Elder Cultivator

While she thought that direct clashes over useless territory were probably the worst way to engage in a war, Velvet wasn’t going to tell anyone from the great powers that. Ultimately, it was best that they wore each other down. Over the course of a couple years, she had focused mostly on organizing local groups to be transported away, and only very rarely did she remove anyone from the land of the living. If she did, it was in a way that could easily be traced to the most visible enemies.

Soon, they would be reaching a threshold where extracting anyone else from the core of the fighting became impractical. Those who were going to die were mostly dead already. That didn’t count those still at risk as the warzone expanded, which it might as more subfactions got involved. Things hadn’t yet reached the disaster levels that had created something like the Bloodsoaked Nebula, but now that proper fighting was happening between the two great powers it was likely that things would go further than they had in centuries.

Shady back-alley deals weren’t anything new to Velvet, but she hadn’t previously done many where just a few kilometers away largish turtles were eating forests at approximately the same rate those forests grew, flailing at them.

“You’ll pass on the word to others who need to know, right?” Velvet said.

“Of course,” the man said. “I know just the right people to speak to.”

“Excellent.”

She made a show of walking away, slowly slipping into crowds. A small strand of her senses was stuck to her espionage target for the day, and once she thought it reasonable she doubled back and began to follow him.

Sometimes, people lied to her face and she would get rid of them. Other times, she had to let them go. This time, she just had to wait. He did know who he was going to speak to, but Velvet didn’t. So she was going to have to find that out. She assumed he didn’t keep a clear record of criminal associates in his pockets at all times.

Criminals weren’t all bad. There were plenty of reasons for people to be keeping a low profile in the current climate. But this guy was supposed to be helping gather people to take off world.

As she continued to conceal herself, the question of Domination continued to flicker through her mind. It wasn’t a distraction, but instead a way she focused on her own power. She still didn’t know what an appropriate anchor might be, but the more she considered it the closer she could get. She didn’t need more of her mental faculties to track down a single fellow and avoid the armies stomping all over the planet.

Velvet had to admit, this guy was pretty good at what he did. She had expressly forbidden him to charge anyone anything and offered payment instead, so his greed was certainly a problem. But he knew all sorts of hiding places and had many contacts.

One group either didn’t have the price he wanted to charge, or they were too stubborn to pay. Either way, Velvet briefly stopped to deal with that.

“Show up here,” she said to a quite surprised young man. “With your family.” A scrap of paper dropped into his hand. “Don’t invite anyone you can’t trust.” It was risky, having physical evidence. But a location was not by itself suspicious.

“... We don’t have the price,” the young man said cautiously.

Velvet turned her head towards her companion in skulduggery. “He’ll be paying it. He just doesn’t know that yet.”

-----

Catarina was quite pleased at how quickly the expansion plans were working out. They had the materials for the formations available, they were merely being redirected from their general expansion projects to this particular need. People had been shuttled to the newly established planets, finding a viable home waiting for them.

They were still outside the spatial distortion, but most of the work was done. The plan was to leave the activation until the end. Otherwise, they would have to route everyone through the whole territory of the Scarlet Alliance. That was an acceptable contingency, but nowhere near optimal.

So far, the great powers hadn’t bothered to chase anyone close to Alliance territory. They certainly weren’t happy about losing resources, but they didn’t have the spare manpower to chase after everyone. So far, the Scarlet Alliance had managed to avoid serious conflicts. Catarina herself hadn’t even been close to any of them, obviously, but Timothy was much closer and Uzun was involved with a massive ship inspired by Numerological Compact designs. It could carry over a million individuals and increased in functionality with each cultivator aboard. By their rankings, it would be somewhere between a Class IV and Class V ship. The Alliance could consider it Augmentation class, but it wasn’t a proper battleship.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

-----

Timothy was late. Though in that case, the Alliance fleets were also late. It might be better said that the enemy fleets were ahead of schedule. Though for the moment, he was not going to treat the great powers like enemies.

It had been predicted that this planet would be drawn into the war. They’d thought it would be at least one more day, and hoped for a week, but here they were. The Creeping Fire Sect was clashing with the Forest of Death. Poison and fire were spreading towards the greatest population centers, and Timothy had to pick one.

Or did he? They were trying to avoid being drawn into the war, but he had to make choices. He decided that he would be protecting the whole hemisphere in question. The two fleets could fight each other above them, he didn’t care. Some groups were going to be disappointed they couldn’t land and begin looting, but that wasn’t Timothy’s problem. Or rather, it was another thing he’d prefer to prevent.

There were a few morons who actually attacked his barrier. Didn’t they know he could kill them? Maybe he’d been too nice so far. He’d avoided killing anyone from the great powers because he never knew when someone might be a young master or a favored elder or some sort of once-in-a-century genius that certain sects would take offense to losing. But maybe his defensive posture was giving people big heads.

He focused his senses on some of the fools attacking. One of them was clearly doing so at the direction of others, and while he wouldn’t say that personal responsibility wasn’t necessary… that wasn’t the best target.

“Not much of a Domination cultivator if he can only defend,” said a woman.

In other circumstances, Timothy could have let personal insults slide. Here, he cut off her head. He was really not great at attacking half a planet away, but he didn’t have to get a significant portion of his energy to reach that far. Just a tiny fraction, really.

Traditional cultivators thought their honor was more important than everything else… and Timothy was willing to let them think that the Scarlet Alliance was the same. Everyone stopped their bombardments while important people in the fleet either continued to fight each other or discuss what to do about the whole barrier situation. And Scarlet Alliance fleets swooped in and began scooping people up. Anyone who was willing.

Fortunately, the planet was lightly populated as such things went. A few large population centers with millions. Low enough that they could take most of them. They’d have to leave all of their stuff to fit, which was an excellent excuse for why the Alliance would leave behind so many tempting resources. But the actual reason was the temptation, so that they wouldn’t chase the fleets.

Nobody addressed Timothy directly. He wondered if he should make demands, but he liked being enigmatic. He was a Domination cultivator now, after all.

Though he did have a good excuse for why he wanted so many people. It was true that saving large numbers of people was great for the amount of devotion he received.

-----

Aerona hugged Devon’s arm as she frowned. “It seems we’ve made too tempting of a target.”

“Perhaps,” Devon agreed. “But I would argue that they’re too late.”

Anton had warned of forces making a move towards Bounty- and there was nothing else of note within several systems, so it would be hard to make a mistake of their target. Both sides had taken interest as it was impossible for them to completely miss the people being shuttled away to the southern border of the upper realms. However, they had been far enough away that with the limitations of moving at the speed of their slowest ships, they were barely entering the system. Though only because Paradise pushed hard to reach them.

“I thought we’d be weaker,” Anishka commented, before glancing over at Erin, meditating atop Paradise’s head. Though she was only the tiniest blip on the horizon. “It turns out bringing a small planet’s worth of natural energy with you is very helpful.”

Anton still remained in the lower realms- even stepping a single toe into the upper realms would be a danger for him. Lingering in between wouldn’t be particularly good for him, either.

Aerona was the one who had to act first. The groundwork had already been laid by her and Anton, but she still had to make sure that a planetful of people wouldn’t panic. Or at least, not panic in unfortunate ways.

Not that they’d have any reason to. It wasn’t like fleets of invaders had just shown up- and some unknown individuals from the lower realm. And a giant turtle, who looked like he was about to headbutt the planet.

Making people feel comfortable with that was a bit difficult, but they would vaguely recognize her. And people would get over any panic within a few days.

Watching the approaching fleets and the incoming turtle, as well as reading the general feeling of the people on the planet, Aerona did what she could, projecting feelings and responding in ways that weren’t quite words.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“Do not fear,” she said. “Please, trust us.”

Not that they had much choice. Though she would have called the whole thing off if the population completely rejected it. Dragging a planet of struggling people out of its system would not be feasible even for a handful of Augmentation cultivators.

“You might as well begin,” Aerona said to Devon. “Try to make it… comforting.”

He grinned. “Comforting chains, coming right up.”

The chains began to wrap around the planet at about the same time as Paradise began to push the oceans. He did nearly headbutt the planet though, and one hemisphere was getting a good look at his face.

Bounty was now accelerating away from the incoming fleets. Probably not fast enough to completely avoid them, but there was some clear commotion among them. Neither of the great powers was going to let the other claim whatever this prize was first. No doubt they assumed that something about the planet was special instead of it just being full of people. To them, people without sufficient cultivation literally didn’t matter.

Anishka was ready to freeze and incinerate the first people to get close, but she would have to keep some energy in reserve. Actually, she should probably get started soon. They’d already reached a significant deviation from Bounty’s normal position relative to the sun.

She wasn’t going to provide good artificial sunlight, but she didn’t have to last forever. Hopefully just a few days. Maybe weeks, depending on how long it took them to get into an area with thinner ascension energy. After that, Anton could take over.