Chương 490: Limitless Path Chapter Five Hundred Twelve

They spent an objective month, or close to it, resting, other than Neph, who spent a subjective year grinding in the gate. That got her enough experience to do another rebirth, her fourth, which she did as a True rebirth.

She had also had enough time to get started towards her fifth rebirth; by the time somebody was three or four rebirths in, and especially if they had been doing Perfect or True rebirths, they would fly through the early levels, even the early hundreds, as they could fight against much higher level opponents. Neph was going to continue her leveling efforts while the others took care of a few bits of business, whether together or apart, until they could spare some more time to help her.

The first piece of business was the sale of the parts from the derelict, which would not just be a one-time thing, but would be an ongoing ordeal. Beth wasn't sure if Seven Lights could handle selling the ship parts, though she assumed they could as they sold basically anything and everything.

She had seen them sell full starships several times, but there was a difference between somebody bringing in a completed starship that they wanted run through an auction and somebody bringing in literal tons of ship pieces and wanting those to be sold. That was the first stop for Beth and Sera after they had taken their three weeks or so off, and they headed off to Luttraine through the teleportation network.

It had once again been a while since they had been in that branch, though Beth saw that one of the counter recognized her, or maybe Sera, considering the dragon was much more memorable in terms of appearance, and perhaps even personality. She had been keeping up with Selene and Alex over the last number of months, though she hadn't shared what they were working on while they were on the derelict.

Jaq had asked them not to speak of what they were doing at first, and Beth now realized it was to help obfuscate the fact he was there for the upgrade system. Now that he had taken that and disappeared somewhere far away, Beth could speak of the ship and not need to worry, as long as she stuck to what she promised and didn't mention the upgrade system.

"It's good to see you," Selene said, having suddenly appeared beside Beth and draping an arm across her shoulders. Despite how strong Beth had become, she still couldn't detect somebody at Selene's level moving, not if the greater demoness didn't want her to.

"Hello," Beth said calmly, giving Selene a side hug before the older woman steered her into the back of the building, Sera trailing after.

"So, can you tell me what this big project is now?" Selene asked, taking Beth's hand as the moved into the elevator while gently touching Sera.

"And don't think I forgot you, either, my dear."

"Hello to you, too," Sera chuckled, returning the affection.

"Let's get somewhere more private," Beth said.

"My, how forward!" Selene said, covering her mouth with her free hand in faux shock.

"You know what I meant," Beth said, rolling her eyes at the greater demoness' antics. Selene took them to her office, which was empty except for them, where she made sure they were comfortable, including providing drinks, before sitting next to Beth. The woman was clearly eager to hear what they had been up to, but Beth guessed she was more eager for what would likely come once they got all the business out of the way. Not that Beth, and certainly Sera, weren't looking forward to even more time…

relaxing, after they had wrapped up the first thing they came there for.

"So, now, tell me, what have you been up to?" Selene asked, draping an arm over Beth's shoulders and looking her quite affectionately.

"Well, we found, or I should say, somebody we work with found a derelict starship," Beth began.

"They brought us in on the operation to help clear the ship, as well as salvage it. We spent a few months working on it and have quite a lot of, well, stuff for sale. Everything from enchanted parts, circuits, subsystems, armor plates, ammo, weapon mounts, the weapons themselves, scanning equipment, spare materials, and more. It's a lot, and a lot of it is just bits and pieces or parts in relatively good condition.

We were wondering if Seven Lights would be able to find buyers or sell the pieces through their channels."

"Well, that's not something that should be a problem," Selene said, nodding.

"How much are we talking about? An average-sized cruiser or something like that?"

"Uh, no," Beth said, shaking her head a bit.

"Think, uh, bigger. A lot bigger."

"A lot bigger, is it? Well, that's not much to go on, but if I think a lot bigger, I think about a battleship or something like that," Selene said.

"We would have to space out selling that much salvage, even if the ship was damaged and is in pieces, or you can only save some of it. The market wouldn't really accept that much salvage at a time from a third-party seller."

"Well, uh," Beth said, glancing over at Sera, who just shrugged.

"Don't look at me," said the dragon.

"I don't know ship classifications. I think this is a lot bigger than a battleship, though."

"Bigger than a battleship?" Selene asked, clear surprise in her tone.

"Now you have me a little worried. How'd you find something that big? And how has nobody claimed it before now? Things the size you'd be talking about are unimaginably expensive to build and maintain; people don't just lose them or not keep track of what's happening with them." Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"It's an old ship," Beth explained.

"Very old. It's caught in the lower atmosphere of one of the gas giants in my home solar system. It took an Ascended who's good at scanning for those kinds of things a couple years to find it, and he was specifically looking for it. The empire the ship is from, based on my understanding, doesn't even exist anymore. Even the name isn't in use anymore, so I doubt they're going to be showing up on our doorstep looking for the ship back.

We've started taking the thing apart and are going to want to sell the whole thing; I don't think there's any worry about anybody fighting us for it. Other than thieves or bandits or whatever, of course, but you've always gotta be worried about that."

"And how big, exactly are we talking this ship is?" Selene asked.

"Here," Beth said, sending Selene a basic scan of the outside of the ship with some of the identifying data about Jupiter stripped out of it. Best not to have that information bouncing around on the Net for now, if she could do even a little to avoid it.

"Well, this is…" Selene said, sitting back like she had been slapped. It was the first time Beth could remember the woman having such a shocked reaction to something, which was saying quite a lot, considering what she dealt with on a daily and weekly basis.

"We're going to tear the whole thing apart and sell all of it, or as much as we can," Beth said.

"Which is an awful lot of salvage to put on the market, which we understand. We'd like help moving the materials, and if we have to pull in more people or companies to handle it, I'd like your help with that as well."

"This is going to be rather complicated," Selene said with a small sigh as she reviewed the data.

"We're not setup here, at this branch, to handle this. I can act as an intermediary for you, which I don't mind, but that's going to stretch the time out on some of this. Just so you understand, this is going to take years to sell. Blood stars, it's going to take you years just to take it all apart and transport the materials."

"Speaking of transport…" Beth started, getting Selene's attention again.

"You need help with the transportation? There's a number of things I could do to help, including matching you with a firm that can help in the transportation," Selene replied.

"No, that's not what I meant," Beth said.

"Well, yes, but no. We found a mostly intact cruiser in the hangars on-board that ship and we're going to get it working as our first priority after this. We do need materials and components to get it up and running, and we'll need a ride back, since the person who was working with us on this had something urgent come up. I have that airship we bought here, but it can't get us across the distances we're talking about quickly enough. We'll need at least one ride back to the ship."

"I'm happy to help," Selene said, lighting up when she understood what Beth was asking.

"I'm ready right now, we can head over and look at this right this moment."

"Hold on, hold on," Beth said, laughing.

"It's not an emergency, and we have a lot of stuff to offload for you to sell first. There's plenty of time to get out there and see the ship, and besides, we'll be going with some other people. I'd rather spend some time with you catching up before we head back to the ship."

"Oh, more of your team?" Selene asked, but made it more a statement.

"Well, I don't mind, but if you'd like to separate business and pleasure, I understand. Let's see what you've got; I'm assuming you'll need to offload the items in the warehouse?"

"That would probably be best," Sera interjected.

"We've got pieces that are quite large, and quite a lot of them. Beth's also got a whole fighter in her storage right now, which we want to sell."

"With a cruiser, you could easily house something like that," Selene said with a small frown.

"It's not a hundred percent complete," Beth explained.

"Missing part of its engine system, but it has weapons, atmo, and a bunch of other stuff working fine. If Seven Lights wanted to make us a nice offer and then get somebody to fix it, I'm sure we'd take a fair price and you could make a lot offering it at one of the auctions…" Sera added, grinning at Selene.

"Well, I'm sure we can work something out," the greater demoness said with a grin.

"Let's head down." Selene simply grabbed hold of both Beth and Sera and suddenly they were somewhere else, Beth barely having felt the transition. Selene had somehow placed them all at the destination standing, so they didn't have to get up or reorientate to start getting to work. They were in a massive room that was several dozen feet high, more than three hundred feet wide, and nearly a thousand feet long.

The section they were in was open, but there was shelving at the further end of the room, though it wasn't exactly full. There were a few pallets of goods at their end, but mostly it was just empty space, Beth guessing this was just one of the warehouses the firm used to store goods.

"How'd you do that?" Sera asked, giving Selene a bit of a frown with a confused look in her eyes.

"Easily," Selene replied with her throaty laugh.

"But really, I just tapped into my Ideal for a bit."

"Your Ideal…" Sera muttered.

"Wait, does that mean you hit Exalted?" Beth asked, grabbing the tall woman's arm just above the wrist and grinning at her.

"I did indeed make it to Exalted, and rather unexpectedly," Selene said, patting Beth's hand affectionately.

"I was struggling to form my Ideal fully, but I had a sudden epiphany about a month ago and everything just clicked into place. It was a case of right time, right place, and I took advantage of that. Well, I didn't have too much of a choice, but that's not really much of a story. I was sitting on the line and ready to go for a few years now, and now I've finally crossed that line and officially done my fiftieth rebirth."

"Congratulations!" Beth said, really meaning it as she hugged the older woman.

"I'm so happy for you. Is that why Alex isn't around?"

"That's right," Selene said with a sigh.

"I was waiting for her, but the opportunity was just too perfect and unexpected. Alex is even more determined to catch up now; I'm worried she's pushing herself too hard. You should send her a message and ask to see her; she might not listen to me to stop and come back right now, but she'd listen to you."

"I'll do that," Beth said.

"Congrats," Sera added, also giving Selene a hug.

"I know it's not really my place, but it's a big deal that you hit that. I'm proud of you."

"Thank you, my dear. You're very sweet, don't worry," Selene said, giving Sera a little kiss on the cheek. Beth, meanwhile, had placed a call to Alex, chatting with her for a minute before inviting her back to what was, ostensibly, her own home to spend time together. The angel was reluctant at first, but Beth wasn't going to take no for an answer, even if she did both sympathize with Alex and appreciate what she was currently doing.

The angel eventually agreed and said she'd meet up with them in a few hours, which Beth said would be just perfect, as they'd take care of the business stuff with Selene before she got back.

"Okay, Alex is on the way back from her hunting," Beth said to the other two after she hung up.

"That gives us an hour or two to get all this sorted out."

"Let me see what you have," Selene said before immediately holding up a hand.

"Actually, do it a bit at a time. I don't know how much in total you have, but we only have so much room in here." Beth started taking items out of her spatial storage, including some things from the reliquary, which she had turned into a bit of a dumping ground for a few large parts that she had then forgotten about. Selene carefully inspected all the initial pieces that Beth took out of her storage, analyzing just what the ship was made from and the kind of quality they were talking about.

After a couple dozen pieces, she had a much better idea of what they were talking about and signaled Beth to speed it up. Beth did just that, and the demoness became a blur of activity, sorting and separating and storing things as both Beth and Sera made them appear from storage.

Some things Selene put into her own storage, though Beth couldn't really figure out an exact rhyme or reason for what got stacked in the warehouse and what Selene made vanish, though anything with a good bit of enchanting work on Selene made disappear.