She made sure the door was shut firmly behind her before heading down through the main building and into the underworks under the arena. Her first stop was the commissary, where she purchased a ton, almost literally, of rations and supplies, as well as a handful of sets of clothes as the last two hundred and fifty days had not been kind to the ones she had bought a little while ago. After the purchase of rations and supplies from the commissary, she headed over across the underworks to the teleporters, taking a couple quick hops to arrive on her favorite governor-less world, Luttraine.

  She made her way across the capital after going through security screening at the CRA Hall and jogging out of the building. Her destination was, of course, the Seven Lights firm with the two workers she felt she had the best relations with so far, Alex and Selene. It also didn't hurt that Selene was a branch manager and someone apparently worthy of great respect, or fear, or both. She slowed down when she got to the building, walking into the lobby with a confident stride, seeing very few other people inside. That wasn't wholly untypical for the firm when it wasn't an auction day, and she didn't recognize the faces of any of the workers at the counter. She didn't have to wait to get one of those attendant's attention, asking to see either Alex or Selene and showing her Emerald Badge.

  "Ms. Alex is currently not present, ma'am. I'll see if the branch manager is available," the worker replied courteously when she saw the badge.

  "No problem," Beth said, leaning against the counter with her hip and waiting for the worker to do her thing.

  It was only a minute later when Selene showed up, Beth detecting just a hint of mild surprise in her eyes upon seeing her. She walked up to Beth and gave her a small bow, saying, "If it isn't Beth. What can we help you with?"

  "I came to ask about making some purchases," Beth explained. "We're currently doing some tasks on a world with a CRA Hall but not much else, so I figured if I had to teleport anyway to get back to civilization, I might as well stop by here."

  "Well, lovely, I'm so glad you thought of us," the greater demoness replied with a big grin. "Please, follow me."

  Selene led Beth up to the room she was well familiar with, even though she currently didn't have anything she was interested in selling. Selene was as casual as always, taking a seat across from Beth and propping her bare feet up on the desk, giving Beth a quite nice view directly up her skirt. Beth ignored the demoness' antics and settled back in her seat, crossing her legs at the ankle under the table and flicking her fingers at Selene, sending her three lists.

  "The beast cores are probably the easiest," Beth said. "Considering we have a stockpile of them, though not quite all we need of the tier four cores, I don't foresee them being a problem. Obviously, I know the weapons will be pricey, but I can eat that cost. It's all the other junk I'm worried about; hell, I couldn't even find a source that could properly explain what a drop of Ancient Ruler's Blood was without halfway contradicting itself."

  "Whew, you girls don't do anything in half measures," Selene muttered, leaning back in her chair and examining the lists. "I also notice you have three lists here."

  "Yeah, I have a new girlfriend who's traveling with us," Beth answered with a shrug. "She's a black dragon from the Milky Way's Black Dragon Clan, and she's void-aspected in terms of mana. She's also at the peak of her third rebirth, so we're all even."

  "Interesting," Selene muttered. "Information is always valuable. Information such as a certain valued customer of mine participating in an auction at a different auction house…"

  "Oh, yeah," Beth said with a nod. "We were on Tellahm briefly, and dealt a bit with Azael. He seemed nice enough, though we didn't get all that close."

  "Yes, I have access to the records," Selene said. "It seems you bring in quite a catch wherever you show up. Have anything interesting for me this time?"

  "Nope, sorry," Beth said with a shrug. "We've actually been burning through resources, though we've made a bit of money fighting here and there, but I don't have anything particularly interesting to show you. Maybe Sera, the dragon I mentioned, might have something, but she didn't indicate to me she wanted to sell anything, so I don't think so."

  "Shame," Selene drawled.

  "Oh, wait," Beth said, holding up a hand. "Sorry, I don't know that I want to sell it, but I do have one valuable thing that we wanted an expert to appraise. We weren't really sure what we had, and we've got details on everything else we've found lately."

  "Oh, interesting. Show me what you found," Selene said, sitting up slightly but still with her legs propped up on the table and spread wide.

  "It's this," Beth said, taking out the orchid, ready to make it disappear if it blasted her right away. It didn't do anything, however, sitting rather calmly on her palm while very small sparks of lightning mana danced around it. Selene made a come-hither gesture with a single finger and the orchid floated up out of Beth's hand and across the room right onto Selene's palm. She carefully examined it, taking more than just a few moments, her eyes lighting up, enough power radiating just from her eye skill that Beth could feel it as a physical sensation.

  "It's a Crying Void Orchid," Selene said after a minute, floating the flower back to Beth. "I don't know what kind of crazy luck you have to find such good stuff, but it's an extremely valuable plant. The one you have is mature, though not that old, and would go for at least a few mithril coins, if not a little more. It's a dual-aspected void lightning and water treasure with a ton of uses in almost every field, though an Alchemist would start drooling over the prospect of using it in one of their many brews."

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  "Oh, whoa, dual void lightning and water?" Beth asked, eyes widening and looking at Selene with a heavily arched brow.

  "Yes dear, is something wrong?" Selene asked, puzzled by Beth's expression.

  "Oh, no, it's just I know someone who has both of those as their mana aspects," Beth explained.

  "Oh, well, that's almost perfect," Selene said. "That orchid is a good enough material to be used as the basis for a potion or elixir to do a number of things, including increasing any skills they have related to that by quite a bit, or even increasing their humanization, if they happen to be a sapient beast."

  "Wow, I'll be sure to get it to them," Beth said with a grin.

  "It will require a very skilled alchemist," Selene cautioned. "Don't even take that to a Grandmaster, would be my advice. At least, if it were me, and I know I have a bit of a warped view after all these years, but I'd take it to a Sage, at minimum. I just wouldn't trust even a skilled Grandmaster to be able to create something truly exceptional with it and trust me, that ingredient has the potential for something really good. Shame it isn't a bit older, or I'd make you a quite good offer on it myself, as I could definitely resell something with a lot of age."

  "Is age that important?" Beth asked with a small frown.

  "Yes, of course," Selene nodded vigorously. "With both herbs and natural treasures, age is a big factor. Natural treasures are their own little thing, but let's just talk herbs. For an herb, the first qualification is whether or not it's mature. To really delve into it, you should yourself be an Alchemist, or have an experienced Alchemist with you, but it's a big fuck-up to harvest an immature plant. After a plant reaches maturity, the second factor is how long it's been in that state. The longer a plant has to grow and absorb mana, the more potent it becomes. That's also affected by the third big factor, which is environment. The better the environment the herb has grown and matured in, the more potent it will be as it ages."

  "Good to know; shame we don't have an Alchemist with us," Beth said with a small sigh.

  "You should try to have people either with you or that you can very easily contact that cover all the basic professions," Selene said mildly.

  "Yeah, we've got two Smiths and a Leatherworker, so we're a bit lopsided right now," Beth said with a rueful grin.

  "At much higher levels, you won't need to worry about an Enchanter quite as much, which you'll see as you train your crafting skills," Selene said. "But, you should really either have one of you train in Alchemy or get an Alchemist to join your little party. They're just so valuable for so many reasons, even if you have the wealth to always be buying alchemical aides."

  "Noted, but I think we'll have to just work that out over time," Beth said. "I heard Alex isn't available, speaking of not having people; nothing wrong, I hope?"

  "Oh no, not anything bad," Selene said with a light laugh. "She's taking a bit of time off from Firm work to focus on leveling. She's gotten a bit antsy lately and has put a bigger focus on hitting her next rebirth and even pushing further beyond that."

  "Oh, well, that's rather good to hear," Beth said. "Shame you have to be here instead of with her. Sorry about that."

  "It's neither here nor there," Selene said, waving her right arm lazily in a dismissive gesture. "Alex is still a bit behind me, which is another thing motivating her. We've got some time while I have my attention split on several other things where she can make a hard push to catch up, so I'm taking care of my business while she grows stronger."

  "That's nice, that you two work so well together," Beth said with a big smile. "Anyway, how about we get back to the lists?"

  "Yes, right, I've been running some searches in the background while we chatted," Selene said. "The drop of blood, by the way, is from a beast or monster that has both the ruler and ancient appellation, though it's only a chance to harvest one from the creature's heart right after you kill it."

  "Oh, I see. I read something about it having to be a beast that ruled over other beasts," Beth said.

  "Ah, yeah, there's some bad info out there," Selene said. "Then again, there are a lot of strange and unusual things; you just have to be cautious and analytical. It also doesn't hurt to have a network of much stronger, more experienced people to rely on to gather information."

  "Hey, I've got you, don't I?" Beth asked with a bit of a cheeky grin.

  "Hmm, true," Selene replied with just a touch of a smirk. "The rest of your items, specifically, I can get my hands on within a few days, provided you can pay. Your little pup is also in luck, as I can get everything she needs within about a week through the firm, though it will be a bit pricey. Then we come to your new lady love…"

  "I don't like the sound of that," Beth said with a deep sigh.

  "Void stuff is rare and highly valued," Selene explained. "The availability is quite low, and the price is quite steep. Not that I can't get the materials, but it will take more time and be more expensive, even if we wait quite a while for a great deal."

  "How much are we talking?" Beth asked, steeling herself for bad news.

  "Hmm, not less than a mithril," Selene said, making Beth wince. "And that's just for the little lizard girl."

  "Fuck. And how much for the other stuff?" Beth asked, still in the same wince.

  "About ninety diamond coins," Selene replied off-handedly. "And keep in mind, I'm giving you somewhat rough estimates."

  "Shit, that stings. And this is only rebirth four!" Beth cursed.

  "It doesn’t get any easier, or cheaper, as you keep going up," Selene returned with a shake of her head and a small grin. "Just wait 'til your rebirths need more than just a small list of crafting materials to progress. You'll be in some real pain then, and that's also when people start making choices to skip the True Rebirth, and sometimes even the Perfect Rebirth. That's another reason why there is such an insane power range at Ascended; you've got all kinds of different people doing rebirths at all kinds of different stages and levels. Really muddles up the whole playing field a lot."

  "I knew that Ascended covers a lot of territory," Beth said. "So, obviously there's going to be a big variance, but I didn't quite think about just how much difference there could be just with different rebirth standards."

  "Yes, it's quite a lot," Selene nodded. "But, that's still a long way off; not something you need to worry about right now."

  "That's true," Beth said with a chuckle. "So, you think you could get everything within two weeks?"

  "Haha, I'll try, little lady," Selene said with a smirk. "But, I can't guarantee anything. I'll contact you once I've got everything."

  "Thanks, Selene, you're always such a big help," Beth said, getting up from her chair while the demoness smiled.

  "I always try," Selene replied, standing and coming around to escort Beth out. Selene opened the door for her and then placed a hand on the small of her back as she walked out, following behind her and keeping her hand there. Beth didn't say anything, not bothered if the demoness felt like getting just a bit handsy. Selene walked her back down to the lobby, letting go of her right before they walked out with a gentle caress of her fingertips.

  "You know how to contact me," Beth said in the lobby.

  "Indeed. And do bring that little dragon lady of yours with you next time," Selene said.

  "Well, she's not so little, but I’ll bring her along," Beth said with a smile before heading out of the lobby, waving above her head as she left.

  She headed back across town, steering around the capitol building…no need to go arresting any governors today. She slipped into the CRA Hall and down to the teleporter room, giving the person on duty a nod as she set up a teleport back to where Sera and Blood were. The teleport took about a minute to happen, the distance and quality of the teleporter big factors in the speed. She was stopped by the person watching the teleporter, even though she had just been there an hour ago, and submitted her emblem for inspection before heading back up through the building to their room.