Elder Cultivator-Chapter 1217

Meeting a new group of people was quite interesting. Ty hadn’t actually gotten to experience it very often, except where the people were already integrated into the Lower Realms Alliance to some extent. The last big opportunity for him had involved the first interactions with Ceretos. Obviously interacting with cultures that had been around for a while was fine, but it was more exciting when it was fully new, even if it shared familiar elements.

If the Origin Cycle had been connected to the Alliance for centuries, Ty wouldn’t have been wondering whether these seemingly friendly people were poisoning his food. Actually, they didn’t have to just seem friendly for that to be the case. He could easily construct a scenario where they were actually friendly and still wanted to kill him with poison.

For example, if their system had been secret for millennia and they were worried about the upper realms finding out about their continued existence. Someone showing up randomly could be quite concerning for a group in strict isolation.

So far he still didn’t have any signs of the poison thing, though. That was fine, because he kind of preferred the thought of the Esoteric Order of the Blade coming to try to kill him. Ty was far better at solving problems that involved martial prowess than social or diplomatic ones.

He was trying to convince Makinia about how awesome the Alliance was and that they really did defeat the upper realms invaders- multiple times. She had some sort of truthreading so she should have gotten it easily enough, but apparently the fact that he believed it wasn’t enough. She seemed to think he was influenced by some sort of unreasonable propaganda… but he’d been there. Nekesa should have been able to correct her about his personal abilities, but she was staying quiet for the moment.

“So I flew my ship- it didn’t have as many upgrades at the time- right through the middle of one of their space boats,” Ty explained. “Some time after that I popped open the cockpit and fought from the wings with my sword. This one’s newer, though.”

It wasn’t going well. Ty was looking for an excuse to be done with the situation so that these people could think about what he’d said for a while. Maybe they’d come to terms with it.

He was pretty sure he couldn’t summon disaster with his whims, or it would have happened far more frequently. But he did feel something sharp appear above Forinti.

Ty set down his cup of tea. “There’s trouble.” He stood up. “Nekesa, let them know I’m heading back to my ship.”

Of the two people in the room, only Nekesa had a chance to stop his movements. She hadn’t even stood up before he was out the door. There were a couple Life Transformation guards there that whipped their heads around to see what was going on. Either they were slow on the draw or wanted to confirm something was wrong before attacking people. There shouldn’t have been any hostility from Ty himself, so it was right to hesitate, but they were still kind of slow.

He was lucky to find some of the doors in the process of opening during his mad dash out of the building. That meant he only had to cut his way through one of them. No time to wait for it to let him through, if it even would. He did slow very slightly to yank one other door open in a way that would probably permanently damage the tracks but at least didn’t destroy it.

“Look up!” Ty projected his voice across the city. They were a bit slow on the uptake. That thing had been approaching for several seconds by the time he got to his ship.

He jumped in, the ignition already triggered from a distance by a twist of his energy. He hoped that the landing pads weren’t expensive, because it practically exploded beneath him as he took off. Ty kept the shrapnel away from the nearby guy watching it though.

Nekesa didn’t run as fast as he did, but she wasn’t slow on the uptake. She was running for her ship, and she seemed to have contacted some of the crew. Ty hoped they hadn’t opened up anything important for repairs. There should be other defenders for the planet, but the threat was right there. Suspiciously close to directly above the city where they landed.

Ty restrained his ship’s speed so as to not break too many windows with his shockwaves. Soon he was high enough he only had to worry about what fliers people had. He thought he could make it out of the atmosphere before it arrived.

It wasn’t a surprise that Ty had discovered something sharp before whatever sensors the planet had. He was highly attuned to such things. It was like someone had fed a mountain of swords into a blender. Normally they’d stop being swords at some point, so maybe that wasn’t quite right. But the distortion beast certainly wasn’t one clear blade.

It was a bit risky to cut through subspace in atmosphere. Ty held out until the very last moment. He did have to meet the incoming attack, though, unless he wanted to let it pierce into the planet below.

His first instinct was fangs or claws. That was the normal thing a beast would have that was sharp. However, as they appeared- with no signs of any torso- he thought it looked a lot more like sharpened rib bones. They were thin, too, though that didn’t make them easily breakable as Ty soon learned.

He still managed to parry the incoming attack with his wing, but the shock sent him spinning. He hadn’t actually been able to cut through his target, which was concerning. He’d fought just a couple hours prior without issue.

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“Do you normally have this many distortion beasts?” Ty yelled at Nekema. They didn’t have comms that overlapped, so he had to hold onto that strand of energy he’d been following her with. It was a bit of a drain on his concentration, but it was better than losing the ability to coordinate action.

Nekema replied even as she hurried onto her ship. “Not at all. It’s usually more of a monthly issue.”

That was… still way too frequent. Ty pushed further out of the atmosphere so that he could hopefully draw the beast away from the planet. The world spun around him, but he had targets in so many directions he just had to extend his sword intent from his wings. He could either cut into subspace or wait for the distortion beast to come to him- it was really some of everything. Tower sized blades cut at him, and he slashed them away.

Seriously though, two in two hours. Even Aipra didn’t have that many, and they lived in subspace where they looked like tasty treats for distortion beasts. Monthly was still way high. Was that for the whole system, or just Forinti?

Ty wasn’t sure how he was having so much trouble with this distortion beast. Was it big? Unfathomably. That was pretty standard, though. Durable? Certainly, but Ty knew he should have cut through the material. It didn’t have excessive energy either. The Origin Cycle had plenty of natural energy in their system and both Ty and his ship were topped off, so that wasn’t it either.

A blade cut for his neck… which was insane. A distortion beast might hit a cultivator in the neck while also annihilating their body. They didn’t aim, except at center of mass. Ty yanked on his controls, twirling his energy into place. The rib-blade cut halfway through his wing. It didn’t smash or tear or anything else, but cut.

This thing was sharp. But that sort of sharpness should have only been possible on a thin and thus fairly fragile blade. Ty aimed for the nearest target with the point of his ship and found himself parried again. Finally, he got it. Too bad he was a bit slow, but he had to change up his style.

There was no time to ask why a distortion beast had sword insights. Maybe it at a million swordmasters along with their blades. Maybe the Esoteric Order of the Blade had begun to delve into distortion beast summoning.

Ty took one more hit, but that was on purpose to stabilize his ship. Then he hit a button, flipping open the cockpit. At least outside of atmosphere he didn’t have wind punching him in the fact, so as long as he kept his feet firmly connected to the ship he’d be fine. The controls turned under his will- he was Assimilated with the ship after all. It was still better to do it directly, but he turned into a series of complex maneuvers that would have been utterly meaningless against most distortion beasts. They would have just chomped down on the region of space he occupied and left it at that.

Ty stopped trying to cut apart the blades. Cutting an enemy’s sword in two was a great move when you were far above them, but it was impractical if they could actually fight. He focused on maneuvering. He also used his sword to cut through subspace, hoping to catch some glimpses of something besides weapons. He couldn’t necessarily get to all the various layers the distortion beast would live on, but somewhere it should have some vital organs. Or at least flesh.

Forinti would have lost a city by now at the rate they scrambled. Though to be fair to them, it shouldn’t have gotten this close. And a normal one would have still been munching on the upper atmosphere.

If he survived this, Ty was going to tell them to invest in orbital platforms. Perhaps they weren’t used to planetary sieges, but if this was possible… having some people always on duty and ready to shoot things out of subspace would be valuable. Though maybe they had trouble with that whole ‘in subspace’ part, since they hadn’t expected him to travel that way.

“What should we do?” Nekesa’s ship was rising through the atmosphere. There were other smaller ones already on the way.

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“Guard planetside. Careful, it knows how to fight,” Ty said. “If you can wear down its weapons that would be great, but otherwise spread out and try to split its attention. Whatever you decide, I’ll be staying over here since we don’t have battle coordination training.”

A tower came for him. He pushed it aside with his sword, a serene look on his face. It didn’t even touch the paint on his ship. Yes, that was far better. His skills were still superior. He’d simply been thrown off by how unexpected it was.

They quickly learned a few things. It was capable of multitasking… but it only seemed to be able to attack a certain number of locations at once. That was the downside of battle insight, Ty supposed. Chikere controlled more blades than this thing did, but he supposed the distortion beast might see its numerous rib blades as spares.

Ribs should be protecting something important. Ty couldn’t feel anything, but he suspected vital organs should be at the center of things. “If you could just distract it for a single moment,” Ty projected his voice.

Nekesa did one better. She’d barely joined the battle for a minute, but she was already flinging around all sorts of weird energy. Well, her and the ship. Some of that energy struck one of the rib-blades, and she capitalized on the resonance it created. A few moments later, she shattered a full dozen of them in sequence. Ty was a bit jealous, but in a way it made sense that if the distortion beast had something like blade insights, it would be better at guarding against people like him.

Plus, that resonant energy beam was some kind of weird cultivator-tech. It had to be good, or they would have just done regular cultivator style combat.

The distraction worked for a fraction of a second. Long enough for Ty to close in on the center of the rib-blades. Hundreds or thousands came at him from all directions. If he turned away now he could avoid them.

But if he reached his target first, it might not matter. Assuming he could kill his opponent in a single stroke. Ty reached his energy through layers of space and found something to target. He sliced it in half. Then half again thrice more.

Whether it was a heart, lung, liver, or amorphous mass of unclear existence he wasn’t quite certain. All he knew is that it wasn’t enough to instantly kill the beast. It did flinch, though. That slight hesitation was how swordmasters could lose a deadly exchange.