Elder Cultivator

Chapter 977

Though it seemed like they might never find anything on Ye’sin, Chikere and Vari finally came across a constructed hall. As usual for Everheart, it was filled of big statues of him and most likely laden with formations that did things both deadly and incomprehensible.

“My practical formation expertise says that stepping inside won’t instantly kill us,” Vari declared.

She stepped forward with as much confidence as anyone could when dealing with Everheart. Even if he had a soft spot for Vari, there was no guarantee random traps would be any kinder to her than anyone else.

“Congratulations!” a void echoed through the room. “You have found a secret treasure vault!”

Vari sighed. “Aww man. He’s totally gonna kill us.”

The voice didn’t sound anything like the Everheart she knew, but he wasn’t exactly consistent about that with projections. Vari was also used to having projections that resembled various forms that Everheart thought he wanted to look like, but there was only the disembodied voice.

“Because of the corrosive nature of Ye’sin and not at all because I’m lazy, I have forgone a projection that would let intru- sorry, guests gaze upon the beauty of my perfect form,” Everheart answered her unspoken thoughts. “Likewise, this task will be noninteractive. That means I won’t answer questions, so you’d better pay attention the first time! Speaking of which…”

At that point, the artificial voice suddenly began spouting off gibberish at a truly rapid rate. But there were a few snippets of comprehensible phrases within. ‘Deadly challenges’, ‘fantastic rewards’, ‘leg up on the competition’, and little else of practical use.

“And so,” the voice slowed down and began to make sense. “You understand how the task is to be completed. Remember, you must fill the chalice with Ye’sin’s finest deadly gasses, and you’re not allowed to bring it out of the chamber!”

Vari didn’t think the task sounded that difficult, but she wasn’t going to say that out loud. Sounded like a good way to die.

“I don’t think I’ll be good at this,” Chikere admitted. “Unless… I cut open the roof and let it pour in?”

“We’ll save that as a… tertiary option,” Vari shook her head. “I doubt the formations would respond well to destruction.”

She stepped immediately out of the area, back into the haze of Ye’sin. She hadn’t realized how much more comfortable she was when protected from it, but being reminded of her momentary respite made her grimace.

Vari surrounded some of the thickest smog with a series of barriers, a somewhat more solid version of upper energy since it easily slipped through thin layers. However, when she tried to move it inside… she found that the barriers around the building rejected her energy.

Just to be certain of what was going on, she stepped back inside herself, finding the motion smooth and unhindered. And so… she was left in confusion.

“How am I supposed to get it into the chalice if I can’t bring it into the room?” Vari grumbled. It was likely a puzzle, assuming they hadn’t run across one of the impossible tests of course.

Chikere stepped out of the area and began pushing at the air with her bare hands, then reached down to cup some of the denser air. It immediately slipped between her fingers, but a slight bit of it made it into the room. And then immediately trickled back out of the barrier.

“I guess that won’t work,” Chikere said. “Unless we can get it to fill the whole room at once.”

“I feel like even if we could make a whirlwind, it would be rejected if it’s pushed by our energy,” Vari agreed. “Which means…?” She sighed. “Maybe we need to look elsewhere.”

“... Do that again,” Chikere said.

“What, complain?” Vari asked.

“No. The other thing.”

Vari literally couldn’t think of anything else she did a moment before. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“Let me try,” Chikere said, slipping out of the mostly empty hall. Then she took a deep breath. She scuttled back inside, breathing out heavily. Noxious vapors clearly trickled out of her mouth. “Oh, it works.”

“... I hate that this is probably the intended solution,” Vari said. “I don’t even know if our protection is perfect or not. Were people supposed to basically kill themselves for this? Yeah, probably,” she answered her own question.

Once they knew the ‘solution’, it wasn’t difficult to fill up the chalice. The toxic vapors were much heavier than the pure air the building was filled with. Intentionally breathing in the more problematic parts, even with the intention to then expel it a moment later, was extremely unpleasant. After a few trips the two women were coughing and sputtering, and they wouldn’t have even tried it without knowledge of how the local not-fruits protected their lungs and other parts of their body.

“Congratulations!” the formless voice declared enthusiastically. “You’re truly ready to go to any means to get a leg up on your competition. Thus, I give to you…” A hole opened in the floor, out of which a pedestal rose. “My leg!”

Vari just stared. “Nope. Don’t want it.”

“... It’s the wrong one,” Chikere commented.

Vari tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

“It looks like Everheart’s leg, but it is the wrong one,” Chikere repeated. “That’s a left leg.”

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“It sure is,” Vari said. “Oh! You’re talking about his actual leg? You said he lost his right in that whole thing that happened, yeah?” Chikere nodded. “Well, it’s not like I would expect him to give his real leg away here. This is probably a fake. Or worse, some random person’s leg.”

Chikere shook her head. “It looks the same. So it might be… a poor copy.”

“... I still don’t want a leg,” Vari said. “Regardless of its authenticity.”

“We needed to find signs of him,” Chikere pointed out. “His leg, a very good copy, or some sort of clone of one… might be useful somehow?”

“You might be right,” Vari frowned.

“Plus it’ll give us an excuse to leave and go anywhere else.”

“Yeah… I have the feeling that even with our protections this planet is slowly killing us,” Vari agreed. “And if he hasn’t shown up by now, he’s not going to come find me in particular.”

As always, Everheart succeeded in being maximally annoying, even when he wasn’t around. The weird part was that the formations didn’t seem to be new, which meant he either planned to lose a leg or made an unrelated joke beforehand. And Vari was willing to bet it was whichever option was most sinister somehow. Including situations she hadn’t considered, like the leg Chikere saw him losing also being fake and somehow meant to cause harm to the Domination cultivators present.

-----

News about Everheart always came to Anton eventually, as the two of them were mutually tolerating acquaintances. Which was almost like saying Anton had been friendly with him when he’d returned briefly to the lower realms.

That thought made him wonder if Everheart had done so again… so he added the thought onto the pile of mostly useless theories that they had. There were no signs of it, and they were much better equipped to notice particularly powerful individuals entering the lower realms. Everheart was theoretically stronger now, which might both make it more difficult for him to traverse without the tides of the world, and both better at hiding his presence and somehow still easier to detect.

In short, it was a theory about as unsupported as the one that Everheart had actually died. Because frankly, if people seeing the man died proved anything it was precisely the opposite as he was always still alive when people saw it.

Everheart aside, Anton knew that Domination cultivators were a concern not just for the upper realms, but perhaps for the lower realms in the future. It was unclear if they would risk entering the lower realms with how it restricted upper energy, but perhaps their strength would break those restrictions.

It was something that had to be considered, given what the upper realms had seen of Zaur Beridze. The man could have potentially taken out all of their fleets by himself. The only reason he had to retreat hadn’t been because of the Scarlet Alliance, but because a rival had come to cause trouble with him. Said rival also hadn’t been a person that could be matched by anyone else.

Since that time, the upper realms had been frantically studying everything they could about Domination cultivators- which was unfortunately very little. It was a well kept secret among both the Exalted Quadrant and the Trigold Cluster. The Chaotic Conglomeration wasn’t known to have any Domination cultivators either, though they could be hiding such despite a technical alliance some of them had with the Scarlet Alliance.

Then again, the Spirit Slicing Sect and even all of Taon might also have had such information hidden from them, if it existed. There was no way to tell for certain. Their communications were limited for the sake of safety, and Velvet aiding them to gain Augmentation cultivators was mostly valuable to the Alliance by means of keeping the Exalted Quadrant busy.

Anton wished he had an opportunity to encounter a Domination cultivator. That didn’t mean he thought he was a match for one. If the stages were similar in power, he was a whole stage behind- the suppression of the lower realms might not be sufficient to overcome that. No, he wasn’t looking for any sort of competition at the moment. He just wanted to know.

A nip on his energy got his attention. It was the Great Queen. She signed in her own language to speak to him, “Your energy is in flux. You are disturbed by something, or perhaps eager?”

“You’re about right,” Anton said, explaining his thoughts. “I know you’re likely not afraid of a Domination cultivator, but it is possible to overcome void ants’ resistances.”

“One would have to know I was coming,” she signed. “But should we catch wind of them, I would be a shadow until my mandibles were in their spine.”

“I appreciate the support,” Anton nodded. “Sadly, we can’t bet on either of us being wherever they show up. It’s unlikely, if they even come with the invasion, that we would be able to readjust ourselves to whatever system they happen to come to in time.”

“Perhaps,” the Great Queen said. “But such powerful movements might be predicted ahead of time.”

Anton shrugged. “I hope so. Either way, I’d like to know what we were dealing with. Recordings can’t do the feeling justice. Quite literally, as Zaur’s recordings created overflow on all of our devices that couldn’t be replicated. I have many questions, and I don’t know how many will ever be resolved.”

“You worry about the future still,” the Great Queen waggled her antennae. “But you know that you will naturally do all that you can, as well as the rest of us. The lower realms will not give in easily.”

“No. No we won’t,” Anton agreed. “I just can’t help but thinking about strange and uncomfortable new things, like what the Numerological Compact was able to accomplish.”

“We have learned from them, and we will do better,” the Great Queen declared. “In all ways you can imagine. Effectiveness and righteousness. People should work together. A queen does not produce progeny for herself, but for the colony.”

“Speaking of which,” Anton said. “How do you think they did?”

“Exceptional,” the Great Queen said. “Not that I doubted any less. Those two are the most unique of my children, I think. Though Fearsome Mandibles and Crossed Antennae would give them a challenge. Have you heard? There have been several more males who continued to live after breeding. In an old colony, that would have seemed problematic… but we can improvise.”

“Does it make your people uncomfortable?” Anton asked. “It’s quite different from your natural instincts.”

“My people will be only as uncomfortable as I tell them to be,” the Great Queen signed emphatically. “Perhaps I was a bit confused, at first, but it is not like we chose our biology. It just happened. When something unusual comes up, that is where we use our sapience to solve any problems. Or to take advantage of the situation to grow,” she added. “The fellow grew back wings. It almost made me want to do the same, but I already had better options.”

Anton enjoyed speaking with his friend. She was so straightforward. He wondered how the world would have ended up without her sneaking into his bag so long ago. He could think of many disasters that she’d helped avert, along with her people.

“What about the reports of Crossed Antennae?” Anton said. “She seems to be spreading many colonies in the upper realms.”

“Perhaps too many,” the Great Queen said. “She may exhaust herself. And in addition to that jeopardizing the success of the mission… I wouldn’t want her to reach that point.”

“Maybe you should tell her that,” Anton said.

“Why?”

“Because people like hearing that others care about them,” Anton pointed out.

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