Elder Cultivator

Chief Engineer Uzun was peacefully working in his lab when Catarina came up to him. He figured he was about to receive a fantastic revelation of some sort.

“How much work would it take to create a black hole?”

As it turned out, it was the other scenario where she casually suggested an impossibility. On the other hand, they’d been successful with a number of those impossibilities throughout the ages so… it wasn’t a waste to hear her out.

“What would you do with a black hole?”

“Dump our enemies into it,” Catarina said with great seriousness.

“That’s…” Uzun didn’t know quite what to say. A massive waste of resources? Dangerous? Both were certainly true. “A bit extreme.”

“How so?” Catarina said. “They wanted to utterly annihilate us. We should do the same to anyone who comes here. If they dare to move again.”

Uzun thought very seriously. “Assuming we could form one, a black hole would destabilize the energy flow of the entire spatial distortion.”

Catarina moved to look at what he was working on- the next generation of pure tech ships. “No more than adding or removing a single star,” she countered. “And we’re going to keep doing that. Actually, I think we’ve already done too much.”

“We’re too… centralized. We had to be,” Catarina said. “We couldn’t have defended two or three fronts. But in the future… we need options.”

“I’m not quite sure where you’re going,” Uzun admitted.

“Teleportation is great,” Catarina commented. “But our current methods don’t work for anything beyond a certain size.”

Uzun shrugged. “Even if the platforms were bigger, the energy costs would strain the stars.”

“That’s why we need black holes.”

“I thought they were to dump enemies into? Also, you never mentioned multiple black holes.”

“We’ll need more, if we’re splitting up into different sectors.”

Uzun sighed. “I feel like you’ve skipped a number of steps. Such as the part where anyone knows what your ideas are or agrees to them.”

Catarina rolled her eyes. “Obviously I wasn’t just going to implement things on my own. Anyway… we need to split up the spatial distortion. The border planets are… too isolated. Having the option to constrain invading groups into different areas might be optimal as well. Though I’m not sure if this time, we would have done anything different since the clashing of various groups was all that allowed us to slip by.”

Uzun nodded slowly. “Explain to me like you would the whole council. Not the technical details.”

“We split things up into regions. Each has their own spatial distortions and rules about where people end up. Adjustable. Combinable.”

“We don’t have the ability.”

“A century ago we didn’t have Domination cultivators,” Catarina said. “We’ll figure it out. Or something functional. We already did something similar with the new border colonies, stretching and relaxing the veil as it suited us. We’re going to at least fill out the Midfields, so we have to consider our options.” Catarina walked around the ship display. “This design is rather bulky.”

“It’s more efficient,” Uzun said. “There aren’t convenient rest stops along the way between realms. And… we’re not going to keep hiding things. Some amount of coincidence might be overlooked, but it was pretty clear that the Trigold Cluster was intentionally drawn away. Not that it’s been a real secret ever since the general population became aware of things. The Great Powers probably simply doubted that it mattered.”

“Until the assault on the Trigold Cluster.”

“And Bounty before that,” Uzun nodded. “Draw up some plans. You can present them to the council. Make sure to not rush the timeframe. And… maybe don’t focus too much on black holes.”

“I could settle for one,” Catarina said. “Now that I think about it.”

-----

Sometimes, war had to happen to protect the things that were truly important in life. Anton knew this. And as an example of what was most important…

“No eating people! Also, people includes anything that can think good!” Bear Hug ‘shouted’ as they dropped from the sky onto the briar patch.

Sharp blades cut at the various strands of algae that made up Bear Hug’s body, but they simply bent and twisted with the swipes. It was an excellent example of what intentional cultivation could do in a relatively short period of years. Bear Hug lacked destructive power, though even that was only true in a general sense. Against things with distinct bodily weaknesses, the ability to grapple was extremely useful.

Against a massive angry briar patch that ate everything, and seemingly preferentially other plants, it wasn’t much good unless Bear Hug wanted to tear apart their opponent one piece at a time, which they certainly did not. They were still adamant that they would become friends.

The briar patch acted much like a wild beast… though with a certain intelligence behind it. There was power there, from the constant consumption. It was an effective way of growing cultivation to a certain extent, but all stolen energy was rather inefficiently processed. Along with losing parts of itself and thus some amount of energy in various battles, the briar patch only grew so quickly.

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Anton wasn’t actually certain that Bear Hug was stronger, but Lev had helped Bear Hug make proper techniques. Bear Hug acted a lot like a Grasping Willow disciple… just without any solid parts. Just the flexible strands of algae instead of hair or limbs, quite structurally different from the actual Grasping Willow.

Energy control was important. The slashing fury of the briar patch was certainly able to gather large amounts of energy in one place, but that only mattered if Bear Hug accepted a clash. Instead, their large body sort of let itself be tossed around everywhere.

Bear Hug was much better at energy control, able to engage in combat and speak at the same time. Since that speech was entirely a construct of energy, it was not as easy as it sounded. “You have to figure out that these are words eventually,” Bear Hug said. “You’re so strong. You have to see things. You and I can be at peace. I won’t even ask if you ate any people.”

The briar patch twitched at the words, seeming to take many of them as attacks. ‘You’ was often a connection between speaker and listener, depending on distance. Up close, it involved an actual touch. At a distance, it could just be a clear line. Pointing at someone to clearly indicate who they were simply made sense.

It took a long time for the briar patch to accept that it was not going to be able to devour Bear Hug. It tried various forms of encircling part of Bear Hug to try to capture them, but being made of discrete strands it would require severing the energy field that permeated everything that was Bear Hug, which was the thing that kept the briar patch from cutting.

Eventually, it pulled back. The various cutting parts pulled back, the stabbing ones having long since been given up on. Bear Hug prepared to give chase, though Anton didn’t know if that was a good idea. It didn’t end up necessary, as the briar patch began directly molding its energy.

“You- you- you eat!” The motions were very emphatic. It wasn’t clear if the briar patch understood words well. That little segment was interspersed with various forms of aggressive energy posturing that Anton would have judged as incoherent screaming, or at least blabbering.

“Calm,” Bear Hug said. “Relax. Settle down. Flow into a nice puddle.” That last one Bear Hug demonstrated, forming a sort of edge around the water inside them and creating a sort of above-ground pond with just them. “It is good for you. You will be happy.”

The other one seemed not to believe them. Maybe the emotion didn’t translate well between different sorts of plants, but… even Anton could feel some of the true meaning of ‘happy’. Which was the whole point of the energy language.

The briar patch was angry, hungry, and extremely energetic. And also, maybe, a bit curious. A bit foreign to the concept of words, though. Anton got the feeling it was trying to say something, but didn’t realize that there were set forms for things. Though… perhaps if they needed some curse words they could adopt some of the mannerisms involved.

Bear Hug was more than chill enough for both of them. Even as they introduced themselves. “You are a briar patch. Sharp and poky plant with cutty bits. I am Bear Hug.”

The name Bear Hug was also the action bear hug. While it did not conform to the human body structure, Bear Hug managed to wrap around a lot of the briar patch in an outwardly aggressive but inwardly very friendly manner. Anton had said it was better to be conservative in approach, but Bear Hug wasn’t that sort.

The briar patch tried to split Bear Hug from the inside out. Slowly, it was allowed to wriggle out… but the message might have ultimately been transmitted. It wasn’t actually an attack, or something more would have happened to the briar patch. It hesitated for a moment, then ran.

Bear Hug had the good sense to not immediately chase. Instead, they wandered over to Anton. “They’re not very good at being friends.”

“Yeah. Seems so,” Anton agreed. “I’ll help you catch up later, after there’s been some time to think.”

“Was I scary?”

“A little,” Anton said. “You’re strong now. Strong is scary.”

“You’re not scary.”

“But I probably was, when you didn’t know me. That’s why you didn’t do anything for the whole time I was sitting around.”

“I forgot. You were scary.” Bear Hug stared off into the distance. “We will be friends. I’m certain. They didn’t even remember to eat those trees.”

-----

Velvet had all sorts of plans. Or at least, parts of plans. None of them were exactly going on a diplomatic mission to the Chaotic Conglomeration, but it wasn’t against her plans. She’d certainly wanted to visit.

There were rumors- by which she meant random plans from Catarina that may or may not become something in the future- that they wouldn’t always need to go around through the lower realms. Currently, however, it was safer and nearly as quick. The Scarlet Alliance wasn’t interested in stirring up more hornet’s nests of political friction right now, so circumventing the Exalted Quadrant entirely was best.

The strangest part of the journey was the in between. Neither the upper nor lower realms. A place without energy, or at least extremely low. It seemed upper and lower energy decayed rapidly around each other, or at least that was one explanation why the area wasn’t simply a mix of both.

The first time, on her way to the lower realms, Velvet didn’t think about it too much. It was a weird thing she’d experienced a few times, and that was all. But she had a period of weeks on the way back to the upper realms where it was either think about that or her actual mission.

So of course her mind drifted to nothingness. It was strange to focus so much on a lack of anything, but it wouldn’t be the first time. She was a stealth specialist, after all. Not being seen or sensed. It made it difficult to come up with an anchor. Ratna had one, though. Presumably. She hadn’t looked too hard because that would certainly seem like an official indicator that the Scarlet Alliance wanted to kill Ratna, which wouldn’t have been a great move with their one future ally in the Trigold Cluster.

It seemed to Velvet that the best thing to turn into her anchor was nothing at all. There were just a million small problems with that. Like the fact that if she actually succeeded, her anchor might just not exist. Or that it would be accessible from everywhere. Could people destroy nothing? Certainly, if it was an anchor she should expect to be attacked through it.

Maybe she should just bond to that black hole Catarina was going to make. That woman was talking a lot about how certain stars weren’t really ‘necessary’ anymore. Black holes were supposed to be a lot like nothing, right? However, aside from theoretical knowledge, Velvet didn’t actually know much about them. She hadn’t visited one. She didn’t know any cultivators that had, actually. There weren’t a ton of them strewn about inside the galaxy.

She thought there was one somewhere in Chaotic Conglomeration territory. A few hundred lightyears deep, at minimum. The twins could confirm that. The next closest one should be in the lower realms, which was not very close at all. Thousands of lightyears.

Black holes weren’t nothing though. They were in fact a whole lot of something, and despite the fact that they didn’t let anything leave, they also weren’t exactly secretive. Maybe not good for stealth after all.

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