Chương 575: Limitless Path Chapter Five Hundred Ninety-Seven

Blood steered them into the sky, though Beth insisted they finish scanning the rest of the planet before taking off into the rest of the solar system. Blood flew them through a grid pattern like she had before, taking hours to finish the rest of the scans before taking them out of the atmosphere and to the one small moon of the innermost world. This moon, unfortunately, didn't have anything interesting, let alone a place for them to find anything related to the gem they had found on the planet.

The moon was very small, relatively speaking, and the scanning took only an hour, after which it was off to the second planet from the sun, a rocky body with two large moons and a thick atmosphere. This place was going to take more work as, unlike the first planet, this one had a full biosphere with plenty of life, including plenty of beasts, that they would likely have to wade through to get to anything interesting.

The planet had another interesting location, of course, but this time it was much harder to find as the second planet was very much similar to an undeveloped world. That included everything that an undeveloped world might have on it, from rare treasures to dungeons that had broken and flooded half a continent or more with beasts.

This is why Beth had thought some of the other planets or moons might be just a bit more of a pain to clear than the first one, as it was possible they would be wading through a million angry, mana-charged beasts to get to an objective. Even with both the cruiser and the airship, the amount of firepower they provided was rather limited and they would have to do a lot of clearing the old-fashioned way.

Not only that, but the first place hadn't provided enough clues for them to know exactly where they were going, meaning they were going have to scan the whole planet and check multiple locations. Unless this location was a tower just like the last place, with the same design and architecture, then there could be a dozen places it would be.

The Path loved to put all kinds of random structures on unexplored or lost worlds, not just ruins and broken down places, so they couldn't just look for an intact building and hope that was it.

"Should we just clear everything?" asked Sera.

"I mean, we have time, but we also have a bunch of other stuff we could do that's a more valuable use of our time," Beth said, tapping her chin.

"I have to say, I'm really curious about what is happening here, but we don't have to solve it. We just have to scout and report back."

"But we're not just gonna leave without finding all the valuables, are we?" Andrea asked, seeming affronted at the thought.

"Well," Beth said, still thinking. After a moment, she sighed and continued, "Let's give it a month to start. There's supposed to be, what, seven?"

"Seven locations to search in total, but that includes the first one," Val confirmed.

"Six more. Let's see how long it takes to find the one on this world. We can decide just how worth our time this is after that," Beth said.

"What if it's an amazing treasure?" asked Sera, her draconic showing a bit.

"What if it's a pile of old scrap?" Beth returned with a slight roll of her eyes.

"Well, even so…" Sera grumbled.

"Let's just focus on looking for the next item we need," Beth said, waving for Blood to continue their flight. The group flew all over the second world, looking for anything that might be a place where the second item was located. They found six candidates, which was a bit annoying, considering they would have to do a lot to clear out an area around them and each could be the place they needed.

Of course, none of them could be the place, which would be even more annoying, but they didn't need to clear the whole planet, just check those locations and move on. Beth had Blood and Sera work together to use the cruiser to clear the area around the first point of interest, a mound in the middle of a flat plain, though it was one that had clear evidence of construction around it.

There were a dozen pillar around the edges of the mound and two massive doors on each the north and south face of the mound, which is really why it stood out as something more than a regular hill. The group used the cruiser first and then leapt down and continued fighting the beasts in the area, taking two hours to clear out enough that they weren't constantly getting attacked any more.

The door was something that was easy to open, at least for Val after working on it for a few minutes, which didn't give Beth a lot of hope, considering it should be a little more challenging than that to get what they were after.

"This isn't it," Beth said as soon as they were inside. It was still an interesting find, but not what they were looking for.

"There's so much fucking ice mana in here," Andrea complained, shivering even with her high resistances.

"I think there are good plants in here," Kris said quietly.

"Inside the mound?" Beth asked, raising an eyebrow.

"It could be moss or mushrooms or something," Kris answered.

"Let's just find it and get the hell out of here," Andrea said, rubbing her arms and leading the way into the mound. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. The inside of the place was a maze of corridors, all clearly carved out by intelligent hands, and it was also chocked full of hobgoblins and cave trolls.

None of them were really a challenge, though the group didn't entirely relax, as there could always be something far stronger in amongst a group of weak beasts, but they didn't need to worry. An hour of exploration, at the speed at which they could move, led to the whole place being explored with Kris picking up all the ice-aspected mana to be used in her alchemy.

The only other thing they found inside was an old shield, something that required level three hundred to use, making it a nice find, but it wasn't going to be making them a fortune. Sera stashed the item in her spatial skill before they were back out and fighting for a few minutes to clear the area again, not wanting to board the cruiser while a huge wave of beasts was actively attacking them.

Next up was a weird house, which they quickly discovered was just that, a random house with a half dozen rooms inside that got transplanted into this pocket space from somewhere. It could have been someone's actual house, or it could have been Path-made, but either way, it had a few small potions and little vials of chemical in that Kris and Neph could use in alchemy and that was about it.

Luckily, finds like that were quite easy to clear, though they did have to fight for a while to get the large number of beasts outside cleaned up so they weren't constantly attacked from the entrance while exploring. Still, it only took about an hour total, almost all of that fighting beasts, before they were on their way to the third stop. Beth's luck must have been pretty good that week, as this place was a tower that gave her a good feeling, though it really didn't look like the last tower.

Inside, however, was a large room with a spiral staircase in the middle and some random documents and knick-knacks scattered around.

"Hmm. Spiral stairs. Random junk. Looks similar," Beth said, giving Sera a nod.

"I'll check," the tall girl confirmed, going almost on all fours to climb the spiral staircase. She was back down in only a minute with a nod, saying, "It's the place. There's nothing but more tat going up to the top floor, then there's a ruby half the size of my fist in some weird array on the top floor. Pretty sure we've already found the right place."

"Good. Clear the floors and grab anything that looks useful, important, or valuable," Beth ordered the team. Everyone followed the instructions other than Bjorn, who was again not going to tempt the stairs, even though they held Sera's massive weight. The titan shrugged and leaned on his hammer, watching the door into the place as the others ascended.

The rest of the group cleared the way to the top, though that clearing involved them grabbing everything that wasn't nailed down and throwing it in storage, only looking at any documents they grabbed that were gibberish. The group didn't really find anything that was shocking or stood out, and nothing that indicated that anything was different than the information that they had from the first structure on the first planet.

With everything taken and read, Val and Kris worked on the top floor while the rest of the team moved back down and made sure the tower was clear. Eventually, it was up to Beth, like the last time, and she easily broke the framework holding the ruby before grabbing the gem and tossing it in the reliquary. None of the empyreans had made any comment on the gems, but that didn't mean that none of them had looked at them or any of the documents they had gathered.

It was nice to have that second pool of resources to call on, particularly with the amount of knowledge those thirteen had between them. That meant they were off and could go look for the next item on the next planet or moon, but they weren't entirely done with that planet, at least overall.

They had marked all the interesting locations and would come back at some point to explore everything; even just quickly accessible resources like the mushrooms would be worth a huge amount for the team, either crafting with them or selling them for a nice payday. They did scan both the moons before they moved on, for they didn't know exactly where all the items were; the two moons weren't specific in the materials in terms of which moons had the two items of the set.

Considering how many moons there were, or bodies that might be considered a moon or satellite, it was going to take a decent bit of time to scan them all just because of all the flight time between all those bodies and the laps around them. Neither of the two moons of the second planet had anything that was interesting enough for them to land and investigate, though there was a single anomaly that they marked that they would check later, whether they found the two items or not.

It was to the third planet now, though that planet was further out than Earth was from Sol and with a slightly odd orbit that made the atmosphere rather weird. That wasn't to say there wasn't any life or any animals or beasts on the world, but the place was almost as inhospitable as the first planet in this faux system.

That also made the scanning just that much more difficult, as a heavily impacted atmosphere didn't do anything nice or beneficial for the scanning suite on the cruiser, making it take far more time despite the planet not being all that much larger than the second planet in the system.

Still, they had the hours to waste, as it had only taken them a day to find the second gem and they were already on the way to finding the third, with Beth doubting it would even take them the full month she had set aside to find all seven. Then again, she was a little worried about just how much scanning they would have to do for the two gems that were on moons or 'moon-like bodies in the system,' seeing as there were quite a lot of things that could qualify.

The third planet's scanning took two days and some change, and that was just the scanning, leaving them with nearly a dozen places that could likely house the gem. This was where Beth's optimism came back to immediately bite her as they had to go through almost the full dozen structures before finding the one. It was not a tower this time but something that appeared much more to be a bunker than a tower, with the gem buried very deep underground, though the bunker had a clear path to the gem.

This time, however, the protections around the gem were much better than the protections around the first two gems, including the door to the room being locked with a very powerful lock, reinforced with a complex enchantment. It took far, far longer for the team to get through everything this time, even though there weren't any beasts or monsters to fight; Beth privately thought it would have been a lot better if there had just been battles, as the team was better setup for that.

She was also feeling the lack of having anybody sneaky on the team; they really needed to find their own Sabs or John to help them break into places. Blood was a great scout, but she wasn't really a traditional rogue in the same sense as the aforementioned two were. This was a case where knowledge could make up for their lack of somebody particularly specialized in the task, and that was knowledge of runes and enchanting.

The whole team tried to contribute, as it was good for their understanding of runes which could give them a bit of help with their crafting and mana usage. That didn't really make things go any faster, not to anybody there's shock, but it did help them a bit with their knowledge. Not only the lock, but the room itself had enchantments to slow or stop access, though they weren't as complex as they had to work without disturbing the arrays that were concentrated around the gem.

That gem being a sapphire of a rather large size and quite nice cut, though it wasn't any bigger than the ruby they had found previously. Beth would just be glad to get the gem and move on to the next planet, which she was not looking forward to at all, but, as with everything, this wasn't going to be easy. They needed six people to work on the six arrays that were scattered around the room at the same time, disabling them simultaneously to prevent what Val said would be a 'very big boom. Very bad.'

They did eventually get the gem, though Beth had to just tear the cage apart at the end as she had with the others, though Val though she could get it open by working on it long enough. As much as Beth would normally let her train on something like that and get some experience out of it, Val had plenty of work she could use to level her enchanting and lots of time to do it.

The next target was one of the two gas giants and the gem there would likely be in a building in a bubble of clear air somewhere in the atmosphere. They would need to spend days flying through the thick soup and scanning in a limited range around them to find anything of worth and Val could practice her crafting all she wanted then. Beth threw the gem into her reliquary after breaking the cage, at which point she noticed the Empyreans were now definitely very interested in what it was and what they were doing.