As Anton grew more familiar with the area around Naewu, he found that his time to bind to additional stars was much reduced. Instead of taking two or three years, he managed to do the same in one or two for the rest. In total, he bound a formation of seven stars covering the vast majority of the cross sectional area that he had been guarding. Along with the others, Anton managed to continue to snag the various ‘deliveries’.
Even though there didn’t seem to be anyone the shipments were for, they didn’t want them to end up in the hands of the remaining portion of Trigold Cluster individuals in the lower realms. It might give them problematic ideas. More than that, studying everything they found was turning out to be quite useful.
It had taken a couple decades to really get the research going, but they had discovered the mechanisms through which stars were being destabilized. This was mainly from salvaging the ships that assaulted Naewu and Egnos, though they did catch two shipments of components meant to be added to yet further ships.
One of the facets involved injecting ascension energy into stars from the lower realms. Since the energies were incompatible, the ascension or ‘upper’ energy breaking down disrupted local stars. There was more to it than that, including weapons formations to augment their efforts, but that was the basis of everything.
There were similar techniques meant for destabilizing planets, intentionally disturbing tectonic activities and the like. With planetary barriers already in place, such weapons hadn’t had a chance to be used against them. They did perform a single test on a remote planet not suitable for life, and the results were quite a bit less spectacular than the destruction of a star.
As a whole, the planet actually remained intact- the catch being it was held together only by gravitational forces as it split and cracked. The result was ultimately extreme earthquakes over its entire surface. Catastrophic enough to kill the majority of the population of both humans and animals, including potential sea life, but not as extreme as the results with Zunrose’s star. Then again, the free energy contained within a planet was significantly less than a star, so even a chain reaction only spread so much.
It was still terrible, of course. The Lower Realms Alliance carefully dismantled the weapons responsible, keeping the information about how they could be made secret. Nor did they reveal the information about various doomsday weapons to the general populace as it could only cause panic. Simply acknowledging their existence was enough, and that they were developing countermeasures to prevent anything like what happened to Zunrose within their own systems.
After some time, Anton came to the conclusion that the Trigold Cluster had to know that most of the weapons were inefficient. While there might be some practical if horrific reasoning in destroying a star- specifically because they might be less well defended than populated planets- the tectonic destabilizers required a large enough fleet that they could most likely conquer most planets normally. Especially since they would have to have broken through all barriers around a majority of the planet to even begin, and it wasn’t a quick process.
It was possible that the upper realms didn’t actually know if everything they sent even worked. There had been some implications that they were using the lower realms for experimentation. And unfortunately, they had likely received successful news about one of the worst successes.
As for the various biological and chemical weapons, those were studied as well for counter methods. Obviously the best defense was to never let them be deployed, but some only required a very small payload to make it down to a planet to cause huge amounts of destruction. Especially anything that was able to grow and reproduce, though those either tended to take longer to cause damage or were extremely obvious, both of which provided opportunities to fend them off.
On the subject of reverse-engineering functionality, access to multiple planets of formations and especially communications arrays allowed for an in depth study of the capabilities of the Trigold Cluster, or at least what they specifically shared with the lower realms. Along with that was a project intended to capture transmissions, especially those directed at the upper realms.
There was no certainty that the Fearsome Menagerie and the rest of the faction on the winning side of the civil war wouldn’t be looking for some way to get a dangerous advantage despite the ceasefire. The basic understanding of their disapproval of Zunrose’s destruction was that it harmed their own people, not some sort of moral stance against destroying stars and killing billions. Though perhaps better diplomacy might clarify some of those details.
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Over the course of approximately a decade, the number of packages passing through the cordoned off area began to decrease, eventually stopping entirely- most likely they stopped being sent when it was clear they were being intercepted. It was just that the particular methods were on a very long time lag, so they couldn’t suddenly retrieve what was already out there.
There wasn’t any indication that the remaining faction had arranged for more aid from the upper realms, but they still wanted to guard the area for some time. At the very least, it would force them to range much further afield- at least fifty or so lightyears beyond their borders- if they tried to have something redirected elsewhere.
Though personally, Anton wouldn’t have expected them to trust anyone in the upper realms at the moment, regardless of which sect they were from. Though on the other hand, Anton could kind of hope that the Fearsome Menagerie and the sects associated with them here in the lower realms were having a scuffle with the Twin Soul Sect and Void Scrying Sect in the upper realms. Having them killing each other would save quite a few lives in the lower realms.
Sadly, very little information came out of their territory. Even the best spies in the Scarlet Alliance didn’t learn much about the internal situation- though one would have expected something like a true civil war in their territory being quite a bit more obvious. Most likely, if they even cared about their lower realms counterparts, the Fearsome Menagerie flipped some tables or yelled at some people. Maybe killed a couple others.
Still, Anton could always hope that the slowness of old cultivator factions simply meant that the true conflict was building up. He could hope, but he didn’t really expect it. Instead, it was more important to prepare for the worst case scenario, which was them working even more closely together to amp up their future invasions of the lower realms. Anton found it hard to believe they would accept their scheme being ruined by… whatever they called people from the lower realms. Filthy peasants, maybe.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
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“Okay so this next plan-” Catarina began to explain to Timothy.
“How many people could it kill?”
“Well… the chances of it functioning to the point it could cause damage and not fully functioning is quite low.” Timothy just looked at her. “A small fraction of a percent.” Timothy raised an eyebrow. “... And if it did fail in the worst way it might kill… well, statistically… billions.”
“A fraction of a percent of killing billions is still probably millions of deaths.”
Catarina scratched the back of her head, “Well, actually, I was already counting the low chance. Because uh… it would kill everyone.” Timothy sighed. “Look, I wasn’t actually going to do it! But if it works it’s a plan that makes us almost completely uninvadable! See, we wouldn’t have to rearrange our systems or set up multi-system defensive formations if we simply cut off the space around our region.”
“... And that would involve what?” Timothy asked. He had to at least let his wife explain her idea or she might explode.
“Well, you know, pretty high upfront expenses. And travel in and out of our space would require special drives. But I haven’t even said the best part yet. If we remove the space of the Scarlet Midfields, you know what happens?” She pulled up an image of the local slice of the galaxy. “Bam! Trigold Cluster and Exalted Quadrant are right next to each other. So even if they would eventually be able to slip individual ships into our sealed bubble, they would find it so much easier to attack and kill each other they’d totally forget about us.”
“Mhmm, and how would that one particular failure state end up with all of us being killed?” Timothy asked.
“Well, instead of cutting off space it might… erase it?” Catarina shrugged. “But it almost certainly wouldn’t happen that way!”
“I liked your other plan better… and that’s still not an endorsement. I still think moving hundreds or thousands of systems is uh… impractical.”
“I was thinking we could combine the two,” Catarina said. “It wouldn’t have to necessarily be a full dimensional cutoff, either. But if we simply distorted space somewhat, it would be much easier to go around us than to us. Which again effectively places the two threats on either side of us closer to each other than to us, reducing our border friction.”
“And what’s the risk of a partial dimensional cutoff, or whatever I should call it?” Timothy asked.
“None at all,” Catarina said. “The trade off being it’s significantly less effective. We would still technically be directly in between the superpowers, it would just make it so that going around our occupied systems was a shorter distance than reaching our core worlds. Which still leaves outer worlds at risk. They’re less populated, but… they still have people, you know?”
“... And you’d risk everyone for those people?”
“On paper the number of lives saved is many more than those lost,” Catarina said. “Anyway, the partial option would push people towards the borders of our region, which would either result in them going ‘above’ or ‘below’ us. Or alternatively, along the border with the lower realms, which we wouldn’t want to bring into prominence right now.”
“Couldn’t it also push people more towards the inner border? Closer to the center of the galaxy? If the spherical distortion I’m thinking of is correct, anyway.”
“Well, yeah, but that would bring people closer to the Everheart System. Nobody would go that way.”
“Pretty sure tens of thousands of fools do every year,” Timothy countered. “And I might be underestimating that by a long shot.”
“That’s just people from our alliance hoping to win it big. The Trigold Cluster has a bit more involvement since the direction is skewed towards them from the center, but the Exalted Quadrant sends a great number of people there as well.”
“... That’s a lot of deaths.”
“Eh,” Catarina shrugged. “Even if tens of millions of people die, it’s still less than the natural deaths of one planet. And like… nearly half of those who go to the Everheart System survive.”
“I’d assume it’s a carefully calculated amount,” Timothy said.
“Same here,” Catarina said. “But Everheart never likes to admit anything in plain language. Or communicate with me in particular unless it’s entirely unrelated to formations.”
“He’s still worried you’ll surpass him?” Timothy shrugged, “Well, I can see why.”
“More like the risk of that is too high for him. It might not be that much, realistically. And I’m around five centuries and an insane amount of replicated projection experience behind.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t done something like that yourself, honestly,” Timothy admitted. “I mean, I’m aware there are pitfalls but you’ve seen the biggest risks and know how to counter them.”
“The problem is projections aren’t really capable of true originality. So most of the experiences they produce will be hollow. I’d prefer to spend the same amount of resources on larger experiments I can manage with my own hands. Well, and the hands of thousands of other real people tirelessly working out the minute details.”
Timothy nodded. Honestly, he understood her wild and over the top plans. He was also worried about their future security. It was just that his methods involved training individual people to defend their alliance- large numbers of individuals, but still. Vast formations that could suddenly make them completely safe… well, that wasn’t his area of expertise. But in his opinion, it was like trying to build up a single Domination cultivator. No, perhaps that wouldn’t even be a proper comparison. A single cultivator that surpassed even Domination. And that would take both more time and resources than they could have, if it was even possible. The same as some of these grand formations that Catarina went on about.
But even if those particular things didn’t happen, Timothy knew that it was still time well spent. She and the others would learn things. And just like he was probably never going to train himself or anyone else to beyond Domination, each step of the way was important to reach that theoretical realm. It wasn’t like one could go directly from Body Tempering to Life Transformation, after all.