Chương 630: Limitless Path Chapter Six Hundred Forty-Nine

"It's strange, how different something can feel," Beth said after she and Sera were seated next to each other in a booth. She would have been in Sera's lap, but she didn't want to go around scandalizing the staff that might see them. At least, not until she was really an Exalted and didn't have to care a single jot about the whisperings of others.

"What do you mean?" Sera asked. Despite not being on top of each other, Sera had both an arm and a tail wrapped around Beth.

"I'm thinking about Selene-" Beth began.

"You and I both," Sera interjected.

"Stop. You're so bad," Beth said, though she was laughing.

"I wonder when they'll visit next," Sera mused, squeezing and stroking Beth, perhaps even subconsciously.

"We can just message them, you know?" Beth asked with another laugh.

"I like the spontaneity of them just showing up randomly…but maybe I should send a message," Sera replied, her tail slithering tighter around Beth.

"Anyway! What I was saying was that there's really a big difference from having somebody on the inside, personally dedicated to making sure everything goes smoothly for you and you're treated well, and this kind of 'everything is business' attitude you get when there's no personal connection," Beth said.

"When Selene was here and in charge, we didn't get treated all that much different, but it really felt different. It really made me realize just how much that personal touch, and those good, close relationships can make a difference."

"That's pretty introspective, for you," Sera said, laughing when Beth rolled her eyes and gave Sera's tail a light pinch, a pinch that could have bent mana steel without issue.

"Let's wait until the auction's over," Sera laughed, clearly the opposite of bothered by the tail pinching.

"You promise?" Beth asked, grinning up at Sera and pressing against her.

"Blood Stars, yes!" Sera said, wrapping herself around Beth and burying her face against Beth's shoulder and neck. Despite not wanting to carry on, it had still wound up with what, for all intents and purposes, lap-sitting, only with who was on top of who reversed. Beth didn't mind and, truth be told, she could detect anybody approaching them anyway, as none of the Seven Lights staff ever teleported into the booth.

Hell, even if they did, it wasn't she could block anyone below Exalted from pulling off a teleport she didn't want them to do. Case in point, that criminal they had caught with the powerful teleportation artefact, Daryl, or Darren, or Dickweed, or whatever the hell his name was.

Beth had mostly flushed it from her mind, the job done and the man either serving a lengthy sentence while they tried to rehabilitate him, or simply put down, which was harsh, but it was a world where a small time criminal could wipe out a city if they were both angry and clever about it. Sometimes, the CRA had to be rather harsh in its measures; its history books were littered with examples of too much leniency ending in tragedy.

Beth didn't want to think about that any more, brushing away the thoughts of whatever-his-name was and of CRA punishments, instead enjoying the closeness with her wife and the start of the auction. She seriously doubted there was anything in the early stages that would interest either of them, but she was proven wrong early on when Sera bid on a simple set of dishes.

Of course, this was the Seven Lights yearly auction, and they weren't going to put some plates and cups in such a prestigious event without good reason. They were all of a set, with an array woven throughout, and whenever anyone used the full set to eat, they would get a bonus to any kind of eating or consumption skill. Sera, it just so happened, had a gluttony skill, one that grew stronger and empowered her more the more she ate; having such a set of dishes would be a big boost for her.

Beth would like to have said the competition was fierce, but this was a niche product, still fairly early in the auction, and not all that many people really cared. Even for someone with a skill like Sera's, it was a nice little bonus, but it wasn't some earth-shattering treasure that would suddenly elevate them to a whole new level. There was also the fact that, though they often attempted frugality, Beth and Sera were filthy rich, even by Seven Lights standards, and they didn't mind splashing cash around.

Sera was always going to get the set of tableware, it was just about how much other bidders would try to bleed out of her before they let go. Well, that might be the case if people knew who she was and wanted to try to stick to her a bit; right now, they were anonymously bidding through the booth. Anyone competing with Sera had a genuine interest in the product and were trying to nab it. They just didn't know they were putting their few diamond coins against adamantine of wealth.

Sera won the set handily, and they had enough prestige that the trading firm delivered it to them immediately without waiting for the auction to conclude. Sera paid for the set with a lazy gesture and made it disappear into her storage power, something that she had actively worked on just a bit with Beth.

It was hard to increase a spatial skill without just using it a monumental amount, but Beth's expertise in spatial magic let her give Sera a few pointers that had gotten her a couple ranks in the power over the last couple years. Mostly, it was an increase in size that came with the ranks, but that wasn't a bad thing or a small matter. Sera's storage skill, at the level she had raised it to, didn't require her to be in direct contact with objects to store them.

Sure, she wasn't grabbing something from the other side of the planet, or even the other side of a large building, but she could put things in and take them out up to a few dozen feet from her, which was quite a feat. The space was also massive at this point, far more than Beth's necklace, though Beth still had a lot more space than Sera did in total, even if Sera joked that counting the reliquary and medallion were a bit cheating.

Still, having access to enough storage space that it rivaled a small city and being able to move things in and out at range was quite powerful, and Sera often used the power quite casually these days, which was actually a good thing. The more naturally one interacted with a skill, the easier a time they had not just activating it, but pushing it up a rank. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

The auction proceeded for a while in more a manner Beth had assumed; there were some exciting items and bids, to be sure, but both of them were largely disinterested in what was popping up on the screen. Sera started drinking, some kind of spiced sweet alcohol that Beth liked the smell of, though she herself only had one glass before going back to hunting spice, and they chatted a little as the intermission approached.

That was the first point that Beth had a bit of excitement for, as either the pre-intermission item, the post-intermission item, or both would be something pretty special. Sometimes, they liked to dismiss the crowd on a high to keep them buzzing during the break, and sometimes they wanted the crowd to get pumped up right after coming back and settling in, but at least on of the two items would be a real thriller.

She was a bit disappointed with the first item, as it was something she wasn't at all interested in, though Sera entered the bidding. Beth wasn't sure what Sera wanted a set of magical rocks for, which is basically what the pre-intermission item was, but she was sure her wife had something clever in mind. Besides, even with it being a surprisingly hotly contested item, they weren't exactly in the same tax bracket as the other participants, as she had noted earlier.

Not that she would think it a great use of money if Sera spent an orichalcum coin or something on a set of strange rocks, but it was her wife's money, and she could do whatever she wanted with it. Besides, especially with their latest haul, it wasn't like they were going to be short of cash any time soon, even if they went house shopping in the City of Mended Dreams, which was either next on the docket or very close on the to-do list.

Sera won the rocks with a stunning bid; well, a stunning bid for the auction house, but it wasn't all that impressive to Beth or Sera, both of whom had been dealing with bigger numbers and more important people.

Talking to Illiem for ten minutes about the Black Ships' business, and how they considered deals worth adamantine coins small peanuts, was both surprising and a bit depressing, considering their groups total wealth was just a handful of neutronium if it was all together and not split between the nine of them individually. It made Sera's bid of ten mithril for the strange rocks, which was twice what the current bid, a bid that had stood for more than ten seconds, feel like very little.

She was sure the person who was willing to bid four mithril and ninety diamond coins on some weird rocks was disappointed to lose them, but Sera's bid made it very clear that their booth had the wealth to play with the big dogs and that they really wanted the odd stones.

"Why did you buy some rocks?" Beth asked, not able to help herself after the stones were delivered.

"These bad boys are great!" Sera exclaimed, examining the rocks closely.

"Really?" Beth asked in a skeptical tone, looking at the dozen stones.

"They're clearly magical in some way, considering they're generating mana, but they don't seem all that special. Are they a rare type of ore or something?"

"No, no, nothing like that," Sera denied, shaking her head.

"Here, hold one of them and then run mana through it in a circle. Just a little! And slowly." Beth thought her wife might be having a bit of a laugh, but she tried it nonetheless, holding one of the stones and moving mana through it in a circular pattern. The results, while not shocking, really did set her back for a second. The rock absorbed a little of the mana and refined it, returning it to her at the end of the cycle a little purer than what it was when it entered.

It wasn't really like what an Ascended got for climbing the rebirth ranks up to the border of Exalted, but it was a mechanism that was a bit similar, and it was being done by a weird rock.

"What the hell are these?" Beth asked, glancing out to see people rising from their seats to mingle, use the restroom, grab food, and so on.

"Uncle Terri showed me something about them," Sera said with a giggle.

"I've never been so glad he collects weird things and studies them. He found there's a type of mana resonant rock like this, not some kind of big Exalted secret or anything, just something really rare and pretty unusual. Most people don't know what to do with them, so they pass them buy or don't want to pay a steep price for them, or they use them wrong."

"But you know how to use them right?" Beth said in a leading tone.

"Exactly!" Sera replied happily, making them all disappear.

"We'll have to do some work on them…hmm, maybe Val can help, but these are going to be very nice. Hell, there are enough of them we can invite Alex and Selene over, too."

"I don't understand," Beth said, rolling her eyes a little.

"That made it even more cryptic."

"There's a couple ways to use them, but two of them are pretty closely related," Sera explained, refreshing her drink.

"First, what a lot of people do, is make them into a kind of array that you can sit or lay in the middle of and channel energy through. There's different variations, including ones that other people can help power, but you lay down and get a little bit of mana refinement. It also helps with a few things, like greater clarity when pondering mana or better understanding of how a Mana Physique works, but we're not really all that interested in that."

"That's one way, but what's the other?" Beth asked, still intrigued, though having a big array to lay in that gave a fraction of the benefit of continuing to rebirth sound like a bit of a waste of time.

"Ah, the second thing is way better," Sera said, an excited gleam in her eye now as she shifted on the couch.

"We can have somebody carve the proper formations on them, different from the first way, and use them in a type of massage or body tempering, though saying the second way is just people trying to dress up a good massage as something fancy. Using the rocks in a massage helps refine the mana already in your flesh, which hardens the body for most people, but for someone with a good Mana Physique, it can increase the amount of power that that Mana Physique can bring to bear.

It won't upgrade it, but we could cycle more mana through our flesh. It would give a bunch of smaller benefits, but it would still be worth it; just for example, your Physique lets you control fire, and after undergoing a few massages, you could control more fire quicker and at greater range. It wouldn't be massive, but it's considered the 'real' way to use the stones."

"That sounds a little like hocus pocus, but then again, we live in a world of crazy magic, so I'm at least willing to try," Beth said, giving Sera a bit of a dubious eye.

"Trust me, my dear, this is very real and simply amazing! Hehe, if those old monsters up on the fourth floor had recognized these little rocks, they would have entered a bidding war with me that would have left us all battered and bruised," Sera said, giggling more than a little.

"We're just lucky that, even though Seven Lights is pretty powerful and prestigious, especially by Milky Way standards, they're not the absolute cream of the crop. There's no way something like this would go unrecognized if it were a Black Ships' auction or big sale day."

"The more you talk about them, and the more excited you act, the more I'm getting intrigued," Beth said with a small frown.

"I'm not finding anything on the Net about them, and yes, I'm being careful how I search."

"Like I said, this is all because my uncle's gotten into really odd, off-the-beaten-path stuff in his Exaltancy," Sera said, shaking her head and laughing.

"It's not forbidden knowledge or anything, but it's deeply, deeply esoteric. You're not just going to find some guide on using such rare and weird things plastered on the front page of some major news site or something. I'd be surprised if a couple hours of digging turned up much of anything on these little beauts."

"And that part about Selene and Alex…" Beth asked, trailing off.

"Well, there's enough of the stones here to be used on more than one person," Sera explained.

"Or, I could phrase it as, you don't need this many stones for just one person."

"Meaning we have enough for more than one person to use at once…" Beth said, trailing off again, but this time with a decided glint in her eye.

"A great opportunity for a couples massage. Or a couple's couples massage…not sure what would be the right term," Sera said, also with a glint in her eye.