Elder Cultivator

Chapter 1130

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.

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?