Chương 47: Chapter 3: Opening Gambits

At first look, the outpost seemed almost impregnable.

Rather than walls around a few blocky white buildings, it was a thick fortress built into the side of the cavern, with heavy Alum-rank walls wrapped all the way around the outpost like some kind of shell. The only entrances were a pair of gates, each one halfway up the walls and on opposing sides of the protective stone.

Nothing that was merely physical would stop anyone at Bismuth or Azoth, of course, which was why there were blindingly brilliant essence protections worked into the stone to keep people from simply teleporting through.

A straight assault would be difficult, especially if there were any built-in defenses — as there probably were. But the outposts were designed to be taken, so Raine didn't think that it was quite as impossible as it seemed. There was probably a way inside without hurling themselves against the fortress walls.

"Spot anything useful?"

Raine sent to Leese, the Cato-provided communication sufficient for the few dozen miles of the cavern. Massive hanging plants provided light for the entire underground pocket, clusters of glowing berries thirty feet across casting a warm glow and providing pockets of deep shadow for the sisters to hide. Dyen didn't need anything so mundane as darkness to hide, but he was accompanying Leese simply due to the rather confusing inability for the two of them to speak with him through Cato's method.

"Only what's obvious," Leese sent back. Raine wasn't discouraged. The two of them were feeling out the defenses with their essence senses and keeping surveillance on who was actually holding the outpost. Between their own experience and the powerful analytics of Cato's combat algorithms, she was sure they could find the slightest crack. That was ignoring the potential of Dyen simply letting them in, though he wasn't sold on a plan that required to expose himself while in enemy territory.

Raine circled around closer to one of the gates, being careful not to expose herself too much. Unfortunately, her movement Skill was not particularly stealthy, so she had to simply walk, traipsing through massive fungi and climbing vines. The few low-Azoth creatures – barely even worthy of being called proper beasts, this close to the outpost – were dispatched with a flex of her Domain, not even needing to bring out her weapon to turn them into smoldering ashes.

Despite its usefulness, she kept her Domain close, careful not to broadcast her presence as she walked.

At a closer range, she could sense that there were only four Azoths inhabiting the outpost, their Domains glaringly obvious — and even as she waited, one of them vanished, presumably teleporting away to somewhere more interesting. The low population wasn't actually surprising; aside from specialty building somewhere inside the outpost itself, there was little reason for anyone to stay there. The three that were hanging around were probably waiting either to enter said dungeon, or for someone to emerge from it.

If she had to guess, the four she had sensed were simply in line for the high-value dungeon, meaning the outpost didn't have any dedicated defenders.

She studied the defensive wards and traps and other essence patterns, letting the combat brains crunch through the complexities. As she had expected there were gaps, small areas where the wards didn't quite overlap as they slowly changed and shifted in their patterns. Not something she would have been able to easily spot herself without far more experience, but the brute force abilities of Cato's tools did a decent job of standing in for real knowledge.

Raine sent what she'd noticed over to Leese, who replied with a similar set of observations, transmitting impressions over the link rather than actual words. Between the two perspectives, Raine was fairly certain they could bypass the wards and slide their way in with their movement Skills. The only question was how confident they were about overpowering the quartet – now trio – inside.

"We should give it a few days, watch the traffic," Leese suggested.

"It might end up being empty if they decide to dive the dungeon. We'd still have to worry about reinforcements from the pylon, but that's true regardless."

"What does Dyen say? Is it likely to be completely abandoned like that?"

Raine wasn't certain how common Azoths actually were, even on the war-worlds. Whether they would be making an enemy of a Clan of thousands, or just annoying a few dozen people. Nor did she know whether they could drive off those who currently held the outpost, or if they'd have to kill the ones who currently held it.

"There should be at least one or two people to monitor it on behalf of their faction," Leese relayed.

"But that doesn't mean there actually will be, especially if it's an outpost where there's not much competition."

Raine half-wondered how Dyen had gotten so much information — but then, he was actually part of a System organization, the Assassin's Guild. Neither she nor Leese, on the other hand, had even visited a Fighter's Hall. They'd surely missed out on all kinds of information that they should have gotten, if they were advancing normally.

"We'll wait, then," Raine decided, and crept back through the foliage to meet up with Leese and Dyen. His inclusion felt awkward, both because they were simply used to doing things as a pair and because he was outside their link. It was an extra step to bring him into any conversation or planning, made even more clumsy by the fact that they needed to stop and speak out loud rather than sharing concepts directly.

At least one of the benefits of Cato's combat brains was that she could set something very firmly in mind and it'd actually stick there, rather than being forgotten when she focused on something else.

They planned out what they could while they observed, though there weren't too many options. It was more a question of balancing attack with distraction, and when, if at all, they should consider diplomacy. Nobody would take Bismuths seriously as a threat initially, but after demonstrating they could take on Azoths they might convince people to stay away long enough to secure the outpost.

To Raine's mind, Dyen's presence was the hardest thing to account for. His entire build and approach was to attack from stealth, by himself. None of his Skills or use of Skills were designed to support a group. On the reverse side, she and Leese had honed their tactics and approaches to account for each other — and nothing else. Not a problem if they were coordinating separately, but Domains made working in close proximity a little bit tricky.

Over the course of the next two weeks, the population of the outpost fluctuated between five people and none, save for one brief moment when a party emerged from the dungeon and brought the count to eight. The three of them probably wouldn't have been able to remain unnoticed so long if it weren't for Dyen's Domain, which shielded them while they kept their own Domains close in.

None of the people in the outpost were bothering to hide their presence, however, and in fact at one point a shouting match from inside grew loud enough to echo off the cavern walls.

They moved when the population hit zero again, a lull when one party was, presumably, within the dungeon and another one had not yet arrived to wait. Not that they expected the outpost to remain empty, not once they started the capture process, but every advantage counted. Despite being ridiculously powerful for their rank, the three of them weren't yet Azoths.

Dyen infiltrated first, just to test whether there were other, more hidden protections. It would have been nice to simply sit inside his Estate and pop out on the other side, but they'd already found that almost any combat suppressed a stable connection to their pocket estates. They just weren't meant to be accessed while fighting.

When nothing drastic happened, Raine and Leese followed, fire and frost spiraling into and through the tiny gaps in the fortress wards. They reformed on the other side, the layout instantly mapped by their senses and integrated into the algorithms as their Domains expanded. A burst of intent sent them rocketing into the Nexus, which still looked familiar enough despite the outpost itself looking far different than normal towns out on the frontier.

[Spiral Outpost South Faction: Three Gods Faction] Raine and Leese slapped their hands against the central pylon, selecting yes to the prompted question if they wanted to begin the claiming process. The standard white color of the pylon shifted to red, pulsing like a heartbeat, and the System broadcast a warning. She had to assume that other people in the faction could see the warning, but if it was just at the outpost, then it was blaring into the empty void.

[Spiral Outpost South is being contested by No Faction!] Raine took a moment to touch the teleportation pylon, just glancing through what destinations were available, and found that all of them had a faction label next to them. Some listings even said they were closed to outside factions. Fortunately, there were still multiple entries for Regional Capitals that were open, so they probably wouldn't have to travel overland.

The two of them took up position by the teleportation pylon, while Dyen's presence flickered and faded into obscurity out by the wall. They still didn't entirely trust him; something about Dyen's attitude and the way he held himself was off-putting. Not only was he outside their close rapport, but he seemed hard, brittle, and closed-off. Neither of them felt that he was immediately treacherous, but at the same time they agreed that he wasn't truly reliable.

It only took a few minutes for the defenders to appear, all from a Clan Raine didn't recognize, dark-furred and with long limbs on squat bodies.

[Enma Lepp – Azoth] [Moma Letep – Azoth] [Tok-Tok Syph – Peak Bismuth] Raine was surprised there were only three of them, because she would have figured they'd send at least a full party. But she was hardly going to object if they were going to offer such weak resistance. She stood side by side with Leese and faced the new party, the two of them standing with spears readied, their Domains overlapping and interlocking.

"Just Bismuths?" Enma scoffed, tossing a massive broadsword from hand to hand like it was a simple knife.

"Not too bright, are you? And where did you even come from?" Raine didn't bother to reply, even if it would have been satisfying to laugh in their faces, and instead tilted her head in the direction of the pylon to remind them the capture timer ticking down.

"Fine," Enma said.

"Tok-Tok, you take care of it. Moma and I will suppress the Domains." Power flared out from the Azoths, slamming into Raine and Leese's own interlocked Domains and trying to strip away the authority they had over their surroundings.

The attempts failed.

A Domain wasn't simply a matter of power, though it certainly helped. At Bismuth, everyone gained a body forged from essence, and could transform themselves into pure manifestations of their chosen aspect, no longer solely confined to the corporeal. The Domain was in the other direction — the self, projected outward into the surrounding essence of the world.

In a sense, having a Domain was like having a body the size of that Domain, even though there was no physicality involved. It was will, understanding, and strength of mind, the ability to control external essence the same way they controlled their own Skills. Exactly the sort of thing where she and Leese had an unfair advantage.

Even if they didn't have the raw power of someone at Azoth, they had their own experience, flawless coordination, and the cold, hard, merciless foundation of unflinching algorithmic calculation. The combat brains did not doubt or fear, they didn't lose focus, flicker, or flinch. The hammer blow of the Azoth Domains met the unyielding anvil of two sisters augmented by Cato's technology and ten years of hyper-efficient learning.

Tok-Tok was probably a savant by normal standards, an elite warrior who could be expected to win two on one. He seemed to be a pure caster, to judge by the shimmering, blue-water shield that snapped into existence around him and the ominously dark bullets that spewed forth from that shield at supersonic speeds. Without Domains, and if they were normal Peak Bismuths, that might have given them pause.

As it was, their combined Domains flash-froze and sublimated the water into nothingness before it had even traveled ten feet beyond Tok-Tok's shield. Raine look one long, burning step forward, the head of her growth weapon blurring into a long, wicked glaive as she crossed the distance from her to Tok-Tok in an instant.

Her glaive sheared through the water shield with a hiss, her Domain empowering the strike to cut through his defensive Skill as if it didn't even exist and crushing his own small, defensive attempt at a Domain. Blade met armor and sheared through it as she cut Tok-Tok almost in half — and continued on to the Azoths.

On the other side, Leese matched her, though instead of a glaive her weapon was turned into a long-bladed ranseur, to deal with Enma's broadsword. Though the Azoths couldn't crush the mixed Domain of the sisters, neither could Raine and Leese suppress the Azoth's abilities, leaving them on effectively even terms. At least in theory.

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Sword met spear as Skills exploded, Leese harrying Enma while Raine used her glaive to press the lightly-armored Moma, who retaliated with lightning. Raine dispersed into flame to dodge a bolt of white power ten feet across, reforming to send Moma jumping backward from a blurred swipe that sent a line of condensed blue fire shooting through the air. On the return stroke she shifted the glaive into a poleaxe — and switched places with Leese.

The two of them swapped in an instant, movement Skills reaching through their Domains to exchange places and letting Raine crush Enma's guard with overwhelming power. The sound of metal on metal rang like an explosion as Leese's much quicker and thinner spearpoint found its way through Moma's defenses. The Azoth arced backward in a bolt of lightning, reappearing at the teleportation pylon in a thunderclap while Enma grunted and blurred away from Raine's heavy strikes.

For a moment there was a pause. Frost and flame covered the Alum-ranked stone of the Nexus, black spots scored the walls where lightning had scorched the rock, and somehow the door had been cut in half from the aftermath of one of Raine's swipes. Tok-Tok vanished, a strange surge of essence twisting around him, and the two Azoths glanced at each other.

"Who are you two?" Enma demanded, inspecting the dent that Raine had left on the massive sword. The damage wasn't much, and would surely be simple enough to repair, but even Raine was surprised that she'd managed to damage an Azoth-ranked growth weapon.

"The ones taking this outpost," Raine replied. So far Dyen hadn't appeared, but when he did, it was not likely to go well for the Azoths. Though Raine wasn't certain if she'd prefer to kill them, or drive them off. Either way would be inviting some future trouble, but there was no way around that.

Moma snarled, a sudden burst of ravening electricity spinning up around him — and it was then that Dyen made his appearance, congealing out of nowhere with a wicked blade driven into Moma's spine. He screamed, and Raine leapt for Enma again, her movement Skill driving her forward as she made her weapon a brutal pike.

Leese moved in tandem to keep the warrior's massive sword locked down with a ranseur as Raine narrowed her Domain down to the point of her weapon and punched straight through the heavy plate into the Azoth's chest. An inferno lit at the end of Raine's spear, and fire poured out of Enma's mouth while Dyen drove several more blades into Moma's back.

Both Moma and Enma vanished in the same twist of essence as Tok-Tok, and they received a strange message.

[Azoth defeated. Essence awarded. Additional Essence awarded for rank difference] [Azoth defeated. Essence awarded. Additional Essence awarded for rank difference] [Peak Bismuth defeated. Essence awarded.]

"I am pretty sure we didn't actually kill them, right?" Raine asked Dyen, who had more experience with post-Bismuth mortality. What they had done would be more than enough to kill someone at lower rank, but Azoths were supposed to be more robust.

"Those wounds? No, I doubt it," Dyen judged.

"But it was probably enough to trigger their lifesaving items. Embarrassing for them, to be so easily bested by mere Bismuths."

"We've yet to see any of these so-called lifesaving items," Leese sighed.

"I think they're mostly provided through Temples, or guilds or factions," Dyen said, half-apologetically. Raine shook her head. Neither of them were going to enter a Temple if they could help it, and it wasn't like either of them had a place they could teleport to in an emergency anyway. Not one that was entirely safe.

Dyen faded away again, Raine only barely able to track him despite all of her advantages, while she took up station with Leese again in case they had any more visitors. The timer counted down, second by second and minute by minute. On one hand, a couple of hours was more than enough time to organize a second, larger group and come to defend the outpost. On the other, when delving dungeons took months and everyone lived forever, two hours was a tiny fraction of time to convince people to bestir themselves.

Especially if the outpost wasn't all that important.

Twice more a trio of Azoths came through the teleportation pylon, and twice more Raine, Leese, and Dyen thrashed them. Three was an odd number of people to begin with – parties were generally four – so Raine had to guess there was some limitation when an outpost was being contested. Something to force the numbers to be even and keep a faction from flooding the place with hundreds of Azoths.

There was only one other challenger before the countdown ended, if that was even the proper term for it. Someone came through the teleport pylon, blinked at them, and left again fast enough that Raine and Leese only got a reflexive [Appraise]. It was a High Azoth, and so could have been trouble, but apparently wasn't interested in making any.

"What was that?" Raine wondered.

"Seeing who is giving them trouble, I suppose," Dyen answered, as they watched the final digits tick to zero.

[Congratulations! You control Spiral Outpost South. Faction: None. You may now resurrect here. Resurrections earned: 1 Feat of Glory awarded for seizing control of an outpost as a factionless individual. Controlled Dungeon: The Spiral Depths]" Resurrections?" Raine goggled at the System messages.

"So all high-rank people can just return from the dead?" Leese half-asked, her tail flicking back and forth in thought.

"You'd think they'd need it a lot less than Coppers or Silvers."

"Might as well ask why people don't start as Bismuth," Dyen said, apparently uninterested in the intricacies of the System's design.

"We aren't going to be able to use it, since I don't think we're going to stay here."

"No, we aren't," Raine agreed, checking on her rank-up quest.

"But it did count as a Feat of Glory, so we got what we wanted."

"Underwhelming for something like that," Leese said, clearly checking her own quests.

"But I suppose it was never designed for what we can do."

[Azoth Ascension Trial destination now available] Raine touched the teleportation pylon, and sure enough, there was a new entry. She glanced at Leese and Dyen, who came to join her.

"No sense in putting things off," Raine said, and selected the destination.

"You are certain of what you saw?" Muar fixed the High Azoth with a narrow stare. Even if Muar was merely low Azoth, he was still the [Crusader], and was far more powerful than rank alone would suggest. Even if Cato had not been seen for years, everyone knew he was still out there. Gathering his strength, biding his time. And now that his agents had finally been spotted, Cato might be ready to make a move.

"The [Appraise] didn't return those names, but they were definitely Sydean, like you," the man replied. Muar believed him. For one, High Azoth Kelem was not a fool, and for two, he was one of the few people who realized that [Appraise] could be deceived and had trained himself to actually look at people. If Kelem thought that he had seen Sydeans, then he certainly had.

"Excellent," Muar said, going into the [Crusade] interface and allotting Kelem an extra share of contribution points.

"Good work. I imagine they aren't still there, but that means we know which faction network they're near."

War World Osk was a patchwork of competing factions, but the [Crusade] had improved communications between them a little bit. Enough that Kelem of the [Three Gods Faction] had reached out despite Muar currently residing with the [Alliance of Koshek Vir]. They hadn't had any success in tracking down Raine and Leese before, but War Worlds were large enough that hiding out was simplicity itself.

"Shall we put together an overland expedition?" Kelem asked, and Muar considered for a moment.

"Yes, in fact. You should treat them as being a full rank above what you can sense. While they may lack the normal backing of those who come to the Core Worlds honestly, Cato's heresies have empowered them beyond even normal elites."

"The rankers that fought them made that clear enough," Kelem grumbled. Muar nodded sympathetically. No faction on a War World was poor, but neither did any have an unlimited supply of [Emergency Talismans]. The nine individuals in question would probably be restricted in which dungeons they could risk until they earned another. Not that Muar had quite enough sympathy to allocate [Crusade] resources. Failure should have a cost.

"I will make some preparations myself and join you," Muar told him, rising and giving Kelem a nod. The High Azoth returned it and left, ghosting out of the Temple into the city beyond. No doubt to spend the contribution points at one of the Azoth-ranked facilities.

Maur proceeded to the Temple nave, settling down to meditate and pass the information on to the various [World Deities] with an interest in Osk. In the Core, he had found the gods were in general less interested in Cato and the [Crusade], but some interest was better than none. In this case, the named gods of the [Three Gods Faction] – though there were, in fact, five of them – were the target of his commune.

He didn't expect them to take a direct hand, but part of his role was ensuring that the divinities were properly informed.

Ever since reaching Azoth, his [Crusade] Skill had gotten ever clearer — but that only meant he knew with certainty when the gods ignored him. Of course, they were busy in the endless competition of the War Worlds, but the [Crusade] should have taken precedence. As it was, he only got a vague acknowledgement, better than nothing but not the full-throated eagerness he would have preferred.

He had made an accounting in his head of which gods were paying attention to the affairs of the [Crusade], and which were not. Muar had no idea what he would do with that list, for it really wasn't his place to correct a [World Deity], but perhaps one day, when things were all over, there would be an accounting. Not by him, but by someone.

With the niceties addressed, he returned to the Temple and selected two of his more ardent [Crusade] members, ones who had been with him since the beginning of the Crusade and who had made Azoth with him. He certainly wouldn't send anyone at a lower rank against Cato's agents, and even then he made sure the other two knew how dangerous Raine and Leese were.

Even then, he wouldn't have risked it with only three of them; these people were his companions and at even odds death was nearly certain, but with Kelem's forces they should sufficiently outnumber the sisters.

A quick trip through the teleportation crystal and they were in Three Gods territory. For most, that would have come with serious problems as Muar wasn't part of that faction – or any faction – but with the support of the [Crusade] Muar was marked as an ally. Kelem himself was easy to find, waiting for Muar at the teleportation pylon along with a small cadre of fellow Azoths. Muar nodded and followed after him as they all teleported to the outpost nearest to the one the sisters had taken.

It was time for a rematch.

"You're kidding." Cato stared at Yaniss — or at least, the version of her up in space. He didn't talk much with the in-System, Bismuth Yaniss too much anymore. For a variety of reasons, but especially after the purges he wasn't comfortable having too much of his biotechnology on the planet. FungusNet and FernNet were enough, along with the bone-induction communication.

"I would have thought you'd be pleased," Yaniss said, clicking her beak at him.

"It might be a chance to turn a god to your side."

"Oh, I am pleased," Cato conceded.

"I just wasn't expecting it, especially since things have been quiet for so long. It makes me wonder what I've missed. But yes, I would be quite happy to talk with Mii-Es." He didn't mention that he'd already been talking with Initik.

That was a secret that could get a lot of people killed, and not something to be casually revealed.

"I've got a device of some sort I was given, down in my Estate," Yaniss said.

"Allows you to talk to the gods directly, though I'd never heard of it before."

"It's probably something that you only ever see in the Core Worlds," Cato said, though he didn't know why they were so unknown. He knew exactly the sort of device Yaniss meant, and from his admittedly lay perspective it was a souped-up farcaster. Nothing particularly special — though System devices weren't technology, and it wasn't possible to add onto or upgrade System devices without the System itself providing for that contingency.

"I'll send myself down right away."

As with many worlds, Cato had a good amount of infrastructure fairly close to Ikent. For some worlds that meant hours to drop anything from orbit without expending a lot of energy, for others it meant minutes, and with Ikent it was somewhere on the low end. Three quarters of an hour later, his glider was undergoing re-entry, shaking from the deceleration as it approached Yaniss' Estate.

Ten minutes after that, his remote Ikent frame was in the basement of the Estate in question, looking at a projection device that might have been an exact duplicate of the one Initik had used.

"Cato." The image of Mii-Es greeted him the moment the device activated, showing someone who was clearly not the same species as Yaniss. That raised all kinds of questions, but ones that could wait until later.

"Mii-Es," Cato returned.

"I can't say I'm displeased to have someone reach out to me, but I admit I am somewhat confused by the timing. I would have thought if you were to make such a decision, it would have been reached years ago."

"Politics takes time," Mii-Es demurred.

"As does ensuring I can contact you without endangering myself."

"A fair point," Cato said, though he wondered what politics were at play among the gods. Some fallout from the purges, perhaps.

"Then let us consider the preliminaries addressed. What do you want from me?"

"That's the interesting thing — I don't know yet!" Mii-Es fluttered one hand flamboyantly, iridescent feathers shining.

"Which doesn't help either of us. My reasons might. No matter what happens in the struggle between you and the Core Worlds, small forces like myself will be crushed. Myself, my world, my allies. I already know that the Core Worlds cares little about our livelihood. You claim to."

"So you want some kind of protection," Cato said thoughtfully, considering that something had to have happened in the Core Worlds to prompt the decision. He didn't know what it might be, but he had to be prepared for a counter-strategy on the part of the System-gods.

"Some kind of agreement or accord, or a way to escape entirely."

"Anything that would make me want to deal with you rather than the Core Worlds," Mii-Es agreed.

"I'm sure you have some kind of plan to deal with defectors."

"A bit of one," Cato said, though it was only a small component of the wargaming simulations. Diplomacy was always better than war, but the problem was that the System ultimately had to go away — which meant that the World Deity in question had to trust Cato with his or her life. That rendered diplomacy rather difficult, but if people were desperate enough it did become possible.

"First of all, the System must be removed. That is not negotiable, and while that may seem a problem – given everything above Bismuth vanishes when the System does – I do have ways to get around it. Yaniss is proof of that." Cato spread his hands, then mimed shoving the issue off to one side.

"A world without the System is far from any other world, with decades or more between messages, centuries or more for traffic. So you're sovereign, master of not only a single planet but of every planet around your star. Which requires consideration of something the System does not encourage, but is inescapable vital outside it."

Cato leaned forward, looking into Mii-Es' eyes, at least in projection.

"The System is a lack of choice. One route, a few options, and that's it. Base reality has infinite choice, but that is its own challenge. If you have nothing outside the framework of the System, no interests or hobbies or even daydreams, then it will be a trial for you. When everything is possible, nothing is obvious." He leaned back and then smiled.

"But without the System, you no longer have need combat to gain power. The world isn't centered around fighting with swords or spears, and there is plenty of room for indulging art and music, writing and exploring realms of the mind or the world. For industry, for learning. What I can offer you is the real universe, in all its horror and glory." Cato laced his fingers together, raising his eyebrows at Mii-Es.

"Now tell me. What do you dream of?"