Chương 287: Limitless Path Chapter Three Hundred Eleven

"That's it?" Blood asked, looking around the room.

"A very strong, very durable boss. It would have been a struggle for many to bring it down," Adam commented.

"Come on," Andrea said, punching Adam on the shoulder.

"Just admit we're crazy powerful."

"Don't get a big head," was all Adam replied before moving forward to inspect the dungeon reward. The reward for the dungeon was a single small chest on a plinth near the back of the room. The chest was carved of exquisite dark wood, about two feet across and both eighteen inches high and deep. It was banded in mana gold and had a simple latch made of the same metal on the front centered right below the lid. When Adam flipped the latch and opened the lid, he found an assortment of gems and precious minerals within.

He gave a little nod before closing the lid and stashing the chest in his spatial power, turning to head towards the exit that had appeared after the orc had exploded.

"Anything good?" Beth asked as they caught up.

"Gems," Adam replied with a shrug. When Andrea buried an elbow in his short ribs, he elaborated, "More of what we got earlier and some minerals I didn't recognize. The gems seem average quality but I'm not an expert at recognizing such things."

"Don't worry; I've got a hookup," Beth said. When Andrea looked at her strangely, she said, "Sorry, I don't think that translates into Standard very well. I mean I have someone who can handle all that."

"Really? How long have you been on-planet? A few weeks?" Andrea asked incredulously as they passed through the exit. They found themselves back exactly where they started, standing in the clearing in front of the airship.

"We wanna go again?" Beth asked immediately.

"You gotta be nuts," Andrea replied with an eyeroll.

"We need a break! We can't just run dungeons back-to-back."

"Oh," Beth replied, nonplussed.

"Well, then, let's relax." She led the way into the airship, the group breaking apart to move to their own quarters. Blood followed Beth into the captain's quarters up by the bridge where they bathed together before getting dressed in their standard, CRA issued clothes and moving out to the mess hall. The other two quickly joined them, both having washed up in the small baths in their own cabins, with Andrea insisting on cooking a meal.

Luckily, the kitchen had come fully equipped with everything they needed to do anything from heat up rations to cook a thirteen course, gourmet meal. Andrea wasn't a professional chef, but she was still much better than Beth and Blood, who usually just heated up something pre-made or roasted some meat in the oven and devoured it.

"Do you two normally just run dungeons back-to-back like that?" Andrea asked as they were digging in to her cooking.

"Normally, yeah," Beth replied with a slightly raised eyebrow.

"Why?"

"I can sorta see why you're so strong," Andrea muttered.

"It's crazy to just run dungeons over and over like that. People normally prep for a while before doing one run, and then they rest and review the run, sometimes even stop and train or do other things, before they do a second run. I can't believe you just run dungeons over and over again."

"Even I don't usually do that," Adam commented.

"It's just what we're used to," Beth shrugged as she finished her first plate.

"We enjoy fighting and doing dungeons, so we just do runs over and over. Besides, we need to get all the way to level two-forty and hit our next rebirth."

"Have you done perfect rebirths both times?" Andrea asked with a raised brow.

"True rebirths," Blood corrected with a grunt.

"You're going True all the way?" Adam asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Why not?" Blood responded with a bit of a scrunched face.

"Time. Expense. Material availability," Adam immediately replied.

"Haven't run into too many issues yet," Beth said with a shrug.

"You will by rebirth five; things start to get pretty expensive there," Andrea replied.

"Even with how much you're making, it won't be that easy to acquire everything you need."

"I mean, there's no point in worrying about it before it happens," Beth said.

"If stuff is expensive, we'll earn money. If stuff is super rare, we'll spend the time or money to get our hands in it. Worrying about our rebirths being hard before we get to them isn't going to help."

"True that," Andrea said, happily dismissing the topic with a smile.

"Look, what are your plans after this? We run the key one more time and then what happens?"

"Well, we have time," Beth said with another shrug.

"We look around and explore more. Maybe go back and fight in the arena. I also want to participate in the next monthly auction before we leave, though I have no idea what our long-term schedule is right now." If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"Monthly auction? I recall you mentioning an auction before…?" Andrea asked, brow scrunched in a perplexed look.

"Oh, yeah," Beth replied as she finished her meal, leaning back and belching loudly. Adam got a bit of a disgruntled look, but Andrea just encouraged the behavior with a "Hell Yeah!"

"So, we explored under the mountains," Beth explained as Blood started cleaning up.

"Ran into a lot of tough shit down there; stuff in the three hundreds that we had to run from. Anyway, we found a couple big pockets of gems, so we came back and tried to sell 'em to a shop. They couldn't buy that much and recommended us to the Seven Lights Trading Firm, and when we went there, the haul was valuable enough they offered us a membership. Long story short, the gems were really high-quality stuff and sold for a lot in the monthly auction they hold, enough to buy this ship and have plenty left over.

And, since it's a monthly auction, I figured we'd participate in the next one."

"Oh man, Seven Lights is supposed to be hella fucking rich," Andrea gasped.

"I'd love to see something like that."

"Well, if we keep exploring for a couple weeks and get enough of a haul, we could even sell some stuff ourselves. Either way, I'm able to attend any auction they put on and can bring in guests, so we can go even if we don't gather anything valuable," Beth explained.

"Well, what about the gems we got? Including the chest Adam grabbed?" Andrea asked, glancing at Adam before looking back to Beth.

"Eh, I don't know. We can get them appraised, but I don't think they're as valuable as the ones we sold, and definitely not the quantity we had. Even if we get just as much from the other run of the key, we won't have the same volume or quality as our first load," Beth replied with a shake of her head.

"But we can still go?" Andrea asked, bouncing in her seat.

"Sure. My pass isn't qualified based on bringing in items; I can go to any Seven Lights auction I want," Beth explained.

"Awesome!" Andrea cheered.

"What are we waiting for? Let's go find some cool stuff to sell!" Beth, Blood, and Adam exchanged a look before Beth asked, "Uh, aren't you the one that insisted on resting?"

"Oh, yeah," Andrea said, calming.

"Let's rest up and then get the other use of that key done."

"Sounds like a plan," Beth agreed. The four of them talked just a bit more before heading back to their quarters, the other two thanking Beth and Blood for allowing them the use of the ship. When everyone was ready the next day, they repeated the run of the Hidden Ancient Mine, careful to gather any ore or minerals of value on the way through. The boss was almost identical to the one from the first run, but instead used a massive maul rather than a saber.

Beth preferred the saber, as the huge maul was quite dangerous and none of them had armor powerful enough to withstand even one hit, making the fight a bit more dicey. On the plus side, the maul made the orc much slower, allowing the four to dodge around him and hit him far easier than in their first encounter. Their reward this time was a lump of metal that even Beth didn't recognize, with a red luster that shined dully in the faint light.

Despite not recognizing it, other than to figure out that it wasn't adamantine, Beth knew that something rewarded by this dungeon would be quite valuable. She stashed the metal before they left, though it didn't really matter who had what, as they would have all of it evaluated by Seven Lights at the same time.

"So, now what?" Andrea asked when they were all safely ensconced on the airship's bridge.

"Where should we explore?"

"I don't know. I'm not familiar enough with this planet to do anything but randomly guess and see what happens, like we did earlier," Beth replied.

"I know of an old rumor," Adam interjected hesitantly.

"And that is?" Beth asked.

"A couple years ago, there was supposed to be some kind of hidden ruin at the very western edge of this continent. It was supposed to be guarded by some kind of devils and, of course, contain fabulous treasures, but then aren't all ruins like that? Anyway, I know roughly where the ruin was supposedly located, but I don't know the exact position, nor do I trust the rumors about what's really there," Adam said.

"Well, give Blood a location and we'll take a look," Beth said with a smile.

"I don't think there's much on this world that the ship can't either fight or run from."

"Okay," Adam said, transmitting the general area to Blood.

"What's her name, by the way?" Andrea asked.

"Her who?" Beth returned with a furrowed brow.

"The ship, you dolt," Andrea laughed.

"Oh. I don't know, to be honest," Beth answered with a chuckle. She then spent a minute looking through the ship's files to see if it had a name registered in the system, but found the line was blank.

"Seems like nobody named it anything."

"You should come up with something good, then," Andrea said.

"I don't want to just jump in and regret it later," Beth said while shaking her head.

"Let me think about it for a while. I'll take suggestions, too."

"What about Old Eagle?" Andrea said.

"What?" Beth asked with a blank look on her face.

"Oh, that's from an old story that's pretty well-known," Adam commented from his seat on the other side.

"Yeah, it's a pretty simple story about some animals that go on a long journey," Andrea said.

"You should look it up some time if you're bored."

"Maybe I'll do that," Beth said.

"But I don't think Old Eagle sounds right."

"Just a thought," Andrea said with a shrug. They lapsed into a bit of small talk as the ship flew across the land, Beth taking note of the time the journey took. Despite flying faster than the speed of sound through the thinner upper atmosphere, the trip to the area Adam had indicated took close to half the day. They passed over quite a large amount of varied terrain, from towering mountains to vast river deltas to massive forests with ancient trees that scraped the very sky itself.

They saw a few unusual things that Beth took note of which they could easily investigate if Adam's old rumor turned out to be bupkis. The area they arrived at was a vast plain with a huge number of animals and beasts spread out across it, and Adam's information wasn't helpful in narrowing down where they had to go. This left them to fly around almost aimlessly until Beth suggested they take it methodically and moved back and forth across the plain in an alternating pattern to scan the whole thing.

The ship's systems were quite good, even more so after the upgraded core had been installed, and the scanner was able to detect even minute differences or fluctuations in mana from ten or so miles away. They were less than ten miles above the ground, without a doubt, as they did the passes and were able to get a thorough scan of everything, even penetrating the ground a small amount. It was hours of searching before anything bore fruit, and that thanks to the improvement of the scanner.

It was at the very northern end of the plain and the start of a huge forest that stretched to the frozen northern sea. The scanner had pinged on something on a tall hill that stood out from the surrounding area for not only how tall it was, but how broad the area the hill occupied was. Blood set them down, landing next to the hills at Beth's insistence; one never knew when a strange location would randomly explode or turn into a portal or sink beneath the earth.

The four of them disembarked after the airship had settled, Beth having the airship fold up before storing it in her inventory. If something crazy happened to her, that would leave the others stranded, but that was better than the various beasts having at it if they were gone for too long. That, and the plain was quite open and the airship sitting there quite obvious, making it a nice target for brigands and thieves.

The ability to pack up was convenient enough that Beth didn't want to leave the ship as a huge target in such an open space for no reason.

"Alright, now what?" asked Andrea.

"Don't know. I just know the ruins were supposed to be buried and have treasures in them, but were too much for the group that found them early on," Adam said.

"And nobody cleared them out yet?" Beth asked with a skeptical eye.

"Ruins can turn into dungeons," Adam said calmly.

"It's basically what I'm relying on. Such a powerful ruin would make a strong, but valuable, dungeon."

"Then, it's up to Blood," Beth said, letting the wolf take the lead. Blood used her nose to sniff out what was strange with the hill, as the airship only indicated mana deviant from the rest of the plain and little else. The wolf was able, after some time and over a dozen fights with the numerous boars, wolves, giant and highly aggressive beetles, and other various beasts, to find an opening in a cleft between two large rocks at the base of the hill near where the forest started.

Beth insisted that they stick together after Blood slipped in and informed them it was a long tunnel, not wanting someone to get caught out alone even if the others were close. Beth felt the rough stone of the narrow passage as they moved downward, using the old trick of putting her gauntlet in her necklace to bare her hand before re-equipping it as soon as she was done. It also made it quite obvious when the area transitioned into smooth, polished stone that was fitted with very minimal mortar in the joins.

It at least spoke to some kind of civilization having touched the area before, though Beth was unable to recognize anything about the workmanship.