Chapter 167

Pentra La’H Twol

Trapped

For over a millennium Pentra sat in isolation. Her wounds slowly, oh so slowly being healed in the toxic air of the newly integrated planet. She was part of the vanguard, a scientist cultivator who dedicated her whole life and future to this one mission. To begin the terraforming process on a newly discovered world that could sustain life.

Pentra, much like the others who had come with her, thought the inhabitants were primitive at best. They were surprised that they could even communicate with the locals at first.

Originally, they were welcomed. Well as welcomed as they could be. When the natives tried to protest or fight back, they were struck down instantly with heavens defying forces. Even an initial cultivator like Pentra had been able to make a difference. Of course, only initial level cultivators were allowed to take on such a journey, as the planet’s level of toxins and lack of qi would have been more than enough to cause severe damage to the most capable of cultivators.

Then there was a time of peace, when they were allowed to live in peace, to set up their terraforming platforms. By the time the inhabitants realized something was amiss it was already too late. At least, that was what they thought. That was what they all thought, at first.

But the inhabitants evolved.

They changed, in an alarming way. They had powers that seemed to mirror the qi fundamentals that her kind held so dear. Worse, they managed to fuel their use of powers with the toxic energies of this world. As if somehow the world itself was fueling the inhabitants with spite and venom.

That was when the great war happened.

50,000. That is how many scientist-warriors were chosen to be the vanguard for terraforming this new and wonderful world. For her part, as one of the vanguards, Pentra would have been gifted a sizable chunk of prime cultivation territory for her and her family to expand on. Additionally, she would have been made a progenitor of this new world. All of that was taken away by the betrayal. At least that is what her fellow scientists called the act.

There had been a violent and bloody war, but her forces still won. At least, that was the consensus from her fellow cultivators. They had won or were at the very least winning.

But it had been a costly war.

The natives, they could breed rapidly. While each loss of life from Pentra’s side could not be replaced. It was a death by a thousand paper cuts.

But even still the forces of the planet were cut low.

Why didn’t they use energy weapons to burn through the enemy defenses? The answer was simple. There was no room for such super weapons on what was to be a scientific journey. All weapons were confiscated and destroyed by project managers when they were found. Besides, they were cultivators. Their whole path for improving their existence, was predicated on advancing forward as best they could, with what they had available.

Finally, there had been the final drive, a battle to end all battles. Where a decisive blow would be struck, culling the natives once and for all. But they had once again underestimated their foes.

Well not Pentra, she had been on the side for peace from the beginning. The path of cultivation was long and winding. Who said there had to be war at every turn to achieve immortality?

The way of Peace is not as quick, as the way of war, but it is still as fulfilling. At least to Pentra it was a noble path to take, and one she wished to follow herself. But her superiors thought otherwise, and ultimately, she was forced to fight.

Even to this day, she wondered if part of why she had been spared that day, was because of her want to follow the path of peace.

She had not been the only survivor.

Others around the world gave their last commands and submitted remote commands for the terraforming platforms to dig deep. Just as the native air was toxic to her kind. So too was the air form the terraforming platforms toxic to the natives of this world.

That had been their one saving grace. Their one bastion of hope.

While the qi levels were still too low to cultivate. Still too low to help her broken body heal faster; she had been safe from the relentless pursuit of the native inhabitants.

That was why, she was at first relieved to be awoken by the alarms of unauthorized persons using the qi training rooms. In particular, she was at first delighted that the alerts were for not one, but two beginning peak tier experts. Two meant a team. Two meant an exploration group was sent. One that likely thought all inhabitants were dead. That was not a bad assessment, she would have assumed much the same, if she were sent here to investigate the different abandoned facilities around this tiny planet.

That was why she was confused when she saw the readings. First the planet was only at 68.325%, that wasn’t nearly enough to warrant the release of the settlement teams. Also, she didn’t see any signs of codes being sent. Well, there was one code from an observation platform from a few months ago. One that said a vessel was on the way. But that was too far out, the numbers didn’t add up. Even assuming some form of increased speed in space flight, the distance was too much to warrant that being the vessel used to send these two.

Also, the alert from the observation platform was for a single person pod. Not a two-seater. So, even if it was the case that the observation pod had carried one of the cultivators, where did the second one come from?

That was when Pentra decided to leave her stasis pod and check the live feeds of the training room.

When she turned on the monitors, the image that she saw made her blood run cold. For a second her cultivation stopped, as all she could do was stare in fear.

For a second, she thought she was still dreaming, that she was experiencing a nightmare. Her worst dream comes to life.

She saw two inhabitants, two of those lesser beings in her training room. Worse, they were giving instructions to the AI, and the AI was acting on them.

Turning on the audio feed to the room. She heard the two talk in that weird throaty language that the inhabitants use. Then the male, at least she believed the one to be a male due to muscle structure, spoke in flawless Galactic Common, the commands to run.

Then Pentra watched in horror as the small female began performing earth-based training.

Pentra looked on in horror. These two, they were like rodents who had snuck aboard her space vessel and were now eating her provisions, as if they were part of the crew. Worse, the automated system was letting them.

At first Pentra wondered why this was? Then she realized that was how all the gyms were, no one wanted to carry their badges to the top where the gyms were. So, it had been accepted to work for anyone, so long as they gave valid commands.

“They are coming to kill me.” Pentra said, under her breath.

Then she paused. “No, think rationally. If they were here to kill me, they would have likely already come for me. No, the fact that they are in the gym means they likely don’t know that I am still alive.”

Somehow speaking out her thoughts, always helped Pentra think more rationally and clearly. That was why she did so, even now. Now when the only one that could hear her was her own systems. Systems that wouldn’t act upon her word, until she gave the activation phrase. A phrase she made sure not to utter as she got her thoughts in order.

She wanted to act impulsively. She wanted to turn off the gym right then and there. But then she realized that would only make the two move out and know of her existence. Then they would be ready to hunt her.

No, for the moment she would keep the gym up, as she tried to figure out what she could do.

Panic began to grip her mind, as she suddenly felt trapped. Here she was, still injured on an alien planet. She was in the core room, which gave her universal control over the facility.

A quick passive glance at the worldwide network showed that several facilities had already been taken offline. In fact, two of her friends. Well, they weren’t friends, Pentra had never actually met them. But two fellow survivors had their own stations destroyed.

She saw them, their status was shutdown.

A chill ran down her spine, as she tried to piece together a timetable of how fast these two moved. Over ten nodes had gone dark within the past three months alone. Forty in all had gone offline within the past seven years, that was too many to be a coincidence. Still there were more than enough to complete the terraforming of this planet, but their rate would be slower.

At this rate, not many promising cultivators would want to come to such a planet. First the time to conversion was long, for a planet of this size.

Second, the lack of living support personnel would also cause a few doubts to form.

No, this was bad.

Panting.

She felt her breath tightening. She was a scientist. A stupid scientist who thought it would be a fun trip. One that would pay off her cultivation charges. But now she felt trapped. She had already survived death once, well more than once. But this was not a scientific expedition. This was no pleasure cruise through the stars where she would be first to see an alien planet slowly evolve and form into a safe natural environment. No, this was a relentless war of attrition. One she found that she was on the losing side of. Despite having the scientific and expertise of cultivation, the inhabitants of this planet were oddly resilient, despite not learning to cultivate their bodies.

Then a thought hit her, she pulled up the room’s readout of their physical structures.

Phew.

Pentra let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding. While it seemed that the bodies of these two could accept qi, and she was impressed that the two could in fact cultivate. There was still the fact that their bodies were frail. They had never learned how to incorporate qi into their own body structures.

With that revelation, Pentra began to relax a little. She had options. While the two could clearly cultivate and had understanding of the base elemental forces far beyond her own. They also had frail bodies.

Out of curiosity, she rewound the feeds, to see the first cultivator. She watched as the male; she was almost certain the taller one was a male of the inhabitants. She watched as the male quickly and efficiently went through the different regiments that were before him.

Pentra also watched how the male, while being stronger, deferred to the female. This was another odd cultural thing Pentra noted about the native inhabitants of this planet. Here, there didn’t seem to be any rhyme nor reason as to who oversaw a relationship. Here the strong could defer to the weak, or the weak the strong. Often the leaders were not the strongest fighters at all, but someone who the warriors would listen to. This was most peculiar when trying to deal with the inhabitants. Also, several errors were made in their first few skirmishes because of their own faulty assumptions of power. Originally the fighting force of the inhabitants was thought to be far weaker than was the case. The reason for this gross under estimation, part of it had been arrogance. But the other part had been that initial strength values were measured against the leaders of the forces.

“So many lives lost, due to gross underestimations. I will not do the same now that I am in charge.” Pentra vowed to herself.

She spun the feed forward, till she was once again witnessing the real time results of the two. She watched as the small female created waves of earth and stone. Meanwhile the male just sat there passively watching, letting the flows of energy flow through him.

“No, I will only have one chance at this. I need to come up with a plan.” That was when she thought for a moment. Then her eyes glowed a deeper shade of crimson, as she figured out what she would do next.

With a slight malicious grin forming under her tentacles, she pressed a few buttons as she began to gain control over the programs running in the gym. “Now we will just see how resilient these natives truly are.”