Elder Cultivator

Before the annihilation of Sudin, one final invasion force went completely unnoticed as they trawled through the lower realms for systems of interest. Rather than a full invasion force, it was really more a team of scouts. They would not have made it so far in circumstances with fewer distractions, though in previous cycles the systems of the lower realms wouldn’t have had the capacity to even notice them. Thus, they effectively stumbled into success. Or at least, what appeared to be some sort of success.

They found a system with significant quantities of natural energy. They were drawn towards one planet in particular- or rather a moon. They made note that the actual planet seemed to have previously had life, and might still be valuable for mining ores or the like, though its current lack of significant natural energy would mostly result in mundane materials. That said, they might find some buried underground infused with natural energy, since it appeared there had been more natural energy present on some of the planets previously.

But the moon was currently flush with it, so that was where they looked first. They were surprised to find formations, yet no humans present. It was a very suspicious situation, so they made certain to carefully inspect the area before landing.

It didn’t seem to be a trap, and their formation experts determined that said formations were merely for the sake of providing a proper environment for the moon to sustain life. Specifically, a wide variety of vegetation.

About a quarter of the planet was forests, complete with undergrowth. Another quarter, filling the moon halfway overall, were crops of various sorts. That indicated that humans worked here, but weren’t present now.

“Do you think they are spacefaring?” one member of the team asked. “Someone from a nearby system?”

“I would say that,” said another, “But we didn’t detect anything from nearby systems. So what would that mean here?”

“I’m not sure,” said the first. “I do know that fields don’t maintain themselves, however. They must have been here within months. Maybe a bit longer, given the formations.”

“Does it really matter? We’ll note it down… and since nobody is around to stop us, we’ll take what we want. Any future teams will choose whether or not to return here. Not our problem.”

And so, they did. First they started by looking for any ripe fruit. They didn’t exactly recognize the varieties, so they scrutinized them carefully to try to make sure they weren’t poisonous. Once they were fairly certain, they tested small bites of a few different things, ready to purge their systems if necessary. There didn’t seem to be any issues, though they did find some things that were obviously poisonous. Most of those seemed to be confined to particular zones in each climate, except for the forested areas where anything would grow wild.

After inspecting for some time, the team leader addressed the rest. “Alright, I think we’ve found enough. Let’s start scooping things up to bring back. We don’t want anyone to drop in and spot us since we have no idea who set this up.”

One of them immediately uprooted a bush. There was a sudden wave of energy from the local star, and the woman stopped, looking worried.

“Relax,” said the leader. “Just a solar fluctuation. You just feel those kinds of things more strongly on a planet like this without proper atmosphere.” He started tearing up some sort of bean plants, tossing them into his storage bag.

Seeing no immediate reaction, the others began to do the same until they cleared out a whole section. That was their biggest mistake… because when the fires of the star came down to annihilate them, it didn’t have to damage anything in the surroundings since there wasn’t anything to worry about. And all of the plants were… not exactly safe, but survivably located inside storage bags. Those same bags did burst open and spill their contents even though not directly targeted, but that was after the great pillar of flame consumed the cultivators.

Their ships were left alone, as there was no one left to take them away.

Maheg was grumpy. If the humans had just wanted the food they could have had it. Why tear out entire plants? These must be the ‘invaders’ from the ‘upper realms’. No wonder Anton didn’t like them. Not that the star quite thought about things so concretely, but it had recognized that their energy didn’t fit. Otherwise, it would have hesitated more with its destruction.

-----

The incident with Maheg was so minor that it would go unnoticed for months after the war ended. Everyone was quite busy elsewhere, and the single burst of energy on their instruments had merely been noted as a thing to look into later.

As for the rest of the lower realms… they found themselves victorious. That was even before what happened with Sudin, though it did shift their perception of things quite greatly. They had lost many lives, even with all of their preparations and techniques. They had saved their homes and their people- they wouldn’t be flattened out like cattle to be farmed or exterminated like vermin.

Enemy casualties were even higher than their own. The combination of special techniques, home territory, and the weakening of upper energy meant that they had been able to fight with great power. More of the invaders perished than were able to retreat, and in some places they were annihilated entirely, not even realizing they were in danger before they were gone.

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The assault on Ekict had some of the worst casualties among their soldiers because of the Domination cultivator Sudin, but they kept their civilian population safe. They were more concerned about Anton, who had sunk into the local star. Only the assurances of Varghese and Three Squeaks that he remained healthy made people feel better. But when people learned of Sudin’s death, they celebrated.

Everyone had felt Anton’s attack, but they hadn’t really understood what it meant. His Constellation Shot encompassing all of their section of the lower realms- except for Turillia and some scattered systems out west- had seemed more like an outpouring of frustration than an actual attack until they put things together- and the shockwaves of Sudin’s death began to reach other systems.

Some portions of those shockwaves only traveled at the speed of light, which meant they would take decades or more to even reach the border, but there had been a burst that traveled faster than the speed of light that some places were able to detect.

The lower realms was busy cleaning up after the war- which included picking up any void ants who had overcome the ships they infiltrated. Some had died with the ships they were on, but more than a few groups had annihilated the human invaders and were simply living on the remaining rations and life support systems- which had no trouble sustaining a few thousand or hundreds of thousands of void ants on a ship for just a few weeks.

-----

The death of Sudin had happened practically next door to Ratna. Sure, it was some tens of lightyears distant, but it was on the nearest border of the Twin Soul Sect’s territory. Though she wasn’t quite certain whether she felt his death, or the destruction of a portion of their core world- where Sudin’s anchor was.

Ratna wasn’t even properly certain what that anchor had been. She had theories, but no one had the opportunity to test any of them. Any attempts to do so would have sparked an all out war, no doubt. Not something she was interested in.

She was filled with a small amount of regret. Not at Sudin’s death. No, it was regret because of a fear she now had for her own life. A Domination cultivator had died. That meant people would know they could die.

Not that people assumed Domination cultivators were immortal. Not strictly. But none had killed each other in about a millennium, and worse this was a Domination cultivator dying to… something else. Ratna had merely thought her messages would perhaps help Sudin be repelled somehow. Cause him a bit of embarrassment. Not… this.

Ratna really couldn’t think of a worse thing that could happen. Unfortunately, that was where she jinxed herself. Because soon after, the worst news in the world came. And yes, it was something that topped a Domination cultivator’s death through methods that were still in question.

-----

“Wow,” Alva said. Then she sighed. It was too bad Kseniya wasn’t around to see that.

She really wanted to say something more profound. Maybe something about the anger of a hundred suns or something. Instead, all she could think was ‘nice shot’.

It wasn’t about the precision of Anton’s attack- though it was that. Nor was it specifically about the power or the range. But all of those factors put together, then factoring in the divide between realms and how that affected Anton in particular? She didn’t really have much more to say.

She could still feel the shot now- even though in fact she probably shouldn’t have felt anything yet. But as an archer, she was sensitive to the factors tied to that… and recently, to the spatial manipulation aspects.

Alva hadn’t actually known that Sudin died until later. She had only felt the shot, and explained it to the others on the council. They hadn’t actually followed Lelka’s advice to start a war with their neighbors, though they had aggressively pushed to expand their influence.

When they actually learned of Sudin’s death, they had a million things to talk about.

“Hah! That’s great. You two have an amazing grandfather,” Tauno commented to Alva and Catarina. His casual acceptance of the situation was not too odd for him. “Too bad, I was hoping to be the first to kill a Domination cultivator. But I guess I’d have to compete against Chidi in that field.”

“So what does this mean for the alliance?” Prasad said. “Sudin’s death won’t just be brushed over. They will be looking for someone to blame. Our connection may be discovered.”

“That’s what we’ve been preparing for, isn’t it?” Timothy asked. “We’ll just have to be ready.”

“We have contingencies in place,” Catarina confirmed. “We can muddy the waters by attempting to escalate conflict between the great powers. With both sides showing vulnerability… it may be possible. Though we are hoping for internal chaos in the Trigold Cluster most of all.”

Ultimately, they couldn’t make any decisions… but they were aided by the other news that followed, providing perhaps not the distraction they wanted, but one sufficient to confuse the situation.

-----

The more terrible news came in the form of a polite message that was distributed throughout the upper realms. Not just the Trigold Cluster or the Exalted Quadrant, but propagating out from various different systems. The message was written with wording that sounded like a business proposition of some sort, but it filled innumerable people with dread.

“This is an announcement that additional Everheart Systems are open for business! Stop on by at any time, we’ve set up little more than ten steps from your most core worlds. If you don’t have a local branch, don’t worry! That just means you weren’t important enough. You can travel a bit further to challenge yourselves and potentially win great treasures!”

The message itself could have been taken as a prank. People would have very much preferred that to be the case. However, it was easy to spot the systems in question. Which was another problem, because how they had been taken over was still mostly a mystery. Though it might have had something to do with various missing Augmentation cultivators from differing factions, cultivators who would in the future reveal themselves as having gone over to Everheart’s faction.

That was even worse news than Everheart somehow having established a hold on more systems and the death of Sudin. At least, for most of the galaxy. Technically, Sudin’s death was still the worst news for the Twin Soul Sect- in more ways than one. Though not all of the ultimate issues were obvious in the first decade.

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