"Well, that's most of what we need," he said, gesturing for the front door.

"You don't want to stay a while? Rest for a minute?" Beth asked, glancing around the house.

"Nothing left here for me," he said, a faint note of sorrow in his voice.

"Then let's get on with it," Beth grunted, leaving the house and moving down the hill. She didn't use any skills, but even without them, she was still incredibly quick. There were times when she forgot herself and walked faster than a pre-Path sprint would have been for her. Hell, faster than a car at highway speed would have been before the Path showed up and messed with everything. She made it to the bottom of the hill in a few seconds and deployed the airship, waiting for it to unfold before getting on, followed just behind by the other three. Beth told Blood to head for Megoria's landing area while she made a call.

'Baelvyr,' she sent.

'What now, girlie? I'm busy,' his response came back right away.

'Let me run this by you,' Beth said, explaining the situation.

'I'll let Meg know to give ya some shit. Just land by her ship and grab the gear. I'll trail ya from a distance. I ain't into all that stealth shit, but I'm an Exalted; if I don't want 'em to see me, they won't,' he issued orders.

'You think this is likely to draw the monsters?' Beth asked.

'Maybe the plant bastard, which I'll leave to ya,' he replied. 'That other bastard is too squirrelly. He'll smell the trap from a mile off, even if he can't detect me. I'll keep a watch out, but ya won't see me at all, and don't look. Pass that on to the others.'

'Got it,' Beth sent before closing the call.

"Megoria's landing site, Blood," Beth said aloud, Blood just grunting in confirmation.

"One of those elusive Seniors?" asked Delonne.

"Yeah. She'll give us some more supplies, and then we're off. One of the other Seniors will track us, but don't look to spot him. It'll give the game away," Beth said.

"And that'll keep us safe?" Delonne asked with a quirked brow.

"Well, he's an Exalted, so if it doesn't, I don't even know what will," Beth answered with a slight shrug.

"A real, live Exalted. I can't even imagine," Delonne said quietly. "It's been so, so many years since we last had an Enlightened. I suppose that goes to show how far behind we are."

"Why is that?" Beth asked, noting that the man himself was on his ninth rebirth.

"Multiple reasons," he said with a heavy sigh. "Our world's too poor and low in mana. We just don't get enough people to rebirth nine, even taking the rebirths early."

"Which is another problem," Sera cut in.

"What do you mean by that?" Delonne asked, looking at the tall dragon girl with a serious frown on his face.

"Sprinting to the ninth rebirth without bothering to learn about your body, your mana, your skills, how they all work, runes and how runes work, or spending enough time fighting and feeling mana is a crippling mistake. People who sprint to rebirth nine are far, far less likely to successfully build a Mana Physique. Scholars have done studies on it, including an Exalted scholar who spent millennia studying the issue, and she found that it reduces your chances by up to eighty percent. That is to say, all other things being equal, someone who only ever rebirthed at the minimum levels would be about twenty percent as likely as somebody who had always done it at the max levels," Sera explained.

"Shit. Shit! No fucking wonder we were so far behind; we were screwing ourselves!" Delonne cursed.

"It's common knowledge among many, and is also spread by the CRA," Sera explained apologetically. "It's a reason why tons of people in the wider galaxy, not to mention the wider universe, will caution young people about blowing through the rebirths super fast. It might get you a chunk of early power, but it handicaps you in multiple ways. A lot of people get stuck at rebirth nine, many of them for life, and a good portion of them are from rushing through the ranks too fast. Getting to rebirth nine doesn't add all that many years to your lifespan, so unless you're from a naturally long-lived race like dragons or phoenixes or the like, you often don't even have enough time to correct your errors. Even if you can correct everything that you messed up or missed along the way, the extra stats you're missing by that point mean you'll be a terribly weak Enlightened; there's a big difference between an Enlightened with a couple thousand in each stat at most and a Copper Mana Physique, and an Enlightened with eight or nine thousand in each stat and a Silver or Gold Mana Physique."

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"Rejecting the CRA hurt us far more than I realized," he said quietly when Sera was finished. "You've just explained things that are common knowledge to you, and I suppose they're easy enough to work out, but they're revolutionary for most on our world. I didn't rebirth right away every time, I took time to continue to level for a while, but even so, I feel like I did myself a disservice."

"It's not a mistake that dooms you, but it is tough to overcome," Sera said with a nod, earning yet another heavy sigh from the man. "Cheer up; with potential CRA access on the horizon, you still have a shot. Even if your world doesn't accept them, you can still leave and get access to those resources. There's nothing saying you can't leave, get stronger, then come back and live here."

"I appreciate your optimism, but it's already too late for an old dog like me," he said with a quick shake of his head. Beth gave him a hard look, seeing that even having rested, his face did look worn and weathered. How much of that was from his experiences and these past few years, and how much of that was from his age, she wasn't sure. He did have patches of white in his hair at his temples, and there was just a hint of salt-and-pepper in the rest of his hair, but Beth wouldn't put him too much over fifty, and certainly not older than sixty. Well, that was going by pre-Path rules, and he had already talked about being over a century old. What Sera had said was right, as well, as every rebirth before Enlightened only added a few years to longevity, depending on one's race.

"Never count yourself out before they've even taken you down," Beth tried to encourage him, seeing the ghost of a smile grace his lips, but his expression quickly grew somber again.

"I won't give up, not until the end, but I'm quite old, for an Empowered. I don't have all that many years left," he said.

"You don't look particularly old," Beth said with a slight frown.

"Once you start walking the Path, as long as you get even a couple rebirths under your belt, you don't age drastically until your last one or two years. Delonne could be ten, or even five, years away from the end of the line, and he'd still look like a person who never leveled much that had several decades left," Sera explained quietly.

"I didn't know. Sorry," Beth said.

"It's alright. I've made my peace with it. It's one of the reasons why I want to try to fix this absolute fucking mess, and soon. I want to see the sky, the real sky, before I go," he said, giving her a quick nod.

"A good dream," Sera said, getting agreement from Beth and a non-committal grunt from Blood.

"It's what I've held to for all these years," he said.

The rest of the flight passed in silence, quite a few hours needed to get from the stop at Delonne's house to where Megoria was parked. Delonne's home was on a separate continent, so that didn't help with the distance, and their airship could only fly so fast. They went back to what they had done, with Blood flying, Beth and Sera studying, and Delonne stewing in his own depression until they made it to where Megoria had first landed. Blood flew right up to the clearing and set down where they had been before, not needing any instruction to know what to do.

"You guys don't have any teleporters?" Beth asked as they all stood and stretched.

"Only a couple left, and they're on segregated segments that are strictly controlled. I don't have the accesses anymore," he said, running a hand through his hair with a sheepish look on his face.

"Oh well, worth a shot," Beth said with a shrug.

"Might be something to look into," Sera said. "Don't want to step on toes, but this is technically an emergency situation."

"Right, that's true," Beth said, giving her lover a big smile before leading the way off the ship.

They didn't have far to go, as Megoria met them in the rain, passing ten packages over to them without any questions asked. Beth could tell that Delonne was just blown away by Megoria, and it wasn't just the woman's incredibly good looks. Beth was used to spending time around Ascended and Exalted, but it was a bit of a stark reminder that most people rarely interacted with even Enlightened. That was certainly true in the Milky Way, though it would be a bit less skewed in a more prosperous galaxy, but they were mana poor enough that even Enlightened were a bit rare. From the look on his face, Beth realized this was the first time Delonne had seen an Ascended at all, and it was an Ascended at the peak of the bracket, just about ready to move into Exalted, as long as she could realize her Ideal. Beth just shook her head, imagining Delonne passing out on seeing Baelvyr for the first time.

Done with the handoffs from Megoria, they boarded the ship again and moved to the dining room behind the bridge. They had a lot of stuff at this point and they needed to split it out. Delonne didn't have a storage power, or item, and he would have to keep the vital equipment in a backpack, pouches, and pockets in his gear. Beth, Sera, and Blood would keep most of the stuff on them, but he still needed things at hand that were critical, such as extra potions or extra water breathing tablets, which they had hundreds of split across a dozen bottles. Beth made sure there were different items in her necklace outside their cases or storage containers; other than liquids, she didn't want to be fumbling with a container when she was in a critical situation, wanting to be able to just grab what she needed. Her storage space kept everything perfectly preserved; things would break down inside it, but that was over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, at a minimum. Not a timeframe she needed to worry about for a few water breathing tablets.

Once all the gear was divvied and sorted, they headed to the bridge, whereupon Delonne gave Blood the coordinates they would need to head to. Punching it in, Blood informed the group it would be about three hours until they could get there, Beth giving the go-ahead as soon as everyone confirmed they were ready. Delonne took the opportunity to catch a nap, while Beth was still fresh and would remain so for many days. Sera dozed for an hour, but her high END and multiple body-reinforcing skills meant that she also needed very little rest, even after hours of battle.

Coming up on the landing site, Beth woke Delonne, Sera only having dozed a bit before returning to her studies. Blood was fully focused at the helm, surveying the area to find somewhere safe to put down. Beth was going to pack the ship back up when they landed, but Blood wanted to get them as close as she could before setting it down. She could see why Delonne had warned them about the place before, as it was a very mountainous area, the whole of it marked by steep cliffs and rocky, scree-filled slopes. None of it was very promising as a landing zone, and Blood was eventually forced to put it down on a very narrow ledge about ten miles from where they wanted to be. Even given the narrow profile of the landing gear, it was a tight fit, and Beth packed the ship up as soon as the four of them were out the door, instantly putting it away in her necklace.

"This doesn't look like very forgiving terrain," she commented, glancing around at the broken, rough ground.

"Old battles happened here a few decades ago," Delonne responded. "That, and the fact that it was never all that hospitable in the first place. People used to avoid these mountains like the plague, mainly because they were so tough to cross and full of hungry beasts. Now, it's even worse, plus the fact that there are several openings into the deep underground in the center here. Lots of danger crawling up out of the depths periodically. There's a ring of forts around the mountains just to keep all of that contained."

"Lovely," Beth replied with a snort. "Well, let's try to make our way to the entrance that you want to use without getting embroiled in a running battle."

"It's not the stuff on the surface I'm worried about," Delonne muttered ominously as they started off.

The trek across the mountains turned out to be tedious, but not because they were swarmed by beasts. The terrain was just that inhospitable that even the girls struggled a bit with it, and Delonne was even worse off. He didn't have any skills at Platinum, mainly because he didn't have any skills that could get to Platinum, and his boosting skills didn't provide too much help in mountaineering. His stats were also low, meaning he couldn't just leap from one cliff to the next across a thousand-foot gap like the girls could, so they had to do a bit of babying to get him to the caves without leaving him behind.

They eventually reached the caves, finding a massive gash carved into the base of one of the mountains, and carved was right. Whatever did this, it wasn't natural, as sections of the cut were far too smooth to have been done by nature. It was also a massive opening, making Beth frown as she wondered how it didn't collapse from the thousands of tons of rock above it. None of them had the ability to see in total darkness, meaning they would all be using lightstones or the like for the delve. They took a second to get fully equipped before heading down into the chasm, finding a series of interlaced tunnels leading very, very deep into the earth.

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