Chương 612: Limitless Path Chapter Six Hundred Thirty-One

A'Mhach focused far more on muscle movements and how the movements of the body than many of those she had trained with, or even fought, so far in her life as a Wayfarer. Body control was important, but even training with Baelvyr, the massive ogre had focused overall on how her body moved in general and not dived into specific muscle movements.

Part of that could be attributed to Beth's much lower skill when she had been training with Baelvyr, and part of that was due to A'Mhach's different style when instructing and even when fighting. Two months of training and fighting saw a small but noticeable improvement in all of their skills, while they also spent a few hundred hours of subjective time killing beasts in Beth's gate. As it was for them, and would be for most Enlightened, the first couple hundred levels were quick and easy.

It was always getting around level three hundred, the high two hundreds, where things started to slow down. The three hundreds were a lot slower even with their power, though they could go through them a lot faster than most. It would take them a couple years subjective time to move through the three hundreds, which was only a couple months with Beth's gate, versus most people who could take five years to go through those levels, compared to just under two.

Not everyone would go through all that, of course, as even at fifteen rebirths, the minimum level to rebirth was only two hundred fifty. Not a whole lot of people who accepted the minimum, or could even survive on it, would get to fifteen rebirths, however, so the time was still important.

Beth couldn't imagine what it was like for somebody at forty-five rebirths that had to get at least five hundred fifty levels at a minimum, but might have to go all the way to level one thousand, without having access to compressed time. Even with compressed time, they still experienced all that time, and aged the same amount, or most of the same amount, but to have to disappear for years at a time to level up, and that might only get the person forty or fifty levels… she couldn't really imagine it.

Even with her gate, it would likely take a couple years of objective time to progress through the six hundreds, not even to mention the nine hundreds or, far worse, anything past level a thousand. Given all the progress she and the others had made, how far she had come, how many years she had been at it, she still just couldn't picture level one thousand. It was such a huge barrier, and the things and trials beyond it so massive, that it really boggled her mind.

That wasn't going to be for a long time yet, even at their current pace, and once they were firmly ensconced in the three hundreds again, it was time to refocus. Well, it would be time to refocus if they had anything to focus on, but Beth found she was at a bit of a loss. They had stuff to do, of course, but much of what they had to do they needed further power for, considering they weren't going to be going to any of the galactic hot spots before they had at least one Ascended in their group.

That would cross out things like the Eternal Depths for them right now, and they had talked to the Black Ships about things like expeditions, but those were also off the table. They were waiting on more Platinum missions, with their contacts assuring them they were priority for missions, but Beth didn't want to just wait for them and do nothing. They could keep leveling, and they would, but they didn't really need to level at this point.

At level three hundred ten, Beth now had more than a hundred thousand Strength and more than eighty thousand Endurance, enough that a freshly Awoken would really struggle to do her any noticeable damage even were she not wearing armor. She wouldn't be running around in regular clothes, of course, but her natural toughness was getting to a ridiculous level. Not having much to truly focus on, she decided it was time to work on her smithing for a little.

She wasn't going to spend years on it or anything, but she was just hitting Master and wanted to start trying to progress towards Grandmaster. Unlike with weapon skills, at least to an extent, crafting skills just needed time. Only real, true, genuine prodigies that intuitively understood a craft at its most fundamental level could advance it rapidly at higher ranks, and even those people needed many hours of study.

Study of mana and its properties, study of materials, study of various processes and techniques; it was a lot more than a weapon skill because there was so much more to cover. Someone learning a weapon did have to learn that weapon, how to use their skills alongside the weapon, and, to an extent, how other weapons and fighting styles worked, but it was still much less than someone going for a high rank in a crafting skill needed to know.

This meant that Beth wasn't just spending time in the forge or hammering on metal, which she was doing less of anyway, but was spending a lot of time doing research. The other critical component was runes, and she still really needed to majorly beef up her knowledge and skill with runes. She had found that having a very good understanding of the mana and branch of magic could help a little bit; her spatial mana was a good example there, and it was a little bit of both things.

She was good with spatial magics, and thus she had a little bit easier time with spatial runes, but she also spent a lot of time studying spatial runes because that was her greatest strength or expertise in mana. One of her current goals was to see if she could start making spatial artifacts, which might still be a little bit early at Master, without the help of an enchanter.

She could make an artifact that was primed, so to speak, that Val or another enchanter could complete and make into something like her necklace, but she was hoping she could push her understanding of runes and crafting far enough that she could do the whole process herself. She still very clearly remember the demonstration of Old Tom, who had crafted almost entirely using runes and magical means.

He had, she did distinctly recall, crafted by hammering on metal and heating it up in a forge, but she was basically convinced that a big part of that was performative. She had a suspicious that one of the things Old Tom did, even when instructing others, was hide his immense level of skill behind a slight bit of a smokescreen, one that worked quite well because of people's preconceived notions. People expected a blacksmith to hammer metal, did they not?

So, when someone stood in Old Tom's forge and saw him beating on some metal, they would naturally and easily go along with the illusion. In reality, she had a suspicious that even the 'cheap' or throwaway pieces that the powerful smith sometimes made were done using runes and the hammering was just a bit.

She was nowhere near that level, but it was something to think about; Old Tom was so good that he could hammer on metal to make it look like he was smithing, but he was really using runes to mold and shape and build the object, but he was also hammering the metal and mana into what he desired at the same time.

There were enough levels of bluff that it made her head spin and she worried that she could ever reach anything even approaching that level; after all, she was so much better at punching things, and people, in the face than she was at creating things. Still, not everybody even made it to Master, and working through the materials they had on hand, and some bought from the Black Ships, should get her a level in Blacksmithing if she really focused on her mana and rune usage while forging.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. She wasn't the only at loose ends, or the only one working on her crafting, with many of the others of the team beefing up their crafting skills at the same time. She shared the forge with Sera and Bjorn rather often, the three of them being the three smiths of the group, while various other crafting happened in other rooms or stations in the manor.

They often used Beth's gate for crafting, taking advantage of the time dilation, though there was the small concern of dilation fatigue that they had discussed some time ago. Beth's power seemed to compensate for that to some extent, something that had even slightly surprised Fallon, so they had generally assumed her gate to be safe and that had generally proved accurate.

The living area within the gate had been expanded, something Beth was able to do with a thought, and a mana expenditure, and after a few years of changes, it resembled a palace more than a house. Well, that might have been a bit of an exaggeration, but the place had a few dozen rooms and a massive courtyard at the back before a big blank space started, the place where they typically did their rebirths. She hadn't wanted to invest too much time or effort into it, but there was always something that was nice to have.

Whether it was another bedroom, or a new lab, or another storage area, the house sort of grew and morphed and bubbled up in weird ways. She had tried to keep the design even, but that had really just entailed both more work and adding more rooms, as she couldn't grow the roof line evenly without adding two or three new rooms to utilize the space.

The best thing about crafting in her gate, besides the time dilation, which was a very close second, was the fact they could go wild with the mana without having any worries. Since it was a totally isolated space, the only danger or bother was if they were interfering with each other or couldn't handle the fallout. Even though they were only Masters, which was a strange thought in itself to have, their power was immense and they could supercharge a craft with far more mana than it could handle.

It was to the point where they would let others in the house, or even in the grounds, know when they were going to try something crazy, as the explosion could be quite impressive, and even pose a danger. Well, Bjorn could face-tank pretty much anything anyone did with his eyebrows barely singed, but the others weren't always as resilient.

Beth did notice, whether it was pure chance or spoke to something larger, that the alchemy room seemed to explode with some regularity, enough so that there was a random shot whether there was even a warning that something was going to happen before she was rebuilding the house. Luckily, she had a lot of mana at this point, and Kris and Neph took enough precautions that they were usually singed but otherwise unharmed.

They were interrupted from their crafting glut when Beth got a message, asking her to go over to her old pals at Seven Lights. They had still been working through selling goods for the team, and Beth's team had dumped even more on them in the last two years, but most of that was done now. Specifically, they had the final tally for all the remaining parts and pieces of the dreadnought that they had disassembled for Jaq, and Beth just needed to collect the money.

They had also sold some of the materials they had farmed at various points that were extra, things they were unlikely to use in their crafting but that others would love to have. The total that Beth walked out with, which still needed to be split between the team, was more than ten adamantine coins; not bad for a few years worth of work. Of course, splitting that nine ways was going to really reduce the amount, but that was still more than an adamantine per person.

It was no surprise that when it rained, it poured, as she was barely back from a quick jaunt to the Seven Light's headquarters, which is where they asked her to pick up the cash from, that they had a surprise visitor. At this point, though, Beth thought it couldn't really be labeled a surprise anymore, considering how often he just popped in without any warning.

She was a little curious as to why he had randomly, or not so randomly, chosen now to show up at their house, and of course, not use the front door to enter. They didn't have a very robust security system because… well, anybody that tried to break into their place wouldn't really find any valuables and if any one of them were home, they were going to have a bad time. Unless the intruder was an Ascended, and even then, it would still be pretty messy for them.

This intruder wasn't an Ascended, however, but an Exalted, and one they were quite familiar with. Mortaine hadn't shown up or asked anything of them for quite some time, and Beth was curious what he was here about, but he seemed content to make some small talk for a little bit. Eventually, like pulling teeth, she managed to get the main topic out of the man.

"I have a request," Mortaine said.

"Gasp," Beth said, saying the word while also doing the action.

"A request? For us? I couldn't have ever guessed!"

"Sarcasm ill becomes you. Or, that's what I would have said, did I not know you better," Mortaine said, rolling his eyes.

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," Beth said.

"What's this mysterious, magical thing you need done?"

"I need a dungeon cleared," he stated primly.

"Really? Dungeon delving? You couldn't, I don't know, hire a basic team for that?" Beth asked, frowning at the man as he grinned at her.

"Ah, but this is a special request, and I need people I can trust. Ones who are discrete and powerful. Now, where would I find a group like that?" Mortaine asked, pretending to ponder the matter very seriously.

"Come on, you've already got the hook set," Sera said, sitting at the table with Val and Andrea as well.

"No reason to keep dangling bait."

"Ah, yes, fine," Mortaine sighed.

"I'll send you the details, but this one is tricky on two fronts. One, it's located in a rather harsh location that is also being fought over by several different factions. Negotiate with them or crack their heads, that choice is up to you, but don't let them know you're doing this for me. I would suggest avoiding them entirely, as the fewer people knowing about our business here, the better."

"We're very good at negotiating," Beth said, flexing in her seat.

"What she means is, we can use discretion when necessary, backed by force," Val cut in, giving Beth a glare.

"What's the other reason its tricky," Sera asked, ignoring the byplay.

"Ah, yes, that's why I need your group," Mortaine said, tapping the table with his right index finger.

"The dungeon must be spiked every time, and it must be fully cleared. There are three things you're looking for, I've sent you the item descriptions, and this dungeon is one of the only places, outside of Forbidden Zones, that they show up. Only when spiked, however! That's very important."

"And it's going to be a challenge?" Beth asked, a certain gleam in her eye.

"The non-spiked dungeon is a level five hundred dungeon," Mortaine dropped that little bomb with a smile.

"We're in!" Beth exclaimed before anyone else could say anything.