A question that had for obvious reasons gained great traction in the Scarlet Alliance was how to kill a Domination cultivator. It was actually quite a step up from the question of how to repel a Domination cultivator, but they were in the mood to consider the extremes.

Obviously if their upper energy were negated they would be vulnerable, but in most cases that was putting the cart before the horse. If they didn’t actually have a way to accomplish it, then it was pointless. Formations were discussed, of course, and they had actually gathered quite a bit of data from the battle between the two Domination cultivators.

At the moment, there were a thousand theories, and none of them were actually tested. Not that the Scarlet Alliance could fully test any option they had, since they had no Domination cultivators of their own. Nor could they expect to for a very long time. It took centuries to reach Integration- passing through four stages before that- and at least two more centuries to reach Augmentation. The theoretical minimum time to reach Domination was another four or so centuries beyond that, but of course it wasn’t that easy.

Even Everheart wasn’t a Domination cultivator yet. If one single cultivator of great talent and nearly limitless resources had spent so long without reaching the Domination stage, it was doubtful others could do it faster.

Aside from that particular endeavor which seemed like it might forever remain out of their reach, the Scarlet Alliance was making great strides in their post-war rush. Catarina’s proposals were taken more seriously, and they quickly began implementation of an expandable prototype for a grand defensive formation.

Making a traditional defensive formation that surrounded multiple systems was a futile gesture. Even if it were possible to expand it so far, the energy would most likely be spread so thin as to easily shatter. In the scenario where it somehow managed to distribute its energy perfectly to problem areas, it was still possible to perform a combined assault of thousands or tens of thousands of ships.

With the distances involved every ship could be millions of kilometers apart from its neighbor. Dealing with a significant number of them before a finite barrier was worn down would be an impossibility. At that point, every system the combined barrier was meant to protect would be open for assault once the ships regrouped, and they would be back to their recent situation with fewer resources.

Instead of such a barrier, they needed something that was unassailable. Or nearly unassailable. It was the same mindset as walls around a city. One could fortify the gates to be nearly impenetrable- but in that case assaulting literally any other part would better. The whole wall would become a weakness.

Gates could afford to be slightly weaker as long as they were strong enough to hold the enemy back. They just needed to provide an advantage to the defender, which involved both consolidating their opponents into a single point and providing a disadvantageous battlefield. If assaulting any particular spot on the walls was even worse, then assailants would either have to attack the gates or give up.

Obviously building a wall around multiple systems would be impractical. There literally wasn’t enough material to do so around even a single system, considering such a ‘wall’ would have to be three dimensional in nature. And each additional system would multiply the total volume that the wall had to surround.

But Catarina’s plans had both their extreme versions and their more moderate versions. The one that seemed most practical, even if it was still extremely costly and difficult, was to distort space around their claimed territory, funneling enemy ships towards specific systems. The distortions would be the ‘walls’ and the selected systems would become the ‘gates’.

Shifting all of their systems so that they fit more neatly within a spherical formation… was still on the table. But it was unnecessary to get some sort of basic functionality.

They were able to set up a fairly quick test with some of their core systems, and they found it worked quite well. Rather than trying to harden space into an actual wall, they would distort it to lead where they wanted. The lack of solid resistance would make a direct assault to collapse the formations difficult, as they would never be directly clashing with the enemy- unless the enemy distorted space themselves.

It wasn’t that the system was without weaknesses. It also had drawbacks for simply being in place, as it disrupted the traffic flowing to their own systems. Normally, people could take a more or less direct route from any starting planet to any other. Stops for fuel or other supplies excepted, there was nothing actually preventing direct trips. Now there was, which was the whole point.

That meant they would be directing more traffic past certain worlds. That was something they had to take into account, as it could seriously disrupt certain planets. However, they might find ways for it to be beneficial, and if it was necessary they could manage whatever trouble arose.

The benefits might not be obvious on the surface, but directing traffic along certain routes would allow them to optimize their efficiency for those particular locations. They might even shorten the time to reach those planets with the spatial distortions. Catarina also came up with plans where they could have malleable changes to space, making travel time for their enemies longer… but the additional complications would both have a greater cost and introduce potential points of failure. They weren’t the only ones with formation masters, after all.

Ultimately, they would have to sacrifice some freedom of movement of their own people for safety. Even as they expanded the bubble, they would have to keep limited routes within the area. Otherwise, their enemies could simply rush a single system on the outer edge and break into their unprotected area, effectively having free reign of all their systems once more.

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Those who lived on the border systems understood the need, and they were eager to have something implemented. However, choosing which systems would be placed at the threshold and built up into military fortresses was not something that could be done in a day. After the initial series of tests with their core worlds which took over a decade, they did draw up plans to implement smaller independent zones until they could expand to cover everything within the boundaries of the Scarlet Alliance.

In effect, they reduced the infinite number of approach vectors their enemies could take down into merely hundreds, and they planned to eventually reduce it to a fraction of that. The most extreme plans were to limit it to two or four passages total, but that was far too restrictive. Instead, the plans were to have enough to handle the flow of traffic from all directions… while trying to minimize points of access on their east and west flanks.

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Defenses weren’t the only area where the Scarlet Alliance was having major breakthroughs. Partially in response to the new restrictions on movement and partially in response to other factors, they had continued their research into inter-system teleportation.

As it turned out, the key components of making that work ended up being in the hands of the Disciples of the Beyond. As they managed to snatch what a large number of the sect disciples and elders were carrying on them, there were many valuable insights to space and subspace.

Engineer Uzun and the technological branch of the Scarlet Alliance managed to make something functional after many tries… and it was only barely functional. Rather than traditional teleportation platforms, they formed a sort of bridge between two points.

In some regards, it was still a step short of teleportation. It wasn’t actually instantaneous travel… but it wasn’t far from it. After a decade of work, they managed to get an autonomous drone to travel from one end of the bridge to the other… without disintegrating.

There were still a few kinks to work out before it was a viable method of transport for anything of significant size, or that was alive, or that needed to hold a particular structure… but they managed to pass through large piles of ore between neighboring systems. If they only counted the activation costs, it was potentially cheaper than shipping it normally. If they remembered to include the cost of constructing the various versions, the testing, and the objects they ruined trying to send them through the bridge… then it was less clearly cost effective.

But the idea was that it could someday work, and even if it only ended having limited uses it was another great advancement. Compressing lightyears of space down into kilometers- the exact proportions were difficult to measure as most instruments taking measurements within the bridge tended to disintegrate- was still a remarkable achievement.

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The Scarlet Alliance didn’t forget to pour resources into their planets and people, either. All of those attacked during the war were repopulated quickly- where it was beneficial. Certain planets were only given sufficient funds to rebuild what they had, as they were less valuable. But even they would be able to spring back in a few decades or so. That was the hope, but nobody could be quite certain of the long term effects.

Speaking of their people, a small fraction of their population but a significant portion of their Integration cultivators came from the lower realms. And during that post war period was the time when one of their most interesting recent arrivals came.

News outlets were obviously disappointed that the first Ascension individual from Akrys was not a meerkat. The first of those would come later and the public reaction would greatly overshoot the actual first and thus monumental achievement. The first to ascend was not Echoing Cry or any of the core group that was associated with Three Squeaks and the rest. Indeed, it was an individual that had almost not been included in their planetary alliance to begin with.

It was, of course, a tortoise. Not a turtle like Paradise, but a slow plodding land creature. The most surprising tidbit was that she wasn’t even one of the Tortoise Triumvirate. No, she was merely an old tortoise that had been living among them more or less unknown until her ascension.

Mauled-by-Wolves was missing many of her protective scales on her front legs, presumably from the same incident that gave her her name. She didn’t speak much, and after she arrived in her attuned landing site in the upper realms she simply wandered out of the city into the countryside. That took quite a lot of plodding along, as she still moved at a tortoise’s pace and Xankeshan was covered in nearly contiguous cities, but the tortoise managed it without complaint.

The only piece of information she had shared when asked was her name. In a way, it was fantastic for her popularity as a mysterious tortoise was presumably better than a boring one. But ultimately, nobody was able to get more than they already had, and after a month of her continuously cultivating in her shell once she reached her chosen destination most people gave up and left.

Most of those who remained began to drop away a little bit at a time, until only the official representatives of the Scarlet Alliance were left. Ultimately it was worthwhile for the Scarlet Alliance to monitor every Integration cultivator, so they alternated shifts of lower level cultivators just making sure nothing went wrong.

There had been some intention to have the wolves- Fuzz and Spikes in particular- meet up with the first arrivals from Akrys. While obviously they were different sapient creatures, it might have made them feel more familiar than simply being surrounded by humans.

Instead, upon hearing her name the two had stayed away. Both of them shared their own new scars, after having fought against Zaur. Having wounds that could mostly be regenerated through cultivation or through advanced medicines actually placed them as the luckiest among those who fought him. Many had not survived, and Prasad was still nursing long term injuries after more than a decade. Everyone only hoped that Ratna had given Zaur even worse injuries. Since he had survived, it was unlikely that he as a Domination cultivator couldn’t access the techniques or resources required to recover eventually, but depending on the extent of damage it could be a very long process.