Limitless Path

It was a month before Beth got them permission to take a slightly long weekend, which she would have felt bad about, but she knew the other Gold Emblems that were new to the Hall were taking plenty of time off themselves. That made her feel far less bad about one to two days extra to go tackle an extremely difficult dungeon. They were still mainly focused on the golem dungeon, as Beth was pretty sure that was the most dangerous of the ones they had found. The one that had started at level two hundred or so had increased in level and complexity, but it was nowhere near a problem yet. Other dungeons would be an issue, and they did want to get back and do the wraith area, which they had been putting off, but Beth didn't think jumping into the wraith portal without knowing more about it was a great idea at the moment.

The second run of the golem factory with a spike wasn't really any faster. As compared to running a new or unknown dungeon, running a known dungeon with a spike was just more challenging. It wasn't like they could learn a better route for the spike dungeon or anything like that; the only thing that would make an appreciable difference on their time was increasing their stats and skills, or getting an entirely new power like a Mana Physique some such. Since they were already leveling, slowly but surely, and they were slowly increasing their skill levels, the only other boost they could get to speed things up was to get a new power, but that wasn't happening any time soon. Gear could make a difference as well, and Beth's new gauntlets would help, if she could ever equip them, but armor and weapons only tended to make a big difference if the equipment was extremely powerful, the level of Beth's new gauntlets or greater.

The dungeon, just as she had expected, was just as much of a grueling grind this time as it had been the first time they fought through it with a spike. The only thing that aided them even a little bit in terms of speed was Bjorn and Kris's levels being a good bit higher, getting into the high two hundreds now. The extra stat points the two had made the whole thing a bit easier, both hitting harder than before. Bjorn also was even more of a tank while Kris could last for even longer, slinging spells for a couple hours before needing a rest. Blood also surprised them about halfway through the long slog, suddenly fighting so much faster and better with her claws that Beth thought she might have gotten a berserker skill for a moment. She realized quite quickly, however, that it was nothing like that, but instead her constant companion had just managed to push her weapon skill to Master as well. They were now three Masters fighting together, and the addition of Blood to their ranks really increased their speed while also lowering the difficulty. Kris wasn't quite as up on her weapon skill as the others, not using it quite as much, though she did train quite a bit with her staff. Sera was pretty damn close, though, hovering at the top of Expert and just looking for that moment to make the leap into Master. If they had four Masters on the team, they could virtually steamroll a dungeon of that level, type, and difficulty unopposed.

The run was different this time in another way, or rather, several other ways, as the layout and beasts were both different. Instead of a pack of what Beth thought of almost as regular beasts with a sub-boss leading them, every beast was closer to what Beth might think of as an elite; none of them were as powerful as the sub-boss, not really close, but they were all faster, stronger, and much tougher than the regular golems and machine-beasts they encountered in the dungeon. In some ways, this was rather a relief, as the group was able to much more easily crush these groups as compared to the first spiked run. In other ways, it was a bit disappointing, as these beasts didn't drop nearly the value of loot as compared to the sub-boss beasts from the first run. It all would have made this run much shorter, but the other big change was the layout, with the path being a massive snarl of interlocking rooms, sometimes with locked rooms they would have to either go around or figure a way to get through the door to proceed. That, combined with the dungeon being nine whole floors, meant that all the benefits of a new Master and easier enemy groups was balanced by the layout. It was just one of, or a set of, those complexities Wayfarers could encounter while repeatedly delving even the exact same dungeon.

The final boss of the dungeon was, fortunately, very similar to their last spiked encounter, though it was a decent bit quicker to take down with another Master on the team. It was still made of a ton of different parts, all guarded by large packs of elite beasts, and all those parts were assembled over the course of the fight to form the boss. The parts were all quite tough and were all shielded to some extent, preventing the group from just focusing one part down and destroying it before the assembly could get very far. Still, they were able to do quite a bit of damage to the boss before it got itself rightly put together, making the second part of the fight quite a bit easier for the group. Again, it couldn't be stressed enough just how much more powerful the group was with just one more of them jumping from Expert to Master with their preferred weapon, making every single fight easier and faster, including the second phase of the final boss of the dungeon.

The boss, and dungeon itself, only dropped two items this time, as if to mock them for having an exceptional haul the first time, but Beth wasn't disappointed with either item. Not because the group could use them, but because they were both going to go for an absolute premium, especially if they went through an auction such as the ones Seven Lights frequently hosted. The first of the two items was a large bottle containing an elixir, but this one was likely far rarer and more powerful than the one from the first run and likely much better, based on some quick research and study by Kris, their current resident alchemist, than the celestial elixir Beth had taken after the second big trial she did.

The second item was just as impressive, if not far more so, as it was a set of eyes, The Eyes of Infinite Depth, that would give a person a crazy strong eye power. It took Beth a lot of searching, but she eventually found an entry in the free information on the net about them talking about their extreme rarity and that they were the equivalent of a lower end tier five skill. Eye powers didn't have rarities above common; it was all about their tier and what they did, and Beth had a little while of extreme envy when she read about the power and effects of the eyes. Everyone in their team and extended friend circles had eye powers and, while eye powers could be merged, it was a very lengthy, complex, tedious, and often extremely expensive process that was usually judged not worth it. It was almost always easier to upgrade the tier of a person's current eye power, whether that was a straight-up tier upgrade or a full evolution, than it was to merge two eye powers together.

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Still, the value of the two items, the elixir being the Elixir of Golden Dreams, and the eye power, couldn't be underestimated. Beth and Kris's research, after comparing notes, expected a minimum price of fifty mithril coins for each, but the eye power was so crazy that they might easily pull in multiple orichalcum for it. It was the perfect kind of thing that a wealthy Ascended would love to buy for a descendant or student that hadn't grabbed an eye power yet, giving that person a massive leg up early on in their Path.

The elixir was not quite as impressive, but it provided a huge boost to Intelligence and Wisdom as well as a massive increase in the effects of meditation. There were some casters out there who were battle freaks like Beth and the girls and having the ability to have meditation, even a lower tier meditation skill, refill all resources, including stamina, quickly and fully was extremely tempting. The secondary effect did make it just a bit more exclusive of an item as people who spent a lot of time crafting or researching wouldn't really be so hot for the enhanced meditation effect, but like Beth had estimated, any caster class that loved battle would go bonkers for it. Beth would have had one of them use it, but none of the three girls that fought constantly would benefit that much from the massive increases in mental stats. Kris was also a possibility, but she explained she had a very good meditation skill and had already taken more than one elixir for mental stats, not that different elixirs for the same stat canceled out or anything, but the elixir wouldn't be quite the boon to her.

That was the second run of the dungeon, and they worked hard on their skills and professions for several weeks, tackling the golem dungeon and several of the other dungeons in the area on the weekends until they were ready for the third spiked delve. It had been more than a month, and the girls doing ref duty were now more than halfway through the year, which was really grinding despite how busy they had been keeping themselves. Blood did have further good news, however, as she had officially gotten her pilots license. It would be a long time before she could train others, but she was legal to fly in-atmosphere basically everywhere now and could eventually teach the others, assuming they didn't get their own certs before Blood was ready. That still left her starship certification, but that was a much bigger beast that she was slowly whittling down. It was funny, but she had to borrow a ship to do that one, as the girls did not have and absolutely could not afford a ship still, even assuming all the crazy, top-tier loot they were getting sold well. Starships were the realm of adamantine coins at the minimum, and that was for one likely smaller than their airship, and they did not and would not have that kind of money for quite a while.

They did the third run of the golem factory with a spike and it was like the damn thing was taunting them, as the run was even more complex than the last. The place had yet another pattern, with endless hordes of 'regular' golems filling the place, and Beth meant that quite literally. They were easier to kill, but they were genuinely endless, meaning the group was basically constantly engaged in combat all the way up to the boss room. Apart from that, the layout itself was more complex and stretched across a whopping ten floors, all of which were even larger than the previous times they had run the dungeon. It was all a trade-off, as the general enemies were easy enough that they blew through them with little effort, but the dungeon was now absolutely massive and took several days to move through while in constant battle. They had now had a full range of options, at least to Beth's mind, from a smaller dungeon with much harder enemies on every floor to a massive dungeon with rather weak enemies on every floor.

Despite the size and complexity, they still cleared this run much faster than the other two, as three Masters alongside two other extremely powerful Wayfarers could push very hard for a very long time. It was their fastest clear of the spiked dungeon by a long shot, with the total time they were inside being somewhere in the sixty hour range, about sixty-three hours from walking in the front door until the boss was dead at their feet. Maybe that was why the rewards were a bit of a mixed bag this time. There were only three rewards, with one of the rewards being something Beth was quite familiar with, while the other two were new to her. It was the item she was familiar with that made this a mixed bag, as the other two items were valuable but nothing that had the team jumping for joy upon checking over.

The thing that Beth did recognize was another cube, very similar to the one she had used in a desperate situation a few years ago. This cube was a cut above the last one, however, which did have Beth practically jumping for joy. It was also not something they would be selling, even though Bjorn informed them that quite a few orichalcum coins was the absolute minimum for such an item. The cube was, funnily enough, another invention of Ephram's, or something related to him at the least, though this time it was named:

Ephram's Cube of Skill Enlightenment

A rather bold name, if Beth did say so herself, but it promised even greater rewards, as it made the same promises of high-tier skills having a low chance of tier upgrade while high-level skills had a higher chance of more level upgrades. Basically, Ephram's cubes were great for high-level, low tier skills, as the endless training in the skill was used by the cube to demonstrate a person's understanding, allowing the cube to upgrade the levels more the higher the skill had been trained. Upgrading tiers was always quite difficult, so the cubes wouldn't provide as much help there, but they could boost skills by several tiers. The last cube Beth had used was a legendary item with a limit of tier five for the skill and could upgrade up to two tiers upon use. The masterwork version had a limit of tier six and could upgrade a skill up to three tiers upon use, which was a massive improvement. Masterwork itself was a pretty big jump in an item's quality; while legendary items were considered rare and powerful, they were still much more common than masterworks. The line between legendary and masterwork was a major dividing line in items, even not considering the level requirements. Even a low level-requirement masterwork was often just as impressive if not more so than a high level-requirement legendary.

In any case, using the cube in their group made the most sense, though they decided they would wait on it for now. Nobody was in desperate need of an upgrade and the cubes weren't great with weapon skills, sometimes not even working on them, and they didn't have any one skill that somebody could boost way up and act as a huge gamechanger. They also could use the cube on somebody in the greater group; Val would likely be joining the girls long-term at some point, and Andrea and Adam would likely work with them often. Veren was a bit more up in the air, but despite how grumpy and aloof he was, he did still show up when they called without even counting it a repayment of favors owed. Having any of them use the cube could also be good, though Beth privately thought Veren would be a waste, not because she had something against him, but a weapon prodigy like him wouldn't really need any crutch or booster at all, even if the cubes weren't that much of a crutch with how they worked better with skills that had tons of effort invested already.