Elder Cultivator

The major limiting factor on how the Spirit Slicing Sect could grow was whether or not they could get access to voidsteel. It was necessary for their techniques to gain full effectiveness, but it was not a durable material which meant that mistakes even from high ranking practitioners could often result in shattered blades. Reforging such weapons only worked to a certain extent, as eventually voidsteel lost its properties. Advanced mining capabilities had allowed them to process known stores more effectively- pure tech mining aids and advanced body tempering training for their miners had vastly shortened the time required to extract the veins they were aware of. With responsible use, they would be able to last several centuries- and that was including selling off some amount of it to other specialists. In short, they were now less tied down to certain planets. Currently, they were scouring the border worlds for more void ore, as that would provide a proper excuse for their future movements. They could even pick a planet that wasn’t normally habitable, either settling elsewhere in the system or trying to transform it to suit their needs. Cultivators did that sort of thing all the time, but usually they lacked a certain sort of precision. Sects would set up formations around a particular zone to create perfect conditions, which meant everything would collapse when the maintenance stopped or the energy dried up. The Alliance came with various methods to create long term stable planets. It was more work for more reward. The sects still might not have been willing or able to make that leap, but the Lower Realms Alliance had volunteered their expertise. They would be managing the other side of the border, after all. That was the very reason they would be going to the border instead of trying to flee the area entirely. It wasn’t possible for everyone to just uproot ancient sects… but when the alternative was potential extermination once people forgot their fear of either the void ants or the Exalted Quadrant, then people were willing to put in the effort. They weren’t trusting people untested. The Scarlet Alliance had come through time after time. Many of their people had come from the same planets that would be sending aid. There were some details that needed to be taken care of- like hiding the true nature of what was happening until they were settled properly- but much of the secrecy would actually be done out in the open. Hiding things was difficult. But if you let people know you were hiding something and then revealed some portion of the truth, they were usually willing to accept that as the whole story and then stop looking. So they were going to accidentally reveal how they had found some resource rich planets. That would be true, though perhaps not in the same way as some people would consider them. There were always resources like minerals to be found, but the best of them typically existed on planets with high quantities of energy. It wasn’t like the upper realms lacked planets, just ones that were valuable at a glance. Why would anyone spend a century making a planet livable when there was already one far better? Even the Spirit Slicing Sect had that attitude much of the time. However, when thinking deeply about the future, even surviving to the next century in the wrong location seemed like a difficult bet. ----- Aconite was having a slight problem thinking of an anchor that would act like she wanted that didn’t risk killing… everyone. Though realistically, even her most widespread options wouldn’t go that far. At most, all of the Scarlet Alliance would die if things went bad. Not that that was better than everyone. In fact, it was far worse because it would only kill the people she cared about. That was why she was thinking very hard, and studying various options. There were a few things to consider about what other people might think about her project, of course. People might not want to house some sort of poison in their bodies. Yet humans were totally fine with bacteria, which were like poisons. Except they weren’t always fine with that. Like when it hurt them. And if she was going to make one that spread to everyone, it kind of had to not hurt people. To spread and grow, but not too much. So maybe she should think about some other sort of microscopic anchor. Aconite had no idea if her parents would be suited to make an anchor. Domination was a path for human cultivators, but Aconite hadn’t acted like a wolf for the majority of her life now. Not that she disliked her heritage, but she cultivated in her own way. An anchor was right for her. Or a whole lot of them. Tiny particles of some sort that would be everywhere. A powder, or maybe a gas. She didn’t need a big anchor. Though of course, she didn’t exactly know how it would work. Maybe if she made tiny anchors, people would only need to find one to destroy her whole cultivation. That would be a risk. She could only rely on her intuition, as she doubted that such a path already existed. Certainly, nobody who would be willing to share cultivation advice practiced such a method. Most of the Domination cultivators were their enemies. At least they had one more now. That meant, depending on whether they counted Chidi, they had three or four. Much more comfortable. But just because Hoyt failed and Prospero succeeded, the others weren’t going to stop trying to advance. Everyone had their own reasons beyond protecting the Alliance, and the threat of death wasn’t a deterrent that had stopped cultivators in the past. ----- Taking a ship between realms didn’t negate the energy disconnect. Long-term operations were difficult, as every expenditure of energy opened up the cultivator to the world around them, draining their incompatible energy. The main benefit of the ships was that by not relying on either upper or lower energy, they wouldn’t randomly stop working halfway across the border. A cultivator flying under their own power would also be drained quite rapidly once outside their native realm. Despite having been a sect head in the lower realms once, Prospero had not ascended. It clearly hadn’t weakened his cultivation to a significant extent- he had the proper experience necessary with some memories from his first life. However, it was an important distinction because it meant his current body had not undergone the same sort of transformation. That made adapting to lower energy a bit more difficult. As a Domination cultivator, he was in an even more awkward state than others might be. He had a constant flow of Domination energy from his anchor, and fully replacing that with lower energy wasn’t quite possible. In short, he had a limited amount of time it was reasonable to stay in the lower realms. With low activity he could manage a few years- and he did. But eventually it was time for him to say goodbye to his old friend once more- though hopefully not for too long. Anton escorted him all the way to the border. Prosper could have pretended it was for him, but he’d seen Akrys. The meerkats were adorable. “Have you figured out where you fit in?” Anton asked. Prospero nodded slowly. “Yes. I must take an active role in things. Catarina has many ways to help build up the Alliance. Timothy is an excellent guardian. Sometimes, you need someone to go on the attack.” Prospero shrugged, “Or they might need some planets moved. I should be much better at that now. There’s no reason to restrict myself to only violence. I just know it will be necessary.” “I would suggest you go help out the western group, if you wouldn’t stick out like an extremely powerful sore thumb.” It would be better for them if they simply chose to leave their region entirely, but Anton understood why they would want to remain nearby. That was their home. Leaving behind planets was already a tough decision. Hopefully, they would be able to secure their own safety and perhaps reclaim those locations eventually. Not that they’d lost everything yet, but it was inevitable. “An intriguing idea,” Prospero agreed. “But there’s more than enough for me to do in the Scarlet Midfields, once we’re ready to show my presence. Now then, I believe there’s a box with my name on it ready to ship me back.” The levity in his voice was a great chance after his arrival. Anton knew it wasn’t entirely genuine, but people didn’t simply recover from the deaths of loved ones in a short time. Single digit quantity of years wasn’t even good enough for those who’d been with family for mere decades. That is, if people ever truly got over it. Anton didn’t think anyone should forget, just accept it. ----- An alarm rang inside Leonid’s head, and while he couldn’t say he was glad for it, at least it was going off. That meant it probably wasn’t an Everheart incident. That Shelach fellow had died, so there wasn’t anything he was particularly concerned about in terms of security. He could proudly say that the archives were safe from anyone below Domination. Not that he had much to do with it. He merely happened to be around. He reported the alarm to Timothy first, just in case. Then he joined security watching some monitors. “... They absolutely don’t know about thermal cameras,” the head of security commented. Rahela was pretty much equally ranked with Leonid. She didn’t have to include him in any security issues, and he was mainly brought in case security had to take certain measures and she wanted to consult him on preservation of sections. Cultivator fights inside buildings could get rather messy. Leonid nodded. “They’re excellently concealed from energy sensors. Invisible. I’d bet their scent is controlled as well. The only question is if they’re a distraction.” Rahela pondered for a few moments. “If so, they’re not that well prepared. We’ll be locking things down now that we’ve noticed someone. And while it’s not that hard to control body temperature, reaching ambient temperature without energy fluctuations isn’t simple. And they’re actually far closer than it appears.” “How’d they get in there?” Leonid asked. “Did they slip through after someone?” That was far easier than passing a barrier without harming it. “Guard shift change,” Rahela confirmed. “These two noticed a disturbance, though, and reported it. I’m glad we’ve gotten the sensitivity of these things correct now. People would be prone to ignore the alarms if they were too eager. Can you tell where they might be heading?” “Let’s see… that’s either the tech archive or the secret archive.” “One of the secret archives,” Rahela suggested. “If there were multiple secret archives, I certainly wouldn’t admit it,” Leonid said. He actually hoped there were more he didn’t know about. There were things he shouldn’t have access to, even from a distance. “Are you going to… stop them?” “The deeper they get, the harder it is for them to get out. And we’ve got extra sweeps searching for extras. Either way, we’ve got a patrol about to accidentally bump into them.” “Will they be able to handle them?” Leonid asked. “We don’t have a readout for their cultivations.” “If the formations here can’t completely shut them down, I’m hitting the button,” Rahela gestured. “If Catarina taking active control and Timothy shielding the guards isn’t enough… then they wouldn’t have gotten caught. But we should be able to handle them.” She was right, of course. The patrolling guards accidentally bumped into them, the sneaking cultivators finding it difficult to dodge out of the way rapidly while still using stealth techniques. And their energy was locked down a moment later as the formations were activated by Rahela. Many systems were manually targeted, as automatic systems were generally easier to exploit. They were fairly quickly revealed to be spies from the Exalted Quadrant. There would always be some of those within the Alliance as a whole- it was merely about managing what information they could get access to. Public knowledge was pretty much impossible to hide without lying to their own citizens, which wasn’t worth it. The same was true in the lower realms, where there had also been an uptick in spies- though they were all locals for the moment. The Exalted Quadrant couldn’t easily slip cultivators of their own into the area. Leonid knew that also meant it would be difficult to pay them if they were successful… but the sort of people foolish enough to work against the Alliance like that wouldn’t understand until it was too late.

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