The auction had proved exciting to watch, as they often were, and Beth had made a strange purchase, but mostly the group was happy that they had gotten a bit more cold, hard cash. It was also a nice recruitment tool, as Andrea and Adam watched the team split the stacks of high-tier coins that they had earned from around two years of work, further being shocked when they learned that that was but a tiny fraction of what they would be earning. Watching a group of people one was friends with pull in close to two adamantine coins for two years of work, then learning that was going to multiple many folds over the coming months and years, really made one want to stick close to that group of friends. Not that Beth hadn't planned on recruiting Andrea and Adam anyway, and hopefully Veren at some point, but they would be seeing a lot more of these two in the immediate future.

With their coins had come the cube of stone Beth had bought, and the attendant that delivered everything warned her before handing it over. He was right to have done so, the poor man, as he heaved it into her arms and Beth was surprised at the weight. Not something that she had to struggle with, but for somebody not rocking nearly twenty thousand strength, she could see it being a heavy burden. The thing also felt preternaturally smooth, like someone had spent hundred of hours polishing it with ever more precise tools and finer sandpaper until the surface made fine glasswork look rough and jagged. The thing was a big mystery, but it also wasn't something she had to work on right now, or that she wanted to crack into right now.

After the auction was fully wrapped, the team split up for a while, as they were officially on break for a bit. Not that it would last long, and the others all understood what was really happening; Beth was taking her fiancée to go spend time with their two girlfriends, so the rest of the team got time free by default. Beth took Sera up to Selene's office, which was currently empty, as both the greater demoness and Alex were taking care of all the work they had to handle post-auction, all of which required them to be down on the lower floors, mainly in the auction house venue. It was hours later that one of them came up to Selene's office, and even then it was still to take care of more work. The auction this year had involved a massive quantity of goods, which is one of the reasons it was taking so long to wrap up getting everything distributed. It was especially tedious for them as the could normally easily move around a lot of the items, like the stone Beth had bought, but the lots Selene had put up were a freight train's worth of materials and a space ship that couldn't be folded up, meaning the transportation to the buyer was a bit of a pain.

Bored with waiting, even with Sera keeping her company, Beth pulled out the cube and started really studying it, placing it on the table in Selene's office and looking it over carefully. The name and description of the item were no great help, as they didn't really describe anything useful about the item. It said it was a stone that was polished with the intent of space and the name was just Spatial Depth Stone. Nothing that really gave her very much indication of what it was or what it was used for. The auction hadn't been very helpful, either, as it was a consignment from someone who had just said it was a valuable materials, and sellers weren't always the best judges of value or worth for items. Nor were they often all that knowledgeable about what the item was, even those people who were respected highly by the trading firm. Beth had brought enough random junk in that radiated powerful mana that she had no idea the value of herself to know just how true that was.

This mysterious item had called to her very strongly and that was still true, and she examined it quite closely as she felt the weird spatial disturbances around the cube. She frowned a bit as she studied the stone cube, looking at it with just her base senses to start. That produced…well, no results, as the thing just looked like a perfectly square cube of very dark gray stone, though the polish level was so much that the shiny surface was reflective. Beth was still using her basic senses, running her fingers over the stone and noting how smooth it really was, and that any bit of oil from her fingers didn't stick to the surface. That was a bit strange, and the fact that the thing was still emitting enough spatial energy that she could feel it without even using any skills or trying really told a tale. Others couldn't really detect it as strongly, as Sera noted that the cube just seemed heavy and smooth and there was a hint of mana around it unless she really concentrated intently. To Beth, however, the thing very clearly pulsed spatial mana even if she wasn't using her spatial mana detection skill to analyze it.

When she was using her mana detection skill, what she saw was pretty extraordinary, even if she only understand something like ten percent of it. There was a massive swirl of spatial mana, which was complex and confusing enough, but there was also clear evidence of hugely complex runes that she could just barely make out. There weren't any runes on the surface of the cube, but there were definitely runes buried within it, so many that Beth could get a sense of a few of them with her detection skill just by staring at the stone. She was still inspecting the item, kind of wondering why it had been described as a material other than sheer ignorance, when Selene and Alex finally got free and returned to Selene's office. The two of them were clearly tired, despite being an Ascended and an Exalted, and Beth and Sera were going to take some time to make sure they were both rested and, more importantly, relaxed.

Beth tossed the stone back in her necklace, glad she didn't have to toss the damn thing, as that would be quite dangerous for everyone involved, before escorting the others to Selene's house. They were going to be there for a little while, but Beth started by treating everyone to a little food, Sera helping with the preparations. The dragon always enjoyed cooking, as Beth had often noticed, and was all too happy to help prepare a massive meal at any time and in any place. Once the food was done, they had a slow meal with the four of them before retiring to the bedroom, though it wasn't to get up to any antics. Selene and Alex were too tired, and the four simply curled up together before falling asleep for a dozen hours; just because they had thousands of Endurance didn't mean they couldn't really sleep when they wanted, or needed, to do so.

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Beth set the weird cube to the side for a few days to spend some time just relaxing and not really thinking about anything too complicated, but she was back to it after they had left Selene and Alex to their work. She was sitting in the common room of the suite they were currently renting on some backwater dirtball of a world while they did missions, staring at the cube intently. Luckily, or maybe just because the Association didn't scrimp, the CRA Hall they were in had very nice facilities, including well-appointed large suites that the group could use for very little cost. Beth had been very careful not to break the nice furniture when placing the stone block on the center table in the living room, and was now trying to inspect the runes in it. Something else she had figured out after leaving Selene and Alex was the thing was very resistant to damage. She had tried cracking or breaking it, though she hadn't gone all out, but her attacks had been powerful and very focused. None of what she did had even left a scratch, not so much as a dull spot on any of the faces, and she was even more perplexed afterwards. It was extremely clear to her at this point that the stone had been manufactured by someone, and they had used extremely advanced processes to do it.

The next thing she did was call on a few pocket Ascended for a little consultation, but they weren't much help. Zel said the thing was well enchanted and that she would learn a lot from it, even not being an Enchanter, and Erosh said it was likely made by a smith, but that he didn't find much use for it. The consensus she got was that she should keep studying it as much as she could before having anybody explain anything; apparently, the stone block could provide her quite a bit of benefit across multiple fields, though she was slightly dubious about the claims. Still, it seemed her pocket Ascended had a decent idea of what the cube was and how it worked, so she could always get some help from them. For now, she dismissed them to go back to doing…whatever it was that they spent all day doing when she wasn't calling them out of the reliquary to help her with something. Sleeping, most likely, though they were all still technically alive, meaning that training was still effective for increasing their skills. On the other hand, all of their skills were Diamond or Grandmaster at the very least and had been worked on for millennia; there wasn't going to be much progress made, given the limited environment, even with quite a bit of time.

Beth was able to make much more progress, however, and a lot of that centered around the cube. She tried not to obsess over it, but the others still joked a little about how much time she was spending staring at a rock, as they called it, and how often she was tapping or turning it while muttering to herself. And she was muttering to herself often as she inspected the rock, trying to keep a running train of thought on the runes and what they were doing and how they interacted with each other. Just examining the thing was increasing the level of her detection skill by leaps and bounds, not to mention that she was getting some good benefit to other skills and her overall knowledge. Sometimes, as well, it was that somebody would have a period of accumulation, even a long period of accumulation, and then burst forward with a great acceleration of their growth or an explosive period of understanding and skill leveling.

The thing that started to crack it open, though only metaphorically, was when she got sensitive enough to the mana and the runes that she was able to read some of the surface level runes inside the cube. That was also when things got a whole lot more complicated, also highlighting why the Ascended thought it would be good for her, as the whole inside of the thing was interlocked layers of sheets of runes. It made her head dizzy just analyzing the first layer, but that work doing that analysis also taught her an immense amount. She tried to have some of the others work on it, including Val and Kris, but it quickly became apparent that they had no idea what she was seeing. She could relay the runes that she could see, but none of the others, even with good eye powers and detection skills, were able to see what she could. That pointed to a couple things, including that her mana detection skill was very suited to the task at hand, but also that she might just be much better at spatial mana and the related runes than any of the others in her group. It was a shame that it looked like the only way the others were getting anything out of the cube was through Beth copying down the runes and relaying them to the others, but nobody was particularly bent out of shape about it. She secretly thought the others were relieved not to have to humor her as much in her new obsession, and doubly relieved that that obsession gave them some more free time to relax without having to run out into more fights.

The only fight that was happening was Beth trying to penetrate the extremely obtuse layers of runes, which she became fascinated with. It gave her the same kind of feeling that one got when a phrase or idea was just on the tip of their tongue but they couldn't quite produce it, that they had an itch that they couldn't quite properly scratch. It was driving her a bit batty, she could admit it, if only to herself, and she was determined to, at a minimum, figure out just what the hell the stone cube was. In all the excitement, and then all her analysis of the object, she still had no idea what the point or purpose was. Even guessing that it was meant as a tool for training or a repository of runes for those attuned to spatial mana were just that, guesses, and she had a feeling they weren't very good ones. Several things about the object tickled several parts of her brain, and she just got this feeling that whatever the object was, it was meant for a lot more, or did a lot more, than just contain some lessons on runes and a very specific mana type.

Part of those assumptions were confirmed when she broke through the outer two layers of runes and found the third layer was entirely different. She was a little embarassed to admit it took her way longer than it should to figure out the third layer, but that was because she was still thinking of it like some kind of puzzle. That layer wasn't a puzzle at all, but was in fact a skill crystal. Well, calling it a skill crystal was a bit of a misnomer; it didn't function exactly the same way as a skill crystal, but the rune structure made up a network that, when assembled the right way in the body, would create a skill. A bit of an odd way to record a skill, and a tricky way to learn it, but there were all kinds of strange things out there and this was probably number three on the list just for that week. Sadly, after figuring what the layer was, both figuring out how to operate the skill, and how to breach to the next layer, took way longer than she had expected; so long they had more to do, and not of the Gold mission variety.

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