In the following days, they spent most of their time cultivating and enjoying each other's company after being apart. Viv quickly warmed up to both Riseth and Fluffy. To Alistair's surprise, the serpent wasn't overly jealous of the cat, and they got along quite well. Alistair often found Viv curled up on top of the coiled snake, dozing together.
Alistair realized they both had a knowledge gap when it came to pets of their respective planets and took the opportunity to show Riseth some cat videos. She was weak in the knees once she realized the baby-sized cats had kittens themselves, calling it unfair that they had nothing like it on Neshan. In return, she showed him images of Neshan's pets. His guess of tigers and mountain lions had not been too far off the mark, though more interesting to him were the different breeds of Cerberus they had. Nessyra had a variant that looked quite similar to a Doberman, though the dog was apparently scared of Dexter, marking the Yagan as the top dog. Neshan also had a wide variety of lizards as large as Komodo dragons kept as pets. Few animals among Neshan's pet selection would Alistair categorize as 'cute,' which explained Riseth's reaction to some of Earth's pets and Fluffy.
Fluffy had apparently made some progress with her Polymorph skill but hadn't shown Alistair her results yet. According to Riseth, she still looked too much like a beastkin according to the serpent standards and wished to appear more humanoid before revealing herself to everyone. King had been less forthcoming about his progress in their messages, though he knew the Wyvern at least occasionally worked on it. Viv had also leveled up quite a bit just from Alistair's rescue operation and records trickling down, which put her at level 89.
After three days, the Jump drive completed its calculations, and Alistair experienced his first jump. Magic seemed to focus, condense, and bend around them before suddenly cracking and jerking them away. Despite not being physically moved, he felt an intense pull at the core of his being and grasped his chest as the Artemis entered warp space. He also realized he had lost connection to all the Networks the second they had jumped. Riseth snickered at his surprised expression.
"It feels weird, right? We'll be traveling in this warp space for a few hours before being thrown out at the edge of the target galaxy's gravity well."
Sensing she was withholding something, he asked, "How bad does exiting warp space feel?"
"You'll see," she said with a toothy grin.
Giving her a flat look made her relent. "It's pretty mild, like stopping mid-run without actually running."
She was proven right; it felt exactly like that. Simon and Jessica, in particular, stomped down on the metal flooring as they exited warp space despite not having moved before. The displays turned on, showing a magnificent view of the nearby galaxy. While Alistair marveled at the display, Riseth took a seat at the navigation station and typed away as she targeted the largest gravity well within the nearby nebula outside of the unknown galaxy. This jump would take the longest, as the possible gravity wells were much smaller and the distance still quite large. Once there, they needed to find a suitable system for an ambush. They required specific criteria to align so their setup railguns wouldn't be out of place when the ambush was finally sprung. They planned to use a Lagrange point with a nearby natural satellite that always faced it so the guns wouldn't be misaligned. It would be even better if they found a system with multiple such points. They would also need to place a handful of other beacons to place a trail for the Kaiakos to follow so they could ensure they were being followed. Having placed beacons would also allow the Kaiakos to flee before whatever syndicate group was following them was able to deploy jump disruptors and attack them prematurely. Though they hoped they would be able to avoid that eventuality.
It took almost a week for the Artemis to calculate its second jump. Unfortunately, the system they jumped into had no suitable locations or interesting planets, and they decided to jump to a nearby planetary system instead. During their waiting times, everyone got a bit antsy and bored being cooped up in the spaceship. Fortunately, there were plenty of entertainment modules and activities to keep them occupied. Alistair had taken out the Dragon Heart manual, which, much like the children's book his sister had shown him in the Nurturing Ward, was heavily enchanted, making it nearly impossible to absorb. It took him several days and the conversion of Qi to mana to get the job partially done as he couldn't copy all the aspects and information from the manual as there seemed to be an almost endless amount of questions and information he could potentially extract from the manual. The soul imprint left on the manual prevented certain aspects from being copied by his Akashic Link, much to his annoyance.
He had tried to read the manual, but instead, it allowed him to experience things from the perspective of the author in an almost dreamlike state. By directing his intent, he was able to pose questions, which the manual answered through visions, thoughts, and explanations from the author, whose soul imprint seemed to be the source of the manual's information. While this imprint allowed her to show and explain things to him, she refused to answer certain questions.
One puzzling aspect was that the Dragon Heart manual, upon acquisition, referred to itself as both a body cultivation and body enchantment manual. The Soulimprint embedded within it refused to elaborate further. It dawned on Alistair that Mitania had been subtly indicating that he was applying cultivation terminology to something that might not strictly qualify as true cultivation. Reflecting on it, there were many stark differences between body cultivation and true cultivation, and the overlap was actually smaller than the overlap with regular magic, particularly enchantments. Mitania hinted at the absence of inner demons back then. Still, there was also the lack of stages, breakthroughs, and the refining of Qi, which is the foundation of cultivation, as well as the absence of tribulations. The only thing that gave him pause was dual cultivation, which firmly belonged to the cultivation sphere. Riseth was the first to point out a flaw in the logic when Alistair shared his thoughts with the others.
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"Don't normal dual cultivators refine their Qi instead of essences? Also, do regular cultivators even use essences in any of their other techniques?" Riseth questioned.
Alistair paused and reviewed the knowledge base stored within his Akashic Link skill on regular, dual, and body cultivation before reaching a conclusion. "No, they don't."
"I think we put arbitrary limitations on ourselves based on another misconception again," Alistair said as he felt himself level up to 112, which he took as a sign that he was on the right track. He had been so close to leveling up, and seeing that gaining insights also provided enough records to level up was valuable information in itself.
"Maybe we could refine things other than essences or Qi with dual cultivation," Riseth added.
Their discussion, which was at first awkward, clearly piqued the interest of James and Jessica in particular; being able to refine their bodies and different magical energy sources through sex had some appeal when you were trapped within a small spaceship for weeks on end. Alistair took the chance to browse his Body Cultivation for Dummies and other sources. Still, unfortunately, it lacked hints or instructions as to how one would use Dual Cultivation to refine aspects other than essence.
"It's not like we don't have time to practice and figure it out," Riseth commented with an almost predatory smile.
"Yeah, rub it in that I'm the only one alone on this ship," Simon retorted, shaking his head as he left.
"Don't you still have that goat-like summon?" Alistair called out, which earned him a scowl and a middle finger, though Alistair saw the tell-tale signs that Simon was barely holding it together from not bursting out laughing out loud.
Riseth turned to Alistair with a slightly worried expression. "Is he going to be alright?"
"Yeah, don't worry," Alistair reassured her. "He's just being dramatic to mess with us. He'll be fine."
He knew Simon well enough to know when he was actually upset. Though he was envious, it wasn't something that would cause issues. So he turned his attention back to the topic at hand, searching the rest of his knowledge base only contained hints at refining Qi, which was something he wasn't comfortable trying as he did not wish to accidentally step on the path of true cultivation and said as much to the others. Taking the realization that they did not need to restrict themselves to cultivation themes when it came to body cultivation, they considered changing the terminology to Body Enchantment. Still, they decided to leave it as is for the moment but would keep an eye out for paths of advancement that they would have otherwise potentially overlooked.
Their discussions were cut short as they arrived in the next system, and Alistair and some others reflexively stomped their feed down. James took his place at the sensor station while Riseth prepared the Artemis for its next jump.
"We shouldn't set up here, but it might be worth putting down a beacon," James commented. "We need to hide it, though, since there seems to be some fauna in the system."
Alistair's curiosity was piqued. He knew the nebulae were now incredibly dense with magic and served as nurseries for most space fauna. He would love to see some, even though approaching them could potentially lead to issues.
"What kind? Are they big?" Alistair asked.
"They're about the size of the Artemis, so not particularly big as far as space fauna goes," James replied. "Though they might be juveniles. I don't have much data to work with here."
According to Riseth's Cosmic Pathfinder topic, the larger Space Fauna could even function as a host for certain clans and groups that wished to stay mobile. Space turtles, whales, rays, dragons, and other space fauna could grow as large as a moon or even a planet or have subspaces or other strange environments that allow people to live on their backs or inside their bodies. Some individuals even searched for juveniles to tame and guide their growth to evolve them into such beings. Alistair had initially thought they should try that if they came across a suitable beast. But Riseth and Nessyra had shot that down as it was very rare, a lot of work, and a planet had its own advantages, which allowed for more stable and less limited growth and expansion. While they would still tame such a creature and take it as a summon if they came across it, they wouldn't use it as a foundation for their clan.
They deployed a drone carrying a beacon towards a Lagrange point with some asteroids where they could hide it. It was one of many beacons Riseth had created for the Artemis and Kaiakos to track. This process repeated for about a week as they mapped out multiple star systems per day, occasionally finding habitable planets and locations of interest. They didn't stop to investigate, planning to either revisit these locations later or sell the map data to the highest bidder.
On their fifth jump, they discovered the perfect location with multiple moons and an asteroid belt, allowing them to hide and spread out the weapon emplacements, which would allow them multiple angles to shoot at opponents while at the same time providing partial cover for some of the emplacements. While everyone else was busy deploying the equipment, Simon and Alistair kept tabs on the sensor station. They had been in occasional long-range communication with the Kaiakos, who had reached Earth and had already departed to their nebula. Everything had been according to plan, and a left-behind spy drone had confirmed they were being followed.
They were followed by a fleet of roughly a dozen ships, most of which looked somewhat ramshackle and hastily put together. Multiple ships appeared to be hollowed-out asteroids with engines and weapon emplacements strapped to them. The pursuers' procedure involved a waiting period allowing the Kaiakos to leave the system before one of the smaller ships jumped ahead of the fleet and sent a message back before the rest followed shortly after. This complicated their plans with the space mines, forcing them to relocate and hide them in the asteroid belt. They had not yet agreed on how to deploy the mines or execute their ambush. Riseth cursed at the prospect of her hard work being rendered useless before it could even be utilized. They all gathered on the bridge to discuss how they should enact their ambush.