Elder Cultivator

Any single one of those present could have managed the issue on their own if they merely had to fling a reasonable sized mass towards something a relatively ‘close’ as the nearest system a handful of lightyears away. However, the task they were undertaking would take a bit more than simply that. Instead, they needed to make use of their experience with applied orbital mechanics.

Mainly Prospero and Hoyt’s tendency to throw things at their enemies. Anton could actually perform the Falling Stars technique as well, but he preferred precision attacks with his arrows. Though it wasn’t like Falling Stars lacked its own level of precision, as the first time Anton had seen it had involved a wide area strike on a beast horde while avoiding allies. It still fit him better to make use of archery techniques.

Because of his style, Anton was less involved with the dealings of gravity- he still had to be aware of how it would affect everything, but it wasn’t an empowering mechanism for his attacks. The other two would be more experienced, so they could help him make real-time adjustments that would align with the calculations that had been performed.

The biggest mystery at current time was the size, shape, and actual mass of the corruption in the star. That was what would require the most active involvement, and while they had to precisely align the mass along an intended trajectory it wasn’t actually that delicate of a procedure- they would be able to spend a significant amount of time fine-tuning its motion after ejecting it from the star.

It had already been decided that all three of them would be responsible for acting together. Though in the lower realms Hoyt and Prospero were weaker, they were still sufficient to support Anton’s actions. Their actual power wasn’t the important part.

From the time of their arrival until the day of reckoning was over a year, as implementing their plans took a bit longer than expected- though it wasn’t an unreasonable amount of time for them, even if their ascension energy was slowly diminishing.

During the last week, Anton’s focus was solely on the star and none of the local planets were in his mind. His connection was taken to its limits as he separated star matter from what did not belong, slowly pushing the foreign material towards one end of the star. It clung to the star, not simply from gravity but also from some other sort of attraction. It felt almost actively malicious, though it was just short of that since it didn’t seem to have any consciousness.

Pressure built up greater and greater as it clung onto the surrounding bits of the star, trying to fling itself deeper- or to carry a chunk of the star with it. Neither were acceptable results, and Anton had been working out how to disentangle the mass for most of the time he had been in the system. It was a matter he had been practicing for decades, and he was getting pretty good at it. But he’d still like the effort to be done and over with.

The time finally came. Anton was ready for the last push, and he communicated that to his compatriots. “Aid me,” Anton requested. “We’re going to tear it out… even if it means taking a chunk of the star with it.”

If everything went well, however, Anton would disentangle over ninety-nine percent of the starstuff from the corruption before it was flung away.

It was the most difficult wrestling match against an inanimate force Anton had ever had to deal with. It was like working with sap or molasses, and he could imagine it was actually a liquid- instead of gaseous or in the form of plasma like would be expected of the matter in a star.

Anton called upon the power of the star in front of him while also drawing on all the rest he was connected to. It wasn’t the same sort of harmony of constellations that had resulted in the death of Sudin, but he still pulled on their physical presence at the end.

It was… heavy. Anton honestly had no idea how the upper realms could have brought such mass to the system. Even if it was a small fraction of the star’s actual mass, it was more than everything else in the system put together- Moturn and its many moons. More than all the planets in any system, really.

Perhaps it had grown. Anton didn’t like the idea, but it made sense. Even so, it would have had to increase by a factor of ten every few years just to vaguely make sense at its current mass. Unless they had a way to open tunnels to the upper realms wherever they were pulling from, which was a much less reasonable feat. Trillions of tonnes wouldn’t have even begun to account for it. Anton’s interference might have been more necessary than he realized.

Anton found himself pulling on the mass, but he realized that wasn’t correct. Hoyt and Prospero could try to do that, but he knew there was a better place for him. Anton flew around the corruption into the center of the star, moving easily through its density as it made way for him. Its great power didn’t devour him, as he was part of it. He didn’t need to protect himself- and a tiny fraction of thought protected everything with him.

Reaching out in front of him, Anton shaped a portion of the power into a string- though the profile of what he wanted to move wasn’t the same as an arrow, the image was more important to him than anything else. A gathering of power, and then a release as it snapped forward, flinging out the unwanted mass at tremendous speeds.

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When Anton poked his head out to finally look at it, he saw… nothing aside from some glowing fragments of starry matter clinging to it which he peeled away. He could feel the snaking mass, curling back and forth on itself, but he couldn’t see anything. It wasn’t dark, such that it blocked out the stars beyond- it simply wasn’t anything.

“Now that’s curious,” Anton said. Perfectly clear, and he didn’t even see any distortion of light. He still had no name for it. “Now we have to figure out if we can attach anything to it or if it is harmful to more than just stars.”

The speed at which it was flung out of the star meant Anton, Hoyt, and Prospero had to chase after it along with other ships- though it was moving slower than the speed of light so it was at least manageable. As he went, Anton paid special attention to the star to make sure he’d gotten all of it out. Fortunately, it felt so unnatural that it was hard to miss, and though stars were immense it was no more difficult for Anton to sense the details than when looking for something wrong inside his own body.

It was good that they didn’t have to worry about air resistance. As long as they didn’t fly it through too many nebulae its actual shape wouldn’t matter too much. However, it was moldable to some extent so Anton did his best to reshape it into a vague sphere- though it would not give up the shape of spindly tubes it was made out of. Like evil noodles. Or intestines.

The mass was active to some extent, but a few hours after being removed from the star it fell dormant. It didn’t seem to react to warning formations being tied to it, so that was something. It wasn’t conscious, just… self-replicating, perhaps.

“I’d rather get rid of this sooner rather than later,” Anton said. “But we can’t significantly affect its travel, even if we wanted to go with it.” There was no way it was brought in its current form, unless it had been launched thousands of years prior. “Let’s get this on track.”

While there were many curious scientists who wished to study it, they could still do so. Anton, Hoyt, and Prospero merely accelerated it to a significant fraction of the speed of light, trivial for any interstellar ship or cultivator to surpass. After all, they took mere days to move lightyears. People would be able to study it for millennia if they wished, and they could monitor to make certain it remained on its track towards the black hole they had chosen to dispose of it in. Anton’s resolve to do so was only increased now that he’d removed it.

As for it being safe to study… there was no guarantee of that. But they intended to maintain proper caution, and everyone involved would be aware there were risks. Anton almost hoped they learned nothing, since he’d rather be done with it, but he also didn’t want to have to interact with things like that again. It didn’t look like any of the other methods the Trigold Cluster had used to try to destroy stars. Perhaps it was a new one. Experimental. Either way, preventing whichever sects were involved from doing anything like that in the future was important.

Maybe if they lived close enough to the border Anton would wipe them out himself. Though that was extremely unlikely, as he could only shoot a couple systems into the upper realms at best.

The three of them took some time making slight adjustments to the speed and trajectory of the mass. They could fix things later and it was possible that anyone studying it would slightly affect it, but it was best to try to set it on the correct course to begin with. They finally had to be satisfied with the speed because it was as fast as they could reasonably get it- and a little bit faster would run it into a star a few centuries out, or they would have to design a whole other orbit.

It fairly quickly drifted out of what could be officially called the system… and with that, the Lower Realms Alliance could leave. At least, until the locals invited them back.

Anton was still going to visit friends of course… but they would also be able to communicate with him long distance. Now that he had his freedom again, he thought he would bind some new stars- he needed to keep up with that to reach the next big threshold- and maybe check on his other long term commitments.

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On the galactic scale, Maheg wasn’t that far from where Anton had been. It was more than a hundred lightyears, but that was still relatively close. Anton finally returned to the star to fulfil an old promise. He was in a bold move at the moment. Each star he bound made the next more precious, as it took more time to advance his own cultivation. He certainly didn’t want to leave Maheg out, and his confidence in his insights had improved.

Maheg didn’t speak or use language in a traditional manner, though Anton still spoke around the star as it seemed to help. Before anything else, he intended to warn Maheg about the same sort of thing that had infested the other star. If the Trigold Cluster got wind of Maheg wiping out previous invaders- which was unlikely given the fact that nobody had returned- they might try the same thing.

And regardless, informing the star that there were actual threats to its person was useful. Anton created a representative energy as a warning. Maheg accepted the understanding of danger, though up to its current point it had been the cause of all the calamities around it, intentional or not.

It sent a feeling to Anton. Had it been long enough for him to make his decision? Previously, Anton had indicated centuries. Maheg didn’t feel impatient- more that it was actually lacking the sense of time scale to pick out how long it had been.

Anton nodded. “Long enough,” he said. He’d once had some thoughts that this interaction could be the step he took to reach whatever the next stage was. After all, he’d fused together a star beyond a threshold to reach Enrichment. But Maheg was a friend- an unusual one, to be certain, but he didn’t intend to exploit his friends in quite that way. All he needed to be certain of was a reasonable level of safety. Hesitating longer than that might have Anton missing an opportunity. Though he wasn’t going to rush into it. What was a few more decades in another system?

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