“I wanna meet the robot!”
The individual making the sudden declaration was, of course, Bear Hug. This was one thing Anton actually hadn’t anticipated at all. It simply hadn’t crossed his mind. It was the same as asking to meet the ship they’d been on, or a doorway they had passed through. Or to talk to the jail cell they had been staying in.
Felicitas cleared her throat. “You do realize I was controlling that robot, right? It’s not a person.”
Bear Hug shrugged. “I want to see it then! It was so cool.”
Anton could feel an internal debate happening in the heads of those present. They were probably debating whether the cost of such a device was valuable enough that they would refuse. Anton was willing to bet that Bear Hug planned to destroy this robot as a form of vengeance. It would be an entirely cultivator response, retribution for a previous slight.
They’d barely had a few hours to get used to Bear Hug’s overwhelming nature, so it was reasonable they might still be uncertain about how genuine they were. This was still the observation phase, after all. Anton and Bear Hug were under constant guard, trying to see how they would act. Bear Hug should understand that, but they didn’t care. After all, what were people with weapons menacing you but future friends?
“It doesn’t work very well in atmosphere,” Felicitas finally said.
“That’s okay. We can go to space.” She looked uncomfortable at that. Now that she was actually interacting instead of stubbornly ignoring them, her stoic mask had begun to slip. It was enough that even Bear Hug recognized it. “Maybe tomorrow. Or the day after. We can’t stay here more than a month or two or we’ll throw off our whole schedule!”
Bear Hug was always trying to learn human body language, but it was hard. They were alien. It would be like Anton trying to read Bear Hug’s body language without them intentionally making some. He had tried, but there literally was nothing there. Nothing about Bear Hug’s physical state had anything to do with what they were thinking. Their mind and body were two separate but miraculous things.
That night, they didn’t try to return Bear Hug and Anton to their cell. That said, the apartment space provided wasn’t actually much different. The main difference was it actually had amenities instead of being bare.
No, the biggest difference was the food. Bear Hug’s was exactly the same, but Anton’s was much more… foodlike. And he got utensils. Anton had almost been worried that all of Aretis ate nutritional cubes.
Holding a regular knife didn’t make Anton any more dangerous than when he was without. The material of the blade wasn’t strong enough to be relevant after Spirit Building and the final steps of standard body tempering. If he was a blade cultivator it being sharp might matter, but he had actual weapons in his storage bag. The locals hadn’t tried to take those away, though Anton had sensed that within the cell the spatial suppression would have likely restricted access to them.
Anton was weaker with an energy bow, but not relevantly. At least not when compared to the people. He hadn’t seen the full extent of their technological capabilities, and he had no intention to force a conflict now that things were going well.
“This is very good,” Bear Hug commented. “How did they know what I would need?” The dirtlike powder they got was a mix of nutrients that easily dissolved in water. “They didn’t even ask. Are their machines really that good?”
“It seems so,” Anton said. Even the Alliance would have needed a more specialized scanning chamber to take such detailed readings on Bear Hug. That didn’t necessarily make Aretis’ tech superior, but it might be in specific aspects which was astounding enough. However, Anton would bet on the Alliance’s mixed tech outmatching them any day. Aretis just wasn’t developed enough in cultivation, having completely ignored the potential of advancing beyond Life Transformation in the lower realms.
Or perhaps they had tried and failed enough to conclude it was impossible. Anton hadn’t had another choice, but he certainly hadn’t been willing to remain stagnant. Various factors had made his success possible, and even then he’d half killed himself. The bar for cultivation advancements indicated that anything without permanent negative consequences was a success, and even some attempts with lasting drawbacks.
Anton chewed on some meat he thought was supposed to be high quality. It wasn’t bad. He would never complain about food unless it was actively vile. It just wasn’t as good as he thought it should be, so maybe he was wrong. He thought they were trying to make up for the part where he and Bear Hug were forced into chains after Aretis’ initial very aggressive stance.
Maybe the animals weren’t happy enough. Or perhaps it had been too long since Anton regularly ate food that approached normal standards. He honestly couldn’t make a clear comparison to what he’d had on his ranch. The problem was all of that had tasted like home and hard work, which very much biased him. This was probably better.
Anton wondered if they would try something while he tried to sleep. He hadn’t built up enough trust with the locals to avoid that paranoia just yet. Anton didn’t have to sleep, but if they were the sort of people that would try to kill him in his sleep he wanted to force their hand. It was entirely possible for them to be enemies of the Trigold Cluster and also reject everyone else.
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Bear Hug was asleep in a pool already- the same pool and sun lamp from the cell, but now in a comfortable little living room.
Anton gave the locals a chance. He could probably react to a bullet entering his body before it killed him, even one at supersonic speeds. For lasers, it would depend on how fast they cut. Then again, the defensive enchantments on Anton’s clothing should minimize the possible targets.
Anton was pleased that nobody tried to murder him in his sleep. He was fairly certain about those immediately around him, but the leaders at a distance he hadn’t gotten a good read on yet. Though, he had spent some time sneakily seeking them out with his energy senses. It would have been a bit difficult if they were on another planet, but Anton found at least some on Ecuma. The rest didn’t appear to be in the same building and he was still seeking them out.
Anton wasn’t going to let some suspicions stop him from being himself. He commented on their fields, growing crops above the heads of their citizens. Most of the underground was dotted with underground structures, yet they usually teleported to the surface and walked between them instead of going from place to place.
They didn’t lack the ability. Anton saw people do it all the time, it just wasn’t the norm. It seemed to be a societal thing that people should walk from place to place on the surface. On that note, unless they were going to space Anton didn’t sense any vehicles except a few hand carts. Prolific teleportation mixed with walking paths was an interesting and laudable combination of movement options. It certainly kept a lot of space free.
Alliance cities had old paths for wagons and carts, with Rutera having old roads for ground vehicles, but with everyone cultivating they could match ground vehicles easily. They still did a lot of flying, since teleportation wasn’t quite as prevalent. Anton wondered if there was better technology, or if it was simply how Aretis developed.
Bear Hug got to meet the robot… and hugged it. “I thought it might be a person,” Bear Hug commented. “Like Reneden. But it’s just a robot.”
“I’m still not sure if we should ask.”
“If they want to hurt Reneden, we have to stop them. But we should ask.”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that.”
The entire exchange took place in energy sign. No doubt the locals noticed he and Bear Hug were doing something to communicate, but he would be surprised if they understood the nuance just yet. Then again, it was meant to be easy to learn. They just had to accept that the energy fluctuations were the words and Anton and Bear Hug weren’t making secret sound transmissions that they had to decode.
Also, in this case, ‘Reneden’ ended up being ‘robot friend over that way’ since spelling out names was annoying and the result was obvious to the two of them.
“You have so many arms,” Bear Hug commented to the robot. “I think this is too many. You should store some inside!”
Felicitas chuckled, “We would, but there are important internal components. And it would weaken the shell. It has to be able to withstand some level of attack.”
Anton was uncertain about it standing up to a Domination cultivator, but it might survive a hit from an Augmentation cultivator. Perhaps they would have sent more if they were trying to forcibly restrain them. Or maybe it was more durable than he estimated. Then again, it could be that it specifically resisted ascension energy better, which he wouldn’t notice.
There was no way Anton was going to call upon ascension energy here. Not without explaining ahead of time, and with far better reason than curiosity. He couldn’t imagine it would go over well with their new… peaceable neighbors.
Janer remained one of Anton’s contacts, the man continuing to prod Anton on various topics. Obviously Anton wasn’t going to give up national secrets, but he was willing to reveal how far things went before they became secret.
“I have the starting manual for the One Hundred Stars,” Anton said, tossing it to Janer. “I can authorize its release to whoever I wish. If you get anyone who goes beyond Spirit Building with that, we can talk and I can provide the next steps.” They weren’t going to find any fatal flaws in that. If they did so easily, Anton really wanted to know what they were. It would be so embarrassing to leave huge fatal flaws for over a millennium. He was quite confident in what they had, though.
Maybe he could improve guidance for Assimilation, Enrichment, and Unity. He was slowly doing so, though he wasn’t enough beyond them as to be certain about what flaws remained. Personally he thought starbinding was pretty good, and the weakness of people blowing up stars was… not significant enough to be a concern.
After all, people blowing up stars in systems he cared about was already a problem. Starbinding cultivators could at least make it more difficult by actively controlling some of the local energy. He was glad they’d mostly avoided such threats. Domination cultivators were capable of it to some extent, but would generally prefer to conquer a system by killing its defenders.
The Alliance had done their best to limit the flow of information back to those who had been experimenting with destroying stars… and to kill them if at all possible. A few sects in the Trigold Cluster had done it previously, after painfully slow smuggling across the border between realms. The Lower Realms were patrolling the border much more strongly, and with better sensing equipment.
Anton hoped that the One Hundred Stars was the most refined technique Janer had ever seen. The locals seemed to be pretty reliably getting to Life Transformation, but it was only by stepping beyond that they could realize all the flaws in their path.
For the most part, Janer seemed surprised he handed it over so easily. To Anton, it really wasn’t that important. He felt safe sharing it. He also wanted to promote further exchange of information.
Janer didn’t immediately provide any sort of response, burying his nose in the manual and no doubt making sure it was copied into their databases. Marty, however, came to Anton with lots of questions- offering information on his own style for Anton to peruse. He didn’t hand over a manual, but verbally went over various things from his own gun focused cultivation style. Anton responded with the best guidance he could give. It was fortunate that he used projectiles, because that made it far closer to archery. With enough time, Anton could probably make the guy into an excellent sniper. Then again, Marty already seemed competent- but people could always be better.