She needed to make an inquiry sometime about some better books for studying some of this, runes in particular. She did remember that Lyrissa had recommended some things, and sent her a book that she had said would be useful. She had worked through most of Lyrissa's book already, but now it was time to look through her recommendation list. That led to her starting to run into books that weren't just available for free and, while a gold coin for a copy of a book would have made many people's eyes bleed, Beth didn't even flinch when downloading a couple new reference books.

  She got more focused on the books for four or five days, spending a lot of very comfortable time in Sera's lap while stroking the snoring Blood and reading books. She was doing more of the same, as well as encouraging Sera to scratch her stomach, Beth's skin hard enough that a light clawing felt rather good, when she got a call on her communicator. At first, she thought it was Selene, since it had been quite a few days, but looking at the ID she saw it was her father.

  "Dad, what's up?" she asked, answering the call and minimizing her book to the side.

  "It's been some time, daughter of mine, and we were a bit worried," Thomas replied.

  "Yeah, sorry, we were in a dungeon for, uh, four weeks there and got out a week ago, or a little more," Beth replied a bit sheepishly.

  "Well then, I guess I can wish you a combined happy birthday, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year," he said.

  "Oh shit, did I miss all that?" Beth asked, rather alarmed and somewhat embarrassed.

  "Yes, dear, you missed all three of those things. Rather surprised we didn't hear anything from you on your birthday," he answered.

  "Well, I already kinda stopped keeping track," Beth said, subconsciously shrugging, which got a raised brow from Sera. "Father," she said to the dragon, pointing at her ear. Luckily, she was able to speak out loud and not transmit it, just like she had been speaking internally and not alerting Sera and Blood that she was on a call.

  "You're not that old yet, Beth," her father had said in the meantime.

  "Well, I never cared too much, and I sorta am," Beth replied. "I've spent some time in time compression, which I think I've mentioned before? That means I'm actually, ironically, closer to your age now than to my 'actual' age group's age."

  "Well, that's…uh, something," Thomas replied, quite unsure of what was an appropriate response.

  "Eh, it's fine," Beth said with a grunt. "Sorry about missing Christmas; I'll be back in a little while, maybe a couple months, and bring everyone some stuff then."

  "It's not a big deal, Beth. As long as you're doing alright, then we're happy," Thomas said.

  "Well, I'm doing really well, and so is Blood," Beth replied. "We're taking care of, uh, some business right now, but really we're taking a break. We've got some stuff that we need that we ordered that we're waiting to be ready, and we can't do anything without that stuff right now."

  "I see. And is this some kind of thing with the CRA or something?" he asked.

  "No, it's, uh, a job from that guy I told you guys about. And the stuff we ordered we did through a trading firm. Funnily enough, the CRA is only involved in that we're staying at a CRA Hall right now," Beth explained.

  "Well, just make sure to stay safe out there with whatever it is you're involved with," Thomas said. "Your mother and sisters are doing fine, by the way. Though we haven't heard from Soph in a little bit; she's almost as forgetful about having a phone as you are."

  "Point taken," Beth replied a bit deadpan.

  "As long as you're aware," he replied, though mildly. "Your mother has been fighting a bit more recently; she's really showing me up in our old age. Apart from her, we have a few other older members of the community who are doing well, but it really is the kids that took to it. You remember the neighbor kids next door? They're all rather accomplished fighters in their own rights, taking down quite a few beasts on their own every week."

  "What are people levels looking like?" Beth asked, leaning back into Sera as she listened to her father ramble.

  "Well, we've had more than a dozen people break through past level one hundred now, and I have to say, these Presence things really change the whole game. They're terribly draining to use, but we've started to get the hang of it at this point. We've had a number of people join the CRA with those Copper Emblems as well, so we've gotten some better training. Not a lot of people like to go down there and fight, I have to say, so I think that's probably our biggest weakness. In fact, I can say that's our biggest weakness, considering some of the fights we've had recently," he said.

  "What happened? Do you need me to come back sooner?" Beth asked, concern evident in her voice.

  "The situation on Earth mostly stabilized for a while, but things have gotten a little hairy some places. Some people were just not in a good position for a long time and decided that they should try to take what they needed from others. We've had a few individuals, and a couple groups, attack the town, and we've had to…well, deal with them. It wasn't pretty," he explained quietly.

  "Sorry that you guys have had to deal with that," Beth replied.

  "It's the world we live in now, sweetie," he said. "As long as you kids don't have to deal with too much of it, we adults can handle it."

  "Well, I haven't had to do too much in that direction, but it wouldn't be the first time," Beth replied, unable to help another physical shrug, only manage to press her shoulders deeper into Sera's chest.

  "Well, I would really prefer if you didn't have to, but sometimes the people are worse than the beasts," her father said with a sigh.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  "Enough with the lamenting; is there anything you guys really need, or even want, right now?" Beth asked, diverting the topic.

  "No, sweetie, I think we're pretty good. We have food, water, shelter, power, and good defenses, as well as strong fighters. If you could get your hands on anything that could take our fighters to the next level, that would help the most. That, and anything you think we need with all your vast interstellar experience that we wouldn't even think of," he answered.

  "I have one or two ideas. I'll make sure to grab some stuff before I stop home the next time," Beth replied.

  "Alright, we'll look forward to your next visit, sweetie," he said.

  "I'll talk to you later, Dad," she said.

  "We love and miss you, Beth," Thomas said.

  "Miss you guys, too. Buh-bye now," she said before cutting the connection.

  "Good conversation?" Sera asked with just a slight facetious note in her voice, both eyebrows quirked ever so slightly.

  "Just family catchup," Beth said with another shrug. "Speaking of which, I need to go through a boatload of messages."

  "Any word?" grunted Blood from her position on the couch beside them.

  "Not on our stuff," Beth said, shaking her head.

  "Hmph," was Blood's very eloquent reply before re-arranging her arms and dozing back off.

  Beth had more messages to go through as she had been trying to keep up with messaging some of the others a little more. She exchanged text messages with Andrea fairly often, and had sent messages back and forth with some of the others, including the phoenix, Kris. She also messaged Val, which she assumed Blood was doing, but it never hurt to check in with someone personally. She read through the latest round of messages now and shot off a couple replies before returning to what she had been doing.

  She spent a lot of time reading, which she had always enjoyed, but this was not just random reading for fun and instead was studying. That was a bit less fun, in her humble opinion, and she did have to take a few breaks, whether to do a bit of fighting, or to open up the gate to her residence area and use the forge. Her smithing skills still needed a lot of work, and the overall skill itself was still rather low, but she was still able to make some basic things, enjoying spending some time manipulating some metal. She had her own forging hammer, and she had bought some other relatively cheap tools including some tongs and clamps that she kept in the forge room. It was nice to have her own place, with her own tools; it just made the environment and the work itself feel like hers in a way that renting space in a CRA Hall didn't.

  A few more days went by, Beth continuing to take it as easy as she could, still doing more than the other two lazy bones. Sera couldn't just lay around fulltime, either, but she still spent the vast majority of her time in the room doing or working on very little. Blood laid on the couch until Beth forced her to get up and shower, returning to the couch afterwards and going right back to sleep. Or 'sleep,' as Beth suspected Blood was still up to a lot more than she let on while she was appearing to be dozing.

  Selene was fairly good to her word, as fifteen days after she had met with her, in the evening, she got a message from the demoness that everything was ready. She decided there was no time like the present, and so got up to head over and pick their goods up. She wanted to bring Sera with her as well, and she figured it might be good for Blood to leave the room for maybe the third time in two weeks. She picked the wolf up by the scruff as Sera was strolling to the door and set her on her feet, getting a lot of empty growling for her troubles, but Blood eventually put on a bikini top and a pair of loose shorts and walked out ahead of her. Beth made sure the room was secure before taking the lead, heading down to the teleporter room with the other two.

  After going through scrutiny on both ends, they made their way through the CRA Hall in Luttraine's capital and out into the mid-afternoon light. Not every planet or place was on the exact same time in terms of time zone, but everyone referenced a universal time to keep track. It had been almost exactly fifteen days by universal tracking since she had met with Selene, and she had left that meeting at something like lunch time, so it being early afternoon made sense. They moved to the Seven Lights firm, Sera observing the city as they quickly walked, commenting that it was a much nicer place than their current haunt. Any city with plants and some paint would be miles better, but this city itself was much nicer and more welcoming by comparison.

  Showing an attendant at the front her Emerald Badge got them immediate priority, and when she requested Selene, they didn't have to wait more than a handful of seconds. The tall, multi-winged demoness strode into the lobby after a few moments, quite a bit of sway in her walk as she zeroed in on Beth and her little group. She walked up to them quickly, definitely casting her eyes over all three of them, a small smirk showing on her lips as stopped in front of the group.

  "Welcome," Selene said. "I see you've brought the others."

  "Selene, Sera. Sera, Selene," Beth introduced them.

  "A pleasure," said the demoness, taking Sera's hand and exchanging contact details.

  "Beth's spoken very positively of you," Sera said with a grin.

  "I'm glad to have an aspiring young Wayfarer's confidence," Selene replied with a small smile. "But, come, let's go discuss what we have."

  Turning, she led the three of them through the Seven Lights building to the same room that they always used when discussing deals. She sat down across from the three of them, propping her bare feet up on the table. Beth watched Sera's face out of the corner of her eye and noticed that the dragon very clearly took a look, not hiding that she was peeping, nor did Beth miss the widening of Selene's grin at that. Beth just shook her head, grinning a little to herself at the overt display, but then again somebody with the kind of power Selene had could afford to act how she wanted.

  "So, your message said you had everything?" Beth asked once they were settled in.

  "I do indeed. It wasn’t all easy to find or get shipped here, but I've got everything all three of you need," Selene replied.

  "And the real question; what's our damage looking like?" Beth asked.

  "If that's a way of asking the price, it's just a bit over two mithril coins," Selene replied calmly. "The exact price is two mithril, four diamond, and fifty platinum coins."

  "It really does just keep getting more expensive," Beth said with a sigh in response. "But it's still tolerable."

  "It won't get too much worse before we hit rebirth ten," Sera said.

  "That's largely correct," Selene added. "At rebirth ten, you have to build your Mana Physique, and that alters the rebirths. The materials are all rarer, and often the list will include more things that have to be created. Your lists right now often rely on raw materials, but eventually they will have quite a few crafted items. The good thing is that some of those items can be substituted for other items; the bad thing is it often takes an expert to tell you what valid substitutions are as the Path doesn’t provide that information."

  "Sounds like a headache," Beth said with a shake of her head.

  "At the end of the day, money makes it easy," Selene said with a shrug. "Not that it doesn't still take time, but money can take care of everything else. It can even cut down on the time, but I often find it's not worth it."

  "I guess it depends on the situation," Beth said with a shrug.

  "Hmm, I find that if you're in a situation where spending more money to save a little time is worth it, you didn't plan or prepare well enough," Selene said.

  "What's the difference?" Beth asked.

  "In what?" Selene asked, not following right away.

  "Planning versus preparing," Beth answered.

  "Oh. If you plan well, you can account for the situation you're facing, even with odd variables. If you prepare well, it doesn't matter what happens, you'll have the resources and abilities to deal with it," Selene replied airily, lazily waving one hand while explaining.

  "Semantics," Blood growled, but didn't elaborate.

  "Right, anyway, let me pay," Beth said, making the coins appear. Selene made a neat assortment of items appear on the low table, including several random weapons for Beth, and made the coins disappear without them even moving. Beth sorted through the pile of goods, quickly realizing Selene had even split it into three groups, so it was just a matter of identifying her group. She picked up all her goods and made sure the other two each put their piles in their storage spaces before sitting back with a small sigh.

  "Everything satisfactory?" Selene asked.

  "Yeah, just means it's time to get back to work, but that's a good thing. Just doesn't feel real that we've made it so far already," Beth said.

  "Well, speak for yourself. I always thought I'd hit this point," Sera harrumphed, preening herself a bit in a way that wasn't really serious.

  "You're hopeless," Beth said with a small chuckle, interlacing her fingers with Sera's.

  "You two are cute," Selene commented.

  "We get that a lot," Sera replied, continuing with the preening. Beth shook her head, flushing a bit, while Blood rolled her eyes and slouched back in her chair, clearly getting ready to doze off.

  "Hey, don't sleep," Beth said, giving her a poke. "We need to get back and use this stuff."

  "And don't be strangers," Selene said as she rose and escorted them out. "You can stop by for a social call as well."

  "We'll have a lot more free time coming up. We might just take you up on that," Beth said with a smile.

  After Selene had seen them off, they were walking across the city when Sera said, "She's totally into you, by the way."

  "She's got somebody already," said Beth with a tilt of her head. "I think you might be just reading more into it than is there."

  "Oh no, trust me, I can tell," Sera said. "She looks at you the same way I do."

  "Oh, well, uh, I'm not really sure what to do with that," Beth said.

  "As long as her partner or partners are fine with it, you should go for it," Sera said as they walked into the CRA Hall.

  "That doesn't upset you?" Beth asked calmly but with an eyebrow hitting her hairline.

  "Only if you didn't at least try to score me an invite too," Sera said with a big grin.

  "You're insatiable," Beth muttered as they went through the teleporter.

  They got back to the Hall on Moldaine and made their way back to their room. It was time to use the items Beth had just shilled out a small fortune on, which would also signal it was time to get back to the grind. Personally, Beth was more than happy to have an excuse to get back to fighting, but she knew there would be at least some protest from the rest of the crew.