Two steps within the boundary of the Silver Fang territory was the planet Sagrigan. It should have been safely embedded within their defensive lines, but as the incident with Gniteria showed they had no ability to prevent intrusion into their territory. Even so, the defensive complement available was sufficient to deter most forms of attack.

Durff had not been informed of any of this- or if he had, he hadn’t been listening. He had come with a plan, and nothing was going to stop that. His hammer came down atop their barrier, making it tremble… but that was all. But if he hit it harder… he took a great swing, sufficient to crush a mountain. His hammer rebounded from the barrier without causing any damage at all. Okay, maybe the barrier would stop him actually. He looked over towards Catarina.

“I’ve got it,” she said. “One moment.”

Durff expected her to break through like Koralo, creating a small path for them to move through. Koralo had done some cool things with rings. Instead, Catarina had a small sword and was poking at the surface of the barrier. He wasn’t going to disparage her choice of weapon, but she sure didn’t look like she was trying very hard to break the barrier.

Then… the barrier started to fade away like mist under the bright sun. Durff thought it would stop, but it didn’t. As far as he could tell, the entire planetary barrier fell apart.

“We’ve got one hour,” Catarina said. “Better make the most of it.”

He looked at her. “Are you going to be breaking their formations?”

Catarina shook her head. “Of course not. I’ll be retrieving them.”

Could you do that? Well, he supposed they were usually just fancy rocks. Or fancy metal inlaid in fancy rocks. Or… things like that. But formations also usually protected themselves from being picked up. That wasn’t Durff’s business though.

Timothy pointed with his sword. “You should get going. I’ll be here to hold off attackers.”

Durff nodded. That guy was really good with his shield. Durff sparred with him once and knocked himself halfway across the system with his own energy being reflected. As expected of people who worked with Velvet.

Alva he’d already seen… but she was already shooting directly downward. Fortunately, her arrow disappeared before it hit the ground. Below them was his target. He did vaguely feel her hit something on the other side of the planet, though. Apparently it was difficult to go through subspace and stuff around ‘gravity wells’, which was why Durff generally didn’t do that and just hit the whole planet. Much easier.

He dropped down towards the area he wanted, swinging his hammer to strike the formation beneath. He was surprised when his attack was once again completely negated. Seriously, had they built these things precisely to counteract him?

Huh. Maybe they had. But if that was the plan, they really screwed it up. Because this just made things easier for him. He looked past the barrier, seeing thousands cowering- both those in chains and those who were not. There were also many others preparing to come attack him. Probably after he tired himself by breaking through.

So he just looked for the edge of the dome, and struck the ground next to it. Durff was immensely surprised when the whole place didn’t go flying into space. They really did make stuff specifically to negate him!

He did collapse the ground around the area, though, turning it into loose sand. Well, since he couldn’t hammer the place into submission… he put his hammer on his back and dove into the ground. He wasn’t trying to collapse things, so his pick wouldn’t do any good. But he still had other perfectly functional abilities.

Durff stood beneath the district and pushed his arms up. He’d learned a few things about lifting heavy things, like how to avoid sinking into the ground. He felt his muscles straining, and he boosted them with his energy. He was pretty strong, but not lift thousands of people and the land they were on strong. Not with just muscle. But fortunately for him, half of the work was done by the formation- the big sphere was unbreakable and absorbed sudden impacts.

It didn’t seem to resist being slowly pushed, though. He hadn’t actually known it would work, but he had to try. He pushed, accelerating bit by bit until it built up sufficient momentum. Conveniently, everyone inside seemed to be protected from the negative effects of acceleration as well. A very well put together formation. It would probably protect from all sorts of things, like the vacuum of space.

Or if not, someone would deal with that. He flung it out towards their hidden fleet regardless. Hiding that many ships was difficult, but much easier when there were people doing big flashy entrances. Like that Timothy guy, who was fighting ten people with spears- because the first thousand people who had rushed at him were now impaled headfirst in the streets below. Well, not directly below because those streets were in space now.

Durff looked around. Was he done? Should he help Timothy and Alva? There were several Augmentation cultivators attacking them. Then he noticed Catarina breaking apart actual formation markings and tossing them into a weird looking storage bag. He could definitely help with that. She might have to tell him where to hit things, because she probably wanted them to be broken in a specific way, but he was good at that.

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Velvet was a big fan of freeing slaves. However, even though a large number of those captured were currently on Sagrigan, many had already passed through on their way to other destinations. Just because they disrupted one market didn’t mean they would be done. More importantly, it didn’t stop them from just invading their territory again.

The circumstances weren’t quite ideal for Velvet as she snuck into an overly fancy building. People would be awake and alert. But… that didn’t mean they could stop her. Especially since she wasn’t necessarily looking for the strongest people. In fact, those were all rushing towards Timothy and Alva.

Some formations tried to bar her way. Velvet had enough understanding of formations to know how to circumvent them… and if she was uncertain, she could disrupt the formations with her daggers. The voidsteel cut through pure energy like it was butter, negating its flow. It was capable of severing a cultivator’s connection to their own attacks, so the passive control of a formation was nothing. Even if it would re-establish itself soon enough, it didn’t matter.

Her first target was a woman. She was holed up in her chambers, guarded on all sides. Except for the secret servant’s entrance. Seriously, how did they not think to protect that one? Did they think she wouldn’t notice?

Ah. She’d gotten ahead of herself. They probably didn’t expect her at all. After all, who would send an Augmentation cultivator to assassinate a Life Transformation cultivator?

The answer was the Scarlet Alliance. Because they understood that combat prowess was not the only important factor for a civilization. Military might was necessary, but without the smooth flow of commerce, resources would be locked down and pretty much useless.

This woman was the first. She dealt in all sorts of trade- including slaves. When Velvet slipped over the servant’s entrance, she wondered if she should leave a note to explain. But she figured that anyone important would figure it out when they put all of the hopefully mysterious deaths together.

The tip of her dagger pressed through the woman’s defensive energy, gently touching her neck. But Velvet didn’t even pierce through her skin. Instead, she gently pushed the drop of liquid waiting on the tip of her dagger onto the woman’s neck. She seemed to sense the slight change, reaching up to touch it. But it would absorb through the skin of her hand just as well as her neck.

The woman developed a curious expression… and Velvet moved on, releasing her illusion of the closed doorway once it was properly sealed again. Aconite had supplied the poison, so even if Velvet didn’t know what it was going to do, she was certain it would take hold in due time. On to the next one.

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Chidi sliced open the formation he was standing next to. He kept his voice as low as possible. “It’s open. And no, they didn’t have any wolf-focused barriers here.”

“Are you sure?” Aconite growled back. “Before-”

“This place isn’t next to their ‘wild lands’,” Chidi pointed out. “They probably didn’t expect any wolves infiltrating.” Then he made a sign over their lips.

He used his energy to keep both of them hidden. He was probably two or three tiers below Velvet in the arena of stealth, but he understood formations, the flow of energy, and where people could observe him. He led the two of them on a route through a courtyard that was currently deserted.

People were likely focused on his father, fighting a third of the planet away. A reasonable choice, of course. But that allowed them to lay their trap. Or whatever they were going to call it.

Aconite was leaving behind a trail of powder that Chidi wouldn’t have noticed if he wasn’t watching. According to what he’d been told, it would spread out as people moved around, clinging to them and eventually working its way into them. Then when they tried to use energy an excruciating death would come for them.

Chidi knew about that last part. Well, the excruciating thing. He’d been given very precise doses and instructions for how much energy he was supposed to raise, and he at least felt like he was going to die. He wasn’t perfectly immune, but he should at least be resistant to accidental exposure. Aconite herself… could probably eat a whole bag and get nothing but dry mouth.

Speaking of bags, she had a voluminous storage bag full of the stuff. It was ultimately not something Aconite made regular use of because it was very specific in only harming a sort of mid range of cultivators. Integration cultivators and above would generally be able to purge it from their systems- Chidi probably could too, as his energy control was like an Augmentation cultivator, but it was better to not have to find out the hard way.

It wasn’t something that could be deployed in front of people obviously without being eradicated. But the insidious part was how its effects might appear seemingly randomly at a later date. They might not tie it back to their sect grounds until it was too late, with many Silver Fang disciples killing themselves.

It was brutal, but it focused the results on the people most responsible for the war. Since the Silver Fang had been given several opportunities to have some sort of peace but had refused, this was the result. They were focusing on a defensive posture- perhaps hoping for some allies to come support them- but the Scarlet Alliance wasn’t going to let them sit easy on any of their planets.

The pair wove back and forth through the sect grounds, avoiding any highly populated areas for the moment. On the way out, Chidi had them stop by a vault, where he purloined a few swords. It was a decent enough place to leave some of the poison as well.

Though the mission wasn’t flashy, it would be impactful. One more step towards them realizing they weren’t safe anywhere… and hopefully the Scarlet Alliance could force a proper resolution to the war. Or at least force their leaders to engage in battle where they could be crushed as a group.

If not… they’d slowly run out of high ranking cultivators. The Scarlet Alliance just didn’t want to have to scour every planet for enemies one at a time. Plus, even if the Trigold Cluster were only loose allies they had to act eventually, if things continued to drag on.