Taj laughed madly in a crater caused by a giant shockwave of energy, covered in ants. "That was close, huh?"

Horst shrugged. "Was it? Our buddies knew what they were doing."

"Still, Domination explosions are a bit…" Taj looked down, making sure not to crush any void ants beneath their chin. "Too much, right?" Fortunately, void ants negated the energy that propagated the shockwave- if it had a larger physical component, neither of the humans would have survived.

Despite Horst's cavalier attitude, he also wasn't intending to stand up any time soon. It was nice to just lay down with no one around. It was better not to think about the fact that everyone that would have been around was atomized or blasted into the stratosphere, but even that didn't bother someone that lived within the Swirling Swarm territory for decades.

Eventually they got up. They had a planet to… protect? Avenge? It was difficult to say. The two of them made their way back towards known friendly territory. They could still feel powerful Fearsome Menagerie cultivators clashing with the Swirling Swarm- a significant distance around the planet.

That was actually the last they managed to get involved. Even Madiha only made one more foray beyond enemy lines and then… the Swirling Swarm just broke down. Once the last of their Domination cultivators fell, no more popped up. Those that remained were still wild but… aimless.

They didn't have a unified goal. Some fought against each other. Some sought out new targets, but more slowly. Augmentation cultivators from the Fearsome Menagerie came for them, and even Madiha didn't want to get anywhere near the wide area attacks they were using.

"So what do we do now?" Taj asked.

Devours Villains looked at all of them. "Take a break. Then ask for a ride. Unless Madiha has gotten far better at interstellar travel?"

"Aside from being dragged along just recently, I have no more practice than the entire time you've known me," Madiha confirmed.

Of course, she had traveled between planets like a normal person. On a ship. The Scarlet Alliance had them for a reason. Normal people didn't need to fly in space on their own. Madiha had only really done it for vacuum and null gravity training. She couldn't always expect to find herself in a proper atmosphere. She probably could travel between systems, but it might take significantly longer than a ship, and she wouldn't do well with human or void ant passengers.

"Is asking really wise?" Horst asked. "I remember your assessment of the Fearsome Menagerie was as enemies." Since Horst and Taj hadn't actually seen any of the Scarlet Alliance, they only had intel that Madiha shared with them. The Swirling Swarm wasn't great at informing people about the outside world.

Madiha just smiled, "I've trained you two in infiltration for a reason. Well, it's possible with an entire planet's worth of agents here we've already revealed ourselves… more than the spontaneous Domination cultivator deaths. But the Fearsome Menagerie isn't completely exclusive. We can probably purchase a ride."

Madiha held up a storage bag she had taken off of an Augmentation cultivator. The Domination cultivators had a nasty habit of exploding and erasing theirs, but snatching one bag was easy enough with everything that had happened. It should have enough to pay for more than a couple rides.

"And bribes, if they're suspicious of us," Madiha said. "And in the worst case, we hijack a ship. We'll need to get moving before they get things back in order. Otherwise, the local Augmentation cultivators might just be able to pick us out. Including the void ants. They might miss one or two, but not as many as we're carrying."

For the most part, they hid the void ants by creating another layer of their own energy outside of them- a thin one, but that was enough to confuse perception. Unless people were scanning them specifically. That might be the case for the ships, but void ants could sneak on just fine. They obviously weren't going to just leave them.

Madiha knew the faces of many of the other agents, and void ants would certainly recognize the presence of others of their kind. If they linked up with them coincidentally they would work together. Otherwise, agents would have to handle themselves.

However, all the planning soon turned to nothing when an Augmentation cultivator's voice rang out over the planet. "All survivors, gather in the nearest city- the ones with Augmentation cultivators. We're evacuating the planet. Another wave of the Swirling Swarm has been spotted. Our nearest fleets are coming to take us away."

That made things easier. Not without risk, of course, but the main thing they had to do was change their aura to not be that of the Swirling Swarm. Taj and Horst might have some bad habits in that regard as faking that aura once they got proper cultivation was the only thing they had ever known, but they could follow Madiha's lead.

She had to make sure at least they made it. The proof that there were innocents among all the madness that was the Swirling Swarm. There was so much about the Alliance that she wanted to show them.

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The big picture activity of the Swirling Swarm took some time to reveal, though the one with the first understanding was probably Anton. He watched them move through various systems near the border. After saving the Shrieking Spirit Sect… he wasn't actually done. Though he had dispersed the remaining Domination energy from the first wave, the Swirling Swarm's territory was more than just a single planet deep. Those who had once been deeper within Swirling Swarm territory still moved outward in a more or less straight direction. They would eventually reach the same system- but a few days later.

Before he could deal with them, however, he observed the wider moves. The next furthest system inward was unoccupied, though it still slowed the Swirling Swarm's progress as they scrambled for whatever resources the place had. However, they weren't thorough or logical about how they went about things. Instead, they got thrown at various planets and just had to figure something out before their Domination cultivators swept them up again.

Said Domination cultivators… were not doing well. The good news was that Anton could pretty much guarantee the Swirling Swarm weren't going to overrun the entirety of the upper realms. Not with the unstable state they were in. They would burn themselves out before that. They probably couldn't even reach the Scarlet Alliance. That would take four to six months, without accounting for slowing down in each system. Unfortunately, even though Anton didn't think they would last more than half a year, he couldn't just shrug his shoulders as everything within a few months' travel of the Swirling Swarm was annihilated.

That might be the determining factor in some places, where they just… broke down. But it wasn't comforting, especially if he considered that they might somehow resolve their issues. Perhaps their transitory Domination cultivators could come together to create a real anchor. It didn't matter if it took a few of them to properly match the threat of any other Domination cultivator.

But Anton could only pass along his observations… and cover a small section of the border. Away from the center of the galactic plane, with the Shrieking Spirit Sect being close to the middle, the wave of Swirling Swarm cultivators was expanding. Some of those systems weren't occupied, but others were.

Now that he'd saved one system, it wasn't enough. Anton wasn't willing to work himself to death… but he was better. It showed what a few intense days of raining destruction on his foes would do. Calling them battles would be a bit much from his perspective, because the only threat to his own life was if he did something stupid. Even so, he performed his task with all seriousness and vigor, reaching out to those beyond the Trigold Cluster that didn't even know him.

So he did his best. He focused first on the Shrieking Spirit Sect, intending to prevent future fleets from even arriving. Anton was exhausted, but he had a few days as the next incoming system's worth was still quite some distance away. He took his time shooting them down… and noticed something quite interesting. Because the Swirling Swarm was extremely wasteful, their first group had absorbed quite a significant amount of the energy along the way.

That meant the following fleet to travel the same path had less to work with. Normally that wouldn't be too big of an issue, because they were being carried along by their Domination cultivators. However, some were using ships and there were other consequences at play- the lack of care they had for… literally any lives. In short, many were less able to protect themselves from infighting or unintentionally being crushed.

It also seemed to be a problem for the Domination cultivators. Though normally they would draw their power from an anchor, they still made use of surrounding ascension energy. They were weaker in the lower realms on the few occasions they had come- slightly more when one considered the friendly individuals the Alliance transported across. Already unstable pseudo-Domination cultivators didn't do that great with less Ascension energy.

Anton doubled down on his attacks, focusing on one section. Each attack Anton made took some of his own energy and the local Ascension energy that wanted to annihilate it, so the more he focused on one path the more he depleted the energy. He took out the second group's Domination cultivators over the course of several days, making use of his improving expertise. That left half a fleet stranded and limping along. Anton didn't have the spare capacity to take down every single individual remaining. Some would make it to the Shrieking Spirit Sect's system, but their strongest cultivators should be in fighting shape once more.

After that, Anton noticed a very specific but expected phenomena. With the Swirling Swarm's territory being vaguely shaped like a spherical shell, the part that was pressed up against the border between realms had far more systems along its width than the average depth of the Swirling Swarm. That was important because with nowhere to go directly outwards, they pushed against the border.

He was lucky. A couple groups crashed into each other, and rather than joining as they very well could have actually clashed, annihilating each other. That wasn't the norm, but he was glad it could happen. As for the rest… there was a massive flow of cultivators still on the way, if any real portion of the systems had been pressed towards the galactic east.

Before he could even begin to come up with a solution to the problem, it began to present itself. It happened when the third group that could have reached the Shrieking Spirit Sect turned aside- towards him and the lower realms.

They would never reach him. It was several times as long to cross the gap to the lower realms as it was to pass between most systems and the difference between lowered energy and no energy was a vast gulf.

That gave Anton the idea to try to provoke the rest. It was a bit of a risky plan… but there weren't any active systems around him. If the Swirling Swarm reached the lower realms they would crumble more quickly than they were already- crossing should do the same. If he could provoke more to do the same… the most they could do was tire themselves out. They couldn't reach him, though he'd be more capable of destroying them if they even got close. But in the worst case, he was faster.

He didn't want to leave any roaming the lower realms… but that was something that could be handled over time. Based on his extremely loose estimates, the Domination cultivators should expire before they reached inhabited systems, unless they knew precisely where they were. But even Anton couldn't sense any from where he was, so they'd have to have records.

Of course, Anton would first have to succeed in provoking them.

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