The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 522 - A Bit Of Preparation For The No Knock Census
A chisel struck with a satisfying ring of metal on treated stone, carving another groove into the surface. Elua rarely got completely tired of the sound. After a few millennia of being able to form sigils without the hassle of hand tools, it was satisfying to work them *slower* like this - and even if she wanted to do things faster, being a Breacher in her essence accumulation didn’t afford her much more ability to use its *raw* form than she’d always had.
’A Lower Realm field is simply not meant to hold onto any of it at all. A speck of the stuff is still pretty much the theoretical limit. Maybe I need less focus now to achieve it.’
Madrigil had offered to help her project around the arrival zone, but been banished to the mansion after his third attempt to ask silly questions. Like... what did it do, how dangerous it was, and if she intended to blast a hole in the Astral Exclave’s ’roof’ and kill everyone. Not that he seemed scared of the last one so much.
In fact, he seemed weirdly excited at the possibility. In a way that made her reconsider leaving him there in the Exclave by himself when it was time for her to go home to Qatrand. Coming back to find out he’d tested something that destroyed the place, which he learned watching her would be... an ironic note from the cosmos, she felt. Especially considering that he was the very reason she had ended up in the place at this point in time in the first place.
And that she had already almost ruined the place once or twice on her own - so could not *really* blame him.
Rezzue was unhappily napping these days, with her increasingly uncomfortable belly from three sets of kicking limbs providing slipping focus at seven months pregnant. That didn’t begin to count he hormonal brain fog that could lead to forgetting little things here and there. Luckily, she mostly kept to the extra safe area made for her study of chemical interactions anyway.
A clean room of sorts, one where she was free to use a control panel - much fancier than the one used at the Gravity Trap research site - in order to manipulate spiritual constructs on the other side of a sealed glass wall. She did not want her incoming children to be affected by any explosive, toxic, or mutagenic substances that she might accidentally produce.
Her friend-sister-teacher did not want that either. The heiress wanted to see healthy triplets born, something she’d only encountered one other time in her last life. The world was vast enough, the people scattered enough, that there was no way she would run into all that many of these instances on her own... even when working as a healer that sometimes did midwife work.
The boys were off training, happy to be freed from the cursed month as ’mortals’. The manacles that El had made to use on herself had found a new purpose and life... after a duplication of their construction. Turning Kaland and Ajoreal into young people that could *understand* and ’remember’ the physical weakness from before becoming an Enchanter and gave them some further perspective on their cousin-in-law’s predicament.
Her ’torturous’ training regimen pulled from the Continental Army also gave them more of an impression on the people they were swearing to protect as Yecine men, as cultivators. Engraving a recalibration of what it took for those who worked hard to actually try and help despite being objectively weak.
With everyone busy in their own ways, she had the ingress point to herself - and her constructs. Which was good, because the protections she’d layered over this space after the ozone incident had grown extensive enough to be a pain if someone else set them off. The illusory maze remained, of course, but now it was backed by randomly placed air pressure walls that could slow unauthorized movement.
Madrigil had run headlong into five of them on the way in three days ago... before she finally just decided to disable them until absolutely needed. Spiritual trip-lines would alert the mansion - and herself - to intrusions while activating the core defenses. And most recently completed fully was the targeting script she’d been installing for the last three weeks.
’Just in case. This is all just in case. ’
Qat had been sending people through the realmshard *usually* a good amount of time *after* others came back. However, none of them were intending to come back out as soon as usual - and that was making her nervous. Since she was quite sure that her beloved knew nothing about the number of new children and her warnings had only ever suggested not to send three groups of three in since it would pass the number 10.
Five cultivators were there now: herself, the exiled noble, pregnant chemist, freediving mobile sonar, and the little dynamo who was taking to his Element more than anything else. Plus the three gestating mortals made eight ’residents’ of the location, a population that ticked quickly upward in the bubble of stabilized space. Essentially making it so that her ’fortress’ could decide she could no longer wait a second longer and rush in to claim her mint-drop any second now!
’Focus, focus. Even if she shows up right now, right now, you have to finish what you are doing. It’s important. Super important. Maybe I can hug her first, but this is... more... it’s more important!’
Elua was not entirely sure where the threshold for population over a designated area sat now in this era - if any adjustments had been made in all this time by the Void Divinity. But she was sure that this pocket of space was something that looked like it could support a Descent with at least a single invasion point. The large, automated systems from that Divine Mandate weren’t exactly sophisticated enough to care about cultivation potential... just headcount.
The reincarnator’s chisel struck once more then stilled. Not finished in what she had been doing, but close - and unfortunately not quite in time. A tug on her senses notified her of incoming travel, just like she’d been expecting. That the realmshard’s spatial sigil construction was teleporting in new visitors.
Adjustments that had stabilized the bubble still caused the same bit of problem as before, essence would pool in the area, reaching incredibly densities that most would not be able to stand. Yet now, there were something like ’vents’ installed around the location meant to suction that overflow up instead. To direct it back, eventually, closer to the Spirit of the World control construct for it to consume and disperse.
’Eventually, if not needed.’
Three figures blinked onto the new arrival platform. Sevra, looking a bit more severe than before, but much less anxious. Nohre, whose green eyes were already scanning across the environment looking for those ’crab-like combat drones’ she wanted to complain about after Qatrand explained them. Zyris, who had come instead of Fusand only for that petty reason... and because they had not planned to be there for long this time. She actually had quite a lot of work inside Yatrel’s new Guild, somehow roped into being the Vice-
"Master!"
A happy cry cut through the air which served as the most happiness anyone was going to get for just a little while. Except Elua er Goltbred, of course, who was quite calm and happy to see everyone - EVERYONE - who had appeared thanks to this teleportation. Three friends of varying degrees and one target of varying proportions.
The ozone rich sky at the apex of the Exclave’s spheroid shape was generally bright violet at this time of day. Often covered with the shimmer of the golden clouds of essence dense Tholins, the tarry hydrocarbons which came down in the rains and caused most all plantlife in this place to taste like oily petroleum. But now, almost sixty miles up - where the stabilized space met the chaotic boundary of golden spatial membrane - the sky in this Exclave gained its first ’moon’.
Dark, like an eldritch eclipse... like a vantablack hole punched right through the barrier and reality itself. Not just a pinprick of absolute nothing, growing as the dimensional tear established itself for ingress. A crashing ’meteor’ almost a mile in diameter was a much more immediate threat that Elua er Goltbred - once Uvraneht - had seen many times before.
It didn’t move with aggression so much as inevitability, falling through the atmosphere until it reached the first layer of actual air. At this point, it looked almost four times bigger than it started. The blackness then expanded in a single violent motion impossible to see with eyesight alone, as from its depths unfurled and emerged its set of vast, long tendrils of concentrated Void essence.
Spreading out into this material plane like the hyphae of a fungus, across the first layers of thin ozone, in searching patterns. Each one was resonating with the potential to bud and create the footsoldiers of its own kind - for they were not just composed of Void themselves, like the Lessers and others sent to combat Lower Realm cultivators. This being had the potential to *generate* Void. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺
’A lovely Defier, with a lovely specialized core organ.’
A Leader-class Voidling had the biggest control of their Hivemind Astralism in their subset of constructs, to guide the others on the invasions. Intermediates had the humanoid nature to serve as nemesis and rival the true strong of any given cohort of cultivators. This thing... this Greater Void Colonizer that served as archon of their Element could spawn them *all*, when given enough time.
And when given the appropriate order from the Greater Arbiter that usually piggy-backed for a ride.
