Some might have wondered how Magus the new 2nd had managed to cause such a catastrophe to occur in such a short amount of time. How could a clone of one of the most famous generals in Tela history have caused something so terrible to happen?

The answer is simple. Obsession.

Magus the 1st was a Tela steeped in one simple flaw since birth. He was obsessed with fighting. Being the youngest in a prominent family of 30 younglings had all of the elements needed to develop such character. Every brutal family gathering only strengthened his resolve and obsession to fight others. Every scary news report cemented the need in his mind for the Tela to fight another hostile alien race. As he grew up, this led him to serve in the military and to become a prominent general of his time.

Each of his clones had obtained his obsessive nature, yet none of his valuable memories as to the reason behind the fire burning in their souls. The original Magus the 2nd, being the first clone to have completed the replication procedure without corruption, saw Magus the 1st as his focus for obsession. He would forever be locked under his First’s impenetrable shadow unless he could prove to himself that he could surpass his original’s achievements.

This led him to amass wealth and to escape life on the Solar Citadel as fast as he could. He bought a habitat and left to create his own Core in a distant star system. To accompany him on his endeavors he had enlisted one of the later clones to serve as his stooge running his scams. Magus the 2nd was, and ever would be, someone who made others do his dirty work.

Why had Magus the 2nd chosen Magus the 15th over any other clone?

The answer is the same as before. Obsession.

Magus the 15th was obsessed with every crooked way of amassing wealth and this served Magus the 2nd’s plans very well.

Each clone had witnessed the power command over others and system Authority gave the one who wielded it. Magus the 1st had command over countless troops as well as Authority over his own Star Citadel.

When Magus the 2nd happened to discover the Leva clutch being guarded by a lone ancient Leva mother, he found the troops he wanted to command. He took the eggs and claimed them as his own, all the while ignoring the distressed mother’s attempts at stopping him. He dreamed of the ways he could command them to serve him, his army of space dragons. Surely this would separate him from his original’s shadow. It might even gain him a coveted title: The Last Wyrm Master.

Magus the 15th had dreams of his own. He found his troops, or rather convicts, much later once Magus the 2nd had begun construction of his dyson sphere. Miners were free Citizens, but convicts transported in from other Cores, they were fair game. This allowed him to skim, steal, and amass vast quantities of cr over the ages. Wealth, for the most part, that he was forbidden from spending by Magus the 2nd. He was forced to exist with only five luxury habitats to his name. It was disgraceful.

Authority was a great shackle and it served the Magus line well.

There was one significant change that occurred once Magus the 2nd finished his dyson sphere and quickly converted it into a Core. The ability to invite Citizen residents and businesses to inhabit a new neighborhood of the cosmos. Magus the 2nd leased the rights out to strip mine the resources from all neighboring star systems, further adding to his immense wealth while destroying neighboring solar systems. This made some Tela immensely wealthy during this time, edging him little by little from under the shadow of his First.

All of that was for naught, however.

Magus the 15th managed to steal everything when he claimed the Right of Succession.

In the moments after his rise to power Magus the new 2nd learned of the sweet taste of victory and success. He had risen through the Authority ranks of his brother clones in an instant after serving decades as a lowly lackey.

This, however, was not his true goal. No, he had discovered a secret far greater than a new way of mining cr while he was stuck inside the sun. A secret that he could not afford to tell anyone about, not even his First.

Magus the new 2nd had discovered this secret only after Kevin had abandoned him in place of Regeth. With nothing to do but wait, Magus the 15th had spent countless hours replaying every interaction and inspecting every detail of his time with Kevin. Everything that Kevin had done had defied the capabilities of cr that Magus had come to know.

He just had to figure out how this convict had obtained this new powerful cr.

He knew that Magus the 2nd wouldn’t have placed a convict inside such a powerful harvester body so it had to have come from somewhere after Kevin was thrown into prison.

Where did cr come from? Inside the sun. That meant that this convict must have found something new, something that no Tela had found before between his sentencing and meeting Magus the 15th.

Magus the 15th was unaware of the discoveries Kevin had made regarding the Sloth leeches and Wrath creature. This was because he hadn’t lived in VR for quite a while. It wouldn’t have mattered to him if he had known. The chance at finding godlike power was worth it. A power above every other Tela Citizen. The amount of wealth that could be obtained from possessing such a secret new cr, was what drove Magus the most.

He had little to go off of. He knew roughly where Kevin had exited the south side of the sun from, this was where he started his searching. He planned to dig all the way back to where Kevin had first been thrown into the sun if he had to.

In the end, he was successful. Not far from where Kevin had first surfaced he found what he was searching for. A sphere of raw white CR. He had no way of knowing that it was gold density cr, but he did know that it matched the cr that Kevin’s harvester body was made of. He had plenty of time to study it in detail while he was strapped to Kevin’s back.

He now had his key to unlimited wealth within his possession. The only thing he had to do was to hide it away, far away on board one of his luxury habitats. All while making good on his promise to provide wealth for the war effort. He managed to do this easily enough. Choosing to do so the moment that he discovered the sphere, lest someone discover his secret.

In the end, it was his greed to find more of the white cr that was his downfall. He used gigantic layers of cr from the storage of the Core to mine the surface of the sun, digging ever deeper.

The wealth of raw cr meant nothing to him anymore as he worked to strip the sun of its outer layers. It only served as a means to pay off his First. Small change. What he sought now was only one thing. More of the white cr.

This was how the surface of the sun was weakened enough to let a creature sniff its way through into our dimension. Sniffing for the sweet smell of cr propulsion.

This was what led to the loss of a Core and the displacement of all of its Citizens. The loss of priceless treasures, artifacts, and materials gathered from abroad. Magus the 2nd had hoarded anything that caught his eye.

The loss of all of his wealth should have fazed the new owner more.The old Magus the 15th was well known to seek wealth at any cost. It should have devastated him and drove him mad with despair. Yet this was not the pitiful being that Magus the 1st had found when he summoned him for debriefing after the tragedy had occurred.

Instead of a broken clone, Magus the 1st had found someone that seemed to have some inner power, some secret knowledge. This lack of oversight and acting ability was Magus the new 2nd’s downfall.

He possessed knowledge that Magus the 1st wanted, and by overwhelming Authority and a lot of unpleasant persuasion used on him, he was forced to relinquish it.

This was how a sphere of raw gold cr ended up in the hands of Magus the 1st.

This was how Magus would get his war. One way or another.

---

Onboard Magus the 1st’s Command Carrier heading toward the Jterg Science Family Core

“What do you mean you can’t convert this into usable cr?” Magus the 1st practically screamed at the grouping of scientists who had manifested on board his Command Carrier to study the orb of raw white cr. They were all under the strictest Authority secrecy protocols, something that every last one of them regretted agreeing to once they discovered what the War General wanted them to study. This was the find of the millennium.

“It is as we have said, General. We are unable to break the orb down to more usable components. It is solid, as though it was a single cell of cr. There are no seams visible to see where to even start to break it apart.” Dolv, the lead scientist for cr research, said.

“If you could only tell us where you discovered this and how you managed to form it, we might be able to work out how to get more of it.” One of the lead scientists said for the umpteenth time. His demands for information were met like every other time he had said it, with silent disdain. Magus the 1st had given them no information regarding the sphere or its origins, just in case, they found a way back to report their findings. Each of these scientists were a newly created copy of their original and would not be living a life beyond researching this new cr. All of the findings would stay military secrets until Magus the 1st deemed it was time to reveal anything.

“We did discover that we can excite it though.” a female scientist said. Her name was Jebzzbej and she seemed to always be somewhere else but in the present mentally. She was, however, one of the brightest minds that Magus had ever observed. The conclusions that she came to were always astounding.

“Explain,” Magus commanded, never one to utter unneeded moral platitudes.

“The procedure is the same as how we used to do it before we learned how to flip our nanobots over to the neighboring dimension. Sadly, we can’t do it with this material. We can excite it and produce cr propulsion, however. This will allow this orb and any more such material that you find to drive starships to incredible undocumented speeds.” She said as she brought up figures in the air before him.

“These figures are not yet fully calibrated but they are astonishing even at the lower end.”

He studied the figures and then the vague expression of the woman.

“Shall we commence testing on its strength?” Another scientist asked who was standing near the orb.

“Yes, but with numbers like these I want you to start at the lowest setting,” Magus said with caution in his tone. He only had one of these orbs and wasn’t yet fully sure how he could obtain another one.

Each of the scientists visibly became more animated and excited, even the space cadet woman had a moment of clarity as she focused on her displays in front of her.

Surprisingly it was this spacy woman, Jebzzbej, who was in charge of running this procedure. Magus the 1st had to bite his tongue to stop himself from recommending another scientist who was more, in the present, take over. He knew that there had to be a reason as to why the other scientists deferred to her control of the settings.

It was a good thing that he held his words too or it would have been the last time that any of them would have seen the orb.

Jebzzbej turned on the power connected to an enclosure made of common grade cr and immediately turned it off and sat back.

“Wow!” She muttered to herself as nothing seemed to have happened. Her expression immediately returned her to her own distant cloud space.

“Wow? Wow, what? Nothing happened!” Magus interjected as he looked around at the other scientists who were just as baffled as he was. Everyone looked in confusion at each other for a few moments until one happened to notice something on one of Jebzzbej’s screens that was different from just moments before.

“It bent the surrounding cr.” He muttered as a hologram appeared in front of him with an image showing just what had happened in that brief moment.

Magus smiled internally. It was one thing to have a retelling and recording of its power shown to you by your clone and another thing entirely to have the power in your possession.

“Study these recordings and give me your findings.” He said, having decided that it was time to show some of his cards. The recordings that he relinquished to each of them were from his clone that he had in permanent storage. As it turned out, his newly promoted clone had tried to hide this secret cr discovery from him. This had earned his clone a permanent place in the General’s aptly named “purgatory”. It was where he kept all of his adversaries and people who displeased him throughout the years.

“Look at how it cut through the cr limb…” One of the scientists muttered to himself as he went off to stand in a corner.

“Such speed…” Another exclaimed as he decided to start the recording near to the back. Scientists were a crazy bunch.

“Does this discovery have any relation to the undisclosed citizen and the happenings that occurred at your clones Core recently?” Jebzzbej suddenly asked as she eerily looked into Magus’s eyes.

Yes, she was too bright for her own good. Magus would make sure that her copy never left his ship.