Some said that the hardest decisions were made upon the battlefield. Perhaps that was true for some, but Lynette found that other decisions were also vastly impactful. Of course, there was some difference in that single individuals didn’t tend to have control over them.

Perhaps not all of the weight of the choice was upon her, but it still felt like it. This was something that would affect billions of lives, and the course of their relations with the Shining Cooperative.

Everything stemmed from fairly understandable circumstances. The current state of the war required constant vigilance and patrols focusing manpower on the eastern end of the Cooperative. That became a puzzle of logistics, transporting food and other supplies to the front lines, such as they were.

Ship parts were a necessity, because even without combat constant operation could cause ships to wear down- and not all of them were powered by directly renewable sources. Even batteries that could absorb natural energy from around themselves would break down over time.

And then there were the problems with food. Mazlerth hadn’t been a primary producer of food for the group, but what happened there had caused a shock to the system at a time when they were beginning to shift over to new methods. Ultimately, Lynette thought the Shining Cooperative would have been worse off without new production techniques from the Lower Realms Alliance… but the timing was still terrible.

Then there had been the resurgences of the mold from Mazlerth- not on the planet itself, which had systematically eradicated every last bit of it. Instead, it was from food shipped off planet before the quarantine. Small amounts of spores had gone unnoticed as various grains and the like were mixed in with other food supplies. During transport they remained innocuous, seemingly in a state of hibernation. Even being stored in refrigeration for years, they showed few signs- until the slow growth reached a certain point.

Methods to combat the mold had been spread throughout the Shining Cooperative, so they hadn’t needed further quarantines… but entire warehouses had found their contents devoured overnight as the environment shifted just enough for it to grow and devour anything organic.

A few incidents of that reduced the food supply, and the necessity to carefully inspect things coming and going to be certain of its eradication further limited the supply chain. Along with that and various other necessities, the Shining Cooperative was in a rough spot.

If they had come and begged for money to pay their workers, Kybele and the others would have been significantly less inclined to respond positively. But as they had hit a limitation of their production and transportation, there wasn’t much they could do.

Obviously the Lower Realms Alliance was going to send aid. The only question was how much. Many lives were at stake- and even if few people would directly starve, it could result in much suffering. And if a lack of supplies on the border resulted in something terrible slipping by the patrols? Devastation.

But while the Lower Realms Alliance was wealthy, they had their own people to worry about, and their own hardships. Natural droughts and poor seasons could only be counteracted by cultivators to a certain extent- especially on less developed planets. Throughout all of the planets they controlled, there was always somewhere that needed aid.

In short, they needed to keep enough for themselves as well. Finding a correct balance was important.

And then there was the small but distinct possibility of deception. There was no chance the entire situation was fabricated, but it could be somewhat exaggerated. It was entirely possible they would want to take advantage of their new neighbors.

Lynette was qualified to deal with numbers, but that situation was something she was especially suited for. They could sign a contract of sorts for the aid. If there were deceptions in the numbers, they could demand recompense. It wasn’t nice to force a contract on those who were in difficult straits, but she had to protect the Lower Realms Alliance. And the terms wouldn’t be too onerous. Most importantly… if they weren’t exaggerating, there wouldn’t be any penalties.

But they couldn’t just donate everything to their neighbors. They had just barely established their non aggression pact, and now they were allies by default in a war. There had been contact between the two groups for fewer than two decades, so the amount of trust between them only went so far.

Knowing that timing could be important, they had already authorized the first shipments before there were even tangible promises of repayment. Lynette only wondered if she and the others could find a balance between speed and proper deliberation.

At least the math would be fast, once they knew what the math should be. Adding and multiplying numbers on the scale of billions of humans was easy enough to compute.

-----

A decade, no, five more years would have been enough. That was what Anton was thinking as he heard about the situation with the Shining Cooperative. But they had barely begun their shift in growth, a few places testing out what the Lower Realms Alliance told them. It was reasonable caution, and if there hadn’t been a war immediately following it would have probably worked out with only a small number of flaws. Whatever was expected with humans involved, as even cultivators made mistakes.

If there was something he could reasonably do that others could not, Anton would have gladly gone to help- but all of the advice he had was freely available. Unless they needed more obscure knowledge like how to grow things on the barest topsoil on rocky crags, his presence wouldn’t matter.

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Anton knew that bad news would always exist. This was just slightly larger scale than most. He couldn’t do anything about it. But what he could do was look at some good news, and where things had gone well.

Akrys was… great, honestly. The best part was that he could hardly even pick out anything that looked like he had contributed to the planet’s development. Obviously there were a number of weapons inspired by human design, and in the core of the Lower Plains things looked a bit more human. But the various types of sapient creatures living on the planet all had their own ideas of what cities and buildings and infrastructure and such should look like.

They weren’t wrong, either. Oh, they were making plenty of mistakes that they would pay for down the road as they had to redo cities or roads… but those were part of the growing pains of civilization. And ultimately, Anton wasn’t as interested in their economic development such as things might be, but their social development.

There were birds of the air, birds of the water, and birds of the land. Oh, and things that weren’t birds for all of those things, obviously. But it was interesting for him to see how different various places were… and yet how welcoming they had become of their neighbors.

Perhaps Anton was cynical, but he could have easily seen the planet turning into a bloodbath as various groups developed cultivation. It was natural for them to eat each other, or at least compete for dominance of their individual groups. And ultimately, that had been the result. It was just that they had become the same group… mostly.

He could see that a certain group of tortoises were still being stubborn, but what was an alliance without a few ornery participants? There were uncontacted or barely contacted individuals in the deep seas.

But mammals, insects, fish, avians, and all different types- as well as predators and prey- were living in as close to harmony as possible. Individual conflicts, but worldwide cooperation or at least social acknowledgement. Which was impressive, given that transportation was quite difficult. It mostly involved walking, flying, or swimming manually. For cultivators, that wasn’t exactly slow, but they lacked certain sorts of large scale connection. It was an ongoing process to keep the threads of unity they had together, but Anton was proud to see a large number of meerkats and ants were on the job.

The void ants… well, they were the only non-natives living there currently. But they were highly cooperative, and didn’t take up much space. Fearsome Mandibles was surprisingly good at establishing them in optimal locations- but only where they were invited.

There was another aspect he hadn’t expected, but should have been obvious. They had been taught the basics of formations, and once the people of Akrys knew about them they developed wild offshoots with regards to how they used them to support their lifestyles. Anton was certain Catarina wished she could come see things herself- but she would have to manage with detailed reports.

This was what Anton loved. A beautiful world, living in something close to harmony. And if something acted against them, they would find out what else Akrys could do in harmony. Any potential invaders wouldn’t know what hit them… though admittedly, they weren’t that powerful just yet. They had Life Transformation cultivators, but they were few and far between. Only a few dozen scattered throughout the continents. But all of that would change with time.

-----

Even though he saw them coming, Varghese let the ships get right up to In’istra’s atmosphere. That was because he’d also sensed the other ships further behind them, barely lingering at the edge of the system.

He was impressed at how ready the lead ships were to circumvent the planetary barrier. Rather than trying to force anything past, they simply went with what would naturally slip through. Simple gasses. If the planetary barrier tried to stop absolutely everything from passing through, it would wear itself out as it deflected light and trapped heat and didn’t allow natural effects to continue.

Which is why the formation masters had built in detection systems. A secondary barrier would have activated, if those monitoring the barrier hadn’t been forewarned by Varghese. Even then, they wouldn’t have thrown aside his plan if he didn’t capture the gasses immediately after they passed the barrier, diverting the flow of sunlight to charge whatever had been released, making it clump together. It would be captured for storage and careful research later. Most likely some sort of poison deadly in extremely small quantities, meant to kill everyone on the planet.

Varghese didn’t like that he could think that thought so easily, but the experience with these Trigold Cultivators had revealed so many things that were better off destroyed. Nobody should have produced such quantities of this poison, for any reason. It was simply too dangerous. If the capsules that had carried it on the ships had gotten the slightest crack where they were stored, they could have devastated the surrounding population. He hoped they at least had the sense to store it off-planet.

The second flight of ships approached. Both groups were using an interesting sort of passive camouflage, quite difficult to sense. Like void ant chitin. But nothing was perfect, and it was difficult for ships to maneuver in space without releasing traces of natural energy.

The second set of ships released different gasses, momentarily lingering atop the barrier as they diffused through it. All in all, it was probably only a few tonnes between the various ships. A single larger ship could have carried it all… but Varghese imagined something particularly nasty happened when the two were mixed.

He would have asked the pilots, but that was for later. In fact, this entire group was being let go. Not long term, of course. Someone was going to follow them while Varghese kept everything in stasis, removing it far from In’istra. Because they had to return somewhere, and it was time to see who in particular was behind this.

Even after a decade of staying in his home system Varghese wasn’t feeling entirely restored, but he could still bind a star and cause some serious damage to a system. So he was kind of hoping they found a good system for him to smash up. But if not, a team of void ants could cause a lot of damage in unexpected ways.