Chương 635: Limitless Path Chapter Six Hundred FIfty-Four

"I understand your organization deals in specialized goods, right?" Beth asked with a small grin.

"Of course, you have it correct," Isa replied.

"I'm assuming, and I could be wrong, of course, but I'm guessing you craft at least some of your goods in-house?" Beth asked.

"That's correct," Isa said with a nod.

"We have many crafters on retainer, many directly employed, and we have contracts with several powerful individuals who enjoy their freedom and privacy too much to do more than sign a basic agreement."

"You must need materials, then?" Beth said with a much larger grin.

"Of course. Supplying all our crafters is something we've spent many centuries fine-tuning. We have massive supply lines that provide everything our crafters need to create anything the organization finds in demand with our customers," Isa responded.

"Then, are you interested in maybe purchasing some rare materials?" Beth asked, gesturing to the table between them before Isa could reply. She created a small pile of beast cores and rare metals, not all that impressive by volume, but certainly very impressive via level and rarity. Not many Enlightened at all would be able to dump out a couple dozen level five hundred beast cores, let alone do it so causally, and combine that with several dozen pounds of very rare, high quality metals.

"This is…impressive," Isa said, though Beth had noted the two low-rebirth Enlightened had had a bit of a bigger reaction. They were able to cover it better this time, but their little jolts at her display let her know that the organization would be very interested in what she put on the table.

"Perhaps we can trade some of the excess of our recent adventures for a discount?" Beth asked, now with a massive smile on her face.

"We can talk business," Isa said, becoming even more serious. They proceeded to negotiate from there, and Beth was pretty sure she got the worse end of the deal, as she wasn't nearly so experienced. Still, she thought she held her own to an extent, and she was able to trade enough materials that Sera's level adjuster went from ten coins down to two. Once they had confirmed the deal and Beth had passed over the materials, Sera immediately applied the adjuster to her new spear.

There was a massive influx of mana into the room and the spear glowed with power for a moment, but the whole process went quite smoothly and quickly, finishing in just five seconds without any fluctuation in the surrounding mana, fluctuations which would have signaled a poorly crafted device.

"Well, it's about time for another rebirth," Sera said, grinning at the spear as it now read level six hundred for the requirement.

"We're working on it," Beth said, a little less giddy about the bartering beat down she had just suffered, and about sharing information about their current progress with others.

"Can't come soon enough," Sera said, making the spear disappear.

"Right, we'll work on it," Beth nodded before turning back to Isa.

"Anything your organization needs? My team is busy with multiple things right now, but we can always spare a little time to look for valuable goods. Despite how much cash we sometimes throw around, we're always in need of more coin."

"We don't have anything specific right now, but anything above level five hundred is very valuable, as I'm sure you know," Isa replied.

"If you find any herbs or plants with powerful mana systems or affinities, we are always in need of more herbs. Our alchemists and enchanters both always have a level of demand that far outstrips our ability to secure those materials."

"We have a few things," Beth said, sweeping an arm across the table and revealing stacks of herbs. These were most of what she had after what they had sold to the Black Ships and others and weren't set aside for the alchemy nuts or Val for later crafting.

"Wonderful!" Isa exclaimed, quickly examining the goods.

"I see you've been in some place hot with both earth and magma mana in high quantities. Yes, yes, these plants will work quite well for a couple alchemy projects our crafting teams are working on, though I wish there were more. You don't happen to have any extra copies of these, do you?"

"Sorry, but you weren't our first stop," Beth said, which was a bit harsh, but she was negotiating in a straight-forward manner.

"We stopped by the Black Ships first, and they bought a bulk of what we had from our last year or so of adventuring. I'm afraid what's on the table is basically everything we have left that we aren't using ourselves in pushing our crafting or repairing our current gear."

"You're whole team crafts?" Isa asked, giving Beth a sharp look.

"Pretty much all of them," Beth replied with a nod.

"Some of them are a bit less enthusiastic about it than others, which is fine, but everybody at least has a crafting skill and uses it a bit."

"A rarity," Isa said. At Beth's look, she continued, "I'm sure your wife can elaborate, but many teams won't bother to diversify so much, even in Enlightened. Many people have enough on their plate as it is, they do not also have extra time units to be crafting and building things." This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"It's true," Sera said with a small shrug.

"You remember the teams we competed against?"

"In the special instance?" Beth asked, glancing at her with a quirked brow.

"That's right. You know how many of those dragons and guests had crafting skills? Well, hold on," Sera interrupted herself, holding up her right hand.

"I should rephrase that. You know how many of those people had put any real effort into raising their crafting skills?"

"If it's the same number that put any real effort into their weapon skills, then zero," Beth scoffed.

"Come on, it wasn't that bad," Sera replied, rolling her eyes slightly.

"No, you're right, I was being overly harsh, but I didn't have a lot of good impressions from that dungeon," Beth said, waving a hand back-and-forth idly.

"Well, that's true, but my point was that very few of them had put any serious effort into crafting. When you're early on the Path, it's a lot better to focus; people already have enough splitting their attention, between skills, weapon training, dungeon training, dungeon delving, and so on. You'll find a lot of people, ones who are serious about adventuring, don't do more than dip their toe into crafting into years and years into their adventures.

Even then, some people just don't like it or aren't interested in it; they'd rather hire someone with the predilection and skill to do the work," Sera explained.

"I understand what you're saying," Beth acknowledged with a nod.

"Our team having not just one serious crafter, but a large group of them, is unusual for people who aren't focused more on crafting than they are on leveling. Still, seems a bit of a waste."

"Well, we do have some advantages," Sera said with a small chuckle, though she didn't explicitly spell out what those advantages were. She didn't need to, after all, considering Beth was a very big part of them.

"Yes, so it turns into a case of organizations like ours always having demand for our skills," Isa added after they were done.

"That your whole team crafts is unusual, but we still have a lot of specialized goods that even a team with crafters can't make all that easily. If you have any other needs, including specialized alchemy products, we have a very extensive catalogue to choose from."

"I'm sure we'll keep you in mind going forward," Beth said, preparing to rise.

"I've taken the liberty of adding you to our approved guests list. You shouldn't have any problem interacting with our main building here or any of our several branches in the future. I assume the token Seraphinalla has will continue to remain with your team?" Isa said.

"Yes. This token is technically mine, so nobody else should be using it in the short term, other than if I let my wife borrow it," Sera said as she and Beth rose.

"Good. I will make note of it," Isa said as she also rose and gestured for them to follow her.

"Let me escort you out. I do hope you have a pleasant day." They left after that, with Beth amused a bit at the politeness of it all, considering she could have easily grabbed Sera with her Ideal and made both of them disappear. But appearances were important, and she didn't want to leave a bad or, more likely, strange impression on a group that they had just done good business with and had a positive, if new, relationship with.

She didn't mind grabbing Sera, in more ways than one, and making them disappear after they'd left the building and turned the corner, Beth not caring to take another slow walk followed by a bunch of boring teleports, with all attendant security checks that were involved. Instead, she simply whisked them away, glad that they weren't too far from home, that being Zephyr Prime, and that there was nothing there that prevent teleports.

Well, there might have been something, but it wasn't strong enough to block a teleportation done using an Ideal, so Beth didn't really pay it much mind. Now that they had taken care of that little excursion, which had turned into a bit of a larger trip than Beth had initially thought, they could settle on their next course of action. The way Beth saw it, they had three main priorities right now, and the order of them also mattered.

They had their work on their Platinum Emblems, which had been idle for a while, though it wasn't unusual for Platinum testing to take decades; still, she didn't want the team languishing, and they should go acquire and complete some more mission ASAP. Along with that, a big priority for a variety of reasons was, of course, continuing to level, which meant doing another rebirth. They were close to ready, as Sera had been indicating, but they could really push over the next month and get that done.

The third priority right now was longer term, but she wanted to both acquire more property as well as get involved in whatever was happening with the Eternal Depths. That priority, which had a high degree of importance, was going to be blocked by priority number two, as would many others.

Going on expeditions with the Black Ships, working through some of their other backlog of instances and such, gathering materials, and exploring certain places; there was a lot that was dependent, at the end of the day, on how strong the team was. They were very powerful for Enlightened, of course, but they were still some distance from powerful for Ascended, which was the goal. They had to work on their rebirths, and hard, and that again circled back to what were, essentially, the two main priorities.

Doing rebirths wasn't all that difficult for them, and Beth was glad they were still getting a lot of requirements to fight with their True Rebirths. That actually made it quicker for her team, and easier, in some cases, than having to gather or create materials for the rebirth. They still needed materials, and that was their current blocker, as they were lacking a few materials they needed for the team to do their next rebirth.

It was gathering those materials that she wanted to be their number one priority for a little bit, beyond even pursuing Platinum missions, though they would be getting back to those very shortly. Her plan was secure materials quickly, do a rebirth, get a few levels under their belts over the course of an objective week or so, then head to Arbitus to acquire about missions.

As with any plan, they didn't survive contact with the enemy, and they were only able to most of the way there before Beth was contacted by their adjudicators for their Platinum Emblems. The judges had secured them their next batch of missions and they were told to report to Arbitus.

Given the supposed voluntary nature of these missions, the commanding nature of the messages was a bit abrupt, but the CRA was not a monolith; not everyone thought and acted the same throughout the organization, and different areas had different rules. Arbitus was also more… perhaps regimented would be a good word, or maybe rigid and controlled, though Beth also had some less kind thoughts that involved thoughts like 'stick up the ass' and so on.

The team wasn't able to get their rebirths done before going to Arbitus, but that was still fine, as only part of the team were going for their Platinums. The rest of the team could keep working on gathering the materials, which shouldn't take long at all, and then they could meet up at some point to do a rebirth. With them being able to pop Beth's gate anywhere at any time, they always had a secure space to do the deed, no matter how dangerous the mission or surrounding conditions.

And speaking of both, missions and conditions, they were in for a bit of a doozy with this set. They had been assigned nine missions, with a promise of a tenth mission, making two missions for each of them this time around. If they completed them quickly, they would be a fifth of the way to their Platinum promotions, or even more, depending on how one looked at it.

Beth wasn't at all worried about the other tests and assessments that came along with the Platinum promotion; her team was strong enough, smart enough, and of good enough moral character that they would have no issues breezing through anything thrown at them. It was really the requirements for fifteen missions, each, that was the very long pole in the tent and the thing that was going to take them years.

She was surprised, in point of fact, that they had found ten full Platinum missions for the team to do, but the examiners had indicated that they hopeful of her team's potential and were going to extra lengths to help ease them through the process more quickly.

And even with the examiners' help, they had been farming dungeons and off doing other things for more than an objective year, and in that time only nine Platinum missions had come up, or nine that her team could do and could wait some time, but it still showed the rarity of those missions, and their importance. They decided to rotate through the missions this time, similar to what they had done last time, but since they had two each at this point, they were going to do one mission each and then circle back around.

That was, of course, dependent on none of the missions having a severe time crunch or the situation changing, but Beth was confident in her team's ability to adapt on the fly to changes and new information. They were to start with a mission for Bjorn, one that was going to see the big man, and the team, do a little negotiation, maybe even a little bit of… forceful negotiation.