Chương 622: Limitless Path Chapter Six Hundred Forty-One

They couldn't really worry about what the elf's team was doing, as long as they weren't trying to interfere with Beth's team, they could mind their own business and keep working on their own tasks. They were starting to get close on the amount of crystal they needed to collect, of both types, but they still had some way to go on getting the minimum number of beast cores.

Beth also, along with the entire team, was a bit of an overachiever and wasn't going to be exactly satisfied just doing the bare minimum and leaving. She wanted both a little insurance and an opportunity, as if the cores were so valuable that two Exalted wanted a whole sack full of them and were willing to pay top dollar, it wouldn't hurt to have just a few extras on hand.

There was very little excitement for the next month or so of objective time, with the team completing quite a few more delves but not encountering anything nearly as exciting, or as rewarding, as a level six hundred, aspected dragon. Not that the dungeon rewards were bad; it was a level five hundred dungeon they were using a spike on every single attempt.

Even the rewards that Beth and most of the team were dismissive of were still items that would bring in good money from just a typical sale, and a lot of them were valuable enough to be put up in a monthly auction and fetch a good price. That wouldn't have been the case for many other dungeons, but Beth could remember a lot of the auctions and sales she had sat through at this point.

While even the monthly auctions had some really fantastic stuff as the final piece or pieces to really whip the crowd up, a lot of stuff that was presented before that wasn't as good as the piles of loot they had from the last seven or eight months. She had already offloaded a few things and was counting on the money that stuff would bring in, but when they finally got done, they were going to be dumping a massive amount of rather high end goods on the market.

Depending on how their efforts at crafting went, as well, they would likely have a literal ton of finished goods to sell, and Beth was kind of anticipating seeing their finished goods up on the auction block on even in display cases. Though, they still weren't at the level where they were competing with the things they were finding as dungeon rewards; Beth was lucky to make level three hundred rare items at this point, though the best she had done was a level three hundred fifty epic helmet.

They would have to step into Grandmaster before they were producing level four to five hundred items, and most of that at rare or epic quality. The jump from Master to Grandmaster was a pretty high wall to climb. Granted, it wasn't nearly the kind of difficulty that going from Grandmaster to Sage was; Master to Grandmaster was something that many people could get eventually, given that they put in years of effort and truly tried to improve.

That was absolutely not true, both in crafting and weapon skills, with the move from Grandmaster to Sage. There were some barriers that were much harder to overcome than others. The whole team was now in Master in terms of crafting, though they were a bit scattered in the grade. Andrea and Adam spent less time on professions and thus were behind even Neph who, while being the youngest of the team, was fascinated with alchemy and loved to brew potions and study elixirs.

Beth also thought it helped a lot that Neph seemed to have a bit of a crush on Kris, though it was a bit hard to differentiate between her admiration for the more skilled and knowledgeable alchemist and her attraction, especially given how much of a bubbly, upbeat, and touchy-feely person Neph was. It also didn't help that Kris was together with Bjorn and they seemed perfectly content to be monogamous, which wound up with some mixed signals between the phoenix and the bee, but Beth was sure they were just fine.

She monitored the team's mental health and interactions just as much as she kept track of their physical fitness and combat readiness; if there was any friction, which there really hadn't been so far, she wanted to be on top of it early. The only friction, and even that was minimal, was with Veren, and he wasn't there that often.

Speaking of their erstwhile Sage, she had given him an invite with an explanation of what they were doing and who they were doing it for, but he had expressed interest that, if Beth were being generous, could be described as tepid. He was otherwise engaged, apparently, with some kind of challenge that involved a lot of fighting, fighting against other sapient beings, and he was disinclined to leave something that was almost tailored to his particular style to kill some lava beasts.

She had extended the invitation and said he was welcome any time, but he hadn't bitten. Their next task, apart from this order for Mortaine, was going to be investigating the situation in the City of Mended Dreams, and Beth wasn't exactly looking forward to that.

Well, the city and the world was fascinating, and it would be nice to be a tourist for a minute, but they wanted to purchase a piece of land there, and in the city itself, if they could get it, and she wasn't looking forward to her bank account dropping down to zero to secure the property.

She was hoping for them to be in the running for one of those places she had talked with Sera and Val about after they were finished up with this task, but it was going to be a while and the money wasn't going to appear by magic; they would have to sell like their lives depended on it. Speaking of their lives depending on it, they would need to get back to leveling here, and fast.

Well, fast wasn't exactly going to happen, given just how difficult their quests for True Rebirths were getting, but they could afford to slow down on gathering the last materials for Mortaine to complete those quests and finish their next rebirth. The only good thing about the amount of combat they were being asked to do was that it was cutting down on the rare materials they needed to gather, but Beth was getting worried about some of the other members of the team.

She was fine, and a few others like Sera weren't going to have issues for a while, but a few others like Neph were going to need to push themselves a bit.

"Do we need to have everyone doing True Rebirths?" Beth asked Sera at one point, the two of them sprawled out naked in 'their' room in the residence version of her gate.

"What does that mean?" Sera asked in response. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

"I just mean, I'm worried about a few of the others," Beth replied.

"Neph and Andrea," Sera said instantly.

"And even Kris," Beth said quietly, lifting Sera's right hand and interlocking their fingers, holding their hands just above her chest.

"Kris is more powerful than you're giving her credit for," Sera explained.

"She doesn't go all-out in dungeons because she tries to conserve her mana and last longer, but when she unloads everything she has, it's devastating. She has an immense amount of power, a dual affinity setup that gives her insane damage output, and some spells she doesn't often show off. I'm less worried about her than I am some of the others, even Adam, who's been working on his Mana Physique quite a bit."

"How's that been going, anyway? I haven't really asked him all that much about it. Then again, he does have his head in the clouds a lot," Beth said, chuckling lightly while using her arm not locked with Sera's to trace over some of Sera's scales.

"It's hard, so hard, to develop a Mana Physique after you've fully built it," Sera started, taking the hand that Beth didn't have entangled and starting to gently caress Beth's hair and scratch her scalp.

"Adam's one of the few people I've ever met that I think not only has a good idea of how to do that, though listening to him try to explain it is like listening to a Sage try to explain a profession you've never tried, but has a good chance of doing it multiple times. Unless we run into someone who's even more of a once-in-a-generation freak than he already is with Mana Physiques, I think he'll be the first person we know who has a Mithril Mana Physique."

"You really think he can push it that far?" Beth asked, pressing against Sera and encouraging more scratching.

"He's already upgraded his Mana Physique once, which is something that just doesn't happen," Sera answered.

"I'm from the Black Dragon Clan, you know-""Oh, you are?! I had nooooo idea," Beth returned, getting into a bit of a playful poking contest with that. Unlike someone who hadn't gone very far down the Path, Beth and Sera poking at each other happened so fast their hands were barely blurs.

"Alright! Enough of that!" Beth finally conceded defeat, even though she felt she had been winning.

"Anyway, what was I saying?" Sera asked, going back to scratching.

"Oh, right, Mana Physiques. So, even in my clan, which is one of the richest and most powerful groups in the galaxy, there's only a single person I know of that improved their Mana Physique. That person also spent five hundred years to do it and I doubt they're going to repeat the feat. That's a dragon, with an innate understanding of magic, with access to wealth and resources most kings could only dream of, improving their Physique once. And it wasn't like they went from Mithril to Orichalcum, either.

They went from Gold to Platinum; a feat in and of itself, sure, but not nearly that impressive. Especially when you consider Adam did basically the same thing in, what? A decade for his first improvement? I think he will eventually surpass the rest of us, and that eventually might not even be all that long."

"So, Adam's going to be fine," Beth said, frowning a bit.

"Well then, it really comes down to Andrea, Neph, and maybe Val. Though I think Val will be just fine, given her knowledge, experience, and that she has that new burst skill that's absolutely nuts."

"Yeah, I think the best thing is to push Andrea and Neph a bit. Get them some skill levels and really push them to work on their weapon skills. If they were even at Grandmaster right now, I'd say this whole conversation would have been moot, but if they don't hit that, or we don't find them a really good tier six skill, or a tier seven skill that just fits them moderately well, they might be in trouble."

"How bad would it really be, though, them falling behind a bit in stats?" Beth said.

"I mean, listen, we're already at the point where most of us are approaching or passing a hundred thousand in our primary stat; even most early Ascended don't rock those kinds of numbers. I'm not saying we just have people give up on doing True Rebirths, not without a lot of effort put into it, but would the stat losses really hurt us that badly?"

"Well, sort of?" Sera answered, scratching Beth a little harder, which Beth actually liked, while staring off into the middle distance for a minute.

"It's really all just about multiplication. Skills multiply stats when they're used, at their most basic. Well, skills that give things like spell proficiency or casting ability work a bit different, but they do still have some reliance on Intelligence and Wisdom. Anyway, the thing that they would miss out on would be a little power at the upper end, really.

When they gave everything they had to hit as hard as they could, compared to someone with the same skills at the same level, though even that has a lot more variables to consider, they wouldn't hit quite as hard. Would that really be make or break, even for the kind of fights we get it? I don't know, honestly, but I don't think the difference is all that much. I'd be more concerned if they were solo Wayfarers or operated on their own a lot more."

"Right, someone like Veren. I could see if he wasn't a prodigy in something how it would be a lot more dangerous if he didn't eek out every advantage he could get," Beth said, pressing against Sera's side.

"But he's a different kind of beast, anyway. It's sort of been an unspoken thing, but I think I'll just make it clear to the team that we don't all have to do True Rebirths, unless there's some other component to it that I don't know, but I think it's fine."

"I don't know, either," Sera said, scratching away.

"It's, as far as I know, just a stat difference. Well, 'just a stat difference' undersells it just a little bit, as that adds up to thousands of points of stats pretty damn quickly, but you get what I mean."

"I do. I just wanted to ask you about stuff like that first," Beth said, fully relaxing, though she did still have Sera's hand captured.

"We're all ready for the next rebirth basically now, anyway," Sera added.

"We should get that done soon."

"After the next dungeon run, I'll have a meeting and check where everyone's at. I don't exactly keep constant track of everyone's progress once we're all at maximum level again. I should ask for an update now before we get too far in the weeds on it, anyway," Beth said.

"Well, my update is that I finished the last of it the last time you opened the gate for training," Sera said.

"I'm good as well, and I know Blood is because I can still see her stat sheet," Beth said.

"Oh, I didn't know that that let you see her quest, too," Sera said.

"Sometimes I forgot that you and Val don't know everything there is to know," Beth replied with a laugh.

"Yeah, never had the opportunity to get a bond, and didn't really study about them," Sera said, shrugging in a motion that Beth very much felt.

"It's something I don't really abuse, for sure, but yes, I can see everything the Path presents to Blood like it was me the Path was showing the screens to," Beth said.

"It was really helpful when she was still non-verbal, and even after she learned to speak words through the bond. These days, I usually don't even bother checking, but I can circle up with her skills and quest progress without even talking to her."