Chapter Ten:

10th circle cultivator Malia Stargazer… was bored. It was in that boredom that she nearly missed her chance. Had she not been diligently and consistently training for this specific moment; she may well have been too late.

The instant the alarm blared on it was shut off by the finely honed reflexes of the millennia old existence. Quick reflexes, knowing exactly where the button was, getting there before anyone else even realized what had happened, then immediately sending out a report that ‘nothing was wrong!’ she was simply testing for glitches in the system. It needent be anything more than a blip on the radar, even to other 10th circle cultivators. Her eccentricities were already well known enough that it was unlikely anyone would make a fuss, and those who might would be forced to chalk it up to an error in the programming, considering that barely anyone even knew what the alert meant in the first place.

The light flared, and almost before the message had even registered in ship's system, she had slammed the false alarm button and turned it off. She’d moved fast enough that even the other Seats didn’t have a chance to comprehend what was happening.

This was her chance. She’d given up hope considering the odds of it happening were about one in a quadrillion. In fact, despite the odds, in the history of the universe this had literally yet to happened. But just in case, she had held on to the hope, and it had paid off. The laws of reality stated that technically anything could happen, and since anything could happen, she had kept her options open for just such an opportunity. Now, that 1/1,000,000,000,000,000 hope was about to pay off. Malia Stargazer, Eye of the Seventh Seat, Administrator of the newly integrated Milky Way galaxy, was about to become the only person in the known universe to possess an unregistered nascent demigod.

In truth, Malia almost didn’t comprehend it herself. Her mind whirled as she spun around in the captain’s chair of the command centre in the tiny spacecraft that functioned as her residence for this punishment posting.

Sure, the councillors said it was “a great honour” to be given jurisdiction over a section of the ‘Milky Way’ galaxy, to be given administrative privileges over a Nascent Sapient World. But a nascent world was just that, a nascent world. This was no high-tier world flooded with mana and opportunity. This world barely even counted as being ignited, and Malia hadn’t been given sole control of the recently ignited celestial body.

Instead, it was a position she was forced to share with children. Cultivators barely emerging into their power. 7th and 8th circles, even one weak and pathetic 9th circle. One of her fellow administrators had yet to live an entire century, and still she was being made to share a position with these children who were still on their milk teeth. For them, this assignment was just baby food on the way to their eventual permanent appointment. Yet here she was, a 10th circle cultivator, confined to a galaxy that had been exposed to mana introduced to mana for almost less time than her youngest child had been alive.

In this universe her cultivation would stagnate; her dao would not develop, and the higher-ups knew it. 1,000 years in stasis, that was what she had expected.

That was simply ‘the cost of ambition’. That was what the Council member had said. But would a cultivator without ambition even be a moderately successful one? Who could embark on the journey of cultivation without taking any risks? Yet, instead of being praised for her ingenuity, for pushing the boundaries, for her innovation, she was punished.

Through no fault of her own, there were casualties. It wouldn’t have even mattered if they weren’t ‘important’ casualties.

Malia had checked, she’d made sure, she’d double checked that she hadn’t brought anyone aboard the vessel that could be deemed as ‘mission critical’. However, AFTER the fact, the Council had deemed the individuals as such.

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Whatever the Council demanded, the people obeyed. For not even a 10th circle could stand up to a god.

But she knew who could, or, what could.

“Demigod,” she whispered. A nascent-demigod had awakened on this backwater, nothing, useless, mana-deprived, punishment-posting of a planet. It was impossible, inconceivable, incomprehensible… and yet… and yet. Here she was.

“Ship Intelligence, designation Angel, prepare for immediate teleportation at the following coordinates,” Malia pinged, keying her coordinates to where the anomaly had occurred in the Council facility. Her stream of thoughts had taken less than seconds.

“Understood. Initiating space-to-ground transfer,” said the ship’s AI.

“Angel,” said the cultivator. “Off the books, yeah?”

“As previously agreed upon, all requested actions will be passed through a filter and –“

Before the ship AI could complete their statement, Malia did something she had never even contemplated doing before. She entered the override code. The code even the Council didn’t know she knew.

They called themselves gods, but they were not omniscient. Malia would take pride in showing those vaunted beings exactly how wrong they were to humiliate her like this.

She, Malia Stargazer. First of her name, and 10th circle cultivator.

She’d do it using the prize she had just found on this backwater, nothing of a planet. But first, she needed to collect him.

Malia would give him to her son, Julius, only for a little while. As a cover. Julius was under a century old, and still understood mortals. Yes, the child, the baby-demigod would be honoured, she was sure. He had no clue just how precious he was and would be overjoyed to be given attention by any cultivator, let alone a 3rd (bordering on 4th circle) like her Julius.

She could bend him, the baby demigod, she was positive. A 10th circle giving anyone the time of day would make them pliant. Grateful. The kid would be excited. A nascent demigod who had simply awakened into the open with no backing outside of perhaps the ever-watchful gaze of the heavens? Truly, the Veil had blessed her this day.

It took a few moments for her to reconstitute her body on the surface of the newly found planet Terra. The planet the natives called Earth.

‘Primitives,’ she thought as she tucked her aura in as tightly as she could. The density of the meagre mana on the planet causing her own mana to leak out, wicking away into the environment. A simple stabilizing spell helped her to automatically regulate the ebbs, flows, and random fluctuations of power as they pulsed to the invisible rhythm of the poor, nascent world she’d ended up in.

Malia Stargazer moved so fast she was invisible to mortal eyes. Her passage didn’t even stir the wind around as she eliminated her targets on her way by.

Anybody who was in the building at the time of her passage may have been a potential future witness, and Malia couldn’t afford witnesses. Not now, not when she was so, so close.

Yes, so very close to what she had thought had been a dream. Except it was not a dream, it was her chance. Her chance to seize power and raise a cultivator from the very beginning. A cultivator with the ability to go to the very top.

Blowing through in under a minute, Malia had silently and efficiently decimated every living soul she came across, and most of those she didn’t.

“Angel, wipe all the feeds. Nothing gets out. Steel trap… Then engage overload protocol,” she said into her subdermal receptor. The ship AI being fed her input as she engaged it.

The AI was silent for a moment, its soothing, semi-androgynous voice spilling out a moment later. “Confirming request for overload protocol.”

“Is that not what I said?” Malia gritted out as she silently opened the door to the Ignition Room, meeting the startled looks of all the technicians who had yet to notice her due to the way they were rushing to manage the aberrant mana fluctuations caused by the ignition pod on the far side of the room.

Malia breathed in deeply, smiled to herself, snagged a tablet from the man who looked like he was in charge, and typed in a ghost override key.

“Go to work, Angel,” she said. The AI did; wiping out every trace of information from every individual from the point of the last successful ignition. It would be suspicious if that went missing after it was broadcasted out to any and every interested party. No, Malia was more careful than that.

With barely a thought, Malia imploded every single person in the room. Everybody except for the person in the pod she was interested in was dead in under a heartbeat. With the facility shut down and on lockdown every living soul inside the building eliminated, and the ignition still occurring in the final chamber, Malia settled in to wait.

“Administrator?” asked the AI inside her ear… “Administrator, I must inquire once more if you are sure of this course of- ”

“It is not your position to inquire,” Malia said to the artificial intelligence. “It is your position to wait and obey.”

The AI went silent. Malia scoffed. Machines with opinions. What were the worlds coming to? She rolled her eyes and settled in to wait.