Elder Cultivator-Chapter 1237

This human didn’t know how to speak, but she was figuring it out pretty quick. Bear Hug didn’t know why humans still used ‘sounds’ when there were clearly better ways to talk, but they had to accept that was the way things were. Apparently, proper speech was pretty new and for some reason not everyone wanted to learn it.

Bear Hug was a bit worried about how strong she was, and maybe all the other people with her. But the fact that they weren’t fighting already was probably good. Plus, she had a ship. There really wasn’t a good way for Bear Hug to get off planet without a ship, unless they spent a long time growing more powerful and learning to fly.

If this lady turned out to be bad, Bear Hug could just borrow the ship until they found friends, then let her have it back. They just… had to figure out where they were. And where friends were.

“Do you know the Scarlet Alliance?”

The woman replied with something about red friendship. Which made Bear Hug think she didn’t know. She did repeat her earlier thing about going up, too.

“I would like to go to space. On your ship.” Bear Hug tried to be as clear as possible, but the ship was far away so they could only gesture towards it instead of properly indicating it. The plan had been to try to sneak aboard, somehow.

“You can come with us,” the woman said. Probably. “Are you bringing your friends?”

Bear Hug collapsed to the ground, not even bothering to retain all of their water. Of course they wanted to bring their friends. But… did they want to come with Bear Hug? They lived here, after all. Not somewhere else.

Leaving them behind was an awful thought, but Bear Hug couldn’t stay with them. It wasn’t safe to split again yet. But this might be the only opportunity to leave.

“... Are you healthy?” the woman expressed her concern for Bear Hug. They gathered their willpower and pulled themself together.

“Wait one moment please.” They had to ask their friends. Most of them were listening, but probably only Mister Dig really understood what was going on, with Mister Snowcat not really getting complex subjects. “Gather around everyone.” Bear Hug nudged people into proper group meeting posture. “I have to go to space. Do you want to come with me?”

“Go to space,” Mister Dig replied in an affirmative manner. He probably understood, but Bear Hug had to confirm.

“You probably won’t be able to come back here.”

“It will be safe with food?”

“It should be,” Bear Hug said. In the worst case, they could be food for a while. The rest of you… do you want to come?”

A bundle of lovely friends happily embraced Bear Hug. It wasn’t clear exactly how much they understood, but Bear Hug knew they couldn’t be left behind. They would take care of their friends, big and small.

“We will all go to space,” Bear Hug confirmed to the woman.

“We have room for you,” the woman said. “But what do you… eat?”

Bear Hug pointed to the sky. “Sunlight. And water.” And a little bit of nutrients floating in water.

“How long can you eat?” She probably meant not eat. Or be hungry. She tried to make some additional energy gestures.

Bear Hug almost said seven suns. But here, that would be like… years elsewhere. They could probably last a week or more, if they had to. Explaining intangible things was hard. Food was easy, because she had pointed to the stomachs of things that had stomachs, and Bear Hug knew about those.

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“I am Ylvali. Do you have a name?” That was what she meant to say, but of course she had no idea how to write her name in… energy. She might not have conveyed anything about names at all.

Then the plant attacked her. She almost blasted a hole through the thing with her pistol. However, even though the algae thing wrapped its arms around her… it didn’t try to crush her. It didn’t even leave water behind after the… hug?

Was Hug its name, or just something it did?

For some reason, there was a tingling feeling in the back of her head, like she should know something. Were there plant people somewhere else? She needed to contact the Alliance and ask about that. It would take a while to get a response, but that was just how things had to be.

Taking a strange entity aboard the Starpiercer wouldn't be the first time it had happened. In a way, Adsila had been more suspicious as she came to Ylvali. This plant thing- Hug?- had just been living on this planet. She still wasn’t sure how it got here as a non-native, or if it was even a plant… but it was her duty to pick out the strange and new.

Before they left, they did have to finish scanning for that strange energy. Actually…

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“Do you know about an energy here… on the planet… recently?”

It took several exchanges for things to get across, but eventually she thought she asked things in the right way. Referring to time was difficult, and ‘an energy that is present but mostly not’ was hard too.

Hug’s response was something like, “Big scary energy woman.”

So it had been a cultivator, then. And a human, probably. It wasn’t clear if big and scary referred to Integration- there was a wide range of power to have within that stage- or something Augmentation or greater. If there was another unknown Domination cultivator… well, the Scarlet Alliance would just have to deal with it.

-----

Adsila watched as Hug- maybe Big Hug?- poured hot tea straight into its body. She felt safe offering the beverage after seeing the capabilities of the strange individual. It was unclear if Hug could taste things, but plants liked water. Rather than normal tea ingredients, Adsila included little bits of soil and nutrients she thought would be helpful.

The response she got was… happiness? Enthusiastic energy pat her on the head. Pretty much everything Hug did was enthusiastic.

As a proper member of the Starpiercer’s crew, Adsila had to keep a lookout for her people. This new oddity could be dangerous- more than a small amount of energy was contained within the amorphous bundle. From inside the ship, it was more than sufficient to cause grave damage. It seemed unlikely to be a saboteur, but if there was some sort of accidental conflict, things might escalate.

The beast friends- though Adsila was hesitant to refer to the badger that way given how it manipulated energy with intention- mostly tended to stay together, and were quite happy remaining in one of the storage bays. It wasn’t very comfortable… but perhaps it was better than freezing or burning to death. The snowcat looked a bit uncomfortable, and they briefly thought he had become sick- but he was just shedding a winter coat. That had probably begun before coming on the ship, but it accelerated when the large cat had nothing to do but groom.

The captain couldn’t constantly monitor their guests- or a least, she shouldn’t have to- so Adsila had taken over. Her actual value while the ship was traveling was rather minimal, since she was barely becoming acquainted with technology. Strangely, the plant thing shared a similar level of familiarity. Some of the lights could produce ultraviolet, which was apparently an okay substitute for proper sunlight.

It was concerning that it had figured it out without asking. Or even knew that it could happen at all. Adsila had reported it, and Ylvali asked her to keep monitoring the situation. Ultimately, the plan was to bring the menagerie back to the Scarlet Alliance and try to figure them out there.

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Bear Hug was pretty happy. It was a nice roomy ship, and the crew fed all their friends food that made the friends happy, and they stopped by nice stars for Bear Hug often enough. These people were much better than the scary woman- even if she hadn’t done anything, most people shouldn’t have that much power. Maybe Anton, but it was scary when other people did.

A time of relaxation was good, as Bear Hug got more in touch with their lower realm selves. It was still going to take a lot of work to be stable, but considering that the most likely result of trying a new cultivation thing was exploding, it had gone very well. Ending up at a random spot in the upper realms had been awkward, but luck or fate or Bear Hug’s big personality had drawn a ship around.

Actually, it had probably been the scary lady, considering how Ylvali asked about her. She had shown up because powerful people just did things like that, and then the Starpiercer had come after her. The name of the ship was big and fancy but it would probably melt in a star. That was okay, though.

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Ylvali was having tea with Adsila when a return message came in. She had been waiting for a response of some sort, but she’d been expecting something more along the lines of ‘that’s weird, we have no idea’. Instead, what she did see almost made her spit out her tea. Only excellent body control stopped her.

“Why does this information require this clearance?” She was stunned. Surely, a random plant person wasn’t that important, right? Even more so, that she got a limited clearance increase because of special circumstances. In the return message was the picture she had sent… except not. It was a different picture of Bear Hug. And it had their name, which was quite unexpected. Big Hug had been one of the top contenders, but the strange part was that this individual was already known.

Energy signatures, too. Though they were signatures of a Life Transformation level individual using lower energy. The resonance was unmistakable, though. Bear Hug had ascended. And was indeed a plant that could cultivate- somehow the surprise of that had sort of gone over Ylvali’s head.

When it was brought up that people already knew about cultivating plants, Ylvali remembered snippets of conversation she had overheard. Little more than rumors, really. That was probably more than she should have, if it was this secret.

As for the reason why… the plant people were unique and limited in numbers. It was sort of a conservation thing. And the other reason was because Anton cared about them a lot. He was a big name in the lower realms, and Ylvali had many connections to the lower realms. That’s how her confluence-like cultivation had been built, after all.

Everyone knew who Anton was, because he was basically the grandfather of all the Domination cultivators. Except for Prospero Vandale who had been the sect head of the Order when Anton joined. So grandfather or close friend were kind of the options.

If Ylvali had previously had any thoughts about hurting Bear Hug, she would have wiped them out. Of course, she wasn’t the sort of person who would want to harm a friendly buddy like that. At most, she had simply thought they must be hiding something.

There were still missing details, though. Like, why Bear Hug was in the upper realms… and hadn’t shown up in one of their arrival points. The system Bear Hug was from was pretty close to officially joining the Alliance in the lower realms- except for the secrecy, it might have been added a while before. It should have been easy for them to get their energy put into the system so they would be drawn to the right place instead of… a random spot in the Trigold Cluster.

Then there was the other issue- that they were probably supposed to become an Assimilation cultivator. There was no way to mix up the two. One was very strongly tied towards remaining in place, while the other was, well, Ascension. No matter how badly someone screwed up, they wouldn’t do the wrong one. At most, they’d just get themself killed.

Along with the other information were hours of video tutorials on this energy language she’d been trying to figure out. Hopefully, this would save her some headaches in the future. There didn’t seem to be an official translation function, but that kind of made sense. It was way different from taking different sounds and matching them. An energy based translator would require far more powerful systems.

So. Bear Hug, huh. They really might just be a friendly algae thing. Couldn’t be many of those in the world.