Elder Cultivator

Ascension was something Varghese had never strongly considered. His early life was filled with visions of ruin caused by those in the upper realms- he had no desire to be among them. However, he had still heard descriptions of what it was like from others in the Alliance, choosing to end up in a friendlier segment of the upper realms.

He imagined it was something like what was happening to his consciousness. Varghese wanted to struggle against it, except that he felt his other connections remain. So he allowed the strange sensations to continue, finding himself drawn over a large distance.

Time had slowed down, at least by his reckoning. He followed the familiar sensation of natural energy, mixed in among his surroundings.

He was suddenly jerked to a halt. His perceptions still seemed slow, as he felt energy surging. He remembered what he had been doing, pushing natural energy through the structure around Ocreaf. His consciousness just managed to continue that push.

Without his body, he was little more than his energy senses, stretched to his limits and beyond. Similar structures to what he had seen came into view, except they were feeding the natural energy into stars in the upper realms. Even split between them, the surge of natural energy overwhelmed them. The structures melted, collapsing into their stars as their rigidity was lost.

It took no time at all to begin, but Varghese watched in slow motion as the structures began to crumble. Then he was snapped back to where his body was, in the middle of Ocreaf with the structure having already melted into the surface of the star, erased from existence except by the slight ripples left behind- ripples he could only feel through his connection to the star.

He wanted to reach out for the fleets, but time surged forward as the star around him tried to come to terms with the sudden change in its status. He held tightly to it, holding it steady… but what felt like a single moment went beyond the end of the battle. Varghese only sensed blurred masses of energy as the fleets and planetary forces clashed, the Alliance eventually withdrawing… but staying near the star.

His star. He returned to normal experience just about the time as a small ship approaching Ocreaf was shot out of the sky- small, but not inconsequential. For the brief moments he properly comprehended it, Varghese was filled with revulsion and fear.

The small worldheart ship still felt off even with the crew dead. Varghese knew that it had most likely been carrying one of their star disrupting weapons. Fortunately, Anton was watching out for him. Through their connected stars, he sent a feeling of thanks. Anton replied with relief.

Stretching his senses to one of the ships, Varghese determined it had been several days. That wasn’t bad, all things considering. It wouldn’t have been for him to be stuck in such a state for weeks… or years.

Their fleets were battered, but still holding strong. Varghese spread out his energy to contact them. “Sorry about that. It was less smooth than I anticipated.” That was a partial lie. It could have been far rockier… especially if he failed.

The first thing Varghese did with his heightened connection was reach out towards the ship-planets that had withdrawn from his star. It had been a point of safety with the star draining structures in place, but without they were concerned about the consequences.

“Surrender,” Varghese ordered- after stretching his star’s magnetic fields around the half-metallic planets. Even before anyone could react, he was pulling them closer. If Varghese had not advanced to Enrichment they would be properly outside of the proximity zone… but now they hadn’t retreated far enough. And there were still echoes of their energy inside his star, a connection he didn’t appreciate but made use of nonetheless.

Varghese repeated his order, focusing on a random Life Transformation cultivator. They hesitated for a moment, so he cut them apart with some of their own metal fragments. He’d seen them use their style enough to see how they broke down the bonds within metal to reform it. His version used significantly more force, but he was too far to properly swing a sword.

One at a time was too slow. Varghese focused on several more Life Transformation cultivators. They actually verbally refused, so he took them apart. He planned to continue until someone surrendered. That should encourage others. However, the sects reacted quickly. It was impossible for so many millions to be true fanatics… but if such individuals rose to the top they could have great impacts.

That was what he saw as the strongest cultivators among them took control of their combined planetary structure. They began the collapse before everyone could understand what was going on. Once the main structures began to slip, there was no hope of them catching the momentum and reversing the process- though Varghese felt the majority of those remaining try.

For a moment, he considered letting the sects come to their own deserved end. Several seconds, in fact. Fortunately for them, they had longer than that before their inevitable crash in the middle.

Rather than trying anything complicated, Varghese first eliminated gravity in the area. No doubt some people would debate that being complicated, but it was only a temporary measure, the force of his various stars combining together to sever bonds, if just for a few moments. The momentum of the various segments was still an issue, but the billions of individuals didn’t want to die. They fought together to stop the momentum and reattach their planetary structures.

The results were somewhat sloppy as many of the strongest among them rapidly became occupied by a civil war. Perhaps one of the shortest in history considering it spanned several planets- even if they were mashed together. It wasn’t quite clear to everyone exactly what was happening, but they could tell that some of them had tried to collapse their planets.

By the time Varghese was forced to let gravity take hold once more, less than a minute later, the battles had mostly settled down. Just to be safe, Varghese let the gravity return a little bit at a time so that people could figure out where their improvised structures were strained. Because of the scales involved even slight tremors were catastrophically devastating, the equivalent of entire countries being rocks by massive earthquakes. Varghese didn’t let himself be concerned with the scale of damage, however. This was still better than what would have been, a single mass of rubble.

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“I’m going to assume the rest of you prefer to live. Be aware that you couldn’t stop me from throwing you into this star, if I wished to. But if you surrender, there is a path for your survival.” Varghese wouldn’t and couldn’t promise all of them would be allowed to live… but the Alliance wasn’t known for eradicating populations where they didn’t have to. It would be a huge project to deal with these sects, but… with so many bound stars in the area, Varghese supposed it was inevitable he’d take up the project.

His senses weren’t as sharp as Anton’s but he still picked out something else approaching. More fleets, but they weren’t what initially drew his attention. It was the gigantic ship made of worldheart.

Neither the fleet nor the ship would have concerned Varghese too much in other circumstances, but he had just expended most of his energy causing planets not to collapse, whether or not they deserved that. How unfortunate. He should have known they were coming- if he’d only bothered to survey the scene thoroughly before focusing on the planets.

He was exhausted… but power was flowing into him at a rate never before felt. No wonder Anton could fight for so long. In the time before the fleets drew too close, he’d recover perhaps a tenth of the maximum energy he’d had before advancing. So he certainly wouldn’t be useless. And they had to come to him, into his domain.

“Don’t fly out to engage them,” Varghese warned their fleets.

A response came from Sharma. “What if they carry anti-stellar weaponry?”

“It will still be easier to deal with up close. Only the large ship is likely capable.”

Varghese reached through his combined stars. He couldn’t quite create the energy response he wanted to properly speak to Anton, but he got a general sense of support and vigor, indicating Anton was ready to fight. Hopefully the plans the Sect Head had made would be effective.

There was a brief concern that the incoming fleets would link up with the local planets and take control… but they seemed to ignore their presence entirely, even as Varghese continued to very slowly reel them closer. Whether to protect himself against them or to aid them, it was better for him if they were nearby. The fleets were faster, however, and soon the battle began.

Varghese found it odd to have no fear for his personal safety. He felt so… free. He was fairly certain he still had a body, but given he had half a star between him and any incoming attack he only had to worry about anything specially made to disrupt the structure of a star. So he was free to focus on offense and tracking the battle as a whole.

He created small but powerful magnetic fields within enemy lines. Rather than slashing out with his sword, he caused Ocreaf itself to lash out with solar flares, mimicking his motions. Some portion of the enemy fleet collapsed together, and that was sufficient disruption.

The main threat was the worldheart ship. Varghese just needed to take some of the pressure off the rest of their fleets. Anton’s arrows were already arriving, weaving through enemy fleets and dragging spectral energy to the ship itself. Alone, they were insufficient- but they weren’t completely useless either.

Varghese felt a large grouping of Life Transformation cultivators aboard the ship. Twenty, fift, perhaps even a hundred. The ship moved forward without thought, cutting through anything in front of it. Its shape transformed at the will of the cultivators aboard.

Just to be sure, Varghese tried to manipulate the ship with magnetism, but they negated his efforts rather handily. Perhaps he could overpower them, but he didn’t think it worth devoting so much of his remaining energy to that.

Instead, he focused on an element he rarely used- even though it was far less obscure than gravity and magnetism. Varghese used fire- drawn from the very star itself. The incoming ship was still beyond the stage where he could actually hit it with the star itself, but he still channeled the energy from an extended thread. All he wanted was for the ship to be hot.

They had barriers, of course. Fire was a typical sort of attack, so they weren’t unprepared… but Varghese’s assault didn’t end. Frankly, he didn’t want to know what they could do, what weapons they had. Perhaps they had one way to destabilize a star, perhaps they had a dozen. It didn’t matter.

Likewise, it seemed they didn’t care that he was attacking them- they continued forward. That meant that soon they would be close enough for him to simply reach out and melt them- but that moment of contact might be the one their weapons destroyed Ocreaf- and by extension, Varghese and the surrounding fleets.

But they weren’t as suicidal as they seemed. The front third of their vessel suddenly disconnected, rocketing forward and reversing the rest of the ship’s momentum.

Varghese instantly called upon Azun to defend its distant brother, enhancing the magnetic field of the star. Even with his focus on a specific area, that disrupted the whole battle- even the stone ships who were anticipating certain sort of movement from the others around them.

Even with a single moment of touching the incoming mass of worldheart surrounding something, Varghese shuddered. But as the attacking ship withdrew, the cultivator’s connection snapped, letting Varghese send the payload into distant orbit.

It seemed as if the ship expected to get away. But even if Varghese couldn’t control the ship around them, he could control roughly half of their fleet. He connected all of their surrounding ships, trying to provide a corridor for the others to escape, to a shell outside of the worldheart ship.

Ships crashed together as Varghese used the last scraps of natural energy he had recovered, turning into various lumps that then piled around the internal structure of the worldheart. And it wasn’t just a few ships. That was one thing the enemy had in abundance, from the resources they had taken by tearing apart so many planets. Not just hundreds of ships, or thousands, but tens of thousands even in that small area around the escaping ship. Enough that it turned into a small moon.

Those in the center surprisingly managed to keep their ship’s structure… but it didn’t seem they could do much more than that. They managed to maintain a small amount of momentum, but there was no way they could pass between system by any normal methods without unburying themselves.

Varghese was tired. It turned out with more power came previously unknown levels of fatigue. Anton probably felt like this for the last year, based on how much the old man had been doing. But he never complained, did he?

Good for him. But as the apprentice, Varghese felt entitled to do so. He was so exhausted.

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