"So, plan?" asked Sera when they were in the room.

  "We should go use a training room," Beth said. "We'll do our rebirths, get ourselves sorted, and then grind some levels. We can rest for part of the day, but we should start this evening at latest. We'll grind levels for a week, objective time, that is, and then see where we're at."

  "Sounds like a plan," Sera nodded.

  "Fine," Blood growled.

  "Then let's get this done," Beth said, bouncing on her toes just a bit. She led the way back out of the suite and down into the underworks, where they took a training room and locked it out for an hour.

  "Ready?" Beth asked as she finished locking the door and leapt onto the training platform with the other two.

  "Sure," Sera said.

  Blood didn't even respond, just directly taking out her materials and starting her rebirth then and there. Beth scrambled to catch up, dumping everything from her necklace and starting her own process, seeing Sera mimic her from the corner of her eye. Energy quickly swirled around all three of them, mana gathering in the room in building waves. It wasn't very much different than what Beth had experienced several times now, other than she felt a greater sense of power and greater mana fluctuations from both Blood and Sera. Of course, they hadn't done a rebirth with Sera before, but the energy coming from her as the items swirled around her and dissolved into motes of mana was quite strong.

  The other thing Beth noticed was that there was a slight pull between her and Sera. It was difficult to describe, but as the energy began to fill their bodies and remold them, she felt a very deep connection to the dragon girl, like a string was stretched between them. It felt like she could sense Sera's emotions and feelings, though just very faintly, and she could feel in a strange way, some way beyond her physical senses, that the tall girl was sitting there. It was an interesting feeling, but the final part of her rebirth quickly distracted her, as the mana pushed into her body, remolding it and rebuilding her mana reservoir to be even larger and stronger. She could feel that it was more than twice its original size, probably somewhere around two and a half times the size it was when the Path first appeared on Earth if not slightly larger, providing her quite a bit of mana.

  That brief feeling of weakness and strangeness hit her, Beth having to adjust to her new, somewhat weaker body. The great thing that she discovered now was that her new stats at level one were so high that she didn't have to adjust to being incredibly weak. She wasn't dropping from a couple thousand stat points to a hundred, but from a few thousand to a thousand or so, which was not nearly as big of a swing. She was weaker than she had been a moment before, but she was still rather strong, and she would never experience undergoing a rebirth and being that weak ever again. She would still experience those low stats sometimes, including in stat-limited duels, but she would never again experience that feeling of having so little strength or speed that it felt like she could barely move.

  The last of the energies swirled around them and dissipated, with Beth the first to stand and test her current strength. She flexed a bit and then punched out, her fist producing a sharp snapping sound even though she didn't hit anything. Blood and Sera both stood up at the same time, with Sera flexing and twisting her body a bit before lashing out with her arms and legs in a few strikes, testing her current limits. Blood didn't even deign to do that, just waiting for the other two to be finished with their little tests before following the two out of the room and back up to their suite. Blood was clearly disinclined to care, slumping on the couch once they were back inside and passing out, but Beth and Sera both were going over their stat pages and reviewing their various changes.

  Beth sighed, seeing that she had way over a thousand points in STR at just level one. Talk about explosive growth; even when she had done her second rebirth, she had been sitting on only a couple hundred points in the stat. Now, her lowest stats, her INT and WIS, were more than her highest stat just after her second rebirth. It would only compound with time, assuming they continued to do True Rebirths, as they would continue to carry more and more stats over with each rebirth, also increasing their base values. Seeing Sera have one and a half thousand END at level one was also pretty shocking, and she knew the dragon's defenses and stamina would be crazy. Blood was a bit behind, though her DEX was still at an impressive level, but Beth wasn't particularly worried about her.

  "Blood will catch up this rebirth, right?" she asked Sera as she finished looking over their stat pages, sitting on the dragon girl's lap.

  "Yeah. We'll have to level at least once to be sure, but she should be getting more points than either of us every level," Sera replied. "She'll at least get just over thirty per level, and she might get even more."

  "It'll be more," Blood growled from beside them.

  "How do you know?" Beth asked with a small frown.

  "Instinct," replied Blood succinctly.

  "Don't question it too much," Sera interjected. "She's a genius and she has a good sense for these things."

  "I wish you'd stop calling this lazy ass a genius," Beth muttered, digging her fingers in as she scratched Blood's back.

  "Truth hurts," Sera muttered in reply, lightly scratching Beth while starting to watch the wallscreen.

  All too soon, it was time for them to get into action. Beth didn't have any qualms about setting the gate to level one hundred and one, the max she could make the starting beasts with her current control over the skill and its level. She figured they could start with a few quick kills, get a couple levels, and see about pushing much further out. Then, they could come back to the gate, exit, and she could reset it with the initial level much higher than one hundred one. She had it set to the most generic and boring grassland setting with the enemy as the ubiquitous goblin, something easy for them to tear through.

  Beth was a little surprised when they absolutely vaporized the first handful of enemies they fought, almost literally. She was so strong that at level three she punched a level one hundred and two enemy so hard, without a skill, that its torso blew apart, sending its four limbs and head flying off in different directions. The amount of experience at the lower levels needed to progress never increased, so fighting level one hundred and up enemies saw them getting levels insanely rapidly. So rapid, in fact, that they just sprinted for an hour to get out to a place with rather high-level enemies and slaughter them. After a couple hours of that, they turned around and ran back to the gate, leaping out and allowing Beth to reset it quickly. The new gate was up in just a minute, same configuration, and they were back in and after the higher levels again.

  They had to do the cycle one more time fairly quickly, running back out and back in. With the time dilation, only two hours had passed in objective time before they were on the third cycle of Beth's gate. This time they were able to dig in and fight for quite some time without running back out to reset the gate again. It was a cost-benefit with how long it would take to get to enemies that mattered as well as how long to run back to the gate versus resetting the gate and having stronger enemies right from the start. This third time they stayed in the gate for more than four days, which amounted to about ten hours in real time, leveling explosively. They didn't encounter any bottlenecks, and their speed barely slowed, even as they passed level fifty. In the end, they reached a shocking level of one hundred and ten. They did so well, in fact, that the eternal brawler and taskmistress, Beth, gave them a half a day of time off (unpaid, of course). This also let her get a little rest, as chain-opening the gate was still rather taxing for her, and a bit of R&R allowed her to handle the strain and refresh her soul a bit for the next time.

  In hindsight, it should have been obvious they would start thrashing the lower levels this quickly, considering their stat growth and skill levels, but Beth hadn't expected they would be quite that strong. It looked like, rather than seventy days, they'd be closer to seventeen days to get to that level two hundred mark she had set for them. This was also with them proceeding at a slightly milder pace then what they had been doing, taking a bit of time every now and then to rest or even sleep. They weren't just fighting for fifty hours straight with only a piss break during the whole time, meaning it wasn't as tough on Sera or Blood's mental state as it certainly could have been.

  The days flew by until they had hit the desired level, Beth leading them back out of her gate and straight to the bathroom, though they weren't nearly as bad as they had been at times in the past. They showered and bathed, quite luxuriously, before turning in for the night and getting a full night's sleep in a comfortable bed. Early the next morning, after they had eaten an inordinate amount and gotten prepped for the day, they were a bit at odds of where to go next.

  "I think we should just go for it," was Beth's vote, which didn't seem popular.

  "I think we should rest," said Sera, getting a firm acknowledgement from Blood.

  "We can rest in the airship," Beth tried, but saw the other two remained wholly unconvinced.

  "Look, fine, we still have plenty of time, so today's a rest day for everyone," Beth said. Sera cheered while Blood stretched out fully on the couch and went to sleep. "Like the enthusiasm, just not the direction."

  "Come on, sit here," Sera said, sitting on the couch and patting her large lap firmly.

  "Of course," Beth said, walking over and sitting on Sera's very thick thighs. "You have any other plans, or is sitting and staring at the screen it?"

  "I'm reading something," Sera replied, rolling her eyes with a touch of exasperation but also chuckling slightly.

  "Picture books don't really count," Beth shot back, getting a light swat on her thigh in response, though it wasn't enough to even slightly redden her skin.

  "I can send you one of those, since I know you like them so much," Sera returned after the light slap, showing all her fangs in a wide grin.

  "I'm more interested in finding out if you can focus on reading while I kiss you," Beth replied, fully turning around to lock lips with the tall girl. Sera tried to speak, winding up mumbling something into Beth's mouth that she just ignored, but she also knew the dragon girl was into it since she had pulled Beth tighter as soon as their lips touched.

  Beth let herself be distracted for a large part of the day, doting on Sera a bit as the tall girl ran her hands over Beth and caressed her. She did do a few errands, some of them while kissing, as she was able to order things on her communicator while otherwise occupied. She still really marveled at the devices; a computer embedded into not just her body but her mana pool that let her manipulate screens in her vision. Of course, the units cost what would be an arm and a leg for most people, but they were still beyond incredible pieces of technology. She had also just scratched the surface of what hers could do, but she hadn't had the time or motivation to investigate its ability to deep dive. She was brought out of her thoughts when there was a knock on their suite door and she could hear footsteps walking away.

  "Who?" asked Sera.

  "Deliveries," Beth said with a chuckle, slipping over and checking the hall with that wonderous device she had just been pondering. Seeing that the hall was empty, she opened the door and grabbed the small stack of packages, making them disappear into her necklace.

  "What's that?" Sera questioned, watching as Beth walked back over to the couch.

  "Got the stuff for Blood and I to condense our resistance skills," Beth explained.

  "Oh, good. We can work on those after we get this stuff done," Sera said with a smile.

  "What I was planning on," Beth nodded as she settled back in the tall girl's lap.

  "More work," Blood grumbled from beside them, subsiding with some petting from the other two.

  "We oughta get some sleep and get ready," Beth said.

  "Sounds like a plan," Sera said with a little chuckle, picking Beth up so she could stretch out on the couch.

  "Guess it's bedtime," Beth said as she settled on top of her, the dragon's hands covering her back, butt, and thighs.

  "Couple hours," Sera muttered, closing her eyes as she gave Beth a squeeze.