Elder Cultivator

Chapter 968

After a short exchange, Queenson realized that Luci was right. It was pointless for a human like her to risk herself sneaking into a secure area when there were perfectly good void ants to do it. Unfortunately, due to certain risks she had to remain quite far from the actual position that was to be infiltrated. The Numerological Compact’s control over the area just made it more of a tempting target, however.

Entering the area, surrounded simply by a wall and a large obscuring formation, was trivial for a void ant. Even navigating indoors was more difficult, as they had to find cracks in walls or areas around doors, and sometimes that was inconvenient. Crawling over a wall and nibbling through a formation one at a time was not.

Queenson was leading the pack and was prepared to climb down when he realized he could already see the thing they were here for. A giant ship, with a large number of people working on it. Or perhaps it was a relatively small ship, by human standards? A dozen of them didn’t fit into the area that smoothly.

The one thing he was certain of, even with his limited knowledge of ships, was that there weren’t supposed to be melted bits of metal and that the walls weren’t supposed to have openings. Other than that, all he really knew was that it seemed to fit his understanding of the central control structures for their ships. Without all of the additional modules, it was actually quite small.

Was that what they were hiding? There didn’t seem to be much else of note, but a single ship… it didn’t seem that important. Could it even have survived Anton’s assault? That would require a more thorough investigation. There were some traces of different energy, but they were old enough that the void ants would have to investigate from up close.

There was a large advantage to being outside, which was that humans would by and large avoid them. The important part was to not look suspicious. Humans might realize regular ants would have trouble getting into the area, and these should be aware of void ants by now, given the previous incidents. Still, it was better to march together in a line than to sneak around and act suspicious.

Obviously they still picked a path with the most cover, crawling through cracks in the large flat pad the ship core was positioned on. The landing pad itself was entirely devoid of energy, perhaps so it didn’t interfere with the process of repair and calibration.

When they got close, Queenson overheard snippets of conversation that he pieced together.

“... furious … Elder Endymion …”

“... critical repairs …”

“... do it himself …”

Some were grumbles and complaints, but the important thing was this ship seemed to be the important one. What was it called, a Magnitude IV? It didn’t feel like much, but it was unpowered so perhaps it wouldn’t. As for traces of energy, there were tiny bits of Ascension energy left over, little delectable treats that could have only come from Anton.

Queenson and the others crawled into the ship and looked at the work the cultivators were doing, digging out chunks of hull and replacing them with carefully crafted parts with replacement formation markings. Though he had some experience with formations, the depth and complexity was truly staggering. He wouldn’t know where to begin. Should they simply destroy them all? Taking out this group would be quick.

No, that was a terrible idea. They wouldn’t have long to destroy things. And the formation were build with enough practical redundancies that they might not even accomplish anything. Like Luci said, it wasn’t worth dying for something that had no chance of achieving their goals

So what could they do? After watching for an hour or two, it seemed the pace of repairs was quite rapid. They might even be finished in a few days. A week at most. That was the most hopeful estimation. From what Queenson had heard, Endymion could rival Devon with the ship fully functional. Keeping him out of the war would be important.

Actually, if they could just find him… he would be just as easily killed as anyone else. Unfortunately, there was no clear source of energy for such a powerful cultivator. Layers of barriers dampened the senses, so there was no guarantee he was even close to here. Then again, couldn’t they wait for him to return to the ship? That was a bit risky, since the longer they were nearby the greater risk they would be spotted and actually noticed.

It was a long journey back to the wall- even though it would have taken a motivated human just a few seconds of running. The void ants could move more quickly as a group, but a rolling formation was obvious.

Even though it took almost a quarter hour to reach the wall, the rest of the trip back to Luci was far longer. Positioned several kilometers away, it was a half day’s journey to reach her- and that was with the void ants moving several times the speed of their lookalikes. That was the speed they could maintain properly without raising visual alarms, but it was still quite slow to travel just a handful of kilometers.

Luci and the others had not waited idly, but instead surveilled the city. Apparently, they had confirmed Elder Endymion’s presence.

“He has been a prominent member of the Numerological Complex even since I was younger,” Luci explained. “But he was far from as strong as he is now. Or rather, all the Confluence cultivators…” she shook her head. “They started appearing after they got Byron over a century ago.”

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Queenson wrote his desires on some parchment they had obtained- with some ink, even. It stuck to his mandibles and was kind of gross, but it worked for writing well enough.

“Sabotage ship.”

That was the easiest thing for him to say. Writing didn’t just involve swishing his hand about, but full body movements for each letter.

“Endymion’s ship?” Luci questioned. “Was it there?”

“Repairing,” Queenson clarified.

“In need of repair…” she frowned. “Unfortunately, I’m sure the ships have developed significantly since I last interacted with them. There’s not a simple solution besides breaking everything. Unless… yes, that should work. I can’t imagine they’d strip out the fundamentals.”

Queenson just watched questioningly.

“True sabotage works best if nobody knows it has been done until someone tries to use it. I can only assume the ship was damaged fighting against your people.” Queenson wasn’t sure about the full circumstances, but he knew that was correct enough. “Most likely, they will fight again. And if it turns out that it is unable to function at full capacity at a key moment,” she shrugged. “He won’t last long.”

It made sense. However, Queenson still had another question. “Assassination?” After looking at the word, Luci swiftly destroyed the already used paper with her energy.

“You’ll have to explain.”

It was a long process, but he ultimately mentioned that if they could find him, they could kill him. That also included waiting for him to board the ship. If he did so, he would be dead.

“Some confidence,” Luci admitted. “But even if that’s true, you mentioned the risks of getting caught. If you properly sabotaged, you’d achieve multiple results. First, if he goes off to a critical battle with a fleet counting on him and then is suddenly crippled… both he and the fleet suffer the consequences. You also wouldn’t risk yourself. I know you don’t care about that but… the only guaranteed way to find him is to wait at the ship. That’s a risk. Otherwise, you can crawl and fly all over the city and potentially miss him.”

Queenson didn’t like that, but he had to admit it was true. And the old woman did have some good points about tying positive results together. If he fell apart in a battle, that might lead to the Compact’s defeat more directly instead of causing them to cower and draw out the war. And more importantly, Queenson could be doing something else during that time. What other good things were there to do, after the sabotage?

He asked that question, and Luci thought for a bit. “Well, you could help free more allies?”

Queenson nodded. “Power stations. Cultivators of one mind.”

“Yes, that’s a good idea,” Luci said. “They would join with us. Though obviously their presence would be missed, if there are too many.”

That wasn’t quite what Queenson meant, but it would do. Before that, they had to figure out the actual method of sabotage. That was still the most important goal.

Luci spent a day consulting with the others, drawing ever more dizzying symbols. After that day, they returned with something particular. “Okay, this is quite complicated but this would be the best option. There are going to be many markings quite similar to this, but they won’t be as critical.” She showed them a symbol- no, multiple symbols in layers. “The pattern will be like this. Can you… memorize that?”

Queenson could not. But, he nodded. Then he signed to his soldiers, having them arrange themselves atop the pattern. They would not need to know the pattern, only the positions of their own bodies and their neighbors. This was something void ants were trained for, especially the soldiers and special operations groups.

Layer by layer, they confirmed the shape of things. Obviously the void ants didn’t quite fit the flowing lines, but they got the shape, and Luci confirmed the differences in markings were on a larger scale than line width, at least for their purposes. The shape was critical, and the layered materials.

“If you can, you’ll want to break it at these points,” she said, pointing. “If possible, carve out all of this material. It’s a bit harder, though. Oh, and try to leave the top layer visually intact. Don’t completely remove anything, either. Otherwise, they might notice the discrepancy and have a chance to fix it.”

Formations were complicated. But, humans were smart. Queenson and the others had an excellent plan now, and they set out. If they just so happened to stumble across this ‘Endymion’, they might yet kill him for the sake of certainty… but proper sabotage also made sense. And to think, they were simply going to tear apart bits of the ship. Of course humans would notice and fix that.

Humans might not notice small things, but if small things were repeated into larger patterns, then they noticed discrepancies.

The void ants returned to the site immediately, having rested while their human allies were occupied. The busy repair workers were still at it, in the deep night. Making any modifications would be difficult while they were around, but they still had to search for the right markings. It was supposed to appear only once, and there were many layers to the materials of the ship.

Any time they saw something that looked similar, Queenson would have the soldiers return to their memorized formations, while he found a way to look down at an angle so he could actually see the shape. It would have been easiest for them to just lay over the markings, but the humans might see that so they used flat surfaces on top of the control segment.

Even though Queenson was ninety-nine percent certain that his imaging device was busted, he dutifully continued to press what pieces of the button still existed. Sadly, it had not been immune to the wider spread of human energy. The box looked much like him, with melted bits. Occasionally, it gave the effort of using up a blip of natural energy, but that didn’t really indicate it was working.

The humans worked long hours. He was pretty sure they were supposed to have slept already. Didn’t humans get bad at stuff when awake for too long?

Some of them seemed to know that and were replaced, but the important looking ones continued working with their faces looking ever more problematic. But, they had good news. Sort of.

“We’re almost done…” one of the leaders said. “Then it can be inspected.”

They’d just have to wait. And maybe they could get something done, after that inspection. If Queenson was lucky, there would even be pictures for their allies, but his luck didn’t seem to be tilted in that direction. Being alive was already pretty exceptional, and he had no complaints.

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