“He sure felt like he had both legs,” Vari explained to Engineer Uzun. “But I do remember he lost one.”

“It could have been part of an illusory formation, or a projection,” Catarina commented. “But speculating on that too much will likely be a waste of time.”

Uzun nodded. “We have to assume that he’ll be able to replicate the functionality if we give him a leg, regardless of who it is for. I think… it’s an acceptable price.”

“Good,” Vari replied. “Because I don’t think we can really go back on this deal. I tried to not accept anything too bad, though.”

“If the man can threaten our Alliance with an artificial limb,” Uzun said, “We have more to worry about than I thought. Even the best aren’t necessarily better than a natural limb, depending on the individual in question.”

-----

The deal went through fairly quickly. Even for the highest quality work for the leg, it only took several months and could be completed without disrupting other production. It wasn’t as if only one or two people lost limbs every year. Most didn’t have the same quality requirements, but there were still plenty of high ranking cultivators it happened to.

As for the other part of the deal, they duplicated all of the data they had collected on Koronis. Given the way it was collected, it could only be displayed with computerized systems. Rather than try to outwit Everheart, they simply gave him the most basic systems possible, the main requirement being speed and longevity. The technology they gave him was made to never connect to networks, so that he wouldn’t have any unnecessary information in that regard. But the basic functionality was important because they didn’t want to find out what he would do if he thought they cheated him.

Vari returned later that same year and had a pile of scrolls dumped at her feet. “Here, that’s everything I know about Sudin.”

Vari’s eye twitched. Technically that wasn’t outside of their deal, but giving information on a dead guy was… very much stretching things. “What about the second Domination cultivator?”

“Oh right,” Everheart said, as if he had forgotten. But he still had a single scroll prepared. “Here it is,” he said.

“... That’s just a name,” Vari commented.

“This scroll contains all the information I know about this particular Domination cultivator,” Everheart said.

Vari wanted to punch him. So she did. He literally didn’t move, and his defenses absorbed all the damage. “Jackass,” Vari said. Then she scooped up all of the scrolls, carefully placing them in her storage bag. She placed down the other bag. “Here’s everything you asked for,” Vari said. “You’ll find it much more complete.”

Everheart shrugged. “You never said I had to have more than a certain amount of information on the person. Oh, I guess I should say that I am certain that Shelach is a Domination cultivator from the Trigold Cluster, so you can scribble that down on there.”

Vari rolled her eyes. “Thanks. How enlightening.”

She resolved to leave quickly before her semi-uncle decided that it would be fun if she were entrapped in some sort of maze on her way out… and before she showed that she was actually unbothered by the results. She’d been warned he'd probably try to pick the two least useful individuals… and the information wasn’t her goal. It was instead the information going to him that was the plan.

They didn’t have any reason to believe he would fight Koronis, but if he did it would be more effective with that info. And they sincerely believed Everheart would have learned they had the info and tried to steal it. So selling it was far superior… and it wasn’t like they lost anything. The leg was weird though. Vari paid close attention but Everheart really felt real. Though it wouldn’t be crazy if a Domination cultivator could overpower her senses.

-----

Within the Scarlet Alliance’s most secure council chambers, Vari revealed the information she had gained.

“So we’ve got info on a dead guy,” Vari commented, pulling out various scrolls, “And a name.”

“Who bet on just a name?” Zazil asked.

Tauno held up his hand. “That was me.”

Prospero clicked his tongue. “I was betting on just a physical description.”

“Is Shelach dead too?” Hoyt asked.

“Uh… I got the feeling he was still alive?” Vari tilted her head. She repeated Everheart’s addition verbatim. “He didn’t really say that, but it sounded like Shelach is active. Though it could be was, a long time ago.”

Catarina was looking through some of the scrolls on Sudin. “The information here is actually quite detailed, at least. Apparently, he had made some attempts to deal reincarnation to cultivators not from the Twin Soul Sect. Though it’s unclear how that worked out.”

Tauno laughed. “They’re not gonna be happy if they made that deal. Since I don’t think the Twin Soul Sect has anything left at all.”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Probably some infiltrators,” Zazil commented. “However, their core sect is destroyed, likely including the necessary pieces to capture souls for reincarnation. Though it is possible Sudin shared the secrets with others. I can’t imagine it would have come cheaply, though.”

Vari frowned. “Does that mean any Domination cultivators we kill might just come back to life?”

“They’d almost certainly have to recultivate,” Prospero said. “Of course, we won’t have an example from Sudin because his soul was annihilated. But all of the other Twin Soul Sect members had to begin cultivation from the beginning. I imagine a Domination cultivator would be much more efficient the second time around… but we’re still talking long centuries.”

“Personally, I’d want to destroy their sects anyway,” Tauno said. “Anywhere that produced a Domination cultivator would be more likely to be able to produce another and take revenge. If we’re worried about reincarnation, that would solve two issues.”

“I haven’t seen any confirmations of successful negotiations,” Catarina said. “Though there are more than a few scrolls to look through. Some detailed histories… and speculation. That does leave the scroll on Shelach rather lacking, though. Everheart promised complete knowledge but I should say… maybe we shouldn’t trust him.”

Everyone had a good laugh at that. Everyone from Ceretos knew that Everheart was not to be trusted, and his infamy had spread through the upper realms. The only thing that made them slightly believe in what he’d done was that his deals usually went through- at least to the letter, if not the spirit. And they had kind of been hoping his fondness for Vari because of her aunt might help as well.

-----

“We’re agreed then,” Velvet said. “Sometime within the next few decades, you find an opportunity to visit the Scarlet Alliance. Traveling with our people, of course.”

Runa nodded. “I’d love that. Hopefully I can actually find the time.”

“I expect you’ll be very busy, but you’re not the arbiter on spreading our knowledge. We have people for that. Though if people are coming to you for negotiations, feel free to take advantage if you can. But you know what our lines are.”

“Absolutely. And… I’m glad we’re actually able to spend time together. When you first left… I truly thought we might never see each other again.”

“I’ll admit that was possible,” Velvet said. “But only in the same manner as it is true for any two cultivators- or any two people. Short of death, however, I wouldn’t let our friendship end like that.”

It was somewhat strange, how their friendship had worked out. Velvet had been in a multi-layered infiltration, but she’d still grown attached to Runa. The same was true in return. There were some rocky points, especially when Velvet’s true identity was revealed, but enough of what she’d shown had been herself. And the fact that she really wasn’t an enemy couldn’t be overestimated. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have let herself grow fond of anyone.

That would have made her infiltration more difficult, however, spending years among people she didn’t know and didn’t like. That was something others could manage, but it certainly wasn’t her area of specialty with regards to infiltration.

“You’ll love it,” Velvet said. “I guarantee it. There are so many amazing things I can’t even begin to describe them all. You can even see the lower realms.” They needed people in the upper realms who could escort their people from the border in the future, otherwise they would risk too much with future groups. But that meant certain information would become obvious… and that measure of trust was far easier in some ways than revealing the connection to void ants.

“I look forward to it. Though, are you certain we’ll see results that quickly? I can’t imagine a planet changes so easily.”

“You won’t see a complete transformation of your planets within two decades… unless you get everyone on board,” Velvet said. “But think of a planet like any other cultivator. In the early stages, advancement is rapid. You’ll notice the increase in available energy by then, and you’ll see a huge increase in the growth of Body Tempering and Spirit Building cultivators. Everyone else will still benefit, but it won’t necessarily be as obvious in that limited amount of time.”

“It does seem like a risk to improve planets that could be taken over by the Exalted Quadrant at any time.”

“That’s why we’re suggesting starting in your core worlds. Renov is safe enough you’re making other decades long plans, right?”

“Fair enough,” Runa admitted. “I suppose we couldn’t have done this on Taon, though.”

“For various reasons,” Velvet said. “You need full planetary control. Too many selfish people ruins it… even for them. Though efficient training methods will help even without planetary changes. Trigold Cluster styles should be very interesting for your people to study as well.”

“Yes, we occasionally came across cultivators who had a partial manual or the like from that far… but incomplete pieces are sometimes worse than useless.”

“On that note,” Velvet said. “I shouldn’t have to say this, but the forbidden techniques are forbidden for a reason. They’re there only as a reference, or for those willing to suffer the consequences. We simply wouldn’t have shared them if they fell into the other category.”

“Some fools won’t realize that,” Runa shrugged. “But we don’t really need them anyway.”

-----

Leonid was, in essence, a glorified photocopier. No, he didn’t replicate scrolls or anything. He was the person who put things into the machines that could also be called photocopiers.

He was perhaps slightly more valuable than others because he was well trusted and knew how to handle delicate materials. He’d worked with old scrolls, especially back when the Scarlet Alliance primarily had scrolls. And books. They still used them, but they also kept digital records.

Leonid wasn’t good with them, but he usually didn’t have this much trouble. “Ugh, this error again. Let’s see… ‘Insufficient resolution to parse glyphs’.” He looked at the machine, and then he looked at all of the scrolls that had just worked.

He carefully pulled the final scroll out, taking a good hard look at it. Even if he was trusted to handle highly classified information, he still didn’t read most of what he was working with. But when there were errors that required human intervention, someone had to take a look at things.

There it was, written in what he would say was exactly the same letter size as all of the rest of the scrolls he’d just scanned. No, there were actually smaller bits and pieces of Everheart’s writing.

Leonid took a good hour making sure that it had actually been capturing the smaller letters, but found it had worked just fine. With the handwriting being literally the same, what was wrong with this final scroll? Probably just a dumb bug.

It was literally seven characters. How could it mess up? He opened up the file, which was an image and an associated text rendering. He was just going to write Shelach in there by hand. Problem solved. But what Leonid saw already in the file was quite a surprise.