Elder Cultivator-Chapter 1226

The whole nest felt strange. Alien. More than distortion beast nests usually did, and not in a good way. Anton kept expecting to find people in there- not necessarily humans, but something that should be able to have cultivation insights. Distortion beasts just weren’t right.

Maybe he was just biased because they weren’t cute. At all. They lacked any of the features that attracted humans to things and filled them with protective instincts. They were sharp where they should be soft, large instead of small, and just generally absent of properties that weren’t meant for battle.

Cultivation insights technically fit into that mold, but there was a certain way of thinking that seemed absent. It wasn’t the mind of a predator- Anton had seen how wolves like Fuzz had developed just fine with the guidance of humans. And then there was the entire population of Akrys. Rather than true predators, they were more like hunger itself.

But Bear Hug wanted to try talking to them and Anton had to admit that there was some chance it would work. He had no way to calculate how small, but it would be a bit disingenuous to not even make an attempt just because they were horrifying monstrosities.

At least he didn’t have to do it. He just had to search through dozens of monsters to find one that had some insights that would potentially make it more inclined towards Bear Hug. It was a rather small population to get extremely specific cultivation flavors, but conversely a large number of distortion beasts. Even after many had eaten each other. The good news? They didn’t seem to be displaying signs of rapid development. It was still unclear if they could ‘digest’ insights from others.

Water. Vaguely. “How do you feel about frozen, deep space ice?” Anton asked.

“I don’t know,” Bear Hug replied. “I’ve never felt any. Is there some around here?”

“That’s what this one distortion beast feels like,” Anton explained. “That’s the most watery one I have.”

“I would like not to be frozen,” Bear Hug commented. “Please be ready with sunlight.”

“I will. So, should I draw it over?”

“Yes please.”

Anton thought about how to do that best without drawing unnecessary guests. Though he supposed if he caught an extra handful, he could take them out when they were about halfway over. They were a significant distance away from the nest in empty space, with nothing around they could accidentally cause trouble for. No planets, people, or much of anything. Except for those with them, including the language team under Abioye. Their recordings would be analyzing potential responses from the distortion beast… as much as they were capable.

Anton set out the bait. He supposed fishing was the most apt comparison as he dangled some energy right in front of his target, empowering a single point at the end of his line of sensory energy. It took a moment to react, so Anton wiggled around slightly. At least a dozen sharp things closed in suddenly- but there wasn’t anything Anton was concerned about getting damaged. He just pulled the energy slightly closer, out of the area of the assault. At most, he left a little energy to get devoured.

A moment, then another leap. Soon after, the beast was chasing the lure with all its might. Without any intent to ruin Bear Hug’s methods, Anton didn’t think that the responses he was getting were particularly intelligent.

He did feel energy building up, but he quickly yanked away the lure before the freezing energy hit. However, he never pulled it too far from the distortion beast, parts of it appearing out of subspace to continue its attacks. Eventually, instead of attacking it just continued to chase.

“It’s coming,” Anton said. “I’d expect an hour or so.” He’d chosen a quite distant location. This nest was being studied for other reasons, after all. The way these beasts used energy was somewhat concerning, after all. This particular exercise had been approved… and might reveal information from the recordings.

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Bear Hug sort of spread out, as if lying on a lake- but there wasn’t one, except what they brought with them. “I kind of don’t want to know exactly how long it will take. I’m nervous now.”

“Sorry,” Anton said. “Need anything?”

“Just keep me from the vacuum. I’m gonna get tired really quick out in space. I’m not even that strong yet.”

That wasn’t true. Bear Hug was nearly Assimilation. They were just particularly affected by the environment. Lots of surface area to cover, if they didn’t just create a bubble of safety around them. That meant parts of them tried to freeze and others tried to boil, with heat being rapidly lost to the surroundings. Plus the lack of air didn’t help. Unfiltered solar radiation was also a bit excessive even for plant cultivators.

“Oh, it’s here. I’m going to take over, okay?”

Anton nodded. “Very well. I’ll be ready.” If the thing so much as ate one strand of Bear Hug… well, they would probably forgive it. Anton wouldn’t, but he would at least refrain from annihilating it on the spot. Unless he felt real danger. He kind of wished his friend wouldn’t be so willing to let bits of him be devoured, but it was much less concerning than if it happened to a human. It still wasn’t great, but Bear Hug also tried to not get hurt. But for the sake of friends and future friends, they would do anything.

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“Hello big friend!” Bear Hug made their words very exaggerated- a lot of energy behind him.

The distortion beast ate some of the speech, and continued on toward Bear Hug.

“If you could please-” Bear Hug jetted out of the area like an octopus- except without any material to push off of, so it was just a strange motion with long strands of algae. “-stop trying to eat me. I am nice. You can be nice. Over there.”

Each word was also an energy gesture, which Anton thought was clear enough in its intent. Even though plant based lifeforms didn’t have exactly the same emotional processing and certainly not humanoid brains, they understood the general ideas of physical relation. Maybe the distortion beast needed some subspace flair on there?

Or maybe it just didn’t get it.

Dozens of different sorts of modestly sized fangs- snake and spider, Anton thought- as well as scorpion stingers stabbed into Bear Hug. Or at least the general area they occupied. There wasn’t anywhere for them to lodge. At best, they nicked a couple individual strands. Then they pumped numerous liters of poison into empty space. Bear Hug recoiled away from the area, taking most of the water they carried with them- whatever remained uncontaminated.

“I don’t have a central nervous system or even a body, so that’s not going to work,” Bear Hug said. “Maybe you should just calm down and chat?”

It wasn’t long before the distortion beast understood the futility of its efforts, though likely not from the words. Nor did it stop at any point. It just began drawing upon its energy. Bear Hug had a much more difficult time not being torn apart by the energy, and indeed lost some of their mass. Anton grimaced as that happened, but continued to hold back. Bear Hug had forced him to swear to a threshold of one-third destruction. They had wanted half, but Anton wasn’t willing to go that far.

Then a wave of ice froze Bear Hug in place- frozen by their very own water, in fact. Anton acted, providing a wave of heat and sunlight- piercing equally through the whole area. He didn’t want to cause rapid temperature changes, but that was already out the window. He did his best to hold back… and some of the ice liquified without him. Not melted, because that would presume it underwent a proper state change. Just like it had become ice through energy control, so too had it returned to water.

“Wow that was dangerous! Please keep this,” Bear Hug gestured to the water. “Liquid and not solid, okay?”

The distortion beast ignored them. Anton would have said pointedly, if he thought it could comprehend anything.

Bear Hug did their very best, including wrapping around one of the scorpion stingers and trying to pat it gently to indicate friendship, or something. However, the attacks continued relentlessly. It was much like what happened with Briar, but Anton suspected that the other side fully didn’t get that it was being communicated with.

Bear Hug made bigger and more energetic words, trying to push into subspace and all sorts of things, but the only energy reactions were empowered venomous bits and ice control. Pieces of algae began disappearing into subspace as they were snatch up- along with portions of Bear Hug’s energy that was imbued in said algae.

Finally, it was time. “Bear Hug, retreat!” Anton called. They, of course, ignored him. So he filled the distortion beast with spectral energy, via hundreds of arrows that pierced into various bits of its hidden body that Anton had scoped out.

“Aww,” Bear Hug deflated. “I almost had it.”

Anton couldn’t say that this was their fault. If they had retreated, he might have tried to lure the beast back to the nest. But… probably not. “I think you overestimated its responsiveness.”

“Maybe…” If Bear Hug actually thought they were making progress, they would have been more mad. But they understood that Anton had followed their agreement properly. “Can we do another one?”

“Not until you rest up. This,” Anton gestured vaguely, “Should still be there in the future. Until then, you need to be somewhere with an atmosphere.”

“And a lake,” Bear Hug said.

“If there isn’t a lake, we’ll make one.” Condensing water out of the atmosphere wasn’t that hard. Or making some from other elements. Anton couldn’t do it anywhere near as efficiently as a proper water cultivator, but he had more power than he knew what to do with sometimes.

And other times he had to defend his friends who wanted the world to be good, but were having difficulty figuring out that it was not. Had he been to sheltering of Bear Hug? No, he’d been honest about the dangers of the world from the beginning. Even as Bear Hug first approached him- a powerful unknown.

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Abioye showed Anton their recordings. “On the language front, we have pretty much nothing to indicate any sort of response, or even understanding. But its energy flow is interesting. Or rather we should say… lack of it. Cultivators store energy in our dantians, right? Bear Hug there is an exception. Distortion beasts generally store their energy throughout their body… and these aren’t any different. But only some of them has the modified energy of a cultivation method.”

“What does that mean?” Anton asked.

“Don’t know! Maybe we could cut it out of them and they wouldn’t be able to do that stuff anymore? I’m not that kind of scientist. Anyway, for the sake of Bear Hug we’ve been analyzing the attack patterns for potential language, but there aren’t really any patterns that seem to rise to the level of communicative. Especially since, if it was trying to reply, it should have done more external energy manipulation. And it only did the ice thing.”

“Well then,” Anton said. “If it were not for the example of our plantlike friend, we’d have no examples of cultivators with energy distributed like that, correct?”

“Exactly. The Akrysian natives form something like a dantian, right?”

Anton recalled some of the details of the battle. “Bear Hug shifts their energy around. It’s not static, or only augmenting nearby limbs. But the distortion beast didn’t do much of that, did it?”

“I think energy slowly flowed to balance out the current levels, but it didn’t seem to have intent. Still not our area of expertise but… no words. Not even in subspace, as far as we can tell. Just a big mass of, well, mass and energy. Normal distortion beast stuff.”

Anton hadn’t really thought there would be anything, but he had to let Bear Hug try. Because if he- and pretty much everyone else- had been wrong, it would have been a big mistake. At least they could dissect this one to see if there was anything else to find.