Elder Cultivator

Hundreds of tiny creatures threw themselves at Anton, trying to cut off his every line of movement. He wasn’t able to directly escape encirclement, even with a significant advantage in his individual speed.

Killing the dart shaped things would be easy enough, if he was willing to risk it. With completely new creatures, however, he didn’t want to judge them merely based on appearances and a single encounter. He could only manage that because he had the luxury of power, however.

They seemed to have no reaction to bursts of light, so Anton began throwing out concussive blasts of natural energy. He could certainly burn them up, but he didn’t know which organs were vital or how much damage he would cause by puncturing their bodies. If he wanted to kill them he could have managed that easily enough, but he just wanted to stop them.

It took a bit for him to test the limits of their sturdiness, but soon he was knocking them unconscious with expert precision. Once he got used to their swarming patterns, Anton also found himself more able to dodge them. When he got the opportunity, he broke through an opening and accelerated away from them- moving further from the system.

As he watched their behavior after he was gone, some of the creatures began to fight among themselves and devour each other. That didn’t speak of any sort of sapience Anton wanted to be associated with, but he could afford to take his time.

He considered binding the star for his own safety. There were certainly more powerful individual life forms in the system that might be able to cause him trouble otherwise. But if there was anyone who could actually care and with the potential to give permission, Anton didn’t want to just assume. There could even be human residents somewhere he hadn’t sensed, hiding from what he presumed were beasts.

The way a great number of them lived among the stars was quite unique. Now that he’d seen their capacity to hide among nothing at all, Anton was content to observe from further away.

One of the largest individuals was a great sheetlike thing. If he were to compare it to anything, it would be a deep sea jelly- except without any sort of gathering tendrils, and without a curved body. It was more or less flat, except for round pustules that Anton thought were captured bits of food.

Watching for a few days, it seemed to be drifting towards a particular pocket of natural energy, catching anything in front of it. That included many smaller life forms that Anton hadn’t previously noticed. Everything had ways to hide from the others, both their physical form and natural energy.

The engulfer- since calling it a ‘blanket creature’ was a bit odd- was mostly transparent, revealing the stars behind it. As for natural energy, it seemed to disperse it throughout its hundred meter across body, barely surpassing ambient levels even to his own refined senses. It was best observed by its effects on the world around it- and the occasional larger specimen that got stuck to it. Though even that wasn’t enough for some less intelligent creatures that tried- usually unsuccessfully- to feast on the seemingly unclaimed remains. Often they ended up captured themselves, slowly drawn into a pocket that digested them.

Anton hadn’t conclusively determined that the engulfer was not sapient, but the likelihood of it having anything more than simple reactions to simple stimuli was low. It didn’t have anything resembling a nervous system, though that didn’t entirely eliminate the possibility of sapience. Maheg was little more than plasma and natural energy, but the star had a consciousness and real thoughts, even if its intelligence was alien.

Eventually Anton would probably judge everything in the system to be beasts, but he’d seen too many oddities to be comfortable assuming after just a day or two.

The dart-like, fishy creatures who had ambushed him seemed to be proficient pack hunters, taking down larger individuals with great success. It wasn’t that strange they had thought they could take him out as well, though their mistake was likely one of magnitude. His body wasn’t that large, but his energy should have tipped them off.

Anton had already sent messages back to the Alliance. No doubt a whole swarm of biologists would be here at some point, as they rarely had opportunities to study one wholly new species, let alone what seemed an entire system’s worth.

While it might not be a friendly ecosystem, Anton thought it was actually quite healthy. While there were things constantly devouring each other, that behavior could only be observed on a large scale. There were much smaller and more efficient creatures that the smallest things fed upon- and things like the engulfer, ironically. The planets seemed to have plant life, which was the basis of everything. It wasn’t possible to have a functioning system entirely based off of life devouring other life, because some energy was always lost in the process. Usually a significant portion.

On that note, one of the terrestrial planets with a thick atmosphere had a very healthy population of all sorts of things. It had forests and seas full of plants, animals, and of course fungi. Some of the plants seemed fond of eating things, which somewhat ruined their efficiency, but that was only a small portion. Maybe one percent of the plant biomass, split between land and sea. Carnivorous plants weren’t unique in the cultivator world, as seen in grasping willows. Technically the trees could survive on sunlight alone, but they rarely did. They certainly grew more when receiving alternate energy sources. Grandfather Willow got donated natural energy from the sect, and a few stray forest beasts.

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Though he could call the system terrifying and savage, Anton liked it. It was lively. He wasn’t the sort that thought ‘natural’ worlds were better than any other sort. Well cultivated crops were extremely valuable to life, and humans could help stabilize ecosystems if they chose to, but it was nice to see something functional instead of another place that was suffering the aftermath of upper realms invasions. Anton doubted that any invaders would have brought a fully functioning interplanetary network of life with them to try to wipe out a system. Or that they could have, given the huge variety.

Speaking of the system, given that he hadn’t heard a native name to call it, Anton would be going with Klar. That was what it had been named by the Alliance, after the scout who had perished trying to observe it. It wasn’t exactly the same name, but it was meant as a form of respect for their sacrifice.

It took Anton some time to figure out where he wanted to jump into closer observation. He couldn’t get a full picture from the edge of the system. He could vaguely pick out insects on the planets, but he kind of wanted to see what sort of microorganisms they had. That said, he needed to make sure such things didn’t get too good of a look at him, as he wasn’t keen on getting a new and exciting space disease.

Something very exciting happened on the other side of the system. A distortion beast attracted to the system suddenly appeared, devouring the local inhabitants… before it was swarmed by everything within that section of space. Most of the various spacefaring creatures were able to accelerate to significant speeds, given the complete lack of friction. They didn’t seem afraid of impacts at such velocity, either.

It was a fight that lasted days, but the most interesting part was how many of the local creatures took bites out of the bits of the distortion beast hanging out in subspace. By the time the distortion beast realized it should retreat, it was being devoured by a menagerie of different things.

So, there was some cooperation between different species- at least as it came to distortion beasts. Anton would have to be careful in case that applied to any outsiders, though he hadn’t noticed such a strong reaction when he was attacked. Only the local space-darts had gone after him, with some nearby creatures seeming to observe, likely interested in scavenging.

Anton had only seen some bones, wings, and claws from the distortion beast, but he could feel quite a number of odd bits of flesh and organ in the bellies of the other creatures. As the battle had dragged on he’d approached closer- going around the system- so he was close enough to sense such things at the end.

It seemed not a single scrap of the distortion beast was left in empty space- or within subspace, as far as Anton could tell with his experience. The local creatures seemed to be mostly sated, avoiding violence as they drifted apart- though there were a few exceptions.

Aside from the strong natural energy, Anton wondered what unique circumstances had led to such exceptional developments. He was far more used to life-seeded planets, and anywhere humans went they tended to bring along familiar species even if a planet was formerly unique.

Ultimately he decided to approach again, wary of ambush predators. He wasn’t going to get close to any planet just yet, but he could sense life living among the vast distances in a far out asteroid field.

Rather than moving quickly- aside from the distortion beast incident- the general state of the local creatures seemed to be picking a direction and drifting. Sometimes they would drift rapidly, but they were content waiting days or weeks without atmosphere or any sort of food or drink. Natural energy could sustain them to some extent, but unique biology had to cover the rest.

Anton picked as his destination an asteroid a few kilometers across. Not tiny, but certainly not one of the biggest. As for his approach, he tried to mimic the locals, giving himself an initial acceleration then avoiding using his energy. That did make it easier to conceal himself from would-be predators, though he did have to keep his senses primed. His senses certainly couldn’t catch everything, as to extend beyond a certain point he had to sharpen them into narrow bands which could cover approximately none of the total area- unlike on a planet where most life was in a narrow band atop land.

Avoiding actually landing on his target, Anton caught himself into a similar movement pattern near it. At just a few dozen kilometers he was able to focus his senses sufficiently to pick out the smallest things- like bacteria. As he had noticed along the way, there were certainly similar microscopic organisms spread out in empty space itself but he found far more on the surface of the asteroid.

It didn’t really have much in the way of soil, but where it was looser he felt what he assumed was a healthy population of various organisms. There were a few things burrowed into the rocks that had a larger scale, but the largest things in the area didn’t live on the surface at all. That didn’t just count the giants.

No plants were growing on this particular asteroid, but he’d felt a few oddities on some others ‘nearby’. He’d obviously have to cover the many thousands of kilometers between them to know for sure, but there might be something.

Oh, and there was some sort of fungus in some of the cracks on his asteroid. The people of Moturn would be so happy to hear about that.

Obviously Anton was kidding. He wouldn’t have anyone touch unknown fungus more than he would touch mysterious energy. They were more liable to be deadly than nutritious, or at the very least mildly unhealthy in entirely unique ways. Perhaps they weren’t even technically fungus, as with the oddity of Klar they could fit in entirely unique categories of life… but even if they weren’t related, Anton planned to use useful descriptors.

Having not been swarmed, even after he was fairly certain some of the locals noticed him, Anton decided that distortion beasts were the biggest local threat. People like him might be prey or they might be predators, but he wasn’t seen as the same sort of existential threat. Or maybe he didn’t smell tasty.

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