Brightness and heat suffused everything around Anton as he slipped around a star. His speed was improving, but mere speed was not satisfactory. Unfortunately, his attempts to develop a better travel technique were limited by his bound stars. He was making some progress when moving among stars he was attuned to, but elsewhere he was restricted to simply pushing himself further.
As he had recently traveled around the perimeter of the Lower Realms’ Alliance, Anton was keenly aware of the vast distances involved. And that was ignoring anything beyond their settled areas. The Shining Cooperative was of an unknown size, but even the most generous estimates would only have them spilling out of that area a few systems to the east. Of course, they could be wrong.
In an unbound system like he currently was, Anton could only pick up a little bit of speed by wrestling momentum away from the local star and planets. He could recover energy just fine between systems now, so it wasn’t always necessary to stop or even pass through particular systems. Moving only in the void between systems also had its merits.
Currently, Anton was circling around through his bound systems to the south. He’d spent a good portion of his time lately traveling, but that was a consequence of his wide ranging interests. He had grown more confident in In’istra with Varghese advancing to Assimilation, but the Shining Cooperative loomed too close for him to fully relax. Thus, his plan was to make certain that the following diplomacy would go as well as possible. That meant a safe and preferably comfortable location to stay. The Lower Realms Alliance had already sent a few security ships that should at least verify specific dangers, but Anton planned to check out some of the nearby systems just in case.
Instead of taking a direct route through unexplored stars- a tempting proposition- Anton had decided it was best to follow a mostly familiar. It was a longer distance, but the actual travel time should be similar. And if his technique finally showed any gains as he hoped it might, he could even arrive more quickly.
Once in the neighborhood of Ceretos, starting with Weos, Anton accelerated his advancement while trying to achieve specific insights. Hoping to instantaneously cover the distance between systems was a bit more ambitious than Anton was willing to strive for. However, he could do more.
What he was already doing involved using the power of his bound stars to accelerate himself as quickly as possible, but he didn’t think that was the right route. Instead, he had been working on another method that was similar in appearance from the outside.
From Weos, he focused on his connection to that star- and its rather odd effects on gravity- then his most familiar and first bound star in Ceretos. The two systems were neighbors, though perhaps over the course of thousands of tens of thousands of years that would change slightly. They were drifting in more or less the same direction, but not at precisely the same velocities relative to the galactic plane.
That double connection was what Anton wanted, and he strengthened it slightly. He propelled himself forward and dove into subspace once beyond the gravity well of the system. He was moving fast, certainly, but he hadn’t quite accomplished what he wanted. It was a matter of days before he arrived around Ceretos, ready to turn to the northeast. This was where his technique was more critical, as he had greater distances between bound stars. Though had had over a dozen bound stars along the path from Ceretos to In’istra and Azun, that put them at around an average of thirty to forty lightyears apart, enough to pass through a handful of systems.
Anton’s next leap didn’t quite get it… but he felt something. His next star was about halfway to the Twin Planets, though perhaps the name was no longer apt considering the whole system was being expanded into.
Either way, he made one more attempt there, finally achieving what he wanted in a primitive form. Between the two stars, he formed a corridor using his connection, one that most likely only he could travel. And not a permanent one. But the important thing was that it was outside of the normal habit of slipping into subspace. Here, the distances were even shorter- the most reasonable way to improve travel times since he was already pushing as close to the speed of light as he felt was safe.
For a first attempt, Anton found it quite reasonable. He had to maintain the corridor rather than keeping himself in subspace, but it was more efficient. And he knew he saved some time. A trip that could have been twelve days became ten. Anton understood it was already ridiculously fast travel by some standards, but taking several months to go from Ceretos to In’istra at maximum speed was still… uncomfortably slow. Even ignoring the time it would take a cry for help to reach him, that was an unacceptable amount of time.
Arriving in his destination system, Anton knew he could do even better with practice. He wasn’t sure how much, but he had a handful more attempts to try to advance his basic proficiency before he needed to turn towards Ozemdu- the system where the meeting was scheduled to take place, still more than four years hence. Before he picked it out for the meeting, it had only had a generic number- even in just their local neighborhood, there were many, many thousands of stars. Uniquely naming those that weren’t something special was simply a waste of time.
After his initial success creating connected corridors rather than simply catapulting himself ahead, Anton didn’t see any immediate leaps in efficiency. However, determining the technique was viable was the most important step, and achieving an immediate travel speed increase between one part in five and one part in six was nothing he was going to complain about. Most likely he would only push those numbers down very slowly… but this was a better avenue than simply ‘going faster’.
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Soon enough he was back to traveling through new and unfamiliar territory. He was glad for his advancement to Enrichment, as it made his journey much easier. When he arrived, Anton was going to scout all of the nearby systems for distortion beasts- best to deal with those beforehand, if there were any- and then see if he could set about making the planet a bit more comfortable besides having tolerable gravity and temperature. Maybe suggest building a nice room or something. He might not be the first to think about that, but he would feel silly if he didn’t suggest it just because he assumed other people brought it up already.
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More than a thousand lightyears away, Velvet was hurtling towards the northern part of the Exalted Quadrant, following her plans to pass by the first few layers of systems. Of course, even pushing her poor transport ship she wasn’t making nearly as good of time as Anton was.
That meant many weeks of silently meditating, focusing on the important task of keeping her energy signature subdued until she finally reached her destination system.
The ship dropped out of subspace a good half lightyear from the system.
Velvet bristled when she felt the change, but she didn’t sense anything nearby that would have caused it. After some inspection, she determined that the ship’s systems had collapsed slightly earlier than predicted under the somewhat intentional strain. If this ship had been built with Ruteran technology combined with modern formations, things might have been different- but the ship was probably older than her. And while reliability and longevity were useful traits for a cultivator to consider, the lack of innovation was the issue.
Cultivators happily improved themselves over the course of centuries, but they seemed to rarely seek out anything new. In a way, the lower realms having their planets ‘reset’ occasionally was the driving factor in how they were different. They hadn’t been able to settle into a comfortable state where they didn’t feel the need to push themselves. And combined with more than a few connected individuals ascending near in time to each other and joining together in the upper realms, they’d managed to start something amazing.
Velvet just hoped that the sluggish and traditional powerhouses on either side of the Scarlet Alliance took too long to properly see what was happening, and reacted slowly enough for them to actually fight back. Because while they had some amazing things, what the Scarlet Alliance lacked was raw numbers. That was something only time could fix, as new people had to be born and rise in cultivation in either the upper or lower realms.
There was an internal debate about whether she should destroy the ship, but ultimately Velvet decided that there were no useful traces left on the ship. It arriving empty in its target system in a couple years would at most be a mystery, assuming it didn’t go unnoticed along its course into the sun.
As for herself, she directed her course around the system. She had a particular goal for where she wanted to first set her feet, as well as a new cover identity to help her be on her way. She even had an identity token from an Exalted Quadrant sect. Some would darken when their attuned cultivators died, but this one had had its connection severed by the Spirit Slicing Sect. Thus, it would look real enough as long as nobody took a deep look at her cultivation.
Obviously Velvet would be hiding that. If someone noticed she was an Augmentation cultivator, there would be too many questions. Obviously she had an excuse for why she was trying to travel incognito, just in case, but at that point it would probably be too late. Her cultivation wouldn’t match any local techniques well enough under a thorough inspection, and while that was acceptable for those of weaker cultivation, Augmentation cultivators were more of the definition of a techniques look and feel. Even if she picked another sun based sect, Velvet knew she wouldn’t perfectly match. So she would be acting as a member of the Western Mirage Sect.
There was a vaguely associated Northern Mirage Sect as well, but their problem was actually being local. And thus more easily recognized. Even if Velvet was good at faking her outer layer of cultivation, the best disguises were the most believable, where people didn’t even try to inspect them. Just like the best stealth was simply going where nobody would look.
Obviously that didn’t work all the time. If Velvet wanted to be the most safe she could be, she would have crawled along either the northern or southern border, staying just within the boundary of the upper realms. But she still had information to gather for the Scarlet Alliance, and it was better to do it now than risk another trip deep into enemy territory.
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Saying that he could predict all of Aerona’s actions would have been foolish, and Devon knew that even with his encouragement she could have gone either way. Even so, he was comfortable saying that he expected the eventual outcome that she arrived at.
Which was to say, she actively chose to participate in more parts of the diplomatic efforts on Nidec. She hadn’t been lacking in options before, but she was pushing for more invitations to various events. And of course, for his part in that Devon had to support her. Both emotionally, and in the manner of being a powerful and intimidating cultivator.
So it was that he was both surprised and not surprised to be challenged to a duel by a member of the Hardened Crown Sect- the Nidec branch, not the other one. Though Naamah looked like she might want to fight him too.
He accepted, of course, though he wasn’t sure if it was particularly fair to stomp a Life Transformation cultivator. And so he asked Aerona to help come up with some appropriate handicap that wouldn’t be insulting and could improve their opinion of him. When she gave her suggestion, he almost thought she was crazy. Then he remembered who they were dealing with… and he decided it was fine.