Limitless Path

The next morning wasn't as early as their usual, this time mostly thanks to Beth and Blood, though Sabs really enjoyed every opportunity she could get to snuggle with Beth. She eventually had to get up, which was enough disturbance to get Beth fully up, which started their day. They got through the whole morning routine rather quickly, Beth sneaking a quick look at Sabs's level, noting that she was getting awfully close to one hundred, which would be a nice little bonus.

"You know what Kim and Soph are up to?" Beth asked as they sat on the couch and finished the last bit of breakfast.

"Working pretty hard," Sabs replied with a shrug. "They've been putting in almost as much effort as I have, though Soph is strangely motivated these days. They're both over level eighty now and trying to catch up to me, though that will likely take a while. If it happens."

"Well, we're coming back around on the rotation again. Blood and I can spend some time with the three of you; team up a little," Beth said.

"Just like we used to," Sabs replied before scoffing. "Listen to me. 'Like we used to,' as if it was more than a few months ago when you were still fighting alongside us."

"We'll do it again," Beth said. "Though, this time, we'll be the low levels."

"That's right. It'll be interesting to watch you two catch up," Sabs returned with a small grin.

"Well, we won't have to go that far," Beth commented a bit more seriously. "Remember, even though I'm level one right now, and so is Blood, we're more like level forty. So, by the time we get even to level fifty, it'll be more like we're level eighty-five to ninety, assuming most people get at least a few stat-raising items by that point."

"Oh, that's a good point," Sabs said with a frown. "How are we going to handle that?"

"Nothing really to handle," Beth answered with a shrug. "We shouldn't get cocky, but Blood and I are strong. Like, really strong. We can fight against enemies higher level without much issue, and now that's just going to be even further exaggerated. It'll be a little tough to gauge, with how beasts constantly jump in toughness every ten levels, and especially every fifty levels, but we can fight twenty, even thirty levels up until we hit a hundred. That jump might be a bigger hill to climb."

"As long as you be careful, Beth," Sabs said in an admonishing tone, giving the tall girl a frown. "I still hate the thought of you, even with Blood with you, out there fighting for days at a time, risking your life every hour, every minute. It keeps me up at night."

"Sabs, we're fine," Beth replied leaning forward and kissing the petite girl. "We know what we're doing, and certainly now, we're pretty damn good. We aren't gonna get taken out by some simple beast just as we're leveling up."

"I've got my eye on you, Elizabeth Bell," Sabs responded with a mock glare at Beth, which the taller girl interrupted with yet another kiss. Sabs broke it off after a moment and asked, "So, what now? Rest today, for sure."

"Yeah, yeah," Beth replied with a sigh. "We won't leave the room today."

"Beth, that's not what I mean-…you know what, never mind. Just do what you want."

"Or who," Beth said mischievously, leaning forward to give Sabs another kiss.

"Enough!" Sabs exclaimed after a moment, standing up after breaking the kiss. "We have time, Beth. I have things I really need to do, at least for the morning. I'll be back in a bit."

Sabs finished getting ready after a second and left, while Beth and Blood laid back and did nothing. Genuinely nothing, something they hadn't done in…well, it literally was years for them with the time compression. Even on their last 'break,' they had still done things like study or practice their skills or professions, but now they watched the wallscreen and napped. The whole day passed in that fashion, Sabs popping back in in the afternoon but just to join in vegging out on the couch and doing absolutely nothing. They did have to do one thing, in that they had to cook, as Sabs insisted on not just eating ration bars on the couch, for some strange reason.

The whole day was a loss in Beth's book, but she supposed it was nice to not really have to do much of anything. They had cleaned up at some point and returned to the couch, and it was apparently relaxing enough that Sabs fell asleep on Beth's lap, her back against Blood who was curled up next to them. Beth made sure she was holding Sabs firmly but gently before allowing herself to fall asleep, having already cultivated that crazy ability to drop into sleep anytime and basically anywhere.

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The next morning, they were up and ready rather early, and Beth couldn't stand sitting around in the room any longer. Her desire to do outweighed any slim need she might have felt for rest, and she made her way down to the forge, leaving Blood to lay on the couch all day alone. She found the forge empty, noting it was still early in the morning, and she wasn't sure that anyone else was living at the Hall like she and Sabs were, so anyone else using this space would have to commute. Apart from Elana, of course, but the Senior Enforcer likely had a lot more to do with her time than spend it all in the forge.

Beth had started working with mana steel a bit now, hoping that she could both get familiar with it before hitting Journeyman, and that she might have some inspiration that let her make the jump while working the more difficult metal. Today, her whole goal was to make a dagger, something fairly simple, but it was still more advanced than forging something like a nail or even a hinge. She had her own mana steel, which was in her necklace along with everything else that had once occupied her 'loot pile' in the corner of their living room.

She started just by heating a few pieces of the mana steel and working it together, wanting to fold the two pieces into each other. That process was one that could only be accomplished, at least with her current skills and abilities, with time. She had to heat the metal quite a bit, hammer it together, fold the pieces and hammer them together again, pause to reheat several times, and just continue that for what felt like forever. As she got the metal folded to the point she was satisfied, she started hammering the shape of the blade out, and that's when a little inspiration hit her. Instead of making a totally standard dagger, at least in terms of how the more experienced smiths would train someone by making a very simple, two-edged blade, Beth opted to make a longer, thinner, single-edged blade.

It would use about the same amount of metal that the very generic daggers she had been making would use, but would be about three inches longer, very slightly curved, and have only a single, razor-sharp edge. Liking the idea more and more, she proceeded to hammer the rough shape out before working on thinning just one side slightly. She couldn't hammer out a fine blade, not with her skills, and she did enough to make the grinding she would have to do a bit easier. She made sure to leave some metal at the bottom to create a functional tang, the bit that would let her fit a hilt. Not only did she leave some metal, but once she had the blade shaped and formed, she cooled everything before using a special bit to carve a screw pattern on the tang. She could carve out the receiving spirals in the hilt she made and screw the blade in, still using some form of glue or epoxy to make sure it held tight.

She next worked the blade to form the edge, the steel soft enough for her purposes, especially with her stats and the knowledge from her skill, that she could create a decent base for the edge she would hone later. She set the blade aside when she was happy with her work and turned to the hilt. She could use one of the blanks they kept in the room for people to use, though those pre-formed pieces still needed some work to fit whatever the smith was making, but she opted not to do that. Instead, she got out a bit more mana steel and worked it into the rough form of a hilt before adding finer details, including a small, curved cross-guard.

She made the center of the hilt, where a person's hand would most likely line up in a normal grip, have several small undulations or ridges to aid in a steady grip. She created a small area at the base of the hilt where a decorative gem or piece of metalwork could be inset, hammering out a small open area and creating several little brackets that could be used to sort of 'snap' the gem into place. She finished both the blade and hilt by heating them to a red-hot that almost had a little orange in before extremely rapidly cooling the metal in one of the quenching buckets.

The final piece of work she had to do was use one of the special drill bits to make the screw pattern in the hilt. After she had carefully made the screw patterns, she cleaned everything rather thoroughly before using a little bit of a strong, two-step epoxy to make sure it would be very difficult to unscrew the hilt from the blade. She had taken into account a couple of the small gems she had in her necklace from all their adventures, not a hundred percent of which she had sold, and used a little ruby to complete the piece, slotted into the brackets and pushed in deeply with a firm click.

She admired the blade, which was quite fine, in her opinion, for a few minutes before her stomach rumbled, letting her know she had been working quite a while. Sadly, the dagger wasn't anything special, not hitting the requirements for a minimum level, meaning it also wouldn't be anything above common quality. She sighed a bit, but still had a small smile as she socked the weapon away in her necklace and cleaned up around the forge before heading up to the cafeteria to seek out some food. It was only as she was eating through what should have served four people that she noticed the dagger was better than she thought, seeing her status screen displaying Blacksmithing Journeyman[0] instead of Apprentice.

She almost got up and went back down to the forge immediately, but she managed to get herself under control in time. She would have plenty of time to forge and practice her craft, and that was just not the priority at the moment. It was a bit amusing that that had been one of the several things on her list, one of the three she wanted to get done before investigating the Lord of Traversal, and she had almost accidentally managed it. Who knew; working in a calm, steady manner after a day or two to relax was great for one's state of mind and progress in finer, more intricate tasks? Turned out that taking a day off once every couple years subjective time might actually be good for them.

She returned the pile of dishes she had used to the machinery at the back for them to automatically clean before heading down to the shop. She wanted to do a very quick check-in with Jaq about two things before heading back to the room. She found several people in the room when she got there, ornery shopkeeper included, and waited for a minute while browsing the shelves. She hadn't looked around at what he was offering in a little while, and it turned out that it was mostly the same, though as she had noted some time ago, he had a lot more of that stuff on the shelves and tables.

Finally, the rest of the lot were done and out the door, and she approached him before taking out the dagger and showing it to him. He wordlessly examined it, the circuit patterns appearing in his eyes for a few moments while he inspected everything about the blade. Finally, he set it down on the table and looked at her.

"Amateurish, but I don't expect much more from you. Yet," he said.

"Gee, thanks for the confidence booster," Beth replied with an eyeroll. "How could you tell it was mine?"

"The hammer marks, for one," he commented, lifting the blade and showing the faint traces of her hammering it. "The best smiths don't leave such obvious markings, or markings at all, in fact. And the way these are arranged is similar to the other few things I've seen that you forged. I'm assuming you came down here for more than to brag about…this."

"I was wondering what you would buy it for," she replied. "And, if you're willing to tell me, what you'd sell it for. I'm trying to get a better idea of what weapons, armor, and consumables are worth what, in terms of value."

"Hmm," he grunted, thinking for a moment. "For this, I would buy it for about forty silvers. I would sell it for about seventy."

"That big a mark-up?!" Beth asked, slightly incredulous, her eyes a bit wide.

"I have other considerations than even most would have," Jaq replied. "Including, in case you've forgotten, that my stock can be bought with contribution points."

"That's a perfect segue," Beth jumped in.

"For what?" he asked with one precisely arched brow.

"Contribution points," Beth said, then elaborated. "I wanted to ask about them as well. I have one-fifty now and Blood will soon, too. I wanted to know more about your prices; what I can exchange for and how much those things cost."

"There's a data packet," he said with a small sigh and shake of his head. "Look through this first and then ask me questions if you don't understand anything."

He sent her a packet to her communicator, which she opened and started glancing through. It had a short introduction, then what was essentially a giant table listing items, their prices in coins, and their prices in contribution points. The points totals seemed kind of steep to her, but she didn't really have any reference, apart from that two contribution points mostly seemed to equate to one silver coin, though that wasn't a hard rule. She also found a section at the bottom where the coin prices just stopped appearing, meaning that there was a group, a rather large group, of items that could only be purchased from the commissary with CP.

"Can I buy any of the stuff at the bottom if I have CP?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied simply. Seeing her gear up for another question, he pre-empted her with, "The list I gave you, if you note the title, is meant for Silver-rank members. Yes, there are things that are limited by rank and no, I won't give you that list until you are that rank. Also, no, you can't buy from the limited section as a Copper even if you've started doing missions and yes, you, as in the person in front of me, not the royal you, could buy things from the CP-only list and give them or even sell them to others. They just can't buy those things without the rank and CP themselves."

"Well, that answered a ton of things I was going to ask," she said. "Last one for now; can I sell things to you for CP?"

"Yes, but there are stricter limits in a number of ways," he replied. "Including that I can only, according to the CRA Commissary Regulations, buy things for so many points from individuals in so much given time. Depending on your rank, I can buy anywhere from five hundred up to more than ten thousand points worth of things from you a week. And no, I don't buy just anything you have for points, that list is a little more selective. To pre-empt that final question I see, no, there's no list I can give you showing that, you will just, unfortunately, have to ask on an item-by-item basis when you are selling, if you are in need of points."

"OK, thanks for the help," Beth said with a nod. "I'll keep the dagger for now, but I appreciate the assessment."

"One last thing," he said as she made the dagger disappear and turned to leave. She stopped and looked at him with a bit of a scrunched brow. "Adding something like that gem is pointless if you don't also enchant it, either yourself or get somebody that has that skillset to do it. People tend not to like decorations like that in functional weapons, for the most part. I know it's hard to drive it into some smiths' heads, but everything on a weapon or piece of armor should be functional."

"That's lame," Beth replied quite honestly before turning again and leaving, waving over her shoulder. She got only a surly grunt in response, heading down the halls to the elevators before going back to their room. She found it empty and, after a quick sniff test, decided a shower was the first order of business for the evening. She luxuriated in a bath afterwards and was joined, somewhat surprisingly, by Sabs, though they used the time to relax rather than get up to anything more…explicit.

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