Elder Cultivator-Chapter 1275

The full history of void ants was lost, but Anton always liked them from what he had seen. They were always… decisive. Maybe that was why humans hated them. Of course, the reason cultivators feared them was obvious enough- they were a threat. But so were other cultivators, and humans still developed new weapons to kill each other better.

Perhaps the void ants in the upper realms were chaotic monsters that had been devouring everything. Or perhaps they thought that annihilating humans was the best for their people. It was logical, in a way. At that point, devouring people wouldn’t be much different from how many cultivators interacted.

There was another possibility that had come up in the past- there might have been something fundamentally different between different groups of void ants. Enough so that they might not even properly be called the same species. Maybe the ones the upper realms knew were no better than beasts.

Either way, the ones in the lower realms were quite intelligent, especially when they had time to develop, and twice now they had formed bonds of mutual cooperation with humans. That didn’t seem to be a coincidence, though Anton didn’t know the full history behind Temine’s interactions with them.

In short, he wasn’t surprised when the Temine commander consulted with the royal guard and rapidly agreed to the Great Queen’s demands. In fact, it was in a bit of an excessive manner.

“She says that she is willing to be sent against our greatest foes,” the Great Queen translated. Anton wondered if there were pheromones for that specific promise, or if they were able to manage a very complicated mixture. “As long as the orders bring no direct harm to the people of Temine, of course.”

Anton nodded. “You did tell them what we wanted… right?”

“I hadn’t gotten to that yet. But now she will take it seriously.”

There wasn’t a whole lot visible in the further interactions, but Anton imagined it in his head as the Great Queen seriously and dramatically proclaiming what must be done. “The first task assigned to you shall be here, upon In’istra! Work hard to perform it to perfection!” No doubt the commander was making serious agreement pheromones, if that was even a specific option. “You must spend every day learning to speak the sign language we developed to speak with humans! And then, for the rest of your task, you are to return to Temine and impart the knowledge unto your brethren!”

At that point, Anton assumed there was a break as the commander tried to figure out when the lethal punishment was going to happen. But that would be it.

Framing the task as a punishment would certainly make them take it seriously, not that they would have slacked off anyway. But ultimately, it was just one of their goals for future interaction being resolved.

The Great Queen appeared to be finished. “I have informed her that you advocated for her survival. After this is all finished, her company will be your foremost defender in Temine’s territory.”

“That’s great,” Anton commented. “By the way, did you have ideas to solve the issue that caused this to begin with?”

“The instinctual bite? It was only a problem because the interaction was unexpected. Even the slightest amount of forewarning will suffice. And we have established plans to familiarize our scents in case for the future.”

“... Are there ways to copy pheromones?” Anton thought it would be a bit impractical for every void ant to interact with every group, especially if Temine had several origin queens.

“Thanks to the work of the Little Alliance, comprehensive void ant communication at a distance has been developing rapidly. I should have promoted such things, but I grew far too comfortable with living among humans… but separate.”

“I’m glad things worked out,” Anton said. “I suppose we shouldn’t keep the humans waiting longer.”

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The affairs of upper and lower realms continued on with the flow of time. Some wished it would move more quickly, and some wanted more. It continued as it always did, moving at a constant rate modified by distortions due to gravity, velocity, and other factors.

The Little Alliance and Ratna’s region had both come out of recent wars, but more were predicted in the future, with other enemies. The Veiled Brilliance secured their southern border against the partially revived Twin Soul Sect, and spies were sent out among them and various other foes.

Among the Twin Soul Sect, spies learned little of their actual goal- Sudin himself, and the circumstances of his survival. Nor could they confirm his relative power, though it was hoped that it was significantly damaged. In other times, Ratna might have sprung into war to wipe him out, but his timing during the Tilki clan’s assault was inconvenient. Even after, she was more focused on building up her sect and connecting to the Scarlet Alliance.

In a way, it was actually beneficial to have a familiar neighbor, as they knew most of the tricks of the Twin Soul Sect. Not all of them, likely. If they didn’t come up with new stealth techniques, then they’d be useless in the future. That was another reason to attack immediately- to stop their growth- but at the same time it was a good reason not to. If they already had spies, more losses would occur. Ultimately, Ratna’s choices were based on simple factors- she expected the growth of her and her allies to outpace a reborn Twin Soul Sect. That said, she was constantly on the edge of just telling her people to form fleets and wipe out every cultivator in those systems. Instead, she was strengthening her establishment in the slightly smaller territory she did control.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Spies sent to the Tilki clan were there for long term observation. They weren’t expected to come up with any startling revelations- just to provide an early warning if anything happened at scale.

Those sent to the Swirling Swarm had a longer journey than most- at least from the core of the Scarlet Alliance. They were similarly distanced from Ratna’s territory, though the Swirling Swarm was a bit more unique in that traditional spies were nearly useless.

It wasn’t that they countered spy techniques. Instead, it was that nobody seemed to know anything. Obviously, they knew how to fight and cultivate. Some knew what they were doing next week, but others didn’t even know what they were personally going to do the next day. Sometimes, that was going off to battle. The one group they didn’t frequently assault was themselves- but that didn’t mean there were never internal struggles. Just that if they had been constant, maintaining their numbers would have been literally impossible. Even as it was, they appeared extremely unstable.

None of the Swirling Swarm seemed to know much about their Domination cultivators. They weren’t any good at keeping secrets- they just didn’t know. So unless the spies were able to interview trillions of individuals and perfectly pick from among them those with deeper knowledge, there wasn’t much to do.

The sect was organized with the strongest individuals as leaders, typical for cultivators, but without anyone necessarily knowing who was going to give orders until they showed up. It was astounding that they didn’t devolve into chaos more often, but they were very consistently able to focus externally. Their territory continued to grow year over year… and at some point something had to break. Though it might be the Trigold Cluster before it was the Swirling Swarm.

One intention that was of great interest to the Alliance was their plans to invade the lower realms at the end of the cycle. For the Swirling Swarm, the answer was yes… but little more than that. Most likely, they would focus on worlds further east that weren’t prepared to resist them- but they might choose to assault the Lower Realms Alliance or the Shining Cooperative or any of the others they were neighbors with.

Similar efforts were launched to the west- dealing with the intentions of the Exalted Quadrant and the Chaotic Conglomeration. The Alliance was concerned with future attacks, whether those might be in the upper or lower realms. The earlier they could hear about possibilities, the earlier they could prepare. Of great concern were future assaults on the isolated segments, the Little Alliance and Ratna’s territory.

But Catarina and Misi had hopeful news for both.

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“It’s feasible,” Catarina confirmed. The mere possibility of their plans had been certain long before. Now, they had some small scale test cases that indicated they could actually accomplish it given their resources and time frames.

“Do you think we can achieve complete encapsulation?” Misi asked.

Catarina shook her head. “Not before the end of the cycle. Not unless we come across a significant accelerating factor. However, for the sake of stability we should plan for individual zones. Small connections.”

They would have to remain secret. The way the various segments that the central plane of the Scarlet Midfields had been separated to linked up was secret, but in a way that ultimately would only slow their enemies. There were too many people that had to be able to navigate for it to be truly secret. Just confusing enough that with some modifications they could direct their enemies where they pleased, instead of simply focusing them on only Xankeshan. Additional defensive worlds had been set up as part of the process, with infrastructure to make up for a certain lack of powerful cultivators. Though they would have those too, if all went well.

The connections to the different regions would be balanced against each other. As the two regions were far from symmetrical, it had taken many people years of careful planning to come up with something reasonable. It actually worked out to some extent. Ratna’s territory was closer, and it would receive more connections. The Little Alliance would have just one region, used only for emergencies. It would be ‘heavier’, a greater strain on the formations, because it was significantly further without piecewise connections.

Unfortunately, just being able to distribute their forces more efficiently wasn’t going to solve all their problems. Even if they could cut months- or in the case of the Little Alliance nearly a year- off of their travel time, they still had to pick and choose where people were. And when war arrived at their doorstep, their movements would be even more restricted unless they wanted to reveal the exact details of how they could move to their enemies.

They had seen how the matter of void ants increased the pressure on the Little Alliance- and how they had made up for that. There was a growing movement to include the void ants in the core alliance, but the transition might be rocky. It ultimately wasn’t something they wanted to do near the end of a cycle- though the Great Queen spoke of her readiness at any point.

“This possibility,” Catarina said. “It is all because of you.”

Misi frowned. “There was no way I could accomplish this without you.”

“Yes. But you chose to make it happen. To ask the rest of us to push our limits. Now, all we have to do is finish this ‘fifty year project’.”

It was a good thing they still had most of a century. Because as any large project, there were bound to be issues that came up- no matter how much planning went into something, they couldn’t be prepared for everything. One source of resources might dry up- or fall behind on production. Perhaps there would be another war. Someone might make a mistake and destroy part of the formation- they had already worked extremely carefully to avoid that as much as possible, but there were no guarantees of anything.

And unfortunately for Catarina, she had other responsibilities. Like reviewing any changes in their neighbor’s formations- mostly Everheart. She was pretty sure anything they could see from outside his system was for show, but it still merited frequent updates. And their other neighbors in the great powers had far more adjoining borders now. More length of borders… but in theory they didn’t need to worry about the full extent of them nearly as much.

Still, they were confident in completing the Alliance Connection Project. One way or another.