“Did you know?” Bear Hug’s enthusiasm always brought a smile to Anton’s face. “Did you know I got a new job? People are pretty much done studying me now and I’m barely needed for sending messages at all. But I get to go visits!”

    “That’s great,” Anton said. He wasn’t sure if that was a job, but as long as Bear Hug felt they were doing something productive… well, perhaps they were. Anton would also not fault Bear Hug if they just wanted to live, but having something to emdo/em was part of that. People weren’t meant to sit around doing nothing, and apparently that sense of activity extended to people that were nts.

    “I still work on Second Gift, emobviously/em. I have to keep the whole bnced! Not all by myself, but with everyone there. Nobody else lives in the upper and lower realms at the same time though, so I’m important there. But also in my new job I visits and then I tell people if their onions are bad.”

    “Is that… so?” Anton tilted his head. That was a emvery/em specific job. Then again if some sort of onion enthusiasts wanted him to survey variouss, it was probably fine. “You emare/em getting paid, right?”

    “I don’t need money!” Bear Hug dered. “And most stuff is made for humans. Or Akrysians who have permanent limb configurations. And so~” Bear Hug flourished, pulling out their tablet. For the most part, they kept their very few possessions inside a single storage bag. “I told them to send it all to the Cute Animal Conservation fund!”

    Anton was d that Bear Hug actually emwas/em getting paid, because he didn’t want his friends to be exploited- no matter how happy they were about it. When something was worth payment, it should be done. Perhaps more interesting, however, was where the money wasing from. It was directly from the pockets of the Alliance itself. Anton hadn’t heard anything about it, but then again it wasn’t like they emhad/em to tell him everything they were doing. Even with Ten Thousand Scrolls, he wasn’t certain he could process all of it. Nor did he need them to spy on his friends and tell him everything that was going on with them.

    “You said… onions?”

    “Oh, sure. This one time the onions were like, really bad. They said a whole lot of people could have gotten sick. I think maybe someone got in trouble for doing a bad job?” Bear Hug pondered for a moment. “I don’t think they would have if they had been paying attention to their own onions, though. Anyway, I mostly do things like that.”

    “... Farm surveys?”

    “On this one, there were a bunch of buildings that were about to fall down. One of them emdid/em fall down onto a bunch of people! And me! I wasn’t under the building when it started falling, you know. I went over there to make sure nobody got squished.”

    “Naturally,” Anton agreed. “Excellent work.”

    “Thank you. I don’t think I got paid extra for that but it’s okay because I emdid/em still get paid to show up and tell people when stuff was wrong. Then I went to this other and people were emnot nice/em. I wasn’t sure if I should put it in my report but I did anyway and my boss said it was the right choice. Then, umm, let’s see…” Bear Hug pondered. “Oh, this one I’m on has really nice waterfalls! I don’t know if that needs to be in the report though, I think they know that already. I’ll probably mention there are a lot of fish though. It feels like a lot so maybe they want to know.”

    Anton really couldn’t tell what Bear Hug’s job was. It was entirely possible that Bear Hug was being used as a vibes based problem sensor. That was… fairly reasonable. Bear Hug was still a cultivator with proper insight and a good sense for imbnces in the natural world. They might be more hit or miss where people were involved, though people being emnot nice/em to or around Bear Hug might actually be a serious problem.

    “I’m also doing stuff in the upper realms too. Besides nting stuff with you. Do you think this ce needs more flowers? I don’t know if there are enough flowers.”

    Anton pondered for a moment. “How about a mix of sunflowers and little tiny purple flowers?”

    “That sounds great!” Bear Hug agreed. “I’ll do all the tiny ones! You know, the Alliance is supposed to be good and stuff but sometimes people do embad things/em. Right in front of me!”

    “You stop them of course.”

    “Obviously! But I’m worried that maybe there will be people too strong for me to stop eventually.”

    “It’s okay if you can’t. Running away to survive is-”

    “They’ll probably kill me and it will feel emso bad/em. But not as bad as not trying, probably,” Bear Hug continued. “Augmentation cultivators are kind of dangerous. I haven’t met any Enrichment cultivators I don’t like, but someone could make one!”

    “I see. You’re concerned you might not be able to advance?” Even with Anton’s familiarity with Bear Hug, reading their intentions wasn’t always precisely urate.

    Stolen novel; please report.

    “I don’t even know whether to call it Augmentment or Enrichmentation!”

    “The name doesn’t really matter. Do you have to advance both at once?” Anton asked.

    “Pretty sure,” Bear Hug said. “I do emnot/em want to deal with an energy imbnce.”

    “If that’s what your intuition says, I would certainly follow it,” Anton agreed. “Do you think you need more insights? Time spent in cultivation practice? … More bodies?”

    “Maybe.” Bear Hug lost a bit of enthusiasm. “It could be any of those things, all of them, or none of them.”

    Anton gave Bear Hug a gentle energy pat. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out. It’s okay to take your time. Don’t be too afraid. You do know that emmost/em people in our systems are pretty alright.”

    “Yeah! And a bunch of other people too. I haven’t met that many, but these Shrieking Spirit Sect people are pretty nice. Maybe they could be part of the Alliance.”

    “That would be difficult,” Anton said. “Impractical based on distance, at the moment. You know how far out we had toe.”

    “It is pretty far. Over to the west I haven’t been as far. The Little Alliance is pretty nice but it sounds like their neighbors aren’t. They told me not to go there.”

    “Solid advice,” Anton said. He sent over a half dozen arrows carrying seeds. The more practice he got, the fewer seeds he annihted- and the less he caused unintentional damage to other things. Intentional damage was still easy enough, and he could even control it to within reasonable tolerances. If he wanted to knock down a kilometer radius of buildings, he could pretty much do that. Or a single building all on its own.

    The Swirling Swarm still bothered Anton. The results had been fine, but their mere existence was concerning. They needed to watch out for more things like that. There was no way anything close wasmon, but they still had to remain aware. The greater a perspective the Alliance could see, the more dangers appeared. However, it wasn’t like they never existed before. They just came into view, or became emrelevant/em.

    It was Anton’s opinion, and the general opinion of the Alliance, that avoidingrge numbers of deaths should be the default. That included outsiders, and even enemies. Sometimes thetter was emnecessary/em, but there were consequences to be had beyond just the political. It was actually astounding that the Swirling Swarm hadn’t created another Bloodsoaked Neb- but perhaps the way they were so spread out had helped. The Bloodsoaked Neb had been pretty tightly packed, and a repeated warzone.

    “Is it okay to stop people from being mean to other people?” Bear Hug asked.

    “Generally, yes. But it would depend on the specific situation, and what you witness specifically.”

    “Yelling at people?”

    “If you understand the situation well enough to deescte it, you might do a lot of good,” Anton said. “Try to keep up your most pleasant attitude. People can feel it. It’s okay to look a bit silly.”

    “Talking is hard, but I do try!”

    “You can also ask people for help,” Anton said. “You can bring the problem to someone in a better position to do things about it. If you know a higher ranking cultivator, you can just contact them directly.”

    Bear Hug nodded repeatedly. “I do know you can always ask people for help. I’m trying to know more people so that I have lots to ask.”

    “I think that makes sense,” Anton agreed. “We don’t want to put too many trees here. However, a forest will rest nicely over there, and we can fill it with undergrowth.”

    “You’re right!” Bear Hug said. “We can even put emivy/em. And I know a lot of people don’t like it, but some poky nts are good too. Little birdies can live there.” Bear Hug paused. “Briar is so hungry. If r gets invaded by a swarm of emdistortion nts/em, Briar will eat emall/em of them. And probably kill any other invaders, too. Briar doesn’t really like outside of r though because the energy flow is different. We have a really good schedule for clearing out ces that need it, and Briar doesn’t even eat all the trees that need to stay to rebuild the ecosystem! It’s pretty nice. Liberty might have found all the immobile nts but maybe not because there are always more. Most people aren’t motivated to go see the stars but that’s okay because I’ll see enough for everyone from r.”

    Anton wasn’t surprised that nts, even sapient nts, weren’t all motivated the same as human cultivators. However, they emdid/em still have their own drives. That was what made a cultivator function. It was what made the Swirling Swarm so terrible. Mad cultivators sometimes gained power from the very insights that broke them, and it was left to those that remained to clean up after them.

    Anton did intend to remain for a very long time. He didn’t expect he would ever run out of ces to explore in the lower realms, at least not for millions of years. No, now that he thought about it slightly it would be far more than that. Just travel to a small slice of things might take that long. Even if not all of the gxy was open to him, it didn’t matter.

    He knew the upper realms were in good hands. He was also d to see that people were working to keep things running smoothly in both, even if he didn’t know specifically who was in charge of certain projects.

    It might not seem like bad onions were a big deal, but where cultivators came in it was. The least worrisome option wasplete ignorance, but people could still get sick. Perhaps there was a gue that they couldn’t handle, in which case it was actually more dangerous than simply getting poor nutrients or a bad bnce of sunlight and water. The most worrisome was that someone might have done it on purpose to hurt people, though Anton wasn’t sure if that would ever reallye to fruition. If there were visible problems, people just wouldn’t ept them.

    The Alliance wasn’t perfect. It was still made of people, after all. Even if they were striving towards perfection, they didn’t always agree on what perfection was. People could get off the path or hide their true intentions. Perhaps for decades, sometimes centuries. If it was easier and more profitable for them they would go along with how the Alliance liked to do things. If they weren’t being watched, they might not.

    Bear Hug was quite disarming. Pleasant and at a surface level rather ditzy. Seemingly easy to fool, even. A perfect agent for subtle investigations. No doubt they had others. Like meerkats. Nobody would suspect meerkats, unless they were a true viin. In that case, they would reveal themselves more easily.