Elder Cultivator-Chapter 1224

Searching his memories for the exact scenario, Ty considered the words of someone pretending to be someone he actually knew. It didn’t even matter if the words weren’t original. He thought the way that it was immortalized was funnier.

Ty Quigley locked eyes with Pavan. “You bear a device in your leg fresh from the forges of our enemies, sixteen weeks past.” The actual quote was eight weeks, of course, but he had to be correct for the current situation. And obviously it should have been a blade.

“This blade?” Pavan raised an eyebrow. “It indeed came from those forges. I took some pieces off the corpses of a few scoundrels I encountered.”

Wow. Ty would have almost thought he’d seen the television drama. That was so close! “How, then, was it custom tailored to your very needs in advance?” Ah, maybe he shouldn’t have gone into this play. Was he supposed to be both Chikere and Rahayu?

“You have no proof of any such thing. You are just here to cause division for your strange faction.”

Ty was ready to skip to the decapitation part. But he wasn’t a local, well respected elder. He was the new guy. He could only be a young Chikere… despite his relative sword capabilities to everyone in the room. “I’m sure there are ways to verify my claims. If we have no experts in the room, we can retrieve them.”

“Are you sure this is a time to levy such accusations?” some other Cycle cultivator began to protest.

Ty held out his hand. “Shush. Don’t go off script.”

He blinked. “What?”

Oh! Uzochi was walking down the hall! “I would like to call in Uzochi. He is one of your own.” It was a bit mean to put the pressure on the guy without asking or knowing if he could do it, but this was Ty’s best hope. Nekesa and Makinia were still surveying the situation, and didn’t seem to have a solution. So Ty needed to return to the script. Ty didn’t wait for permission, instead throwing open the doors and dragging Uzochi in. “Hey. This guy has tech custom made by the Esoteric Order of the Blade in his leg. Can you verify that?”

Uzochi blinked. He looked around. “Uh… greetings, seniors,” he bowed. It probably included Ty. His gaze focused back on the swordmaster. “What did you want?” Before Ty answered, he continued. “Is the tech computerized?”

“It should be,” Ty said. Mostly because the majority of things were.

“Then… if he lets me scan it, the metadata might tell us something.”

“Did you hear that?” Ty pointed. “He can unfurl your lies.”

Uzochi grimaced. “Well, only if-”

“What’s metadata?” Pavan asked.

Uzochi’s face went from concerned to baffled. “You don’t- it’s an important part of things for so many generations before you were born. Whatever, just give me permission and you’ll see.”

“Fine, if it will resolve this dispute quickly.”

A few minutes later, Uzochi finished scanning the man’s leg- Ty had singled out the particular part in question. It would increase his legitimacy when he was right. Unless Pavan was just pretending to be stupid. Then he’d improvise. With his sword… or not. Hard to say.

“How long is this going to take?” Pavan demanded.

“Well a complex analysis like this could take-” Uzochi stopped as he finished pulling something up on screen. “Huh. Well, there it is.” He made a swiping motion and changed the display to the larger one in the meeting room. “Plain text. Customer- Pavan Sharma. Produced by- Detron Lewis of the Esoteric Order of the Blade.”

“That’s it then,” Ty said. “Off with his head!” He gestured broadly with his arm, while keeping the other what appeared to be a safe distance from any of his armaments.

Pavan tried the typical tactic of yelling louder, of course. “You can’t just believe what this foreigner and his compromised friend say! Why I-”

Ty suppressed him with his aura. “We can go get his boss. Or literally any other tech competent individual to verify the information. While someone does that, I suggest people start grabbing this guy’s computer and searching for how he communicated with the Esoteric Order. Because you all know.”

The guy was, at best, a mediocre liar. Obviously nobody had directly confronted him about being a traitor.

“Guards,” Nekesa finally said something aside from noncommittal noises. “Arrest representative Pavan. Make sure he doesn’t have access to any computer terminals.”

“I’ll have people sent to his residence,” Makinia said. “This is more than sufficient information to warrant a full investigation. Now then, can we talk about… what was it? Complaints about Ty solving half our problems at once?” She looked around. “We can have a proper discussion, you know. Unless the rest of you are traitors, in which case you’re very poorly organized and should have probably taken over publicly already.”

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They weren’t. At least, not most of them. Ty didn’t have any additional moments of genius and he’d barely gotten a few proper lines from the old ‘historical’ show in, but things had eventually resolved themselves after a few times of Ty explaining why and how he made the distortion beasts fight the Esoteric Order. The latter wasn’t completely annihilated, but scouts had actually caught up to them as they were leaving the area. Their ‘vessel’ was somewhat crippled, after all.

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The distortion beasts were of course having an internal discussion. By which it was meant that they were eating each other. That would be a good thing, normally, but there were concerns about some sort of extra strong one appearing. The situation was being monitored- it would likely take a few days to resolve the initial frenzy.

Ty was ready to finish off a wounded beast- even a victor wouldn’t be suddenly at a higher tier of power. It would inevitably sustain injuries, especially against something that could consistently attack all of it like one of its own kind.

Ty was waiting.

And waiting.

Then his ship was ready. Like, actually ready. Either he was extremely lucky, which he was, or his tactics had been very insightful. They might have been. He truly hadn’t thought that attacking the nest would stir it into a frenzy that attacked the whole system, but he also hadn’t thought it would come to such major reduction in force. It was to the point that the locals were considering annihilating it… if the distortion beasts hadn’t been slowly drifting away.

The nest was kind of just drifting through the system. It would be gone in a couple years at most. But even when it was gone, Ty would have a million unresolved questions.

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Would pointing the Alliance to the nest to study the beasts be a violation of the Origin Cycle’s secrecy?

He didn’t have to find out, because they agreed to accept a formal diplomat from the Alliance- as long as the location wasn’t dispersed to the public, just yet.

Ty was so good at first contact. So good, he almost believed it. Diplomacy was exhausting. Someone else could take over.

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Not long into the future on the scale of cultivator’s lifespans- which was all lifespans in the Lower Realms Alliance- the nest was being carefully observed. First and foremost, they didn’t want to allow distortion beasts with cultivation insights to pass into surrounding areas, once they were aware of it. The Origin Cycle had no connection to any neighbors and had very specifically kept to their one star- even if they had some capabilities to visit others- so if they wouldn’t take responsibility, the Alliance would.

Not that the Origin Cycle really owed that risk to anyone. It was first noticed in their borders, but it clearly had no connection to them beyond that. They didn’t have any dark, hidden sects that would be interested in such things.

Who did, though, was the Disciples of the Beyond. It was primarily speculation that they would be involved, simply because they were the most well known sect to associate with distortion beasts outside of violent opposition. At least, until one distortion beast was isolated and carefully placed into stasis. Devon dragged a distortion beast multiple hundreds of lightyears to the Unified Sector, where a containment area had been prepared. It was easier than moving the containment area, and he had practice with a planet.

This particular distortion beast was both smaller and lighter than Bounty by a good margin. That didn’t make the journey exactly fun, but it was a necessary one. And since the distortion beast was already in subspace the trip didn’t take multiple decades, as Devon could cut off some distance. Quite a lot of it.

Alin Kato was the lead scientist on the task. He was very meticulous in his research, carefully cataloging each flail-like limb and its relative location to others, theorizing how they were attached. He obsessively took notes on its cultivation ability- creating a projection of itself to attack using energy, instead of exposing its true self. The creature could remain entirely in subspace, safe from the majority of cultivators.

Yes, his work was truly meticulous and planned. His assistant, on the other hand… the little twerp arrived one day, saw something shiny, reached in and yanked it out.

Just because that was ultimately the right move- the strange fist-sized token was decaying, with a half-life of somewhere around a century- didn’t mean that it wasn’t reckless and insubordinate. But… he could be forgiven. Because on that token, they found traces of human energy.

“Told you,” the assistant said.

“I had already theorized the Disciples of the Beyond were involved when you mentioned it,” Alin turned up his nose.

“Didn’t say it, so it doesn’t count. Anyway,” the impertinent assistant continued. “I think we can potentially trace this thing’s journey by comparing it to an analysis of the energy structure of the surrounding systems. We’ve already got some of that, but we might want someone to follow a particular path. I think it could reveal a lot.”

Alin nodded. “I thought much the same.” Except he had been waiting to determine if there were any flaws in his reasoning. Surely such information couldn’t be completely reliable. What if they spent years on a wild goose chase? Still, there were more than enough people already out there, and compiling the data wouldn’t take long.

Surely the Origin Cycle would like to know if they had been targeted. Though existence of their location hadn’t been revealed to those with an incautious nature. Like a certain assistant.

“Do you think we can get more of these guys?”

“Storing a distortion beast is not an easy task.”

“Oh that would be pretty neat too but I mean these things. I have some destructive testing I want to do that might reveal-”

“You may not.”

“I knoooow. That’s why we need backup. Also, if they’re significantly different it may reveal if the insights were pre-programmed or random. Too bad Ty didn’t grab any.”

Alin rolled his eyes. “No doubt he was rather busy turning them into small slices. Without one constrained and an eye for such things, it would be impossible to pick out such a small piece.”

The assistant nodded, tapping the side of his head. “I’m so glad I upgraded my eye. I didn’t even know we were going to get to observe a unique specimen! And you told me to save my money!”

“For rent. And food. Speaking of which, you cannot continue to sleep in the lab.”

“Fine. I’ll move into the hall.”

“That’s not-”

“I’m still going to eat everything in the break room.”

“You’d better not have been the one who took my sandwich.”

The assistant looked horrified. “Whoa there, I meant the public stuff! I’m not a monster.” He pointed. “This guy is. But if he ate your sandwich then we have some serious problems with the containment field. It was probably Steve.”

“The security officer denied me access to the footage for it being a ‘trivial matter’. Perhaps I should poison the next one and show the true meaning of trivial!”

“Yeah! Make it funny, too.”

“I take it back. Any idea with your support is worth reconsidering.”