The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 527 - ’Survival Of The Fittest’: Gathering The Aftermath

Chapter 527: Chapter 527 - ’Survival Of The Fittest’: Gathering The Aftermath

A reincarnated cultivator conducted her harvest like a dancer. Miles above, the vantablack flood parted in all directions from where the Greater Colonizer had been as she twirled and spread her hands. Spiraling into a whirlpool that flung to the far arcs of the bubble they were in. Intent blooming through her spirit that had no doubts of her capability to do all this on the control area.

The anchoring stakes she’d placed during her Essence Breacher breakthrough - all six hundred and forty-three - had been designed to stabilize the golden spatial barrier against hurricane-force essence charged winds. But Space and Void shared a conceptual kinship that had made repurposing the probably too many sigilposts trivially simple. Space contained ’nothing’ or ’something’... and Void was that very nothing given metaphysical form.

Sky blackening ichor flowed against the golden barrier, like water finding the path of least resistance between two extreme forces. It would eventually pool at the edges, contained between expression of Time itself dilating the escaping violet light to a less energetic wavelength at the visible edge of the bubble... and the stabilizing sigils carved like her life and hard work had depended on it.

Altogether turning the catastrophe of an uninvited guest into a permanent moat of liquid eldritch ’matter’ that would not dissipate into the air. The still falling organ was another matter entirely, something a bit too heavy and valuable to bully with such an explosive vortex of the superheated air left behind by the plasma’s moments of existence.

Thirty-three of her combat constructs were already rising into the air, still in their smooth metallic round shapes. Halfway to meeting the core organ, they unfolded like mechanical flowers blooming to reveal the nightmares held within. Six serpentine limbs extended out as every one of them retained exact flight distances from each other. Done so that they could create a net-like cradle of repulsive, Inverse Gravity to catch the dropping pyramid.

Slowing the fall greatly while angling it over to a prepared containment area within the Illusory Maze. Which, when they dropped low enough again, was the point that one green-eyed young woman found her voice again.

"Those... aren’t crabs."

"They never were. I told Qat so."

A distracted response from the heiress, as most of her attention remained on ensuring none of the dangerous substance fell on zones inhabited with flora or fauna. However, she was not so busy that she could not feel her disciple’s spiritual state shifting. From ’paralyzed’ by the danger to something that allowed her to speak with a flat toned sense of *being* the danger.

"Master."

"Hm?"

"Those still have six legs. And two... others. Do they perhaps scuttle?"

Elua’s own cloud of spirit did not hide the feeling from them, one that expressed a lot like a desire to ’omit’. Her drones could in fact... do that. In a number of ways and a number of definitions, but she already knew where the orphanage raised girl was going with this. Dark hair still wearing Silver antlers crossed the distance between them in stomping strides, grabbed Elua’s shoulders - and shook.

"He. Can. NEVER. Meet. These!"

"If you’d stop-"

"AND you are NOT allowed to make him... make HIM automaton crab legs that somehow come out of his BACK!"

The brunette blinked her mint eyes and dropped a bit of the ichor from above, almost onto the main estate, before quickly adjusting herself and clasping at her friend’s wrists. Gaining control of a tornadic channel of air to spin it all back into the attempt at containment, she looked plainly into Nohre’s eyes.

"I wasn’t ever going to do such a silly thing."

"You are thinking about it right now!"

Without any pause, that look slid sideways. Her disciple knew the master well. It was entirely impractical and pointless, from her perspective, but that was what made the idea such an attractive, whimsical distraction. If she’d had more time left in the Exclave...

"Master Elua! Nonono!"

"You’re the one who put the idea in my head, girl!"

"Fusand is the one who has been practicing Projection lately that way!"

"What does that have to do with me coming up with that sort of idea?"

She knew that the little water-deer was a bit possessive, to the point that she disliked how much attention the young man paid to something he found himself attached to other than her. But her reaction right now was too much, even to El! If Qat wanted to spend all day talking about swords and swordplay, then she would just smile and nod and learn enough about both to seem like she cared. Of course, similarly, she was more than content to keep playing along with her friend’s ’obsession’.

"Because he would absolutely love these things no matter what they are - why would you build them this way?!"

"Maybe I was missing the two of you and it just kind of turned out that way. Do you really have such a problem with- OKAY STOP SHAKING ME!"

Despite yelling out, Elua’s spirit was not radiating any *particular* hostility. Being content had turned into the temptation to turn it all into some sort of over shoulder throw like when she was training her disciples in hand-to-hand. Or to firm all her muscles, using a Primalist’s level of physical energy reinforcement, and cause the other girl to hurt herself.

’That I am *letting* my real body be handled as if it was as flimsy as it looks is already very outside of my old zone of comfort...’

Sevra had risen to her feet during the exchange, though her face still looked like it had accepted that nothing in this place or around the orbit of the Goltbred girl would ever make sense. Though she had seen the younger cultivator’s additional arthropod arm use of Astralism and had to agree that it was creepy enough that it should remain as a mental Projection - not made a physical cultivator tool. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

Not that she would speak that aloud and get in the middle of their conversation, imagining it would *guarantee* it happening.

"You’re being unreasonable, Nohre. The more you try to keep him away from what he harmlessly enjoys, the more he’ll resent you some day. Trust me on this."

"I refuse to spend the rest of my life watching my husband pretend to be a crab-human hybrid. Can you sincerely tell me you would be fine with your beloved Qatrand doing the same?"

She considered this as the vantablack rivers finished their final descent to the earth below. It took time for nearly thirty billion cubic feet of amorphous-nothing to settle... into a veritable river circling the Exclave. It had also taken much time for a newly designed set of excavation constructs to prepare the land. At one hundred and eleven feet wide and filling an estimated sixty six feet deep by her mental math....

’Over seven-hundred and fifty mile circumference and no clue how big it would be, the max depth was actually a matching hundred and eleven dug down all the way around the perimeter... just to be safe.’

The schemer did not think she was being paranoid at all, now that it ended up being one of the biggest Greater Colonizer’s she’d seen throughout her last life. But she did think she was a bit too ambitious with the scope of many things. Including how much Nohre had expected her to really consider her question...

"...She’d have more arms to hug me with. Or she could keep hugging me with her real ones while taking care of other business with the others. Honestly, although I have experienced a number of oversized or highly toxic spiders I did not much enjoy in my last life, I mostly think they are adorable creatures."

"I said crabs, not spiders. Those *things* you made are not spiders either!"

"If I promise that, until the next Descent, I will not personally make such an interesting sounding thing for him... will you just stop nagging and give me a hug?"

The dark haired young woman crossed her arms. She’d had plenty of experience in dealing with people since beginning to boldly take on the role of a healer. Especially patients that said one thing, but really felt another way. The ones who claimed they would take it easy but then you found them trying to chop wood or something silly the very next day - for cultivators, they would claim it as less stressful than their usual training.

"Try again. This time, don’t make it sound so much like you intend to train *someone else* in how to make them... to fulfill the letter of your promise while breaking the intention of the oath requester."

"But... if the person a given tool is designed for understands how to make things himself, then he can take on the drastic burden of iterating the improvements and-"

Rolling her green-eyes and wrapping her arms around the person she cared about second-most in the world, Nohre blew a loud exhale from her nose right into the brown hair now beside her face.

"You’re so frustrating, are you happy that I caved first?"

"Extremely. I really am glad to see you."

"The feeling is mutual. But can you maybe stop dealing with forces I barely understand while I am here? First at the wedding, now right when I arrive. You know that if I don’t *see* it, I can successfully pretend it isn’t happening, right?"

Chuckling at the ’Ondua Method’, the ancient cultivator made a few final adjustments to the active rituals before stepping off the control area. She then walked over to a certain hidden area and locked everything down by removing the ’keyshard’, buried all this while in a certain sheath-like receptacle and functioning as a way to keep others - mostly Madrigil - from using her hard work for nefarious purposes.

This item was better known to the others in the Astral Exclave as her beryllium copper heavy blade... and was settled into Adhesion behind her back right in front of everyone like it was the most natural thing. They had all seen her use that ability in this manner - as all of them were taught this perk of an essence energy Primalist, even if only Sevra had the skill at any level of mastery due to being primed to practice it while stuck here before.

The curious looks they gave were instead more along the lines of ’where, when, how, why’ in regards to the weapon’s existence and the decision to wield it. None of them needed to question the ’who’, because the answer was always Elua er Goltbred... if something sudden and strange in this place was ’made’. At least those who had not been to Madrigil’s Metal art studio.

"Speaking of what we know and what we ignore, *you* must know I taught him how to selectively prevent you from seeing what he creates with his Projection, correct?"

"...When? You mean years ago when we were here?"

"Yes. He still shows you anyway because he enjoys sharing what he likes with you, his dearest one. Even if you get a little upset. Maybe even a little because of it, as he’s a bit of a mean-spirited fox at times."

She thought back to his many plans to ambush her during their last training phase. While all of them had failed, some of them had been downright immoral when it came to the continent’s usual dueling culture. Situations that Elua had judged had high risk for fatalities if *both* sides were inexperienced combatants.

"...I’m not that upset when he shows them to me, I’m upset when he comes home, or to dinner, or to bed a half hour late because he was making notes on the creatures or reading a book on them he has read dozens of times, or... or because he went out of his way to capture one and it got stuck pinching his ear."

All of it sounded like the grievances of someone who went through every one of those events at least once. Elua had been on both sides of that... with partners that missed plans because of their hobbies and she herself getting consistently stuck in something - usually related to a project for that person - that made her companion of the time react poorly.

’Not making me feel better about staying here all this while, no matter how many fairly reinforcing letters she sends with them.’

One hand rose to touch the mint gem at her collar. A stone that had been etched long ago, with the link to the mansion’s telecommunication system. Routing from there to the ones which she made Qatrand’s relatives wear, she gave three young cultivators a bit more heads up... and figured Madrigil would just show up on his own at some point, since he refused to wear one.

"I’m sure you have a few thousand questions, but we also have some new guests to settle in. Please prepare to meet in the dining hall for an early supper. We’ll be there when we can, I think I will take my time showing them through the garden."