Elder Cultivator-Chapter 1277

No doubt those hiding among the distortion beast nests thought that they would be laying low for just a few more decades before springing out to assist others from the upper realms, suddenly bolstering their numbers. Nthanda even imagined they had contingencies if anyone was to begin destroying the nests, plans to cover themselves in the waves of energy and escape. But she hadn’t provided the sort of warning they expected when she broke through and revealed them.

Technically, she hadn’t known they would be there. It was only a hypothesis, but it had been high enough probability that she chose to check it out. She wondered what she might have done if the first nest had nothing- would she have dismissed it as speculation, or tried several more?

Not that it mattered. Because she found them.

Now there was a war around her. The cultivators were trying to hastily repair their formations, but the distortion beasts were moving in. Nthanda was adding chaos by moving among them. Nthanda noticed that the cultivators were slow to react- at least, relative to where she expected them to be. It had taken actual seconds instead of fractions of a moment for them to spring into action. It was unfortunate that her energy senses didn’t cover a wide area, so she could only take in details in a small area. The wider battle had enough energy that she could track it as a whole, but it wasn’t the same.

Any time the humans appeared to be close to establishing a formation of any kind, an arrow would strike them. A few cultivators managed to avoid Nthanda’s arrows, but most of them were blindsided by the arrows, launched without the usual mass of energy they would be looking for. Instead, they were heavy arrows launched to high speeds, packing more kinetic energy than most could resist while feeling like almost nothing.

It didn’t matter if they disintegrated one of her arrows- if it was coming for them, they still had to face the impact force. At a certain point, the shape of the arrow didn’t matter, just the total amount of kinetic energy it possessed. Only stronger Integration cultivators could resist an arrow or two, as well as the single Augmentation cultivator Nthanda sensed among them.

Distortion beasts launched their wide area attacks- with their great size, every attack was at scale. Weaker cultivators fell in droves, while Nthanda still remained nearly unscathed. She alternated between using distortion beasts and enemy cultivators as shields, moving among her foes. When she found an opportunity, she swept the remains of various formations into a storage bag she carried- even if she couldn’t completely figure out what it did, someone else might. And it would be much harder once it had all been chewed up by distortion beasts.

-----

Nthanda’s incident was first, and it was perhaps quite lucky that she actually found foes. There weren’t a vast number of distortion beast nests- some thousands scattered among an equal number of occupied systems and a hundred times as many unoccupied systems. As the Lower Realms Alliance began increasing their efforts to investigate them, they found that only a portion of them had any intruders. They could have truly missed them after a number of investigations, written off the possibility as unsubstantiated. And they would have been correct to do so, to some extent.

In the areas that didn’t have exceptional individuals to call upon, strike teams of greater numbers were called upon. More than eliminating the enemies, they were actually interested in how they got there in the first place. The ships provided some answers, while the cultivators themselves would provide others- knowingly or not.

Cultivators having slipped into their territory was a big concern, even if none had been particularly close to occupied systems. Normally, invaders from the upper realms would have to rely on the Tides to sustain their energy as they traveled. It seemed that they had found a way around that- and everything came back to the nests.

They relied on the movements of the nests to help conceal their arrival, while at the same time using the nests to sustain their energy. The catch? The people were close to a form of hibernation, both to hide from the distortion beasts and to minimize energy expenditures. Still, it was a concern to discover they had put in such great effort, even bringing ships that had multiple sets of formations to power them- after all, one set wouldn’t work outside of the upper realms.

The Lower Realms Alliance found themselves very busy for quite a number of years, distracted from other preparations for war- but it was a necessary distraction. Furthermore, they were able to gain some insight for potential assault locations based on where the distortion beast nests were expected to be in proximity of.

Nothing was exact- it didn’t seem that the upper realms had any control over the paths of the majority of the nests, unlike the single special one that had been heading outside of the galactic plane. Instead, they seemed to be tracking approximate locations- they might have to go ten or twenty lightyears out to launch their assaults.

Thus it was that guesswork and prisoner interrogations helped solidify some of the potential targets. Most systems within the Alliance were responsible for the bulk of their own defense, but if they were known to be specifically targeted they could send more fleets to support them. Specifically being prepared ahead of time instead of in the few years leading up to the shift in the tides would help significantly.

-----

“None of these distortion beasts want to talk either,” Bear Hug complained.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Anton just shrugged. “I don’t know what to say, except that if they do think they don’t think like us.”

He was doing his part to take down a few distortion beast nests, whenever he was in the neighborhood. Usually they left the nests in place when they weren’t approaching occupied systems, as part of the ‘natural world’. As disturbing as the creatures were, the galaxy had survived with their presence for a long time. They were ultimately destroyed more often than not, but over the vast expanse of the lower realms there were many that remained.

And now they were a problem, so more were being dealt with. This one didn’t appear to have any cultivators hiding- Anton was paying special attention to any potential energy ripples.

“It appears some of them will actually reach us,” Anton said as he continued to snipe targets. Technically, he could have taken them both away fast enough that the distortion beasts couldn’t keep up. However, Bear Hug had expressed that they wanted more combat experience.

Anton was willing to allow that. He didn’t want even a single segment of them to die- it was a negative experience, a wound on the mind and perhaps the soul- but simply avoiding risks would stymie a cultivator.

When the first one approached, Bear Hug expanded their waters from a pond to a lake to a small ocean, augmented by their energy. The waters rolled over the spaces that the distortion beast occupied, freezing the creature of fangs and wings on multiple layers of reality when Bear Hug turned the power to ice.

“Ice is bad for life,” Bear Hug explained simply. It was true, even those things that lived in icy areas didn’t want ice frozen onto and inside them. Sometimes, it was difficult to discern which parts of a distortion beast were the ‘outside’. ƒreewebηoveℓ.com

Bear Hug wasn’t done with a single move- a distortion beast with its strange anatomy might still survive being frozen. Bear Hug stretched flailing arms of algae, smashing into frozen sections and shattering them. They had pretty much won with the initial move- anything that couldn’t resist being frozen was essentially defeated. But the results would be more clear once there was nothing left that could be called a creature.

Just chunks. Many of which Bear Hug broke into even smaller pieces. “I’m going to recycle these!” Bear Hug said. “I don’t know if there’s bad things in this one, but I can turn it into dirt and nutrients which will be full of energy.”

The people of Aipra would approve. They were very experienced with distortion beast ‘recycling’. Relatedly, in their particular section of the galaxy killing distortion beasts unnecessarily was discouraged. It was the main influx of energy the subspace planet got. Surrounding systems just dealt with it, as the people of Aipra were the main attraction for the beasts and the others rarely got attacked.

Anton realized he was going to be fighting quite regularly for the next few decades, from the distortion beasts to those foolish enough to set up near the borders. And yet, he wouldn’t see the most combat. Instead, that would probably be someone like Vandale or Timothy in the Scarlet Alliance, who were quite busy defending the Scarlet Alliance territory against sects trying to prod their way into the territory of the midfields to set up forward bases. They would likely learn how serious the Alliance was sooner or later, but not everyone would have an opportunity to report back. Though it meant more fighting, the Alliance figured they’d have to kill those particular individuals sooner or later so they didn’t mind.

They didn’t just defend, though. Apparently, Zazil was tasked with retaliating against smaller sects that hadn’t gotten the message. Specifically, those who didn’t have Domination cultivators. They might not actually be ‘small’ sects, but they were individually weaker.

The war had already begun. Or maybe it had never stopped, from the beginning of time.

Anton satisfied himself by shooting horrible monsters, exploding them into pieces. Some of those, his friend would be using to fertilize friendly planets. Anton wasn’t against it, but they only had so much capacity to carry it about- and they had other things to do. Maybe he could shove it all into a single bunch in case anyone wanted to come collect it later.

Creatures as large as distortion beasts at first appeared to be pointless for target practice- how could one possibly miss something the size of a county, let alone something the size of a moon?

The answer was simple. Some of them, you could shoot straight through and touch nothing because none of them was on the right layer of reality. Thus, Anton was challenging himself by focusing on particular targets- not just creatures but specific sections and their spatial layer. He wanted to hit those targets without anything else, which was part of the reason some of the beasts had gotten closer. And partially because Anton wanted Bear Hug to get better at fighting.

There would be more fighting in both the upper and lower realms, and Bear Hug was pretty much everywhere, at least a little bit. Battle would come to them. Anton wanted them to survive unscathed… or at least survive. Just like all of his friends.

He gave no special consideration to either the cuteness of meerkats or the adorableness of his plant friend. It would be like choosing a favorite child.

It was Devon. Though he wasn’t actually a child but a grandchild, and he won by being the only survivor of that generation.

Anton had more descendents than he could currently comprehend, but he mostly spent time with those first generations. Once you were five or ten generations removed, family was less like family and more just… people. Anton cared about people. He cared about everyone in the Alliance, and their neighbors. At least the decent neighbors.

The common folk living in the domain of the ‘great powers’ Anton would place above their cultivators. The sanctity of human life was all well and good, but there was a level of ancient enemy where he just couldn’t tolerate them. Not that the Alliance wouldn’t tolerate any of them- they’d converted many individuals from the Exalted Quadrant once they made the choice not to be enemies.

Ultimately, Anton knew his priorities. He was glad he shared the overall theme with so many others. He wanted the greater Alliance to have as many happy, prosperous, alive people as possible when the next war came to an end. For that, he would kill any enemies foolish enough to get within three systems of the lower realms. The rest others would have to deal with.