Chương 293: Limitless Path Chapter Three Hundred Seventeen

Beth knew she had ensured their victory when she saw the message for completion of the special challenge pop up in her vision. She signaled for the team to rest for a minute, though they would want to get out of the remaining area quickly to not have to keep dealing with the cold. Beth looked around after checking the message to find the rest of their rewards on a single pedestal the size of a small table formed of a single block of stone a couple yards from where she was standing.

Indefatigable Frozen Devil Plain special challenge complete. New record time registered. Rewards distributed. Instance will close in six hours. Beth walked over to the pedestal to check the items that they had been awarded, shoulders drooping a little as the exertions of the last two days caught up with her. She leaned against the small pedestal once she had reached it, examining the four items that were clearly presented as their rewards.

One of them was some kind of potion or something in a bottle, one was a cube that hovered slightly above the pedestal, one was a strange gem that glowed with an inner light, and the fourth was a ring that appeared to be two tiny horns bent into half-circles and connected at the top and bottom. All of the items brimmed with mana, so much so that Beth didn't even need her new mana-sensing skills to pick up the waves of mana they were emanating at close range.

"Rest for a minute then cleanup," Beth commanded as she grabbed the four items and tossed them in her necklace. As soon as her hand had touched the last item, a gateway appeared behind the pedestal leading out of the instance. The team followed her instructions, taking just a few minutes to rest and recharge before addressing the devil corpses. The first was obviously the corpse of the large, misshapen boss, which yielded a powerful beast core to Blood's digging.

A wonder they hadn't fractured the thing with the power of their final round of attacks, but it was still whole and undamaged. The wolf then led the group in moving outward and searching through the corpses at a rapid pace. Even given a day, they might not be able to search through every corpse on the battlefield, but with all eight of them working together, they could cover a lot of ground.

They spent four hours searching the endless charnel house they had created, netting them a couple thousand cores before they retreated through the gate, not wanting, or able, to stay any longer in the deleterious environment. They returned to the frozen hall, though the chill wasn't nearly as bad as what they had experienced in the special challenge. Still, they were quick to move out into the tunnel and quickly get back out onto the plain.

Beth wasn't careful about where or how she deployed the airship, merely getting the cube on the ground and giving it the command to unfold. As soon as the last piece stopped moving or transforming, Beth had already had the ramp emerge and the team was up and through the door.

They split to their various cabins immediately, and Beth was briefly concerned about the capacity of the hot water system to keep up, but doing a few seconds of checking found that the system and its redundancies could practically boil an ocean and have capacity to spare. It was pretty clear how tired everyone was as, after they all showered or bathed, nobody was much interested in food.

All eight team members fell asleep and were down for double digit hours before stirring, the first awake being the captain herself, Beth. It was more than two days from the time they had first entered the special challenge, nearly two and a half days, and Beth checked to make sure they had enough time, relieved to find the monthly auction wasn't for around another week.

The date wasn't always precisely thirty or thirty-one days later, but they had another six or seven days before the next auction was slated to start. Blood stirred next, joining Beth in the galley for breakfast before heading up to the bridge. There was no way around their high flight time, which meant Blood would be in the pilot's chair for the entire day. Not all the rest of the team even appeared for breakfast, or for the rest of the day, for that matter.

It was rather clear the experience had been quite taxing on them and many of them preferred to get a bit more rest rather than wander about the ship. Beth had her own things to do, including taking a look at the four pieces of loot that she had grabbed before they left the special challenge. The first thing she took out was the potion or whatever happened to be contained within the glass bottle.

The bottle was a standard size, similar to every potion and elixir she had taken or still had stored in her necklace, made of a totally clear glass that allowed her to see the contents. The liquid was a steel-gray in color with hints of a white-blue in the very heart. Beth's eye power allowed her to see the name of the item and its basic description. Elixir of Frozen Blood {This elixir increases END by fifty and STR by thirty. It changes the imbiber's blood to be cold and frozen, flowing more slowly with greater power.} As usual, the basic description of the elixir explained some of its secondary effects, the arguably more valuable portion of what the elixir did, but in a confusing way. What did making someone's blood frozen imply? And what did it then mean by saying it would cause the blood to flow slowly but with greater power?

Beth frowned as she studied the elixir with her mana sense, finding a very complicated pattern of different kinds of mana swirling around the vial. It was complex enough that it made her nearly go cross-eyed after a moment, and she turned her gaze away before rubbing her temples. She returned the elixir to her necklace before withdrawing the cube. She found she was unable to hold the cube for it hovered over her hand even when she curled her fingers in an attempt to grab it.

She stopped after a moment and turned her attention to the cube itself, studying the mana flows around it before using her eye power to inspect the item. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. Isolation Field Nexus {This artifact creates an isolationistic field that freezes everything within. The field will repel any mana, skill, or spell type below a certain threshold.} Beth supposed the repelling effect explained why the dark blue cube refused to come into contact with anything, though that seemed a secondary effect. Luckily, when the cube wasn't fully activated, it was able to be stored away, and Beth did just that. She then withdrew the third item she had nabbed from the table, the strange, blue gem that glowed with a mysterious inner light.

The light was a soft white and maintained a consistent level of output, never dimming or brightening no matter how much Beth observed it. The gem felt cold to the touch, very cold, and if it weren't for Beth's even further upgraded Ice Resistance, she would've been injured just touching the surface of the gem. She gave it a quick scan to check what her eyes could tell her. Gem of Endless Winter {This gem constantly generates ice, wind, and storm mana, which slowly emanates from within. Any power source made from this gem will have the property of the Eternal Blizzard.} Once again, Beth felt there was an awful lot left unsaid, the description inspiring in her many more questions than what it answered. What was the Eternal Blizzard and why would making the gem into a power source have that property? What was storm mana? Why did a gem constantly generate mana? Beth's gaze turned distant for a moment as she thought about the various properties of mana and how much she still had yet to learn.

Shaking that off, she returned the cold gem to her necklace before withdrawing the last item, the ring. She stared at the ring intently, sensing that there was something truly strange about it. The ring was cold, direly cold, but it wasn't from emitting cold, as strange as it was to discuss it that way. The ring had a supernatural ability to absorb the heat from around it and just having it in her hand, Beth felt the heat in the galley being leeched away.

It also attempted to leech the heat from her fingers holding up the ring, but her Ice Resistance was too high to be so easily affected by what she suspected was a passive effect. The other thing she could sense about the ring was that it was strangely altering the mana around it. Not releasing mana, but that the mana near the ring was being changed and altered into other forms of mana or energy. She quickly used her eye power to inspect the ring, eager to toss it back in her necklace.

Ring of Cold Ends {This ring is said to contain the essence of all things cold, presaging the Final Cold. Any wearer of this ring will find their connection to cold deeper and any ice they form will linger far longer and be far harder to dissipate. 10% increased END 25% increased INT 30% increased WIS Minimum level 250.} Beth still sensed that there was something else going on with the ring, but she didn't think it was anything that was permanent.

She shrugged and made the ring disappear, returning it to her necklace and feeling the galley immediately start heating back up. She knew that at least a couple of the items they had found would be good enough to appear in the monthly Seven Lights auction, but she wasn't going to see nearly as much profit with them splitting the returns eight ways. That was also taking into account that nobody wanted any of the items.

Beth didn't think any of the others were particularly far in their chosen crafting pursuits, but someone could always want one of the materials. The biggest items would be the elixir and the ring, though the ring really seemed geared towards an ice-based caster. She suspected the others would haggle over the elixir before someone claimed it while agreeing to sell the rest, even the ring, at the auction.

Beth's connection there meant the team could offload everything that wasn't tailored precisely to their needs or wants and still get a huge return for it. The rest of the trip to the capital passed uneventfully, with the various team members appearing at different times to eat, though everyone was still rather worn and didn't stay in the galley for long. Beth resumed her place on the bridge, sitting in the captain's chair and studying while Blood confidently piloted them to their destination.

She waited until they had set down some distance outside the capital before calling the team together in the galley. She noted that everyone appeared quite a bit better after eleven or twelve hours of rest, though Itharion was still exhausted and Kris's feathers were noticeably drooping.

"What's the plan, lassie?" Rell asked, sucking on his unlit pipe.

"We got four items as rewards, apart from the beast cores that everyone managed to harvest," Beth started, pulling the four items out of her necklace.

"I think the only item that somebody here might want to use is the elixir, but I could be wrong."

"Is that a masterwork?" Andrea exclaimed, squirming in her seat as she stared at the items.

"An elixir, two legendary materials, and a masterwork ring," Beth said.

"Rings and other accessories are rare," Itharion pointed out, leaning back against the bulkhead with a sigh.

"A masterwork, two-fifty ring is quite valuable," Kris said, eyeing the ring speculatively.

"Even with it not perfectly aligned to the wielder, it still presents a large leap in power."

"Are you saying you want it?" Beth challenged, not angrily, but testing the other girl's interest.

"Not really," Kris shook her head. She then elaborated, "The element is close, but close isn't good enough for my needs. I also don't want something like ice that might directly create problems if I used it, changing my water to ice just because I'm wearing the ring."

"Is anybody else interested at all in the ring?" Beth asked. Seeing nothing but head shakes all around, she made the ring disappear.

"Next easiest; is anybody interested in either of the legendary materials?"

"Our Lord might be interested in the Nexus," Rell said tentatively, sucking the pipe stem between his teeth.

"Can you message him and ask?" Beth asked.

"Sure, lassie," Rell replied, eyes losing focus for a second as he sent a message off. With the airship being right next to the capital, they were within instant range of the network, not that flying really added much of a delay. Rell's message was out and away in just a handful of seconds and they turned back to the items.

"So, no interest in either of the legendary materials from anyone else? Nobody knows a crafter that would want them or could make you something good with one of them?" Beth asked.

"Not me," Adam said.

"Not interested," Bjorn commented, taking up a whole corner of the galley.

"I want them, but I couldn't do anything with them," Andrea said with an aggrieved sigh.

"I don't know that something made with the gem would even be useful for any of us," Kris said idly.

"I doubt you'd want to make that into a piece of equipment," Mortaine commented.

"Right," Beth said before doing a double take.

"Mortaine!"

"That's my name," the immensely powerful man said calmly.

"My Lord!" both Rell and Itharion exclaimed, trying to stand before being waved at by the man sitting on the galley bench.

"Relax," he said. Seeing the puzzled and suspicious looks of the others, he introduced himself, saying, "Greetings, everyone. I am the ever inscrutable and unknowable Lord of Traversal, Mortaine-""Give it a rest," Beth sighed, interrupting Mortaine's very over-the-top introduction.

"You can just call me Mortaine," he finished with a bow from his seated position on the bench.

"How'd you get in here, anyway?" Beth asked, giving him a raised-brow look.

"I walked," he replied primly, thrusting his chin up a bit.

"Right," Beth replied with another sigh, suddenly having the feeling it was about to be a long couple of days.

"Don't look so down, girl," Mortaine said with a chuckle.

"Nothing bad is in the works, I assure you. In fact, it's quite good for you."

"Why does that not reassure me?" Beth asked with a frown, the rest of the group looking back and forth as the two talked.