Elder Cultivator

The reach of the Scarlet Alliance wasn’t limited to taking on a single project at a time. As long as it didn’t require Catarina’s capabilities with formations, other projects could easily be undertaken. Securing Alliance territory was a high priority, which included augmenting their defenses and continued attempts to establish proper diplomacy with others.

The Hardened Crown Sect wasn’t any closer to joining the Alliance after Sly’s visit, but that had never been the point. Merely engaging in peaceful contact- judging by that sect’s sensibilities- was a way to build towards the future. The varied members of the council could expand areas in which they had expertise, and below them there were many layers of subordinates they could count on to complete any job.

Specialized cultivators worked hard to make sure their faction wasn’t weighed down too heavily by layers of bureaucracy, while still making certain that everything was being done appropriately. Sects that could have all of their resources pulled by the sect heads on a moment's notice were agile and rapid in their responses to threats… and prone to similarly rapid falls whenever the best judgment of their leader came up against a failed bet. On the other hand, unnecessary restrictions would make people unable to act.

The Scarlet Alliance had many people dedicated to keeping them in a proper middle ground of efficiency, sufficiently agile but not prone to overcommitting to anything. Such people were a constant thorn in Catarina’s side… and her most important allies as they kept a steady flow of supplies flowing to all necessary projects. Forgoing other opportunities to focus only on large scale formations would ultimately result in Catarina being incapable of doing her work at all.

This was the Alliance’s greatest merit, those who specialized in areas other than battle. All manners of resource gathering and growth, production, and everything else had their own people who would only get better with time- and those who didn’t reach a level of expertise would find themselves rapidly aware of their deficiencies. It was best for them to seek out other methods of focus, though in most cases a desire to excel was sufficient since training of all sorts was readily available.

The Scarlet Alliance had many planets to settle over the coming centuries- which meant they needed to be prepared for people. Many had been ecologically devastated by the decades of war in the Midfields and the period of occupation and extraction. Establishing stable ecosystems planetwide was a significant task that took a large number of workers, though the Alliance knew all the necessary factors for a practical balance. A complete ecosphere was far harder to achieve, as the species present on any one planet numbered in the hundreds of thousands at a minimum. Transporting enough of any of them to create a stable population would be difficult enough, let alone fine tuning things to result in future success.

But there were people who did that, specializing in their lifelong goals. Even if they never reached Augmentation- which was possible even for non-martial styles- they could build up centuries of experience, passing their knowledge and experience on to many future generations. Teaching techniques had also been expanded upon.

Colonies would be established in the Midfields, but their assistance would also be offered to their allies in the Chaotic Conglomeration. The upper and lower realms parts of the Alliance would both have expertise to offer in that regard. The plan was to make the move look more like expansion rather than some sort of retreat. Some of their allies would not wish to leave old homeworlds, but the pressures of the Chaotic Conglomeration and the Exalted Quadrant would eventually cause them to crumble.

The void ants were one of those reasons- but they also recognized that the contributions of the void ants were what kept them from perishing along the way. Suddenly divesting themselves of the void ants wouldn’t protect them from potential wrath, so they were locked in to their course there. The lower realms greatly approved. Those in the Scarlet Midfields kept their cautionary separation from void ants… though pressure from the Great Queen might change their mind eventually. She could weave convincing arguments about how they would be needed, and there was every reason to trust she believed that.

Void ants had opportunities to use human transportation, but there was only so far they could walk on their own six legs. Even if they were a hearty people, at some point it was quite inefficient to go between different sections of a single city, and they had ways to contribute to all forms of human society. They could get into so many small places, observe machinery up close, and handle areas with unstable energy. More void ants worked in pretty much every location than humans, by numbers but certainly not by mass. The total quantity of void ants in any one place usually contained less matter than one article of human clothing.

For the sake of efficiency, void ants had created many smaller devices- mostly based off of trains, bringing them from central nests to human transportation hubs. Otherwise, it could take them half an hour to go a couple hundred meters. That could be accelerated by void ants working in harmony, but a rolling battle structure took up far more space than just an underground tube on a per-ant basis. Various methods had been developed over the centuries, but now they were more capable of building their own technology.

It still very much helped to have humans help set things up initially, since they could usually carry an entire void ant factory in a box- ready to be put into place at its final location with only a few small tweaks.

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Anton was confident that once he finished his interactions with all the various peoples of Klar that they would accept him. If not, he could accept not binding their star- but he honestly thought it would be best for them.

As time went on it became clear that the sapient species weren’t limited to plants and plantlike individuals, but they were by far the majority in kind and total quantity. Especially when they began producing future generations. Some ended up normal plants, but others- usually those from individuals with higher cultivation- maintained the spark of sapience.

Meanwhile, there were only a small number of animal types that had gained sapience in the area. And, as Anton had recently discovered, some portion of the space-dwelling oddities in the system. They were the hardest to put into a category, though if he wanted to Anton could easily call most of them ‘animals’ by an extremely broad definition, and some might be plants, or at least sufficiently plantlike.

Regardless of the results, Anton continued to spread the energy language- but the locals also managed that as well. Bear Hug was the most enthusiastic teacher, as they loved communication in all forms. Others merely found it practical, and once they learned that cultivation could benefit from an exchange of insights with others many became more social.

That was even true of the most antisocial individual, Briar. Given where Briar started on that scale, the fact that they had only reached the level of neutral interaction wasn’t that bad. Not friendly, and not always willing social interaction, but nonviolent. Briar did like cultivation, at least, and Bear Hug knew more about active energy control.

Briar still consumed a lot of other plants- and occasional animals. Anton thought it was fine, though he’d emphasized that Briar couldn’t count on others to replant for them. With a large enough territory Briar could cut around their continent- or the continent of various planets- and not cause any lasting damage. Fortunately Briar didn’t seem interested in making more like them, so whether it would be a violent nature or teaching, neither would come into play.

The whole system wasn’t at peace though. It couldn’t be. The way the planets drew in various energy-sensing creatures and then erupted them into space between planets was the only way for the constantly spacefaring individuals to grow their mass. Except, perhaps, for a very slow transformation from pure natural energy, but that was inefficient even for plants.

Violence among nature was expected, however. Anton could call a forest peaceful even if there were foxes hunting rabbits and deer consuming leaves. Birds would eat insects, or rodents, and that was natural. Even if feeding was inherently violent to some extent, it could still contribute to a peaceful enough ecosystem.

An actual lack of peace came with intent. That is, people. Anton minimized his presence so that people could interact as naturally as possible, but there were others like Briar that found it expedient to take resources from others, and they maintained that stance even after learning to communicate. Anton was relieved that Bear Hug and Liberty were among the stronger individuals, and they brought together communities that could work for mutual defense. As for how they handled violent individuals, that was generally dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

Some they were unable to spare even if they wished to. Others eventually learned reason. Anton could only share what he had seen work for other people, but there were quite different thought processes as far as plants were involved- not just from humans but also from each other. Some conflicts were due to slower growth in understanding, and tensions remained from a lack of any particular authority structure. Though society did seem to be developing slowly, and Liberty was more interested in that part than Bear Hug.

Then again, if Bear Hug got their way everyone would be friends and thus there would be little need for complicated conflict resolution plans. Even friends could have issues with each other, but they would work out a method to resolve that over time without others forcing them to.

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Not all of the sapient individuals were on par or weaker than Bear Hug and fiends. Some of them wouldn’t have been a viable target for their attempts at cultural exchange regardless due to certain difficulties. Specifically, reaching them. ř𝙖Ŋ𝐎₿Ёṧ

So that was where Anton focused his efforts. Partially on sea creatures- learning lessons from Akrys- but also on spacefaring individuals. One of those was a particularly large individual that Anton could most closely associate with an ocean ray. A large and wide individual that was thin like a sheet.

That was where the similarities ended, except for perhaps visual movement. Because this individual tried to wrap around and crush him instead of biting or stinging. It wasn’t like a manta ray that could swallow hordes of smaller things whole- though it would have functioned quite well in the space ecosystem in that regard.

Anton used Stars Steps once more to get just outside of attacking range as the ray lunged. He was fairly certain it was beginning to understand the patterns of his speech, but was clearly not interested just yet. “That’s not going to work, you know,” Anton said. “I replenish energy faster than you.”

He got no response. He was simply chased around, until eventually his pursuer got tired and went to eat something easier. It was clearly cautious about him watching it feed, but he kept enough distance that it felt safe. Likely because it didn’t know about archery. Anton’s attacks had flown through the system before, but not every denizen would have immediately recognized what it was. Long range attacks were unusual without developed tools, and the sort of range Anton had was never experienced without vast cultivation. Technology could replicate a good number of in-system attacks, though. @@novelbin@@

Anton thought that the ray would be better served as a herder than an ambush predator, but he was finding it difficult to explain that. It happily killed anything he led towards it, but it wasn’t much fond of preservation and control. Then again, three dimensional herding might be a difficult task below a certain level of cultivation. The ray could probably do it, though. It was vaguely equivalent to a Life Transformation cultivator, which was quite strong, even if Anton had surpassed that level long before.