Elder Cultivator

Chapter 1164

Chapter 1164

Blood dripped down Tauno’s left shoulder onto what he was generously calling his arm. It was undeniably his, but whether it was an arm was certainly in question. He’d had one not long before, now he had carved pieces of bone held together with straps of leather.

Tauno was quite aware that he would be able to get a much better replacement if he returned to the Alliance’s territory, but he felt like he was finally making progress. Apparently, after fighting enough beasts the size of a small planet you would eventually see some improvement.

Or maybe that was the blood loss talking and he was going to die soon. Perhaps even in this very battle. The untamed territories of the Trigold Cluster were vast, and had provided a great number of enemies to train against. Size wasn’t everything, but Tauno thought that he might have overestimated himself stepping up from small planet sized to large planet sized foes.

He should have left it for later. It wasn’t like someone else was going to come along and take this prey from him. Nobody even really knew it was there, since he’d only intuited its presence from how ships seemed to disappear in a certain region of space.

Tauno literally couldn’t see all of the beast he’d been fighting, and not because it was mostly in subspace like distortion beasts. Instead, it was kind of the opposite. It was mostly in normal space- but not entirely. It had appeared from a distance to be a large blob, but he supposed any beast large enough to generate its own gravity might relax into such a position.

Various parts of it unfurled into long appendages covered with spikes, and they were by no means slow. Many parts split into smaller branches, though they didn’t necessarily need to. The vast amounts of energy coming off of the thing meant it didn’t actually have to hit Tauno directly. The blood dripping down his shoulder was not a product of a direct hit, or he would be mush. As for damage to the beast...

He’d managed to injure the beast enough for a lake of blood to pour out. Unfortunately, Tauno would need a whole planet’s worth of oceans to even begin to win. This was the sort of thing he’d need to be Domination to defeat. He should run to fight again later.

His grip clenched on a spine taken from the very creature he was fighting. Even if he could escape, he knew he’d never come back. Once he acted on his fear in that manner, he could collapse. He remembered acting on his fear long in the past, and he never wanted to return. Death would be better.

-----

Sometimes wars had a long period of building tension before they happened... and sometimes they just began. Though in the case of the Exalted Quadrant and the Trigold Cluster, it was more like they simply returned to not fighting.

Whatever dominion the Scarlet Alliance had simply didn’t seem to matter as fighting broke out in the southern end of the Scarlet Midfields. It seemed their agreement was only good as long as it was convenient for them.

On the surface, this seemed like a perfect occurrence for the Scarlet Alliance. They were still a bit too weak to stand against either of the great powers, but the fighting was occurring outside their direct territory and it would weaken their enemies. As long as they kept out of the fighting, it seemed that everything should be fine.

Except nothing was that easy. Their active interaction with the lower realms nearly got caught in the crossfire, and while not all of the Scarlet Midfields was their territory, they did have some association with the whole area. Just like it had before, the greatest damage would come to the local residents and not the great powers using their territory for battle.

The Council had hoped that the first clashes would be all of it, but every sign pointed to a continuing gathering of forces in the area. Thus, they had to choose how to react.

“The boldest but perhaps riskiest move,” Timothy began, “Would be for me to go and declare our interests in the region. They might respect my position as a Domination cultivator.”

“And if they don’t,” Prasad finished the thought for them. “Then our position is much weakened, and we might be drawn into conflict.”

“I didn’t say it was the best idea,” Timothy admitted. “I just wished I was well enough established for it to work.”

“We can’t afford to join such a war,” Zazil said. “We have two Domination cultivators, but we could easily turn all their wrath towards the core of the Scarlet Alliance. Then they could freely fight over our remnants once we were wiped out by a handful of Domination cultivators.”

Catarina frowned. “It would be a bit more difficult for them to push into our territory, but it would certainly be infeasible to face odds on that scale. We can continue to send ships to the lower realms the long way, routing far around the fighting, but we still have to consider the people of the Scarlet Midfields. Uzun?”

“Thank you,” he said, activating a display in the center of the chamber, showing both a star chart and a ship. “This is a standard shipping vessel. If modified to carry passengers, it can fit ten thousand people. And sufficient resources for them to survive a journey of half a year. They wouldn’t be comfortable, but it would be possible.”

Anton was completely covered in algae. Bear Hug was way bigger now at their lake, so Anton was more being held in slimy hands than actually hugged- but the smallest bits still wrapped around Anton warmly. In heart if not in physical temperature.

“You are going to a place with many battles to fight?” Bear Hug prompted once more. “You could... not do that.”

“If I’m lucky,” Anton said. “I’ll go and not have to fight.”

It was difficult for him to explain the situation to someone with little concept of things beyond one planet or maybe a system. Bear Hug hadn’t seen Anton shoot anything in a different system, for example.

“If I do end up in battle,” Anton said. “I will be alright.”

“Make a promise you will not be hurt.”

“I can’t quite do that,” Anton said. “It’s always a possibility, but I intend to be safe.”

“... Take me with you.”

“Don’t you have things to do here?”

“I do. But I am ready to go with you again.”

“I’m sorry,” Anton shook his head. “But I doubt you can go that far. And I don’t think you’d do well in space.”

“You cannot forget me.”

“I won’t. And Lev is still coming, at least for a little while. He will be able to tell you how things are going.”

Lev had begun to expand his domain some time before, but he hadn’t gotten anywhere close to the border. Even if he had, he couldn’t really do anything.

Anton might not be able to do much either, but he did have range. And the Lower Realms Alliance was just as concerned about the people getting wrapped up in the war as their upper realms counterparts. Anton didn’t want to reveal his abilities too early, but if he did nothing while so many people were at risk, it might be too late. Though the plan was not to need him.

There were only so many inter-realm ships like the Far Horizon, but they were going to try to do something. And technically, it was possible for other ships to make the trip. They just tended to become non-functional part way over the border, which really brought things from a screeching halt. The difference between lightyears and lightdays would do that.

People had thrown around all sorts of ideas like cryo-freezing people for what could be something like a twenty or thirty year trip. Anton thought that would be better than nothing, but he was hoping they could do better. And maybe now that technology was improved, convert a few larger ships to inter-realm functionality.

All of that depended on anyone being willing to come with them, but as it turned out people tended to prefer to live no matter what.

There were still risks to consider, and they weren’t guaranteed to actually bring anyone to the lower realms... but if there was any chance of it, Anton wanted to be ready, watching over them. And his bound stars simply weren’t enough for that.