Elder Cultivator

Most of Yuval’s effort was spent dancing around beneath the belly of an elephant. Of course, the Fearsome Menagerie cultivators tried to stomp him to death but he wasn’t going to stay still to take a hit. And if they tried to drop onto him, he’d have a huge warning as energy built up.

Meanwhile, the majority of his company continued to harass the Augmentation cultivator from an encircling position. They fought in groups of five or ten, such that they could provide for mutual defense. So far, they had avoided any deaths- though they had more than a few wounded.

A quick flash of power, and someone was caught in one of the elephant’s dual trunks. Immediately, the whole present company launched into action, launching attacks at the main body of the elephant to force the cultivator to redirect energy to defense. Yuval launched himself at the jaw, striking upward.

Such a tempting target couldn’t be ignored, and not only the free trunk swung towards him but the one carrying the captured man let go instead of continuing to try to crush him. Yuval was ready for the counterattack, dense flames cloaking him. He managed to singe some of the hairs on the beast as he kept the grasping appendages away from him, diving back to his ‘safe’ position.

They weren’t going to win. Then, Yuval heard something. The others would be receiving the same message as well.

Yuval was inspired by the news. He gathered energy around his fists as he slipped past the rear legs. The Augmentation cultivator spun as Yuval half followed the twist. When he was facing a side, Yuval’s flaming fist struck ribs with all his power.

It didn’t even scratch the Augmentation cultivator… but it did blast them back while at the same time sending Yuval flying in the other direction. The surrounding company was already pulling away.

Together, they ran back towards the main body of their forces. The Augmentation cultivator was only a short distance away, but their clear retreat was enough for the transformed individual to only launch a few more attacks, holding the defensive position near Yann’s anchor. The Alliance cultivators never made it to the mountains that were their target.

Well, not most of them. But they didn’t need most of them to get there. Just a couple to slip past as they were fighting the elephant. They’d deposited some drones that could dig through the soil and rocks, adding to the network that others were building as well. All that, just to confirm for certain that the anchor was still in place beneath the mountain.

But he was wrong. Zazil wasn’t even present. Ratna was fighting Yann in the sky, shaking the planetary barrier with every crash. The Alliance saboteurs had been pre-emptively damaging the local formations to weaken them, but no attack from Yuval’s expected Domination cultivator was on its way.

It seemed he’d lost the coin flip. In truth, it turned out to be Prospero Vandale, and Yuval was glad everyone had taken the evacuation order very seriously. noveldrama

He apparently found an actual asteroid about halfway across the system, and once the position of the anchor was reconfirmed he began gathering energy. Yuval could feel him now, the asteroid accelerating. A small glance told him he could see it, further than the distance to the planet’s moon. It wasn’t that big, but it was bright. A couple seconds after the light began to bathe the Bya in blinding light, it hit, tearing through the unstable planetary barrier like a paper wall.

Yuval took a deep breath, feeling the power of the One Hundred Stars wash over him. “Everyone, gather and leap!” Yuval ordered.

They were at least a couple dozen kilometers away from where the Falling Star impacted. However, that wasn’t sufficient. A full powered attack by a Domination cultivator that put no thought into defense was… massive. Sufficient to destroy the whole planet in a single blow. The only thing that prevented that was Yann’s anchor, resisting with the power of Domination cultivator. Yann’s energy infused through the mountain range, creating a barrier that mostly blocked the direct hit.

Yuval was worried about the shockwave that was rapidly reaching them. His entire squad gathered their energy together, leapt into the air to let the shockwave carry them away instead of smearing them on the ground, and even though the energy wasn’t the least bit hostile to them and was of the same style they still barely managed.

Yann roared, in pain and anger. He wasn’t instantly killed, unlike what Yuval might have hoped. The mountain rose up, the giant snake skeleton- not a dragon unlike Yann’s form, however much he probably wanted that to be the narrative- ripping away. Yann dove towards his anchor, twisting himself up with it and then…

He ran, leaving behind his people.

“Next time I’m taking your other eye!” Ratna taunted. “Then we’ll go for your remaining three limbs!”

Two Domination cultivators could have given chase… but instead they let him flee. In Yuval’s opinion, that was correct. And not just because Prospero almost immediately began wiping out huge sections of the enemy forces.

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Yuval and his company were still involuntarily flying when he spotted the elephant. Their trajectories were pretty close, and being closer to the core of the shockwave had launched the Augmentation cultivator more quickly. Yuval focused what remained of his energy. His allies did as well, launching waves of flame at the Augmentation cultivator. They were ready to follow up with something more except…

They turned half of the cultivator to ash. The other half was already gone, fizzling back into a humanoid form before being consumed by the remains of Prospero’s first attack.

Yuval wondered if that counted as their kill. Surely if they hadn’t softened the Fearsome Menagerie cultivator, an Augmentation cultivator wouldn’t die so easily. Except Yuval could feel the ripples of power, and he knew that wasn’t true.

He was glad that Yann had taken the bulk of the damage, as Yuval and his company managed to tumble to a halt a hundred or so kilometers from the blast site. Nobody was trained to escape an exploding planet. Hopefully most of their ships had been clear of the blast zone- or at least at an angle they were launched out to space instead of into the planet or each other.

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Ratna shook the blood off of her blade. Yann was a coward more concerned for his life than his legacy, but that was precisely why it was dangerous to go further. She hadn’t really been targeting his eye, but rather his brain. The eye was just a convenient entry point. Sadly, she hadn’t been powerful enough, even with him splitting at least half of his energy to block Prospero’s attack.

In terms of the power concentrated in a single attack, Prospero was far ahead of Ratna herself. Though if they actually fought, she’d never get hit by anything like that. Even Yann could have probably moved his anchor to avoid it if he’d been ready. He certainly wasn’t trying to defend the planet.

Ratna extended her energy towards Prospero. “You handle things here. I’ll take a defensive position to make sure he’s really going.”

Prospero was already making wide area strikes that were far more precise. As a Domination cultivator, he had the power to strike down numerous Integration cultivators at once, or a couple Augmentation cultivators. About half of those that had been deployed locally had been defending the anchor… and a good portion of them were dead or injured. Their victory here would be overwhelming.

However, this would be the end of their retaliation against the Fearsome Menagerie. There would be tactical benefits to crippling more of their systems, but it wasn’t worth risking the arrival of further Domination cultivators and stronger sects. Ratna thought that things had only gone so well because the Scarlet Alliance hadn’t launched many proper counterattacks before.

They had recently attacked the Exalted Quadrant, but that just made the Trigold Cluster more secure. Then when they only had a couple of months to respond to this strike, they simply weren’t ready. No doubt Yann was prepared for an assassination attempt, but a focused invasion was difficult to resist.

Notably, the great powers had been weakening since the prominence of the Scarlet Alliance- and not just because they lost Domination cultivators, though that certainly accelerated things. No, it was because they hadn’t gained much from the lower realms in the last three cycles or so, and in most cases suffered repeated losses as they tried to comprehend how strong the lower realms had become.

Ratna sighed. It would have been convenient if Yann died, but the hit to morale of having a more or less crippled Domination cultivator should be highly valuable as well. The Alliance might manage one or two more serious campaigns before they risked a unified retaliation. It was possible they could stand up against that, but if they could cripple another sect or two before then? It would be perfect.

There was still the matter of the Tilki clan, but they were more distant. It would be much more difficult for Ratna and the Alliance to strike against them. Also… it was potentially unnecessary.

They had received a series of communications. Simple news from the Tilki clan referencing things like Sevinc and Timucin ‘going into closed door cultivation after their successful campaign’. Propaganda style stuff… but the relevant part was what came along with that. Scribbles and markings in a recognizable hand. Everheart’s. He’d clearly done something, but simply believing him that he crippled people wasn’t necessarily correct. They did scan the documents in an isolated system, but there didn’t seem to be any hidden subtext.

Plans to investigate the veracity of the information were under way. If they could learn what happened… they might be more prepared to strike Everheart if he moved against them. And verifying the level of damage he caused would help them update the current threat of the Tilki clan.

Everheart was usually neutral with the Alliance, which was about as good as one could expect. If ‘neutral’ was the correct word for ‘occasionally burglarized by’. Having his favorite and only niece plus a shared planet of origin seemed to only be sufficient to avoid being enemies. Ratna doubted that anyone in the Scarlet Alliance forgot that he had a system in the north center of the midfields.

And of course there was the one near Ratna’s territory from which he’d struck out and ultimately assaulted Second Gift. That could have been a serious disaster if not for Bear Hug. Ratna grinned. Never would she have expected that Everheart could be stopped by a being of only middling intelligence and zero duplicity, but it had happened.

That wasn’t meant as an insult to Bear Hug. There were many human cultivators that Ratna would rank lower on the intelligence assessment. They just happened to think… quite differently.

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The Little Alliance heard about Yann, and the conclusion of the campaign against the Fearsome Menagerie. Of course, it was all minimal details transmitted via BHCP, which was just Bear Hug saying things. It would take a while for any ‘normal’ messages to reach them from that far.

They were quite glad for the news, because their position in the west was feeling rather cramped, even as they repeatedly pushed back encroaching neighbors. Part of the plan was to further move against the Exalted Quadrant, which should take off some of the pressure on them. Though it might also draw more trouble, in which case they might have to take advantage of the spatial distortions to receive reinforcements- such as Domination cultivators. Though at least they had Velvet, who was proving to be a very effective deterrent.

After all, nobody wanted to be part of a war if there was a chance they would die three systems away from the front lines before the battle even began. Velvet could do that, and she was a threat to every Augmentation cultivator first and foremost.

They might still want another one or two Domination cultivators permanently stationed within their territory, but even the best of their Augmentation cultivators weren’t ready for that just yet.