Elder Cultivator-Chapter 1233

Her hand clenched over her heart as she felt the attacks wiping out her energy. Small traces, but still part of her. But… she was alive. Zazil knew that, and that she wasn’t really harmed. After all, she had moved on. Her Domination energy now resided in another system.

Koronis was one crazy individual, to destroy a system within her own territory with such little hesitation. The worst part was how reasonable she seemed sometimes. She knew how to act like a normal person, but she wasn’t.

Zazil pondered that for a moment. Actually, Koronis might fit the normal cultivator mold quite well. She acted strong with those who were weak, and showed deference to the strong.

It was the people like Timothy and Catarina who were abnormal for caring about more than themselves. But… it was nice. Zazil liked it. If they hadn’t been strong it wouldn’t have been more than good thoughts, but having seen their methods successfully work for nearly a millennium, she couldn’t doubt the logic behind everything.

Even now, Zazil felt the devotion from the many happy, healthy, and strong people of the Scarlet Alliance. It was stronger, now. She was literally just a couple days into Domination, but her entire perspective on things had shifted.

She wondered if Prasad had failed not because he had overreached, but because he hadn’t been audacious enough. Random chance shouldn’t stretch so far that the Scarlet Alliance could have four Domination cultivators and Chidi.

Timothy and Catarina could be considered a single incident. Prospero Vandale was then something like the second. People would be terrified to find out about Zazil. Such people tended to overreact.

Because of that, and because she had a feeling that she would actually grow better in particular circumstances… Zazil wasn’t going to return to the Scarlet Alliance. Not yet. Koronis had stopped chasing her. Hopefully, she thought Zazil had perished.

She carried her anchor with her- but not obviously. Zazil spread her energy very specifically in the places that nobody paid attention to. That was her anchor. If they looked, her stealth would be broken. If it came down to battle, she would probably be blindingly obvious.

But for the moment, she was content to roam through enemy territory. Though she was planning to get out of the Creeping Fire Nebula as soon as possible, because she had no intention to tempt fate. All she had to do was follow the places where her anchor could be, and she would find her way out.

Once she was far enough away, Zazil would celebrate. Alone, for the moment. Then she would continue to scout out enemy territory, and at the same time practice the use of her anchor. Given the circumstances, it might be weaker… but she had no way to safely test that. She couldn’t test it in the Scarlet Alliance- none of that was enemy territory. Though Zazil suspected there were a few unobserved nooks and crannies, they would be less plentiful.

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Bear Hug didn’t know anything about someone reaching Domination in the upper realms. If they did, their response would probably have been ‘Good job!’ or something equally positive. It wasn’t every day that someone became a Domination cultivator. It hadn’t even been every century, until the last few.

Unknown to everyone, including to some extent themself, Bear Hug was planning to do something more unique. It was so hard for Bear Hug to decide whether to try to ascend and work with Second Gift in the upper realms, or to guide the planet through the lower realms to begin with. Assimilation seemed like the obvious answer, because if everything was dead before the planet reached the upper realms there was no point in protecting it.

But one or the other wasn’t good enough, so Bear Hug thought they would try something that wasn’t even close to being a possibility for most cultivators. Why not both?

Bear Hug wasn’t a young, inexperienced, naive cultivator anymore. Instead, they were a somewhat less young, somewhat experienced, naive cultivator. It was going to be dangerous. Either sort of advancement would be difficult on its own. Trying to do both while also remaining Bear Hug would be the greatest challenge they ever undertook. Maybe even harder than convincing Briar to talk instead of eating everything.

Human cultivators could get pretty far without profound insights. That was much harder for Bear Hug, because their very existence was suspect. It wasn’t like a bundle of algae was a single organism. It was a whole bunch of separate things, far more divided than animal cells. Bear Hug shouldn’t even be able to think.

But that didn’t stop them from doing it. Or from learning to do it in multiple places at once. And there were so many places to be that Bear Hug hadn’t really stopped. It was a slow process, though. There were really only a couple handfuls of Bear Hug- which was funny because Bear Hug didn’t even have hands. Anton would have laughed at that one, because Bear Hug would have temporarily made little fingers on the end of their limbs.

Each planet in Klar got a Bear Hug. That was their home, and it would never not be their home. But Second Gift would need a Bear Hug too. Or two of them, since it would need one to do stuff with upper energy. And Bear Hug had no time to waste, because they’d have to be good at it by the time Second Gift reached the border. That meant maybe a century of practice in the upper realms. They wouldn’t even surpass Integration. How could you keep a planet safe like that?

Bear Hug would have asked everyone that if they thought anyone had an answer. But they didn’t think anyone else did, so they came up with an answer. It might not be true, but they just had to make it true. That was how cultivators worked.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Secretly, Bear Hug left a bunch of notes behind for Anton and the others to find if something really bad happened. Bear Hug would be sad if Anton died, and Anton would be sad if Bear Hug died. But it was better that nobody had to be sad if nothing bad even happened. Nobody needed to worry about what was going to happen to Bear Hug except them.

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Bear Hug had made Anton tell them everything about Ascension and Assimilation. Every little detail. Bear Hug had also asked about Fleeting Youth. Why did the upper realms hate Anton? It was important to not have that. It didn’t seem like it would be good enough to just not steal upper energy. The realms were like neighboring herds of animals that got into conflict. Or like trees that had crossed roots.

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Bear Hug slapped themself down on the sunny side of various planets- including Second Gift. If everything went well, nobody would be mad at Bear Hug for binding to the planet they were sending away. If things went poorly, they wouldn’t be around to get mad at. So it was fine.

There was also a second copy of Bear Hug on Second Gift. Because if they were going to protect the planet, then their Ascension should be connected to it. It made sense to Bear Hug, and that was the most important thing. Of course, Anton had mentioned that things like that only mattered if something was possible, but Bear Hug couldn’t know until they were successful.

Because they wouldn’t know if they failed.

Thinking negative thoughts was bad. Bear Hug wanted to call on all their friends to feel better, but just thinking about them was better. Anton, Liberty, Helix, Abioye, Lev, Briar… all of them were great. Oh, and Rocky the Ninth. Normal snails didn’t live that long, but Bear Hug didn’t want to force any of them to absorb natural energy.

Bear Hug found splitting thoughts to be easier than walking. Walking was hard, because you had to think about every limb. Balance mattered, and holding things in shapes mattered, and moving, and stepping on things. It was all unnatural. But doing a few different things with energy in different places was easy enough.

So hopefully doing mostly the same thing with energy in different places would be, too.

Noon came, and Bear Hug lapped up every ounce of tasty sunlight they could. Natural energy filled them, as it had for many days prior. But today was the day that they pushed beyond the limit.

Place by place, all at once as far as Bear Hug could tell, they built up energy and tried to be friends with the whole planet they were on. Bear Hug promised to be friends with the lowest of creepy crawlies to the tallest trees and even the really mean ones that tried to devour them.

Two Bear Hugs promised that they would be friends with Second Gift. One of them needed to go away for a bit, though. To do that, you had to make a connection to the upper realms. There had been a lot of people that talked about that. One of Bear Hug reached out. Tearing apart space was something a strong Life Transformation cultivator could do. It just wasn’t always something they should do.

Bear Hug hoped that feeling bad in upper energy was because they didn’t fit, or it was going to be very not fun to ascend. Also, they hoped that the upper realms wouldn’t kill them for being friends with planets in the lower realms too.

Suddenly, part of them was gone. There was a gaping void, as one part of Bear Hug was cut off from the others. It didn’t feel good at all. Hopefully, that was a temporary thing, because they were feeling very destabilized, which didn’t seem like a good thing. Noon after noon passed by as Bear Hug tried to be an Assimilation cultivator and an Ascension cultivator at the same time.

As far as Bear Hug was aware, their plans had been as good as they could be. But they’d been counting on that missing part that had been taken away to make everything fit.

Oh wait, there was one thing. They hadn’t told anybody that they were going to ascend. Anton had said something about attuning their energy so they ended up somewhere friendly.

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Going fast was fun. It was exhilarating enough that Bear Hug was able to avoid panicking about being separate from the rest of them. Without anything to judge time by, the stars streaking by seemed to go really fast. Bear Hug just sort of relaxed as days or weeks or something passed.

As it turned out, ascension energy wasn’t so bad. Or upper energy. It was silly that it had two names, but humans were silly.

Bear Hug felt themself being filled from the inside, like they had a little sun inside. Bear Hug wasn’t actually cultivating sun related abilities, it just felt really good to be empowered like that. It was weird for all their natural energy to be scoured away. A bit scary, too, because Bear Hug thought sometimes that maybe they were the natural energy around them. They were quite glad to be wrong enough that it didn’t matter.

Eventually, Bear Hug stopped being between the stars and appeared back in ‘normal’ space.

Immediately, everything felt cold, heavy, and dry. Not at all the feelings that Bear Hug enjoyed. The good news was that there was a lot of energy.

Also a whole bunch of pretty moons in the sky. That was nice. Bear Hug really hoped that the local star would be super warm, because it was really cold. Good thing they were suddenly a good bit stronger.

Bear Hug only had the water they brought with them. Other than that, there was nothing. Which meant Bear Hug had to make water. And air. The planet had air, but it was so cold and thin that trying to absorb it was really difficult. They didn’t need all that much at night, but it was still important to maintain their body.

Bear Hug found a good nook to huddle in place among some chilled boulders. At least the winds didn’t get there. Morning should come soon.

But it didn’t. Bear Hug was worried the planet might not even have a sun.

Fortunately, those worries were easily assuaged by spreading out their senses. There was a star heating the planet… a whole lot. On the other side of the planet. Which meant all that Bear Hug had to do was get there, on an unfamiliar planet. Without being able to fly, because gravity was high and they had to concentrate their energy on that whole not dying thing.

They should have probably told someone about the ascension thing. But maybe they could make some cold friends here, so it shouldn’t be all bad, right?