Elder Cultivator-Chapter 1242

Vincent was nice. Bear Hug almost wished they met him earlier so they could cultivate just like him, because connecting with people was the core of his power. That was exactly the sort of thing Bear Hug wanted… except perhaps not.

He was friends with so many people, but not everyone. Vincent wasn’t restricted in who he could bond with, but the focus was on the Order of One Hundred Stars.

And Bear Hug might want to be friends with everyone, or they might want to be friends with all of the oddballs off alone. After some thought, that was certainly where their efforts began.

As for why Second Gift had become an obsession, Bear Hug couldn’t say. Perhaps it was the loneliest, a planet made to live just to die. Even if it didn’t feel anything, it just seemed sad. Everyone else also admitted it was wasteful, but they were already so used to things being harvested. To them, that seemed like how it was.

Bear Hug didn’t mind so much, but it would just be better if things survived. Nobody disagreed, but they weren’t motivated to change things either.

So Bear Hug was trying to learn how to make sunlight. Vincent was decent at it, but not really the best option even on Ceretos. He mentioned the people of Bounty- which made Bear Hug realize they should have already sent one of them there a while ago. Though getting from planet to planet was a bit tough, without someone specific to communicate with. People didn’t mind Bear Hug going around since they were safe, but very few people could speak.

That was a lot of learning to do. Learning to hear and speak would be hard. Learning how to make sunlight from disciples of the Order on multiple planets. Learning to fly- in particular into and through space. And then learning to fly through space and between systems which required fancy abilities. Because it was really far. They didn’t want to spend a decade every time they wanted to go visit a nearby system, and that was assuming they could get close to light speed. Apparently that was pretty hard.

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Ceretos cultivators used sunlight to supplement their farms, either adding their own or manipulating what came from the natural star. Bear Hug thought the latter was easier to do, because creating sunlight was nearly the opposite of absorbing it in a way that wasn’t helpful for learning how to do it. Though obviously it was more heavily weighted towards cultivation instead of physicality, Bear Hug did actively absorb the natural energy- or ascension energy- in sunlight. Manipulating it was possible.

Producing sunlight was taking that energy and turning it back into that form. It seemed like it should have been easy, but the problem was that Bear Hug naturally took it into their body. Some of it joined their cultivation, other parts became something else. Not all of it was available to return, and there were different parts of it that needed to exist. Some fundamental part was gone, and unable to easily be restored.

Bear Hug could enliven a few plants or give someone a sunburn, but it wasn’t exactly impressive for an Assimilation cultivator. Maybe another few times more efficient compared to how they were before, but it didn’t seem that training with the Order for another few months would produce much more fruit. Not that Bear Hug produced fruit to begin with- they were the wrong kind of almost-plant for that. Algae wasn’t always considered a plant by humans because they had arbitrary definitions, but if it was something that survived by eating sunlight… there were a few things that definitely weren’t plants.

And Bear Hug wasn’t just talking about machines. Because none of those were people, probably. Apparently, some people were very dedicated to making sure they weren’t people, which was weird. Bear Hug thought it might be fun. If they could communicate, at least. It would be sad if they couldn’t.

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Speech was another form of energy manipulation. The problem was humans- and many animals- had two sets of things that made them very good at making and hearing noise. Even if some of the sounds weren’t quite right, apparently they were close enough for people to understand.

All Bear Hug got was ‘lots of high frequency sounds’ or ‘lots of low frequency sounds’. Patterns that seemed just as foreign on an energy display where they were made out of up and down wobbles as they did inside Bear Hug’s head. This was going to be a difficult project. Fortunately, they got recordings and knew what they were supposed to say so they didn’t have to constantly bug humans to try to say things until they figured something out. Once they could do static phrases…

Well, they’d probably shrivel and die of old age. Because sound was hard. On the topic of language, speaking to void ants was also very hard. The best way so far was for them to input information into tiny little ‘computers’ which eventually turned into basic energy ‘letters’ for Bear Hug to ‘read’. Because an energy language translation tool was apparently hard to make.

Apparently, some people thought void ants were scary. It was true that they could eat the fundamental thing that made Bear Hug a person, but a really big monster could also eat Bear Hug. What was worse about smaller ones? And they were friendly, so it wasn’t even a problem. If Bear Hug was afraid of them because they were small and could kill them, Bear Hug would have to be afraid of a lot of humans, and especially all of the Enrichment ones. And Anton. Even though none of those would kill them.

Void ants sometime nibbled like fishies. Mostly to grab attention. They had plenty of other energy to actually fill them up, which was good. Bear Hug didn’t want friends to be hungry.

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Flying was just pushing yourself around harder. That wasn’t too bad. On planets with ‘regular’ gravity and a decent atmosphere, Bear Hug found it easy enough to push off of stuff. When the atmosphere got thin, there was less to push off of but energy still did the job. Then they were in space.

That was the hard part. Humans weren’t actually more suited for existing in space, but they did have things meant to contain them. Bear Hug didn’t. Perhaps they could get a little sunlight sphere? But also, they could insulate themself with energy. They were strong enough, if they weren’t too tired when they reached space. Landing on one of the big floating platforms for a break helped, since those had air and just as much sunlight as the planet- depending on whether it was night or day.

Bear Hug zipped around and pretended to be Anton. Star Steps sounded like it needed human feet, but it really didn’t. It did need proper instruction, though, so Bear Hug could only jerk around and use a lot of energy. They’d be asking Anton to actually teach how to do that later… but more important was constant acceleration.

After insulating themself from the outside. A layer of water frozen into ice kind of helped, but it blocked off sunlight. Still, Bear Hug could move as one big sphere and not have to spend too much energy keeping the rest of them from freezing and recycling air and just surviving. It was a tricky process they could only keep up for a few hours at most. Most of their spatial shenanigans had been supported by others, and they hadn’t realized how hard it was.

They were so far from reaching another system. They could go out to the furthest planet, and then do it again and again forever and never make real progress. And they’d be away from dense energy and most importantly sunlight. But sharing energy with themself could help account for that- at least on one side of the border. It had to be the right energy, after all.

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But aside from trying to go faster, Bear Hug had to do something with space or subspace. They’d experienced cultivators carry them along many times, and ships that did it several different ways. It was a bit hard to understand, but they thought they could do it.

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Someone came to visit Bear Hug! Lots of people did, really, but someone not specifically working with them in the Order. And apparently, she was more Anton than others without being part of the Order. A relative.

Anishka was both hot and cold. Both at the same time, though not in the same place. Sometimes left and right, sometimes up and down, in and out… or in layers. She changed it a lot.

Vincent helped translate for her, as she explained her reasons. “I heard you are trying to figure out how to support… Second Gift? Like we supported Bounty.”

“That’s right!” Bear Hug said. “Lots of people helped you there, but Second Gift is going further and nobody wants to do it.”

“I don’t think that’s quite true,” Anishka said. “But nobody really thought about whether it could be done with Bounty until it was happening. Seeing how hard it is to do that but more… it scares people.”

“But there are so many people and just one problem,” Bear Hug complained. “How can you be afraid?”

“Some things are very big. Or they look very big.” Vincent added his own thoughts about that, and Bear Hug had to agree that sometimes they thought there were things that couldn’t be done even if it was possible.

“I was one of those who helped provide sunlight,” Anishka explained. “But only for a few years, and only half the time or less. Anton did much of the work on the second half of the journey. He’s both a Unity cultivator- and thus has the power- and naturally suited for that sort of thing. Both the light and the giving.”

“He has many important things to do,” Bear Hug said regretfully. “Taking many tens of years is probably too much, right? And he could only go halfway. Or less.”

“That’s the other problem. Without a complete solution, people don’t want to try. The upper realms doesn’t have anyone who could fulfill the task.”

Bear Hug didn’t think that was true. The people from Bounty were all from the upper realms and learned how to make sunlight. They said that. “And there have to be a bunch of other people too. There’s lots of Order of One Hundred Stars people. Though the Domination cultivators maybe can’t go with the planet.”

“More relevantly, they can’t be responsible for keeping it warm and for defending it,” Anishka pointed out. “In the upper realms, people are likely to attack.”

“... why?”

“Because there are many enemies there, and they want the resources we are offering to Ratna.”

“Oh. That’s mean of them.”

Anisha nodded. “Indeed.”

Bear Hug took a close look at Anishka’s energy. “How do you make a planet hot without getting cold?”

“Do you think I got cold?” Anisha asked.

“If you use up all the hot, that is all that is left.”

“Indeed. But it is part of me. Well, its certainly a possibility for that to be the result. But my energy can become either at will.” Anishak suddenly felt like a furnace. Then a bunch of ice. “In extreme circumstances, I can even draw heat from cold or cold from heat. Though that’s usually less efficient than just altering my own energy. Mostly, what I did was manipulate the outside cold from seeping in while I provided heat to the planet. It wasn’t very good as sunlight, but fortunately the local cultivators took care of that, supporting patches of life around their communities.”

“The whole planet wasn’t safe?”

“Not all the time,” Anishka admitted. “It took a while to regrow. You can still see some of the signs, if you look today. Especially since they were in the midst of replanting, given the devastation after the shift in the Tides.”

Bear Hug wondered if it was okay to just save part of Second Gift. They could probably protect a grove. Or a lake of fishies. But without everything else, there was little point, right?

Still, it was less scary to think they didn’t have to protect a whole planet for it to still be worth it. The humans were right about that. Bear Hug was motivated by how big the task was, but they hadn’t realized how much harder it was making it. No matter what happened, they now thought they could do something.

Bear Hug still wanted to protect the whole planet though. They had enough time to learn and convince people to help that they could certainly get closer.