Limitless Path

Baelvyr's sudden visit aside, the rest of that afternoon went rather well, as her extended team, as she thought of them, spent time with the Ascended. There was no real limit to the amount of time she could keep them deployed like this and, despite at times getting a bit frustrated with some of the questions or things, it was very clear they were happy to be somewhere, anywhere but inside the reliquary for a time. A few hours of training might not really seem like a lot, but a few hours of training with Sages and Grandmasters, when the trainee was only an Expert, was an incredibly valuable experience.

Beth planned to let them have a bit of a longer session the next day, one where they could make use of the time in her gate to accelerate their timescale and get a few dozen hours of training in within just a few hours. She was a bit hesitant to push the others too hard, knowing that other people preferred to actually take breaks, which is what they were supposed to be doing. That and, well, she basically had this group of Ascended instructors at her mercy; they certainly weren't going anywhere without her permission any time soon. They packed it back up when the sun was still up and made their way back to the Hall, Beth laughing under her breath as they passed a disgruntled Baelvyr in the lobby leaning against one of the walls with his arms crossed and answering questions from several other Senior Enforcers. He gave them a sour look as they moved by, but Beth just answered it with a huge grin of her own before they were past and into the depths of the building.

They found Kim's team in Beth's suite, as she had left the gate open for them to use before going out on their weekend jaunt. Several of the members hadn't met before, so they made introductions before settling down to eat and drink. Veren, as he had before, produced a prodigious amount of very fine alcohol, looking to get everyone present drunk, a not inconsiderable task when taking account of their stats and skills. The alcohol wasn't just normal booze, however, as it was brewed with mana and much of it had quite a hell of a kick to it. Beth only sampled a little herself, content to drink her own drink with her own brand of additive, both of which were mild stimulants, though redgold salt could produce a mildly euphoric effect if someone overindulged. The rest of the group wasn't as reserved, digging into the alcohol, though Sera and Veren did not try to outspend each other this time with the price of the bottles they were producing from their storage powers.

Speaking of which, Veren did have a storage skill rather than an item, as he pointed out with a hint of prideful contempt. When Neph, of all people, countered that she had one too and that it wasn't that special, the look on the arrogant Grandmaster's face was rather priceless, considering he knew just how old and strong Neph was. The bee girl was rather demure about the whole thing as well, just saying it was something she had picked up here and there as they had been doing some beast-slaying requests for some people. Beth assumed there was more to the story than that, but she figured she'd get it out of them later, after some of the guests had departed.

That wasn't happening for a while, and certainly not with the amount of drinking that was happening. Beth was amused with how the group progressively became sloppier, her humor further increasing when Val started challenging people to drinking contests. The kresnik had not cut loose, at least not to this extent, in quite a long time, apparently, and she was eager to take advantage of some of her little remaining free time. She practically drank Andrea under the table and then pulled off a much narrower victory against Veren. When she got the brilliant idea of challenging Bjorn was when Blood decided to interfere and sit on her girlfriend, quite literally, which was not particularly difficult, given the state Val was in at that point. People started dropping like flies shortly thereafter, though Soph lasted just about the longest, and she had really been hammering it back, much to Beth's surprise. Apparently, her youngest sister was something of a drinking champion these days and Beth wondered if it was maybe making up for missing out on her college years, or maybe because she was still basically around that age, in objective time, at least.

The party, which is what it was, took a toll on everyone except Beth. It turns out that, once again, many of the group had to learn the hard way that stats and skills aren't much prevention against something one does to oneself to intentionally get around those things. Now, that's not to say that regenerative skills or healing skills couldn't get rid of the effects, or aftereffects, as the case may be, but it wouldn't prevent those effects from cropping up in the first place. One thing that was just a touch different from before the Path was that people kept their dinners down a whole lot better; puking as a result of drinking was not a particularly common thing. Beth had a pet theory, supported by some evidence, that it had to do with the mana in the booze and how that interacted with people's gut biomes, but that wasn't something that had yet been conclusively proven. Either way, at least that lessened the cleanup considerably, though it didn't prevent people who had had a few too many from spilling expensive, and rather staining, alcohol all over the place.

Beth commandeered her gate power then, which was a bit ironic considering that it was, well, hers, but she had uses for it. She changed it over to the residential area, waiting a little while until everyone had their heads screwed back on straight and had had some time to rest and recover from the previous night's ordeals. Once everyone, including her sisters' group, was back in mostly fighting shape, she had them go through into the residence and into the large training area out the back. That's when she sprung the surprise on her sisters' group, the rest of Beth's team having managed to keep it under wraps leading up to that point. Kim and Soph were shocked, truly flabbergasted, by the powerful Ascended appearing from nowhere, but Sabs had a more muted reaction. Neph, on the other hand, was just excited, her bubbly personality showing through as she bounced around, quite literally, trying to ask questions of everyone at once. Beth just shook her head before giving the four of them the rundown on what was happening and letting them get at it.

She and Sera ducked back into the house with Erosh, moving into the room they had for crafting. While the others could practice their skills, hone their weapon skills, discuss theory, and just listen to some fun stories, Beth and her lover wanted to push their smithing higher. They still had a long way to go, including a fair way to go just to hit Expert, though they had closed that gap a little bit. Erosh, surprisingly, was a rather effective teacher, not just because he knew what he was doing in the forge, but he was rather good at explaining even difficult concepts in ways others could readily understand. He also cautioned them that not all of the others from the reliquary were as good at teaching, but then again, he had trained apprentices numerous times even after he took up his role as a ruler, so he had quite a bit of practical experiencing teaching, and teaching a craft specifically.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

It was a marathon and not a sprint, however, and so they made little progress. Not no progress at all, but they were still slowly working through the ranks of Journeyman, and Beth was a bit frustrated that they had to spend so much time for each and every level. Erosh just laughed at her, though not unkindly, saying that only real, true-blue savants could shoot up the levels in crafting with any kind of speed. Those kinds of people were as rare as somebody like Adam, with a genius for Mana Physiques, if not even rarer, and Erosh had never trained somebody like that himself. He had only met one person who was supposedly like that, but the person was already at the peak of Grandmaster in enchanting when Erosh had met him and had slowed his progress by quite a bit at that point. Getting to Expert would take them a couple months quite likely, and that was objective time and taking into account the fact they would be using Beth's gate a good bit. The real time was a lot closer to eighteen months of pretty substantial effort, though they did have a real glut of time on their hands right now, rather fortunately.

The others were out in the courtyard and were working on their weapon skills. That seemed the main focus of the day for all involved, as they were all eager to take part in training by a large group of people far above them in skill and with heaps of real-world experience under their belts that they could draw on to impart some nuggets of wisdom. Well, everyone was suitably impressed with one notable exception, that being Veren, of course, who was already well progressed through Grandmaster. That put the shoe on the other foot, funnily enough, as the group of Ascended were rather stunned that someone so young had risen to such a great height. It wasn't unheard of, but such people were rare, to have such skill with a weapon so young, and it was the difference between hearing about it, even as a story of someone one met talking about their younger days, versus seeing it happening in the flesh. Veren was able to hold his own against several of the Ascended, provided they were fighting down to his level, that being in stats and other skill usage, which had everybody buzzing. Watching his spars with the other Ascended was also extremely informative and having so many experienced hands there to comment on it and dissect it after every round was extremely helpful.

Using Beth's gate, they were able to turn a dozen hours into multiple days, which was quite a boon, but all good things couldn't last. Val had to go, and so did Adam, surprisingly enough, after which Beth reset the gate to allow Neph and her team to use it. Beth still thought of it as Kim's team a lot, but Neph was the most driven and eager of that group, so she was really the driving force for them right now. There would likely be a point where Neph could make the jump to Beth's team, depending on a few factors, but she would likely be pushing Kim's team pretty hard for quite a while to come. Not that that was a bad thing; far from it, really, as Beth secretly thought having somebody on their level but slowly pushing ahead of them as time passed might be a very good motivator for the other three on that team.

With people cycling out, and her gate occupied, it was time to get on with some work, though not anything on an appreciable deadline. They had some things to wrap up before they got credit for the Gold missions from Tazeen, and that was their next task to complete in the ordering, after which Beth wanted to focus heavily on crafting before getting to their next rebirth. That would also give some others some time to catch up, as well as give Val some time to get some of her nonsense wrapped up and finally break free of that obligation that had been an albatross around her neck for so many years now.

But, first things first before all the rest of it; getting the stuff in the center of North America corralled enough for Tazeen to be happy. They had the golem dungeon mostly locked down, and they needed to take care of the lizard dungeon, have some better idea what the sacred mana thing was all about, and handle another dungeon full of massive, bearlike enemies. That last one was rough because the beasts were so strong and tough, taking a large amount of time to kill even with their team working at it. Veren stuck around for a little to help them with some tasks and to get them to work on the tower in the desert for a few days, but he once again dipped without any warning after two weeks, just vanishing one day. Beth really wished he would at least say something and not just suddenly disappear, but she guessed it was just nice that he even deigned to show up at all.

The work went pretty well, and Kim's team made very good use of the gate over the course of a month or two, or maybe three, to level quite a bit. With how low they still were on rebirths, it didn't take them particularly long to get to their next one, and finding the materials wasn't really a problem for them all to do True Rebirths. The fact Beth had given Neph a king's ransom worth of wealth a few months before with a flick of her fingers also helped an awful lot. The team was able to all do their rebirths within the span of just under two weeks and then were able to rack up a ton of early levels extremely quickly in Beth's gate. She could even set it to a rather high level for them and have them still able to handle the beasts around the gate itself, which was a rather nice change of pace.

After that bit of excitement, they were finally able to get the mission credits from Tazeen and close that work out. They all needed three more Gold missions to get through the requirements for their next emblems, though those kinds of missions were still in a bit of short supply on Earth. It was often hard to find missions that could be given to a whole group at once; that wasn't really how the CRA mission structure was designed, especially not at the White Hall, and they had been getting both lucky and some fingers on the scales with their assignments so far. That time was over, at least for a while, and they would basically have to do twelve missions, barring they could find ones that would give credit to their whole group, to get them through Gold. Beth was hoping they could find four missions on Earth to do between all the various Halls, though she wasn't holding her breath. That meant it might be time to pack it up and move along, though they could always return whenever the fancy struck them.

Beth offered Kim's group the chance to tag along, which they all declined. Neph was still very motivated, but even she needed breaks from time to time, and the others on that team were certainly ready to shift into a bit of a lower gear for a while. This opportunity let them catch a little rest while Beth's team was off gallivanting around the galaxy, and Earth still had plenty of opportunities that they could use to level. Beth and her team really only needed to leave as there just weren't enough missions above Silver for them to get their requirements done. Beth wasn't under any illusions that Kim's team would be all that much advanced when they next met up, but that just pointed to what a real game changer and accelerant time compression was for a team in their efforts to get levels and rebirths under their belts.