Chapter 1068

Chapter 1068

Two steps within the boundary of the Silver Fang territory was the planet Sagrigan. It should have been safely embedded within their defensive lines, but as the incident with Gniteria showed they had no ability to prevent intrusion into their territory. Even so, the defensive complement available was sufficient to deter most forms of attack.

Durff had not been informed of any of this- or if he had, he hadn’t been listening. He had come with a plan, and nothing was going to stop that. His hammer came down atop their barrier, making it tremble... but that was all. But if he hit it harder... he took a great swing, sufficient to crush a mountain. His hammer rebounded from the barrier without causing any damage at all. Okay, maybe the barrier would stop him actually. He looked over towards Catarina.

“I’ve got it,” she said. “One moment.”

Durff expected her to break through like Koralo, creating a small path for them to move through. Koralo had done some cool things with rings. Instead, Catarina had a small sword and was poking at the surface of the barrier. He wasn’t going to disparage her choice of weapon, but she sure didn’t look like she was trying very hard to break the barrier.

Then... the barrier started to fade away like mist under the bright sun. Durff thought it would stop, but it didn’t. As far as he could tell, the entire planetary barrier fell apart.

“We’ve got one hour,” Catarina said. “Better make the most of it.”

He looked at her. “Are you going to be breaking their formations?”

Catarina shook her head. “Of course not. I’ll be retrieving them.”

Could you do that? Well, he supposed they were usually just fancy rocks. Or fancy metal inlaid in fancy rocks. Or... things like that. But formations also usually protected themselves from being picked up. That wasn’t Durff’s business though.

Timothy pointed with his sword. “You should get going. I’ll be here to hold off attackers.”

Durff nodded. That guy was really good with his shield. Durff sparred with him once and knocked himself halfway across the system with his own energy being reflected. As expected of people who worked with Velvet.

Alva he’d already seen... but she was already shooting directly downward. Fortunately, her arrow disappeared before it hit the ground. Below them was his target. He did vaguely feel her hit something on the other side of the planet, though. Apparently it was difficult to go through subspace and stuff around ‘gravity wells’, which was why Durff generally didn’t do that and just hit the whole planet. Much easier.

He dropped down towards the area he wanted, swinging his hammer to strike the formation beneath. He was surprised when his attack was once again completely negated. Seriously, had they built these things precisely to counteract him?

Huh. Maybe they had. But if that was the plan, they really screwed it up. Because this just made things easier for him. He looked past the barrier, seeing thousands cowering- both those in chains and those who were not. There were also many others preparing to come attack him. Probably after he tired himself by breaking through.

So he just looked for the edge of the dome, and struck the ground next to it. Durff was immensely surprised when the whole place didn’t go flying into space. They really did make stuff specifically to negate him!

The woman developed a curious expression... and Velvet moved on, releasing her illusion of the closed doorway once it was properly sealed again. Aconite had supplied the poison, so even if Velvet didn’t know what it was going to do, she was certain it would take hold in due time. On to the next one.

-----

Chidi sliced open the formation he was standing next to. He kept his voice as low as possible. “It’s open. And no, they didn’t have any wolf-focused barriers here.”

“Are you sure?” Aconite growled back. “Before-”

“This place isn’t next to their ‘wild lands’,” Chidi pointed out. “They probably didn’t expect any wolves infiltrating.” Then he made a sign over their lips.

He used his energy to keep both of them hidden. He was probably two or three tiers below Velvet in the arena of stealth, but he understood formations, the flow of energy, and where people could observe him. He led the two of them on a route through a courtyard that was currently deserted.

People were likely focused on his father, fighting a third of the planet away. A reasonable choice, of course. But that allowed them to lay their trap. Or whatever they were going to call it.

Aconite was leaving behind a trail of powder that Chidi wouldn’t have noticed if he wasn’t watching. According to what he’d been told, it would spread out as people moved around, clinging to them and eventually working its way into them. Then when they tried to use energy an excruciating death would come for them.

Chidi knew about that last part. Well, the excruciating thing. He’d been given very precise doses and instructions for how much energy he was supposed to raise, and he at least felt like he was going to die. He wasn’t perfectly immune, but he should at least be resistant to accidental exposure. Aconite herself... could probably eat a whole bag and get nothing but dry mouth.

Speaking of bags, she had a voluminous storage bag full of the stuff. It was ultimately not something Aconite made regular use of because it was very specific in only harming a sort of mid range of cultivators. Integration cultivators and above would generally be able to purge it from their systems- Chidi probably could too, as his energy control was like an Augmentation cultivator, but it was better to not have to find out the hard way.

It wasn’t something that could be deployed in front of people obviously without being eradicated. But the insidious part was how its effects might appear seemingly randomly at a later date. They might not tie it back to their sect grounds until it was too late, with many Silver Fang disciples killing themselves.

It was brutal, but it focused the results on the people most responsible for the war. Since the Silver Fang had been given several opportunities to have some sort of peace but had refused, this was the result. They were focusing on a defensive posture- perhaps hoping for some allies to come support them- but the Scarlet Alliance wasn’t going to let them sit easy on any of their planets.

The pair wove back and forth through the sect grounds, avoiding any highly populated areas for the moment. On the way out, Chidi had them stop by a vault, where he purloined a few swords. It was a decent enough place to leave some of the poison as well.

Though the mission wasn’t flashy, it would be impactful. One more step towards them realizing they weren’t safe anywhere... and hopefully the Scarlet Alliance could force a proper resolution to the war. Or at least force their leaders to engage in battle where they could be crushed as a group.

If not... they’d slowly run out of high ranking cultivators. The Scarlet Alliance just didn’t want to have to scour every planet for enemies one at a time. Plus, even if the Trigold Cluster were only loose allies they had to act eventually, if things continued to drag on.