being an epic dagger (and what was with all the daggers?). The cube was the real prize, after all, and Beth was sure she could pawn the chestplate and the dagger off for at least a handful of diamond coins at some point. That run had taken them only a part of the weekend, but it was still exhausting, so profession work was the next thing on the docket for them. That weekend also had taken them over the two month mark for getting their materials, though Alex's last update said they were still fetching some things. Funnily enough, Mortaine had just chickened out right away and contacted Zane and Fallon who had produced the really rare material for Beth in one week. It turns out knowing a couple of Manumitted, old and powerful even for their tier, came with tons of unexpected benefits.

The delay turned into another month and another run of the dungeon before Alex and Selene messaged them that the materials were all ready, providing they had the payment ready. Beth just laughed at that, not knowing if Alex and Selene understood just how much wealth the girls had access to. They had made quite a bit of it through Seven Lights, but then again, they spent an awful lot at various places, so maybe Alex was erring on the side of caution with them. In any case, the fourth run of the golem dungeon had given them a legendary dagger, an epic helm that nobody wanted, and a pair of leather gloves that had moderate bonuses to Dexterity and a big bonus to stealth which Blood turned down as a little too far outside what she wanted in terms of equipment bonuses. That gave them a decent pile of items over level three hundred to drop off at the Seven Lights when they retrieved their materials, including the eye power and elixir.

"We're heading to Seven Lights to sell this stuff," Beth said to the room at the start of their next weekend. "You guys want to come?"

"No," said Bjorn, Kris, and Blood.

"You, too?" Beth said, giving Blood a questioning look.

"You're gonna give those two some things, then spend a couple days making out with them. No thanks," Blood said, shaking her head.

"Well, right, I guess I can understand that," Beth said with a shrug, sharing a glance with Sera.

"Let's get moving," the dragon girl said, turning and leaving their suite in the CRA Hall.

They made their way to the branch of Seven Lights they constantly used and met up with Selene and Alex, the greater demoness herself coming down to the lobby to lead them to her office. That certainly elicited a couple raised brows from the rest of the staff, but nobody breathed a word about it; Beth had a feeling that a lot of people both respected and feared Selene, even very strong people. She remembered several people commenting about the woman, including Sera herself at one point, so she must be a bit famous in the Milky Way, but none of that really concerned Beth. Sera had a good gauge on people and wasn't much interested in anybody that wasn't up to any good and Selene passed her sniff test, so Beth didn't pry into it any further.

"Good to see you both again," Alex greeted them once they were in Selene's office.

"It's already been a bit again," Beth said, hugging the multi-winged woman.

"We have everything you need," Selene said, gesturing across the table and making several boxes appear from thin air.

"Just what we've been looking for," Beth said, scooping all the items into her necklace. "Everything's here?"

"Yes; Mortaine had a courier drop by with an item from somebody for you," Selene said.

"Yeah, Zane," Beth said, glancing at the boxes in her necklace before refocusing on Selene.

"As in Farstrider?" Selene asked.

"Yepper," Beth replied.

"Interesting," Selene muttered.

"Anyway, what do we owe?" Beth asked.

"Four mithril and thirty diamond coins," Alex said softly.

"Easy," Beth replied, making the coins appear. "Any decision on that shield?"

"Yearly auction," said Selene. "Which is coming up in a few months. If you have anything else for us to consider…"

"Oh boy, do we ever," Beth said excitedly, waving her hand over the table and making a small pile of incredibly powerful items appear. The mana in the room danced and surged just slightly when she dumped the items on the table, that was how much power was focused in them. The elixir and the eye power, which was a set of eyeballs that glowed with a dark light, were particularly powerful in influencing the mana around them.

"This is quite something," Selene said, starting to sort through the pile of items on the table. "Where did all this come from?"

"Dungeon on my home world," Beth said with a shrug. "There's a really high mana density area there. Well, high density by the CRA standards. Stuff up to level five hundred or more in that area. Not something that would really challenge an Ascended, I would bet, but it's enough that we'll be able to fight there even at Enlightened."

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"That's true," Alex said. "A lot of the scales that are commonly used are made with the average person, or average Wayfarer in mind. A ten on the CRA scale used for most worlds is enough to be threatening to most Enlightened, even some brand new Ascended, but it's not enough for someone like myself or Sel to really work up a sweat."

"That's what I figured," Beth said as Alex joined Selene in looking through the items. "What would something like the Eternal Depths be classified as?"

"Well, first, don't even think about that yet," said Selene with a shake of her head. "Second, the general classifications are for planets and used as guides for most explorers and warriors. If you're somebody that pushes far into Ascended, you're already pretty far beyond the standard, so the standard metrics aren't really used. The numbers are really narrow; I think something like forty percent of people try to actually be Wayfarers and not just get thirty levels to get some stats and quit. About a quarter of those people even make it to rebirth one, so maybe ten percent of the population, tops. Then, about a quarter of those people make it to rebirth five, and a fifth of those people make it to rebirth nine. So, by rebirth nine, we're down to half a percent or even less of the total population, then more than half of those people get stuck on building their Mana Physique and never progress past that, so by Enlightened we're looking at something like point-two percent of the population.

"The numbers get even lower from there, as it doesn't get any easier to do even the basic rebirths. By the time you get to where I'm at, we're talking about something like point-zero-one percent of the population or less and then a lot of people fail to make the jump to Exalted, though I don't know that those figures are even tracked. So, all that to say that a lot of the scales are used by normal people, or even 'normal' Wayfarers, which is something like ninety-nine-point-eight percent of the entire population or more. Ascended, and even stronger Enlightened, don't worry about those scales; we look at total mana concentration, which is a number you can either look up or get a device or skill or something along those lines to figure out."

"So, all the stuff we learn at the CRA applies to most people, but once you get to the level where you've left everybody else in the dust, you can't use the normal scale?" Beth asked as the two finished examining the items.

"Yes," Selene answered simply, putting the elixir down. "Sadly, a lot of the more dangerous places in the Milky Way are discussed in terms of how many Ascended died there out of how many total went there in the last century. Somewhere like the Eternal Depths has a mortality rate of over fifty percent for Ascended, so it's rated as one of the most dangerous places in the whole galaxy."

"What about the Maze of Eternity?" Beth asked, seeing Selene narrow her eyes at that.

"I don't know if Farstrider has given you his spiel on that…?" Selene asked, letting the question hang in the air.

"Not the whole thing, I think," Beth replied.

"Okay, I won't rain on his parade, but Delvers into the Maze are basically never below Exalted and only about ten percent of them ever return," Selene said. "So, if you want the mortality rate dangers, ninety percent of Exalted and above that go there either die or just don't return for one reason or another. I don't want to get too bogged down in that, though; I'm not the expert on it by any means."

"Right, I understand," Beth said. "So, anyway, what do you think?"

Beth had gestured at the table and now Selene smiled broadly. "I think your team has some pretty incredible luck. Several of these items are yearly auction worthy; I don't think you'll have to worry about funds for a long time."

"Well, I'm saving to buy a starship," Beth replied, seeing both Selene and Alex's eyebrows go up at that.

"Well then, I stand, or sit, corrected," Selene said. "This is not, unfortunately, starship money."

"Well, I figured that, but you think it's still a pretty good haul?" Beth asked.

"I think you are going to be several orichalcum, possibly a couple dozen, richer after we sell all this," Selene said, Alex nodding along. "I think you are making a very good profit off of this. It all came from the same dungeon?"

"Spiked," Beth answered with a shrug.

"Ah, ah. That explains at least some of it," Selene said with a nod.

"Spikes are pretty dangerous," Alex cut in, looking a bit worried. "I hope you're being careful with them."

"Nothing we can't handle," Beth replied nonchalantly. "We've got more than just the three of us working on it; we've got a full team of five doing the delves, and we've got three Masters between us, so it's not that bad."

"Oh really? Who are the Masters?" Alex asked with a raised brow.

"Myself, Blood, and Bjorn," Beth answered.

"The titan boy," Selene cut in before Beth could explain further.

"Yeah, that's him, though he's not a full titan," Beth said.

"Of course not, they disappeared years and years ago," Selene said.

"Know anything about that?" Beth asked.

"No more than most," Selene said with a shrug. "They had a city in the Eternal Depths, as crazy as that sounds, and was. Then, one day, poof. All of them were just gone. They left some descendants and bloodline items and a few other things behind, but all the pureblooded of both species, those who Identified as titans or giants, just disappeared overnight. I think most know that, though not much beyond it. I heard it had something to do with the galactic cores across a huge swathe of space, something that a usually reliable source told me. Then again, you hear everything about that; they were taken by void beasts, they tried to all evolve their bloodlines at once and it backfired, they all tried to transcend this level of reality all at once and it either failed or succeeded, and even that they all sacrificed themselves to create some kind of item or treasure or starship or something. The last always sounded like truly wishful thinking from treasure hunters; it's such an old thing and so widely discussed over the years that you can ask twenty people and get fifty different theories or explanations on it."

"Maybe Bjorn himself knows more, but I was just curious what somebody a lot more powerful thought," Beth said with a shrug.

"Everybody has stuff they're interested in," Alex said. "For us, we do a lot of research on rare materials and some very rare and powerful arrays, but those are such massive fields that we wouldn't have time for anything else really serious. I know there's people out there that have devoted millennia to the titan and giant problem, but I've never heard that anybody has ever figured out anything concrete, even the remaining descendants or blood relatives."

"Well, as interesting as it is, how about back to the topic at hand?" Sera asked with a grin.

"Right, the items," Selene said. "You want to auction them all, I assume?"

"Yeah, this is everything that nobody in our group wanted or could use for a very long time," Beth said, waving at the table. "I trust you guys with it, so just put it in a monthly or yearly auction and let us know how it does."

"Several of these things are one hundred percent going in the yearly auction," Alex said, her eyes seeming to glow with excitement. "We're going to get a whole bunch of accolades for this, absolutely. The next yearly auction might even be entirely headlined by us."

"Don't get too excited," Selene said, just a slight warning edge to her tone.

"Right, sorry, I got a bit carried away," Alex said, demurring and blushing slightly.

"Problem?" asked Beth.

"Nothing that is a big concern," Selene said laconically, waving the issue away before scooping the items up. "We'll handle all this; in the meantime, we do have some free time…"

"That sounds lovely," Sera replied for the both of them, grinning widely at the two on the opposite couch.

Selene took the lead, in more ways than one, and the girls spent a pleasant day with the other two before they had to go, not because Beth and Sera were busy, but Selene and Alex were both involved in prior business that couldn't be put off. They said their goodbyes the next afternoon and Beth and Sera returned to the suite, surprising Blood and Val when the walked into the living room and found the two intertwined on the couch. Not that either of them really cared that they had been caught cuddling and kissing, but they seemed surprised to see Beth and Sera.

"Selene and Alex had business," Beth explained, slouching across from the other two.

"Oh, okay," Blood said before rolling back on top of Val and resuming what they had been doing.

"Good to see you, too," Beth grumbled, Sera laughing from the kitchen at that.

The dragon made some food, just for her and Beth, and the two ate, finishing just as Bjorn and Kris returned to the room, those two having been out but not having left permanently. The four of them discussed the plan for the next couple weeks, Beth saying she wanted to do their rebirths and then spend three weeks leveling while doing their ref duties before they did any more dungeons, certainly any more spiked dungeons. The others were in agreement, though the mention of spiked dungeons got Val's attention, with her calling them crazy for doing so many of them so close together, which just amused the group in general.