Every day that passed, Velvet thought to herself how it might be a trap. There had been a trap last time, after all. She’d thought she managed to sneak up on Zaur for a moment… but she was now convinced he had spotted her. After surviving that encounter- and the Alliance miraculously surviving the war- she had intensified her training. There wasn’t exactly a way for her to test herself against a Domination cultivator, but Velvet was confident that if she did not foolishly approach too close she could still retain her stealth.

Perhaps that confidence was pointless. Everyone had different reactions to feeling the might of a Domination cultivator, and while none in the upper echelons of the Scarlet Alliance had given into despair permanently… even Velvet retained some feelings of hopelessness.

Besides, the Exalted Quadrant had to be able to move their people more stealthily. The Citadel’s movements were far too obvious. Velvet almost didn’t believe it, even though they had crossed paths just recently. And of course by crossing paths she meant strictly as far as a naive map without three dimensional coordinates would be concerned. They never got closer than fifty lightyears. That was one benefit of a ship that didn’t require refined fuel, but functioned off of upper energy in general.

“I sense a spiral of doubt,” Koralo interrupted her thoughts. His hair and beard were grizzled, indications not so much of a greater age as a lesser cultivation. He had not yet advanced to Augmentation. “Would you mind sharing?”

Velvet knew she couldn’t expect much privacy on the ship, considering they had tiny compartments to sleep in and little other room. Spatial compression was a point of failure a dedicated spy ship could not afford. Only strict necessities and nothing else. “What if this is all a trap, and they are simply testing our capabilities?”

“If that is the case…” the formation master shrugged. “I expect we should gather as much information as possible before retreating. Like whether or not the Citadel itself is an anchor, and what sort of formations protect the outside.”

“Assuming we notice ahead of time,” Velvet said. “And that we can do anything.”

“Yes. That is indeed the assumption,” Koralo said. “It is why you are here, is it not? Both yourself and Alva have the best senses to pick out a trap. You are the head of the alliance infiltration network. And I… am highly ranked in formation assessment.”

“And if we fail-”

“Then we die. The Scarlet Alliance loses three Augmentation experts. A serious loss. But probably fewer Augmentation individuals the Exalted Quadrant will lose. The plan is to not approach until the actual war is underway, correct? So they will have to commit their forces. And they will lose them. Trust me, I have seen what our formations can do. Too bad we didn’t complete total inversion… Can you imagine the looks on their faces when they got to Xankeshan directly?” He smiled. “They’d laugh maniacally until they began the assault. Then Catarina would be doing it as a whole system’s worth of formations began to rip apart their fleets.”

“There are worse results than death,” Velvet grimaced. “I know too many secrets.”

“I do have a solution for that, actually. I was going to bring it up when we were closer,” Koralo said. “It’s a bit risky, but since this mission bears the hallmarks of a suicide mission… I can set up some enchantments that would kill us should we lose consciousness or energy flow. I won’t say it’s not risky, as I’d have to tune it to be quite sensitive. But since none of us are completely immune to information extraction, it’s likely best for all involved.”

“... That would actually make me feel much better,” Velvet said.

“Good. Because we’ll need you at the peak of your game for information gathering before we go in. Unless you learn that Zaur or some equivalently dangerous cultivator is still present, this will be our best opportunity to gain critical information for the Alliance. Assuming we don’t just save the day by destroying a Domination cultivator's anchor.”

“What if we don’t have the strength to destroy it?” Velvet asked. “Everyone counting on us…”

“Then we chuck it into the nearest star,” Koralo said without a moment’s thought. “That’ll take care of pretty much anything in the upper realms.”

“Well but- hmm.”

“Indeed. I refuse to believe we cannot even move the citadel. I heard that Durff smacked around a planet. Unless he was exaggerating.”

“Oh, no.” Velvet had sent someone to check. “It was definitely a planet sized mass. It likely didn’t have any upper energy resisting him but… if he said it moved, it did.”

“I can’t imagine the Citadel itself is any larger than a planet,” Koralo said. “It will most likely have formations, but it is my job to assess countermeasures for those. Then there will be the enemy cultivators who probably won’t enjoy our presence. I assume yourself and Alva will be primarily responsible for dealing with them, when we get down to it. Or Chikere, depending on if she wants to cut people or the Citadel.”

“I’d bet on both, honestly,” Velvet said. “I do have serious concerns about entrapment, still.”

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“Then I would suggest we arrive before they think we possibly could and complete our infiltration early.”

-----

“Is this one of those space squishing ships?” Durff asked out of nowhere.

Alva took a few moments to translate what he was saying. “Oh, no. It doesn’t use a warp drive. It uses a subspace traversal engine. Which is why I’m here. Not so much the engine but… in case we need to know about weird subspace stuff.”

“So it can’t make me heavier?”

“... No. Not unless something went horribly wrong and you got parts of the ship stuck overlapping with you.”

“That happened with that one secret realm,” Durff said, looking down at his body. “I think I got all the bits out, though. They weren’t helpful.”

“Yeah,” Alva said. “I find having the right things in the right spot very helpful. I don’t want extra stuff.”

-----

Durff found himself staring at a planet, trying to solve the most difficult problem he’d ever faced before. They were in some system that might not have a name, and if it did he definitely didn’t know it. Then again, Durff would never have been the one to ask about things like that. The point was, nobody lived here. Not even a thousand year old hermit.

That was what they needed, as their ship was orbiting as close to the star as it reasonably could, filling its battery with energy.

An unoccupied planet was what Durff needed, but Velvet’s restrictions made things hard. He couldn’t say she was wrong, of course. It would give them away if people saw huge cracks in a planet or something.

But he needed to hit it with his hammer. He was confident in his own strength for most things, but breaking something connected to a Domination cultivator? That was probably a lot harder than what he was used to. So he needed to be stronger, which meant practice. And while he could sit and meditate all day, that only got him so far. Circulating energy was good and made him stronger, but it was very slow. They probably only had a few months now, and that wasn’t long at all to reach Augmentation.

He didn’t even know if he could do it. Aunt Eka said it would be difficult for him to reach Augmentation because of… she didn't precisely say why. Probably because he wasn’t smart and didn’t have a good cultivation method. He would have liked to ask her, but he couldn’t talk to her right now because he was technically working for an enemy group. He wondered if the Guardians of the Veiled Brilliance knew they were on a list to watch out for? Well, so was all of the Trigold Cluster.

Some of the Guardians weren’t very nice, but Aunt Eka was good. Some other people in the Trigold Cluster were much worse. There was one time someone had tried to kill Durff and he’d killed them back instead, and then Aunt Eka had gotten mad at him for some political thing and something about souls or whatever. She said all that, but nobody came to take revenge on Durff so she’d probably fixed the politics problem. She’d been real mad though so he’d stayed away from people in that sect.

The point was, Aunt Eka wasn’t here and his friends had helped him get good training and maybe he could reach Augmentation anyway. The one thing he knew about cultivation was that just because someone else said something was impossible didn’t mean he couldn’t do it. Aunt Eka never said something was impossible. And his new friends in the Alliance agreed with his thoughts. Chikere’s look when she thought about cutting an unbreakable building was kind of how Durff felt about things sometimes.

Of course, Durff didn’t have his own statue. He wondered if he needed one to become an Augmentation cultivator, or if it worked the other way around. Maybe they would make one for him after.

He could break off a chunk of this planet and turn it into a statue, but he wouldn’t do it if there was no point. And he wasn’t supposed to leave evidence behind. Which made figuring out how to do anything very difficult.

Could he hit a planet without anyone noticing? That seemed unlikely. He’d probably leave a big hammer imprint. Maybe if he hit the whole side all at once, all spread out? No, there were a bunch of people who monitored planets’ orbits and stuff.

Then again… he could just put it back, right? It wasn’t going to go far.

Durff had to think about that. It took enough thinking that he didn’t get to do anything on that stop, and he didn’t notice when he was dragged into the ship. He didn’t even notice when he was plopped down on an entirely different planet a week later.

Then he smacked the planet good. Immediately afterwards, he rushed to the other side and hit it just as hard to get it back into the right spot. He… hadn’t thought about how long it would take to get to the other side of the planet. A few minutes shouldn’t matter, right? It was probably fine. Nobody would notice. There weren’t any trees or anything delicate and he hadn’t even smacked it that hard so it was hardly off course even before he fixed it.

Well, it was as hard as he could hit but planets were big and heavy. And that was why he did it.

Wasn’t he thinking about Augmentation? He checked himself and he was not an Augmentation cultivator. Maybe he needed to do it again, or maybe that wasn’t right at all.

Ultimately, he decided it didn’t matter. He did it again because he wanted to. It was fun, and nobody was stopping him. As long as he didn’t break the planet or something, nobody who didn’t set foot on the planet would notice anything. Except maybe a slightly odd spin. Even when Durff stood on it the planet looked fine. Some of the soil was just more compact than the rest. The impact was spread out over such a large area they’d need fancy measuring tools to notice anything. Or some sort of dirt cultivator.

Did people cultivate dirt? Yeah, he’d seen them on Xankeshan. Well, mostly people who worked with crops and stuff, but those were in dirt. Then again, on Xankeshan people cultivated while doing everything. Even reading. That just made it hard for Durff to read, but he supposed it fit some people.

So. Augmentation. He wasn’t there and didn’t know if he could reach it. But he was probably a little bit stronger now. That way, he wouldn’t disappoint any of his friends or himself if he failed to smash stuff when they needed him to.