Beth passing her combat exam, and quite easily, meant that they just had one more piece to go, which was a review of their equipment. It wasn't a place that people were failed, per se, as stopping someone from reaching Gold because they didn't have enough wealth wasn't something the CRA really did. Beth's group had it easy, as they all had spatial items or powers and they all had a good set of armor and weapons. The inspection took just a few minutes, and, unlike for other candidates, the examiners didn't really have any suggestions for how to quickly improve their gear. Two of the examiners even said Beth's crazy gauntlets, which she could now use thanks to Selene having gotten her some level requirement reduction equipment that she had applied to the gauntlets, were better than anything those examiners had.

With the equipment review not even producing any notes for them to take into account, Baelvyr went through the process of upgrading all four of their emblems from Silver to Gold. Once that was done, he told them to get back to work and went off to drink with the examiners somewhere out of sight. Beth and her team, meanwhile, returned to the suite, informing Bjorn and Val that they had all passed, and Bjorn gave them a look like that was an obvious statement. Now that they were done with that, their next big goal was reaching Enlightened, which they were getting pretty close to. Well, except for Val, who was a little behind them in terms of rebirths. She was at the peak of rebirth six right now, but she had an advantage over all but Beth, as she had made her Mana Physique already, which meant there was a lot less pressure on her. The others were all at the peak of rebirth seven, ready to do their eighth rebirth, and they would do that rebirth and then level a little more slowly for a little to try to help Val catch up.

Doing another rebirth, another True Rebirth, meant gathering materials, however, so it wasn't something they could all just pop off right now. Val had most of her materials already and, considering her family connections, she was going to be getting the rest very quickly. The rest of them weren't quite as well positioned, though Bjorn always seemed to have most of what he needed already at hand. Val would be able to rebirth very quickly and start catching up, even catch up quite a bit, before the rest had all their materials ready. Beth also put out some feelers through her network for anybody that had or could source anything they needed, which would take a little while to come up with any results. In the meantime, they could look around a little themselves, but they were a bit stuck with what they could do until they had all the materials.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending entirely on one's perspective, Jaq showed up with a mission for them. It wasn't exactly an official mission…well, they would be getting mission credits for a Gold mission each if they helped him, but it was more about what he wanted them to do. He had found, with all his scanning and instruments, an anomaly, one that he wanted the group to back him up while he explored. He considered them to all basically be half-step Enlightened, even if only Beth and Val had Mana Physiques, but that was just how strong their group was overall. A group of six that were all close to early Enlightened in strength led by an Ascended would be more than enough for what Jaq intended. And what he had intended was pretty big, as it turned out their destination wasn't on Earth at all.

"You want us to go where? To do what?" Beth asked him again, blinking at him in a confused manner.

"I was rather clear the first time," Jaq said, a tinge of exasperation in his tone. "I will make a Gold mission for you to join me in an exploration delve into the atmosphere of the planet you call Jupiter, where I have found a derelict starship. We will figure out what that starship is, where it came from, and what it is doing hidden in the atmosphere of that planet."

"And how come nobody every figured this out before?" Beth asked, narrowing her eyes.

"The ship is not only deep in the atmosphere, which your people never really probed that deeply or completely, but it is also cloaked with mana," Jaq replied sourly. "It is no surprise that nobody detected it before now. Even my instruments took over two months to confirm that there was something more than an anomaly there."

"And how confident in these, uh, 'instruments' are we now?" Sera asked, exchanges glances with several of the others.

"Quite," Jaq replied shortly. "If there's nothing else, pack up. We're leaving."

"Give us a damn minute, Jaq," Beth retorted. "The ship's been there, what, hundreds of years? We can take an hour to get ready without it suddenly flying away."

"More like a million years, but yes," Jaq said, adjusting his beret before turning very precisely on his heel. "Meet me in the garage in one hour."

He then left and everyone looked at each other. "What do we need to get ready?" Val asked then.

"Nothing, but I just wanted to make him wait," Beth said, laughing.

"You shouldn't poke him like that," Sera chided, but Beth could tell from her near-laughing tone that she really didn't mean it.

They did have a couple things to pack and get ready, which took about ten minutes, but they still dragged everything out for the full hour before heading down to the garage. Jaq was waiting there with his hovertruck, which the rest packed into, Bjorn sitting on the floor in the extended area of the cab that had the small workbench in it. The rest took seats around him or up front with Jaq, who started the truck as soon as they were all in and drove it out of the garage before practically pointing the nose straight up and taking off. The inertial dampeners were powerful enough that they didn't even feel the change in orientation or acceleration, though it was a little disorientating to look outside and watch the land dropping away.

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The speed at which Jaq accelerated them to had them covering many miles in short order, bringing them to their destination rapidly. That destination wasn't Jupiter, of course, but was a ship that was hovering in orbit. Beth got a good look at it as they pulled up to it, finding that it was a very sleek number, a good bit larger than her airship, but she wasn't comparing sizes. They circled around the ship to get to a small dock where Jaq parked the truck, giving Beth a good view of the engines as they passed. There were two large nacelles on the left and right at the rear along with two smaller nacelles nestled between them at the top and bottom. Just from looking at it and feeling it, it was a lot more output than her ship, meaning this thing could likely go a lot harder and faster than her ship.

That was proved true a minute later after they parked, Jaq leading them aft and up to the bridge which was nestled a few decks down within the ship. When Jaq took the captain's chair and got them moving, the ship leapt away from Earth's atmosphere like a charging stallion. They were off beyond Luna in a few minutes or less, the acceleration way beyond anything Beth's ship was capable of achieving. The ship's feel was incredibly smooth, too, with the whole thing feeling no different than them sitting back in the suite and talking about the weather. Blood was beside herself, going over everything on the bridge with a fine toothed comb, wanting to know about all of it, particularly the ship's specs.

"It's a Stardust Industries Light Cruiser," Jaq said. When that didn't explain anything, he sighed and continued, "It's equipped with a Type 3 stardrive that allows for rapid navigation of interstellar distance, which has my own personal modifications added in on top. It has mana-forged orichalcum armor plating, a main battery of six heavy gauss turrets, and is capable of normative drive speeds of up to ten percent the speed of light. We won't be pushing it that hard but will, instead, be engaging the stardive after a few hours to do a 'skip jump,' as they're called, allowing us to surf the subspace medium for a minute and slingshot across the solar system. It will take two hours until we're at a safe distance to engage the drive, so get comfortable until then, and don't break anything."

Beth kind of regretted making Jaq hurry up and wait at this point, as she didn't know that they'd be waiting quite a while to get to the destination. The flight was quick enough, and Beth would suspect it was Jaq fucking with them if she didn't know he was generally such a serious person. They got to a point where they could do the jump and Jaq allowed Blood to walk through it, the wolf not quite having finished her starship license, but this could count as an hour of training towards it. The jump was so smooth when the wolf initiated it that it wasn't even noticeable from the bridge, the ship slipping into subspace without even a whisper and then sliding through the subspace with barely any indication. The transition back to regular space, somewhat near Jupiter, making Beth flash Jaq a suspicious glance, considering how close in they were. They needed only half an hour of flight to get to the edge of the atmosphere and Beth watched on as Jaq took them right into the chop, the ship not reacting in the slightest to harsh buffeting of Jupiter's atmosphere.

Jaq controlled the ship effortlessly, moving it to the location his scanning had identified some time before. The ship showed up on their scans when they were within just a few thousand feet, which was practically touching when one was talking about starships. When Jaq had just told them there was an old spaceship he wanted their help in exploring, he had kind of under sold it just a bit. The ship they were pulling alongside was the size of a small city, several miles across and more than a dozen miles long, with it being more than mile in height at the thickest part. And those numbers were just rough estimates based on what Beth was seeing; the whole thing could be even larger, and that was not even taking into account a ship of that size possibly have spatial enchantments on the inside.

"We're going to explore that?" Beth asked skeptically as they pulled alongside.

"Yes. Now, pay attention," Jaq said, bringing them in to dock. The ship was so massive that Jaq's ship, which Beth had just been thinking of as fairly large, was swallowed up in one of the four hangar bays the derelict behemoth possessed.

"This is an exploratory mission," Jaq continued. "Old derelicts like this can be anywhere from relatively benign to extremely dangerous; places even Ascended have to be wary in. I don't expect, considering the six of you have managed to live this long and get this strong, that you'll be stupid about this, but then again, I always have the capacity to be surprised. We're simply interested in mapping the ship out to discover what it is and what's in there. I don't expect it to be a dungeon, as that's somewhat rare with these cases, but that does not mean the place will be clear. I expect it to be crawling with beasts and monsters, likely highly strong ones to either survive making it here, or having spawned here from mana buildup. Any questions?"

"So, we can't take anything?" Beth asked, thinking of the loot first and foremost.

"You can take things, just be careful. This is an old ship of an unfamiliar design, likely with unfamiliar technology. My best advice is, as always, don't touch it if you don't know what it does. There's no rush, whether this place is a dungeon or not. I suspect this ship has been here a very, very long time; it's not going to suddenly go somewhere as soon as we start investigating it," Jaq answered.

"Anything we should be aware of, apart from the beasts?" Val asked.

"If none of you have done a ship exploration before…?" he asked, letting the question trail off. Everyone shook their head no, so he continued, "Then, the biggest things to be careful of are the capacitors and the drive system. If you see anything like these images, or detect massive buildup or potential of electricity or mana, be extremely careful."

He sent them several image sets highlighting what many standard capacitor and supercapacitors looked like. He then said, "Anywhere with an unusual mana concentration could be especially dangerous. If you find that there's something leaking, or there's a buildup of any kind of mana or substance that shouldn't be there, again indicating a leak, come find me if I'm not with you. Leaking things on a starship are never good, and anything that could leak in a high concentration is likely to be extremely dangerous, including extremely volatile. Any other questions?"

"I think we've got it," Beth said, looking over the rest of her team. Nobody countered that, so Jaq nodded before leading the way off the ship.

They left Jaq's ship through a side door, heading down a ramp into the massive cavern of the first hangar. Well, Beth didn't know if it was the first hangar, but it was the first hangar they were investigating on the derelict. Beth noted how the whole place was very, well, ship-like, in terms of spaceships. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all made of either metal or plastic panels, with strips of lighting along the walkways and large overhead lights strung up at even intervals. The place was cold, but it wasn't disturbed by Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere outside, as the hangar was kept sealed by some kind of force barrier. It wasn't strong enough to stop Jaq's ship from pushing through, but it was able to retain atmosphere and keep the wild atmosphere of the planet the ship was sailing around locked out.

Jaq led the team over to a set of doors, a set of heavy emergency doors that could seal the hangar off from the rest of the ship. Jaq spent a handful of seconds manipulating a set of controls by the door before it flashed green and orange and opened with a slight hiss. The hallway behind the door was quite plain, more of the ubiquitous panels covering the structure and more lights along the edges of the floor and even spaced in recesses in the ceiling. The hallway wasn't any different than the hangar, including in temperature, a level that might have been lethal for Beth a few years ago without many layers and even heated layers of clothing, but now she was just in her CRA clothes and her armor and was totally fine. The rest of the group was clearly scanning the surroundings and coming up with nothing of interest, so she turned to Jaq.

"Anything so far?" she asked.

"Well, that might be something," he replied, pointing to the end of the corridor where it split off in a T-intersection and at which point, slowly lumbering into view, was something that looked like a bear walking on its hind legs and plated in heavy mana steel armor all over.

"Oh, that. Yeah, that's a something," Beth said, watching as the beast orientated on them and let out a low growl.

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