Chương 46: Chapter 2 — The Pieces Move

When Raine Talis cut the mountain in two, it was entirely by accident. At Peak Bismuth, the sheer amount of power in her newly S-tier attack Skill, [Khuroon's Sunfire Spear of Wrath], was beyond what she expected. She had simply been trying to kill an Azoth-rank World Elite, but it seemed that putting maximum effort into the Skill was not at all necessary.

It wasn't a large mountain, for the war-world, but the grinding, thundering collapse of the mountain slopes was a sobering reminder of how much power she actually wielded.

"There is no such thing as overkill," Leese quoted to her over radio link, the two of them standing on the air as they watched the slow motion disaster of the falling mountainside. Though, that was the entire reason for the war-worlds. In a few days, or maybe even hours, all evidence of the blow would be gone as essence remade the landscape.

"I suppose not, out here," Raine agreed, glancing down at the corpse of the World Elite, which had fared only slightly better than the mountain. Instead of being entirely cut in half, it was only mostly cut in half. Still enough to make it dead. The pair of them descended to the burnt-and-frozen corpse, to harvest some of the more lucrative bits to turn in to the System store.

It seemed almost pointless after some ten years of the same had packed their Estates full of salvage, but it would have been awful to miss out on something they needed, whether material or money, simply because they couldn't be bothered to loot the corpses. Of course, that all depended on finding a store in the first place, and with the sheer size of the war-world, that was proving difficult. Their Estates were packed full of valuable scavenge, but none of it was directly useful to them.

"You'd think we'd get a quest to help us find one," Raine said, scowling at the System interface as she shared her thoughts on the availability of towns through the link. Aside from the rank-up quest, the only quest available was the [Crusade]. It wasn't even a quest they could ignore. It was a constant pressure, a drift in a direction against Cato. Fortunately, it was a drift they could correct for.

The cold, indifferent logic of the combat framework did not change, and helped correct for any outside influence that tried to affect them. That particular benefit was most obvious when they dealt with enemies wielding mental influences or illusions, but over the years it had probably done more work pushing back against the quest.

"At this rate we'll hit Azoth before we leave," Leese sighed. Raine snorted agreement. The only thing left was another Feat of Glory — which were not easy to come by, and not something they were specifically looking for, but certainly not something they would pass up, either. They'd come a long way from their first, hasty entry, fleeing for their lives from every Azoth beast, but reaching Azoth themselves would make the war-world far easier to deal with. For one thing, it would be easier to move around.

Even at Bismuth, the scale of War-World Osk made their movement Skills feel slow, and they'd crossed the equivalent of multiple worlds worth of distance with no sign of habitation. They had thought that going up high would let them spot something useful, but there were Alum-rank monsters lurking that far up, on the floating islands that peppered the sky — to say nothing of oppressive, deity-level bands of essence wrapped around the planet only a few hundred miles beyond those.

There seemed to be no such barrier going down, and in fact they'd spent a good two years mostly lost in the inconceivably large network of caverns, some of which seemed to be sized to hold entire continents. And that wasn't even counting the dungeons, which were strewn liberally throughout. In fact, they'd gone into no few Bismuth-ranked dungeons simply to relax, when compared to the Azoth-ranked surroundings.

"Right, which way were we going?" Raine cast out her senses, scrutinizing the surroundings and trying to find their trail. When a single fight could cover several hundred miles, and spats between high ranking people and monsters could rearrange the terrain, it was easy to get turned around. Telling north and south, east and west, was considerably harder than it should have been, even with their augmentations.

There were multiple suns and moons, orbiting at all angles, but it was difficult to figure out the exact details given the speed of their travel and how much time they spent out of sight of the sky. One of the sets of tools Cato had packed along with the combat algorithms did a passable job, but it was easier to use something more concrete than guesses based on the angles of what they could see in the sky.

The two of them found their bearings at the same time, a trail of fire and ice that they'd left behind them, half-deliberately. Neither of them worried much about someone or something hostile stumbling across the trail; the zones were only mid-Azoth and they would welcome someone else. Preferably someone who knew where the nearest town was. They resumed their westward trek, barely slowing down for the regular, non-elite Azoth creatures that decided to ambush them.

Sometimes it was swarms, which Leese could freeze with one swipe of her spear, and sometimes it was some hulking hill turned living golem, which Raine used her newfound mountain-slaying Skill to deal with. It was freeing to be powerful enough to traverse the war-world without too many worries, so long as they didn't stray into higher-rank zones. It was obvious why not a single Zone was ranked lower than Bismuth.

If it was possible to go entire years without coming across a town – not to mention that the few dungeons they'd tried had taken months – then there was no way that anyone still needing food and drink would be able to survive. The war-worlds were clearly meant for people who wanted to rank up, to delve deep into what their Skills could do and challenge powerful creatures.

If she and Leese had been there solely for themselves, they could have spent ten times as long in one-tenth the area, just exploring everything the war-world had to offer.

"Wait." She and Leese thought the same word at the same time, as they both sensed a new presence. Through the esoteric senses of their capelets, not their Skills, so whatever it was had stealth Skills. The two of them shifted their movement Skills, coming about to face whatever it was that had tailed them. Only to be surprised as a familiar figure emerged from the shadow of a cloud, shaping itself into a Sydean frame.

"Dyen?" Raine said aloud, her voice somehow not rusty from years of disuse.

"The very same," Dyen drawled.

"You two were tough to track down, you know?" Rather than try and talk out in the open, they decided to assemble in Raine's cluttered Estate and swapped the necessary details for them to all be on the same page. Less for any reasons of security as they simply didn't want to be accosted by wandering creatures every few minutes, and it would take more than a few minutes to catch up. Even if they'd mostly just been wandering and fighting, ten years was a long time.

"I do wonder what Cato's been up to," Leese said, once it became clear that Dyen had been on the war-world nearly as long as them.

"He can move fast when he needs to, but does he need to?"

"The [Crusade] means he's still around," Dyen pointed out.

"But I have not heard anything. The towns are difficult to infiltrate, and they're all controlled by one god faction or another. I can't think that there are any divine users who would be happy with us."

"Likely not," Raine conceded.

"But we can't just stay here. If nothing else, there isn't any way for us to spread Cato to the core. I tried with one of the spears, and it just disintegrated when it hit the divine essence bands."

"From what I've overheard, all those moons are the Core Worlds' planets, so that wouldn't have helped anyway," Dyen said. Raine didn't correct Dyen about how far the new spears could go — but she had seen another war-world hanging in the sky during the infrequent nights, a small colored disc with its own smattering of moon-specks. There might not even be any of the so called outer-system sorts of planets Cato had mentioned.

"Well, if we can't stay here, and we can't sneak past the towns — are there any Alums there?" Raine asked.

"Ha! Not hardly. I'm not sure Alums even bother with towns. The gossip I heard said that those earthquakes you feel on occasion are the Alums fighting somewhere else on Osk." Dyen flicked his tail indifferently, clearly not sure whether to credit it or not.

"So we make Azoth and force our way through," Raine said.

"Maybe we couldn't take all those Azoths and Bismuths in a straight fight, but between us, Leese and I are confident we can break through any resistance. Especially if we see them using their Skills first."

"Just make Azoth," Dyen said, his voice holding an edge just short of mockery.

"Because it's easy."

"We have one Feat of Glory left," Raine said.

"How about you?" Dyen appraised as Peak Bismuth as well, though she had to guess most of his essence had been gathered from dungeons. Unless he hadn't been so much reconnoitering towns as hunting in them.

"Just one," Dyen agreed, though that was less of a coincidence than it might have seemed. Feats of Glory were few and far between, and it was only natural that they'd be the limiting factor. She didn't ask what other Feats he'd managed, but he'd probably tripped over them just as she and Leese had. One of their Feats had been when she and Leese had been lost in the underground, where they had been the first ones to clear a dungeon and turned a Conflict Zone into a Resource Zone.

They'd been practically forced into it, considering the massive swarms of Mid-Azoth beasts around, but it had turned out well enough. Another was from clearing one of the smaller sky islands, one of the ones without any Alum-ranked monsters, and claiming the crystal core within — a prize that had permanently augmented their cornerstone Skills. Part of her would have loved to travel every inch of the war-world, uncovering all the strange and amazing details crammed into the massive landscape.

They certainly could have spent years at it, centuries even, since they'd barely seen a fraction of the whole, but they weren't there for themselves. They were still Cato's agents, and the entire purpose for going to the core worlds was to aid his goals.

"We're all far more capable than our rank would suggest," Raine said, tail flicking slowly back and forth of its own accord as she thought.

"There should be some Feat of Glory within our reach. Especially now that we have some idea of where things are." Dyen's most welcome contribution had been a map. It didn't cover the entire war-world, just the immediate area, but that was still several planets worth of volume.

"These aren't normal towns, are they?" Leese half-asked, studying the map in question. It had a score of features marked as outposts, some in areas they'd already been, but it was easy to see how they'd managed to pass them by. Only a few were on the surface, the rest scattered throughout the vast underground.

"No, they're part of some large-scale strategic competition," Dyen said.

"They have buildings and services unique to Azoth-tier and above, and sometimes they change hands between factions. Not that often, but it happens."

"So, why don't we take one?" Raine suggested, following Leese's thought process. Even if Feats of Glory were not necessarily spelled out, it was easy enough to guess if something would count.

"That's not guaranteed to be a Feat of Glory, but it might contribute. And we'll have to if we want to teleport to a town with a portal anyway."

"Hmph. They'll be full of Azoths," Dyen pointed out.

"But I suppose we can scout them. Find which one is the most vulnerable."

"If it looks too risky, we can look for something else," Leese conceded.

"But Feats of Glory are not supposed to be without risk."

"It'll also give us time to see if Dyen's motives have changed at all," Raine sent. Yes, Cato had sent Dyen, but that didn't guarantee that the man was actually on their side. Unlike Raine and Leese, Dyen had not taken Cato as his patron, and so was not entirely trustworthy. He'd once vowed that he'd make Cato pay for what had happened to his wife, and neither Raine nor Leese had forgotten it. Combined with the Crusade quest, treachery was entirely possible.

"For now it doesn't much matter," Leese sent back, though they hardly needed to speak to be in agreement on that point.

"He's stuck here just as much as we are. Once we get back out, well. We'd better be careful." Raine sent acknowledgement back and tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair she'd managed to extract from one of the dungeons. The lack of trust was one reason she hated fighting alongside anyone but Leese. It was impossible to quite know or believe what anyone else was saying — even Cato, though as they had never fought alongside him, that hardly mattered.

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"Each of these outposts guards a dungeon," Dyen said, ignorant of the byplay. He probably realized they were communicating in some way, but he couldn't intercept Cato's special not-quite-telepathy. It wasn't a System thing, after all.

"Which is mostly why people control them. Means they can decide who gets access."

"There's plenty of dungeons out in the wild," Leese pointed out.

"There sure are," Dyen agreed.

"These are apparently special. I'm not sure why; I didn't stay around long enough to hear anyone elaborate. But they're high-valued dungeons, and that's enough."

"So if taking the outpost doesn't work, maybe clearing the dungeon will?" Raine speculated aloud, though part of her felt that even mentioning something about a Feat of Glory was bad luck. Or at least tempting fate.

"Perhaps," Dyen said, sounding unenthusiastic about the concept. Though really, he should be more interested than them, considering they'd be dealing with Azoth-rank people and not monsters. Exactly what an assassin Skillset was built for.

"The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can get back to Cato's territory," Leese said, rising from her own chair and stretching, though at Bismuth they no longer got cramps or needed to loosen their muscles after inactivity.

"Very well," Dyen said, stowing the map back in his System storage.

"We shall see what can be done."

Harik Lim, once of the Warden's Claw, clung to the restraints as the glider entered System space. It was far from the first time that he'd returned from Cato's habitat, but he hated it every time. Not just because it was nerve-wracking to feel the glider smash into the atmosphere of the moon below, but because each time he was reminded that he was no longer a contender for the higher Ranks.

He was something else now, a representative of a reality and a project with an importance that he was not sure he was worthy of. A messenger between two gods, one of which was alien and suspicious, and the other was a patron to all his people. The glider shuddered as it decelerated, making him feel like something heavy was sitting on him, but it was, apparently, not as bad as entering a planet. He only had Raine and Leese's word for it, but he was inclined to believe them.

Even if they had masqueraded as Urivan the first time they'd met, that was overall a fairly minor issue. At least compared to the world-shaking revelations afterward. He worked the controls, peering out the window at the splotch of System-town visible below. Even if Harik wasn't entirely adept at maneuvering the glider, he just needed to get it close enough and the sole inhabitant of that town would take care of the rest.

A Platinum-ranker, a divine user, but completely devoted to World-Deity Initik rather than the System itself. A distinction that Harik would not have thought mattered, only a few years prior. After only a few minutes, before any of the creatures that inhabited the Platinum-rank zone that surrounded the town spotted the glider and decided to tear it apart, a golden bubble surrounded the vehicle and pulled it downward.

It landed gently in the open space in front of the town Nexus, and Harik unstrapped himself and clambered out to bow to High Priest Rekik.

"Rise, Harik Lim," Rekik said, his gripping claws clicking in amusement.

"It hardly seems necessary, by now." He was in part referring to how the strangeness of Cato's technology made the normal Ranks and relations irrelevant, but also to the fact that Harik had been speaking directly to World Deity Initik. That wasn't something even priests tended to do — but they were all breaking the rules anyway.

"Perhaps not, but I am still merely a messenger," Harik demurred. And he meant it. Compared to Platinums and Deities, on one side, and digital life and space industry on the other, he was barely important. He thought he had been humbled by Raine and Leese as a Silver, but that was a mere trifle compared to the matters he dealt with now. Rekik gestured to the small tavern, adjacent to the Nexus, and Harik followed him in.

Not that either of them needed what the tavern served, but it had become the custom over the last eight years or so of the Cato project. Every few months he returned to the surface to report his experiences, though under the watchful eye of High Priest Rekik. When Harik sat, facing the divine artifact that allowed Initik to talk to them, Rekik suffused him with a Skill. Under its effects, Harik could no longer lie, but that hardly bothered him.

It was safer for everyone if he couldn't dissemble, even if he had never been tempted to. Moments later, the device lit, and each of them clasped their hands together in supplication.

"Report," Initik said, not rudely, but focused and businesslike as he ever was.

"All the mothers have fully recovered," Harik said, which was the most important news. Of course, Cato had ensured they had all survived the rigors of childbirth – including his own mate, which was still an odd thought for him – but the lingering effects had taken more time to address.

"The hunters became restless enough that Raine created a simulation for them, but some of them still found that lacking. It's not real."

"That is rather a substantive problem," Initik said, shifting his gripping claws. Under his gaze, Harik felt small, but he tried to think and speak as clearly as possible.

"Would they find the System similarly unreal, if they returned? Knowledge of the outside — it certainly changes someone."

"None of them wanted to ask to return, but I know a few whom I think would prefer it." Everyone involved in the project was aware of its importance, so of course none of them would actually admit to being dissatisfied.

"According to Leese, motivation loss and behavioral sinks are common problems with this sort of culture shock. There are options for dealing with it, which I have here," he said, removing a printed packet from his uniform.

"Unfortunately, none of them are perfect."

"Nothing can be perfect," Initik said, as Harik put the packet on the desk.

"I would mistrust any solution that Cato insisted lacked flaws." Harik didn't argue, though for himself he would have loved solutions that worked perfectly. It would have been so much easier. He had never asked for a world where he had to struggle with worrying about what reality was, and whether even Cato was simply trapped in some larger System, some false world whose edges they couldn't see.

"Continue," Initik ordered, jolting Harik out of his contemplations. Most of the rest of the goings-on aboard the habitat were, at least, less fraught than the nature of reality. He described the slow progress on understanding agriculture and animal husbandry, of mechanics and geometry. They had access to far more advanced information, including the technology that built and ran the very habitat they lived in, but Raine and Leese had maintained that the best idea was to understand the fundamentals first.

Not that Harik disagreed. Seeing what could be done was overwhelmingly complex, far beyond the nuances in any Skills he'd ever had. Trying to get there in a single step would be impossible. Using the tools was easy enough, but that wasn't the same as understanding them, and not only Raine and Leese, but Cato himself, insisted the understanding was important. At the same time, he was glad that none of them insisted on other things that appeared in the histories Cato had of life outside the System.

Famine, plague, neurodegenerative and immunocompromising diseases, technologies that accidentally poisoned the populace — all kinds of pitfalls that were simply cruel chance. The future would be challenging, but at least it would be challenges that would edify the Urivan people, not ones that would simply force them to rebuild and hope.

"So which do you prefer," Initik asked, after Harik had wound down his report.

"The System or Cato's reality?"

"Personally, I would want to stay in the System," Harik admitted. At least he understood the System.

"But for my mate and children, Cato's is better. It's possible to have both, in a way – one of the options in that packet – but like all the others it's not straightforward." There were actually two ways to do it, as he understood it. An all-digital reality, or something Cato referred to as an angelnet, where integrated technology mimicked much of the System's functionality. Both of them still allowed the other aspects of Cato's reality, unlike the System, and both of them were ultimately optional.

Fortunately, Harik wasn't the one who had to make that kind of choice. [World Deity Initik] was the only one who could make the final judgement there.

"And what of Cato's offensive capabilities?" Initik asked. He'd had the same question every time, and Harik had been surprised by how many different weapons they were allowed to know about, via the databases. Which implied there was even more that wasn't shown.

"When I learned about the angelnet, there were other, similar topics." He'd already covered some of Cato's orbital weaponry, though simply knowing about them didn't really help with figuring out how to defend against them.

"The sheer size of the swarms Cato could put together is terrifying. He could literally flood planets with creatures, of almost any type."

"But he hasn't," Initik said, not entirely a question.

"Not that I know of," Harik admitted, though it wasn't like Raine or Leese discussed Cato's wider operations much.

"I know that what he can fully unleash is limited by the System, but it is clear that he has been using a light touch. For what reason, I cannot fathom. He would have been far better served to be aggressive, and demonstrate that he can consume planets on a whim."

"Clearly he does not think so," Initik replied, his gripping claws clicking softly.

"Surely he has good reason."

"I am not entirely certain," Harik said, under the influence of the truth Skill.

"I don't wish to blaspheme against anyone, but Cato is not like you. I don't think he is a true god, but merely someone with very, very powerful Skills and knowledge. If you had the same as him, my lord, I believe you would be ruling the System."

"Perhaps," Initik said, leaning forward ever so slightly.

"You believe that, given the chance, I could usurp Cato's position?"

"I don't know," Hark confessed.

"We do not hear from him often on the station, but he has maintained that he does not wish to be the one in charge of Uriva. But with so much power, what else could his motives be? What would be the point?"

"At the extremes of power, motives become strange," Initik said reflectively.

"Or rather, their outward appearance does. If we credit what Cato says, the reason he desires no power over Uriva is simple — a single planet is meaningless to him. He no more cares to deal with Uriva than I would care to seize a remote outpost on some distant world."

"Yes, my lord Warden," Harik said, though the thought of Uriva being a mere remote outpost disturbed him. Initik noticed, and chuckled, his claws clicking in rhythm.

"Don't worry, Harik," Initik said.

"I'm going to squeeze Cato for everything he's got."

Yaniss pinched herself. It wasn't like it actually hurt, as a Bismuth, but she felt that she needed to do it just to assure herself that she was really real. It was hard to entirely credit it, after so many deep discussions with the version of her out in space, looking down upon the planet from above. She yearned to experience that stripped, uncontrolled, raw reality — but she couldn't. Not just yet, not without abandoning her hold inside the System.

Something she was not quite ready to do, and the person before her demonstrated why. Over the past few years, Yaniss had not been on the best of terms with the priesthood, for obvious reasons. Yet the only connection to Cato – and her other self – were a couple of communications-lizards, with all the other infrastructure kept well away. That, and her refusal to go to the Inner or Core Worlds to follow the dictates of the [Crusade].

But priests still came by from time to time, asking tentative, delicate questions — at least until now.

"What shall I tell [World Deity Mii-Es]?" The Gold Rank priest asked, quietly and politely, but still firm enough to imply that he wasn't leaving without an answer. Respectable in its own right, given their Rank difference.

"I might as well," Yaniss said at length. The request to visit the Temple to actually commune with the local [World Deity] was odd, not least because until Cato arrived she hadn't heard of any gods actually acting directly. Considering her general attitude, Yaniss would have expected some kind of smiting – another reason she was looking forward to discarding the System entirely – so wanting to talk was strange. It pricked all her instincts, and in the end she couldn't resist her curiosity.

If the worst happened, she was also out in the stars and beyond the System's reach. She tapped into her Estate inventory and adjusted her clothing. There was no harm in at least being polite, so she swapped out her lounging-around robes with her best-looking armor, casting a quick [Clean] a few times just to make sure she was fully ready. She had too much pride to look slovenly out in public. With a quick invocation of her movement Skill, she created a portal from her Estate into the capital city.

Less for herself, as her Gold-rank guide, who would have had to take a far slower, manual route otherwise. He ducked his head to her in thanks and scurried through ahead of her to open the Temple door. She breezed through, following the Gold Ranker past the common meditation room and into the private offices of the Temple. There he ushered her into a room — and left her, which struck her as entirely wrong given that priests were supposed to actually mediate when it came to the gods.

Instead, on the table was a small crystalline device, a cube above which floated a tiny version of the usual pylon. The moment she settled into the chair, it activated, displaying an image of a woman that was certainly not of Clan Ikent. She was avian, with carefully groomed feathers and an exquisitely polished beak, but stood more upright and clearly was far larger than someone like Yaniss.

A disappointment, withal, to think that their world's god was not a fellow, nor distant ancestor, but one she could hardly do anything about.

"Bismuth Yaniss," said [World Deity Mii-Es], studying her claws, which gleamed with a sinister lethality.

"You have been quite annoyingly disobedient."

"I am as I am," Yaniss replied, not worried about the censure. Surely the [World Diety] didn't need to have a priest plead with her to come speak face to face if it was something so simple.

"Yes, I suppose you are." Mii-Es sighed, lounging in her throne as she eyed Yaniss.

"In this case, my dear, I cannot say it is truly a problem. It gives me an avenue that I could not have gotten otherwise." The World Deity peered at Yaniss with sharp eyes, then chuckled.

"I don't see any need to dance around it any further. I wish to speak with Cato."

"That is—" Yaniss started, but Mii-Es interrupted before she could even make a start at a protest.

"I know you can, dear. Your scry protections aren't as good as you think, and I've had my eye on you for quite a while." Mii-Es waggled a chiding claw at her.

"Though I have to say you have been surprisingly circumspect. Those strange lizards — I still can't sense anything from them, even if I know they're some form of farcaster."

"And may I know why you're asking for something so blatantly heretical?" Yaniss dared, now that she knew that what the god wanted required her full cooperation.

"Or is it blasphemous? I've never been able to keep those straight."" You are cheeky," Mii-Es said, leaning forward. A heavy weight pressed down around Yaniss, something she hadn't felt for many Ranks.

"I am tolerant because the situation is unusual, but I am not entirely averse to simply taking your lizards and wresting the secrets from them myself."

"I understand," Yaniss said, deciding it would be better not to press her luck, backup or no backup.

"Though I am not certain I can get him to entertain a conversation just by asking."

"Perhaps not," Mii-Es said, tapping one talon against her beak.

"Clearly he has offered you something, for you to hide his secrets so. I want to know what he'd offer me."

"I think that would get his interest," Yaniss conceded.

"Soon as I get an answer, you'll have it."