Upon hearing some news from the upper realms, Anton thought some things Bear Hug had asked made significantly more sense. They hadn’t really been interested in Ascension at all until a certain point, and Anton didn’t really think they would give up all their friends.
But of course, the end result had been an audacious decision that went completely silent. He almost didn’t believe it until he went to visit the closest Bear Hug and felt an increased aura. Not quite the same as human Assimilation, but clearly along the same vein. He wouldn’t have taken deeper look if he didn’t know better, but once he did he felt a slight connection into the upper realms.
Bear Hug’s greeting was entirely normal. They threw themself at Anton. “Hi! I increased my cultivation!”
“Indeed,” Anton smiled gently in return. “In some rather interesting directions, I have heard.”
What should Anton have said? That Bear Hug should have asked for advice on simultaneous Ascension and Assimilation? Obviously that wasn’t a fruitful path. All unique cultivation came with risks, and Bear Hug had been as informed as possible about what those were. Neither survival nor death was something a cultivator who was just trying could be blamed for. Unless they had been specifically warned, perhaps.
Treading new cultivation paths was part of that, but Bear Hug had done everything sensible. And then, clearly, believed in themself.
“I’m something like Assimilation now,” Bear Hug beamed, their energy making happy waves.
“And Integration, apparently. Unless you’ve got an imposter in the upper realms.”
“Oh! How did you hear about that? I just met Ylvali recently, and she hasn’t left the ship!”
“But then you wouldn’t come see me in person all the time.”
That was a fair point. From Bear Hug’s perspective, that was more important than timely updates. “Maybe when you can make more of you, we can spend more time journeying together.” Anton didn’t want to say they would always be together. Not that he got tired of Bear Hug, but there were legitimate reasons to go alone. If he needed to be quick, or was visiting an inherently dangerous locale, for example. Though Bear Hug would be more self-sufficient in the latter, now.
“I can only do so many. And there’s only one of me in the upper realms, right now. It’s hard. Doing human things with energy is hard.”
“Don’t be sorry. Without you, I would still be floating on one of a few lakes, if nothing ate me. I wouldn’t have seen so much stuff in Klar or made probably any friends.”
“It would have been nice if you could develop your own cultivation path, not based on human ideas.”
“Isn’t that what we did?” Bear Hug countered. “You provided me guidance, but nothing quite worked exactly as you explained. Same with humans. I think.”
“Maybe a bit further removed,” Anton said. “But it is true everyone has their own unique hang ups with cultivation. So… have you gained any astounding insights from your success?”
“Umm… being connected with multiple types of energy in you is hard.”
Anton chuckled. That wasn’t so astounding as it was extremely basic. Even he didn’t keep either Ascension energy nor spectral energy within himself.
Though Anton couldn’t help but be worried about Bear Hug hiding this event from him, it also made sense. Bear Hug clearly hadn’t wanted him to worry. Now everything Anton was feeling after the fact was demonstrably unfounded… but of course, the thoughts were still there.
Second Gift was going to be so good. Bear Hug knew that. He didn’t quite know the lady that it was for, but she was a friend of many friends- an important ally- so making Second Gift the best was important. The problem was that Bear Hug was still much, much smaller than a planet.
No matter how nice they made things, when the planet froze over and everything died it would be sad. So even if they could be there for the whole trip, the planet would kind of be ruined outside of the initial system.
That wasn’t less true just because Bear Hug was stronger. At best, they were capable of covering a slightly larger area. Though insulating the planet wasn’t enough- it needed a constant input of energy, preferably sunlight. Even if Bear Hug somehow covered the entire planet with their energy, that wouldn’t happen.
They could make little patches of sunlight- maybe bigger ones now- but their experience tended to revolve around absorbing sunlight. In terms of actual controlling techniques, moving their own body- which was something worth praising- and controlling the water they carried along with them were the main parts. Most insights were focused on those specific and very relevant paths.
Also talking. Some people might not think the energy language required any insights, but Bear Hug thought they were pretty good at coming up with new words that people would understand. Even the people who worked to invent the language like Abioye had to admit Bear Hug was good at it.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
It was a good thing there were still decades to go before they had to implement whatever plans they had. It was going to require a lot of work. Probably some outside help, too.
Alin Kato looked at the plan put in place… though rather than a plan, it was an idea. Plans had details, but they simply didn’t and couldn’t have those until after enacting the plan. “Are we missing anything?” he asked his assistant.
“We could send multiple ships. For redundancy. Though, that compounds the potential risks as well.”
That was it. The ‘choice’. Due to assistant’s insight, they had tracked the potential arc of the distortion beast nest outside of the galactic plane. It was just a few hundred lightyears off, but there wouldn’t be much in the way of energy or really anything there. So they would have to have a pure tech ship that could survive the journey, as well as people that could survive the journey.
Strong cultivators could replace their need for food, as long as they had energy. That was the issue, because the further they got from everything, the less energy would be available. Even for Assimilation cultivators. They relied on particular locations for the most part, but even Devon who had reached Enrichment had noted significant drops in his energy in between the upper and lower realms.
Entirely outside of the galactic plane? They couldn’t make any bets. The journey could last years, if there was anyone willing to undertake it. Test projects would be best, but ultimately the goal would be to carry enough fuel to sustain subspace momentum for the trip and to accelerate into a one hundred eighty degree turn around exactly once. Plus some extra for any necessary maneuvering.
“What troubles do you think there will be?”
“Well, could be anything,” the assistant said. “Or more likely, nothing. Which is a big enough problem on its own. If this place is drawing in other distortion beast nests, there won’t be many resources for a confrontation. I think assuming there is a lack of any sort of resupply available… we’ll have to make the ship recycle every scrap of energy.”
“I see. An interesting thought. I had been thinking of it much like the transition between realms. And it is, in some ways. But only if looking at things from a top down perspective.” Alin stroked his chin as he considered the positioning of the theoretical point of calling. “Without energy replacement, pure tech is generally better, but if it could be recycled a hybrid might be optimal.”
“Like creating a mini solar system,” assistant said. “It doesn’t have to last indefinitely. Just long enough. I don’t think we can have any extradimensional storage. That’s too costly.”
It was actually surprisingly cheap, running easily off of ambient energy- at least on a moment-to-moment basis. Long term, the draw of storage bags was a significant drain on energy. A momentary lapse would still allow it to reconnect to the same space, but they didn’t really get turned on and off. Though that might be a feature of ancient design rather than a requirement.
“So then,” Alin commented, “A miniature ecosystem? Or is that too mass intensive? Do we just have barebones nutritional recycling and ask the crew to remain in constant meditation?”
“Meditation still costs energy,” the assistant pointed out. “So their personal energy would be drained. Though we might manage something with a Confluence crew where they could create a feedback loop of energy sufficient to sustain them long term.”
“Or we could send a Domination cultivator.”
The assistant, who was usually the one with the audacious ideas, was stunned for a moment. “That’s… actually a good point.”
They couldn’t send a Unity cultivator. Anton was tied to stars, and they could easily predict his range wouldn’t allow him to exit the lower realms into what wasn’t quite the upper realms. He might be safe from some consequences, but it was sort of antithetical to his base.
Domination cultivators, however, were meant to roam far from their anchors. The only problem was getting one to commit to a decade or more of testing boundaries. While most of their power came through devotion, there was no telling what would happen to devotion outside of the galactic plane. The unknowns were the sticking point that would no doubt cause all sorts of headaches.
Never once did they consider not visiting this location. Distortion beasts with cultivation insights- whether imbued from outside forces or having generated them internally and being detected somehow and drawn to the beacon- were far too significant of a phenomenon to ignore.
The best part about being Bear Hug was that, even when there were a lot of hard things they had to do like save a planet, they could also just chill out on top of a lake. Anton had said relaxing between training sessions was good, and even compared what Bear Hug did to meditation.
Bear Hug didn’t know. How could they? Right now, this part of them was just a bunch of warm stuff. Energy? That was there, somewhere. But as sunlight hit, the feeling of it being transformed into something they could use to do everything they did permeated their very being.
Convincing humans to send a star along with the planet would be hard, wouldn’t it? Stars took a lot of space and were hard to push around, because they were hot. And stars that were not heavy and not hot were not very good at being the right kind of stars to make planets survive.
Bear Hug thought about blankets. Humans used those to remain warm at night. Bear Hug just bundled up with themself most of the time, though they could see the appeal. The problem was most blankets weren’t made to get wet.
Or to cover whole planets. Because there was still that issue to solve. But they weren’t supposed to think about that. They were supposed to relax.
Relaxing on purpose was hard. The very effort you put in slapped back in your face and told you that you wouldn’t be doing any of that. It was better to think about something else, but usually the first things were the ones that made you want to relax in the first place.
But if you arranged the right circumstances, you could deal with anything. Bear Hug’s most stressful season was over. They weren’t likely to stop existing any time soon. At most, they’d be sad if things didn’t work out for Second Gift.
So they floated and absorbed sunlight, and it was glorious and warm and powerful. More humans should figure out how to do that. It was weird that it was limited to particular sects… but maybe that was just how humans did things.
Not everything had to make sense.