184. Sauna

“You should have joined me!”

Evangeline’s warm smile triggered a likewise reaction. There was so little time for family, Alistair felt.

“I wish. Cleanup duty wasn’t so bad. Almost got a level out of it.”

Evangeline raised an eyebrow. “What’re you at now?”

“73,” Alistair said with a smug smile. “And you?”

“Show off. I’m at 64.”

“That’s not bad,” Alistair said honestly. “I don’t understand it fully, but I think the more ambitious your build is, the more energy you need to level up. Being lower leveled compared to your peers could mean that your end road is longer.”

“But you’re still the highest level on Earth,” Evangeline pointed out.

“Yeah, because I’m the best. And technically, you’re my subject now. I’m the only nobility on Earth, excuse you. I think I need some honorifics.”

“If you’re a lord, then I’m a lady,” Evangeline said. “I’m your heir, since you don’t have any kids.”

“Wow, bringing up me dying. You’re cold.” Alistair stopped and concentrated on his surroundings for the first time. [Reality Sense] registered the sensations, but he hadn’t thought about what they meant. They weren’t alone; over a hundred people were sitting and walking in the vast emptiness of the simulated space. “Wait, where are we?”

“The library,” Evangeline said. “It’s super cool. You just have to concentrate and the library’s AI interfaces with the Pathfinder AI to find books you want.”

Alistair tried it out. He focused on books about the Clear Water Sect, and a blue system window popped up. He saw a list of two books, one titled, A History of the Sects During the Reign of Emperor Dragus, and the other The Makers and Movers: Important Cultivators from the Reigns of the Last Two Fell Emperors.

“Huh, that’s cool. Can we borrow books?”

“Sadly, no.” Evangeline shook her head. “You can only interface while you’re in here. From what I understand, this isn’t even a large library. It’s literally the Grand Imperator’s personal selection, and it still has over a million texts.”

“I can see why you’d enjoy it. How was the majordomo? He seems a bit… zealous.” Alistair didn’t see any reason to soften his words about the man. It was possible he was listening in, but he was quite certain that the Grand Imperator did not tolerate fools.

“We saw him in his official capacity as a spokesman for the Empire. When he escorted me, he was cordial. He gave me a tour of the ship.”

“How do you even get around?” Alistair asked. “This thing has gotta be at least a hundred miles long and maybe eight miles wide.”

“There are Teleportation Circles every few miles or so. The majordomo told me that this is a Grade-5A spaceship.”

“Grade-5A?” Alistair asked. He knew that referred to the Sublimed Machine’s preferred method of organizing the realms of cultivation. Doing the mental math, Grade-5 was Visionary. “Does that mean a strong Visionary?”

“A Peak Visionary,” Evangeline corrected. “Verging on Grade-5S, which would be the pseudo-grade in between Visionary and Exalted that doesn’t really exist for cultivators, only objects. The Empire doesn’t play softball when it comes to their Grand Imperators. Why shouldn’t they? It should be impossible for any of them to turn against their maker.”

Evangeline carefully emphasized the “should” of her sentence. That was right. It should have been impossible for Choran to betray his master, but it happened nonetheless. That further emphasized the inscrutable methods and potential power of the demonic organization backing them up.

His sister knew him better than anyone else, so she certainly caught his dark expression. “Don’t let me hold you up. We’ll have more time to catch up later. I’m in the middle of reading, and I can tell you want to explore the ship.”

“That obvious?”

“Just go,” she said, pushing him toward a glowing white rectangle at one end of the space.

Alistair took her advice, giving her a big hug and making his exit. Before he left, he noticed some things about the planetarium library.

With his new 360 degree vision, he looked at everyone. His mastery of focus wasn’t complete, so he couldn’t truly examine all 124 people in the room at once, but he could at least count their number that without thinking too hard.

The peculiar thing he noticed was almost half the people in the room were young. It was often hard to tell the difference between ages, since cultivation slowed down the aging process, but something about their demeanor struck Alistair as evidence they were actually youthful—between eighteen to twenty-five years old, perhaps.

Based on the strength of their aura, they were all at the Adept realm, with a couple standouts. They all wore an interesting robe that was partially see-through, which set off a memory.

Where have I seen that? Alistair considered. That’s right, Yarik wore nearly identical robes. They must be from the same sect.

Alistair decided that being shy wasn’t going to get him in anywhere, so he walked up to the nearest person wearing those robes. That turned out to be a group of three women, all beautiful like cultivators tended to be, each with their hair tied into a bun and fastened with black sticks.

“Excuse me,” Alistair said. “I noticed that all the young people here are wearing the same robes. Are you members of a sect?”

The right most girl, taller than the others, giggled. “Isn’t that the Prime Initiate that Yarik lost to?”

The middle girl, whose hair was so black it blended into the sticks, shushed her companion. “Don’t be rude. Yes, we are all outer disciples of the Divine Sword Sect. You are to join the Clear Water Sect?”

Alistair nodded. “Yes. Is that a problem? Are our sects enemies or rivals?”

He thought he caught a glimmer of a smile on the middle girl’s lips. “No, I wouldn’t say so.”

“You’re too nice,” the left girl said. “The Divine Sword Sect is one of the four great sects of the Empire. The Clear Water Sect used to be prestigious, but it’s not within the top fifteen any longer.”

“I see,” Alistair said. “Why are you on the Grand Imperator’s ship, though? I can already feel that the ambient Mana on this ship is far better than these parts.”

“There are close to a thousand outer disciples on this ship,” the raven-haired girl explained. “We’ve come with one of the sect elders to test to become inner disciples.” She looked at her friends with a frown. “There’s no harm in telling him. It’s not as if it’s a secret.”

Alistair knew a little about the sects, how they were split into three sections, the outer disciples, the inner disciples, and the core disciples. Everyone started out as an outer disciple, and then you could work your work up the ladder.

Even though the Clear Water Sect wasn’t as prestigious as it used to be, only Profound realms and those of unbelievable talent were accepted to be core disciples. That meant that becoming a core disciple under the age of a hundred was almost unheard of.

The sect cultivator continued. “The other sects might have fallen to favoritism, but the Divine Sword Sect is strict with its promotions. Only through proving your worth can you be promoted. We were supposed to venture all the way out to the edge of Chaosbeast territory, but we got attacked by pirates on the way, so the elder decided to adjust our curriculum on the fly. Chaos is too dangerous right now.”

With his Intelligence improving his memory, Alistair recalled the exact words of the Pathfinder AI.

Ever changing and unceasing in adaptation, the essence of Chaos is permanent impermanence... It is better to ask what Chaos is not rather than is, and the one thing it is not is an ally of creation. The incursions grow worse every year, worse I tell—

Not caring if he looked like a country bumpkin, he decided to poke around more. “What’s going on with Chaos?”

“You haven’t heard?” the girl on the left asked. “Ah, nevermind. What do you know about the Chaos Legions?”

“Nothing.”

“We should get going soon,” the girl on the right said. “We’ll miss dinner.”

“Fine, I’ll give the abridged version,” the left one responded. “The Chaos Legions are a name for the infinite entities borne out of depths of Chaos. They’re always trying to invade the multiverse, but they’re thwarted by champions of the Heavens. Those kinds of things involve Truthseekers clashing, but the impacts of their incursions ripple out to the frontier. Chaosbeasts try to break into the multiverse, and when the incursions get really bad, like when the elder Chaos Legions involve themselves, stronger and more numerous Chaosbeasts can break through.”

“That… can’t be good,” Alistair said.

“The Emperor will protect us,” the tall girl on the right said, clearly trying to hurry her companions. “The strongest Chaosbeasts that actually make it over are usually Profound, very rarely Visionary, and never Exalted. We don’t have anything to worry about.”

With that, the three of them left, leaving Alistair to ponder what they said. There wasn’t much he could do about such things. Only getting stronger.

After checking out some of the books, he explored more of the ship. He was not disappointed.

The Grand Imperator’s spaceship was basically an entire moving city. There were people who lived on it full time, mechanics, engineers, soldiers to man the weapons, her personal retinue of servants, and all of their families.

Besides even that, there were people completely unrelated to the Grand Imperator’s mission who lived on the ship just to see the wider multiverse. She wasn’t officially a member of the Imperial Military as a Grand Imperator, so that title offered her more leeway with personnel decisions.

As long as they swore an oath of secrecy and loyalty to the Emperor through Praetei, they were allowed to live on the ship, also provided that they contributed to the local economy.

There were restaurants, sports arenas, gymnasiums, theaters, and everything you might find on Earth and even more. There was no way that less than a million people lived inside the ship, making Alistair wonder if this was commonplace, ship cities on the move.

It was also the first time that he got to relax in a long time. There was no fighting. No immediate threat. There was the six-month deadline to Adept, but he was confident in his ability to reach that.

When Alistair found the cultivator sauna, he knew true bliss.

It was on the floor up from the library, almost directly above. The vast majority of the interior of the spaceship was a shiny golden material with the feel of polished wood, so the rocky formation was a dead giveaway for the sauna.

The entrance was a cave in the middle of the rocks, a humid and hot passageway that forced Alistair to duck to walk through.

The wide cavern led to a world of steam. That was when it hit him.

The sauna was the perfect temperature. He had been to them in the old world, and he liked those steam room types that were really, really hot.

Somehow, this opaque steam zone knew his exact preferences for saunas and modulated the temperature to suit his liking. With his current stats, it had to be several thousand degrees Fahrenheit inside the room, if not more, for him to be feeling the heat so strongly.

After a few minutes of total relaxation, where he floated endlessly in the steam, he looked down.

He was naked. Panicking for a moment, he struggled around in the steam, which he realized was like a soup he could swim through. Then, he realized that the steam always coalesced around his privates.

Huh, he thought. I hope they give back my clothes.

Dev’rox could be heard snickering inside his head.

Alistair floated alone in the steam for an uncountable amount of time. Tiny impurities sweated out of his system. He felt stress he didn’t even know he had leak out, and his muscles softened into a deep state of relaxation he hadn’t known possible.

It turned out it was also a good place to cultivate. His body cycled the ambient Mana, converting it to the types he required through his soulcore’s membrane. The concentration was even higher than the normal places of the ship, and it was one of the most Mana-filled environments he had ever been in.

Time passed and eventually Alistair decided to explore more of the sauna. He swam and swam, looking for other people, but found no one, so he gave up after a while.

After another period of time, the sauna’s heat grew too much. If he was worried he wouldn’t find the exit, those fears were quickly assuaged. The moment he indicated a genuine desire to leave, the steam cleared away and he could see the stony cave.

It was an awfully suspicious coincidence, then, that as he left, a certain lion-man exited the steam as well.

Farsa Strongbite accidentally met Alistair’s eyes. He was in his eight-foot-tall form with muscle like corded steel, his lion head somehow looking not that weird on a human body. “You’re here.”

Alistair looked at the Visionary realm with shock. He had been testing an idea for the majority of his time on Praetei’s ship.

He had only used Karma for combat before—what if he tried burning Karma in everyday life? Would he get lucky? Fortuitous circumstances falling in his lap? That was what he was aiming for, making sure to not get so low that he couldn’t be useful in a fight.

This was the fruit of his labor.

“Greetings, senior,” Alistair said respectfully with a bow. “I had not expected to find you here.”

“Things have a way of working out,” Farsa said, clothes returning to his body as he shifted into his portly and short human form. “You’ve caused me a headache, you know.”

“I don’t understand, senior,” Alistair replied with a smile.

“Watch it,” Farsa said. “The Portolon Clan isn’t happy with the imperial meddling in their business. They’ve lost face from this affair.”

“If this one might be so bold,” Alistair said. “Perhaps the young master should have chosen his fights better. I can’t be expected to just accept my death?”

“Yarik…” Farsa said, trailing off. “Bah! You wouldn’t have died, not under my supervision. The Bank of Mai Atal has a reputation to maintain.”

“All I’ve known from the Portolons has been violence and threats. You can see how their word, or the word of a close associate, would be insufficient in my view.”

“That may be.” Farsa pulled a briefcase out of thin air. “Your time clearing out vaults will be under my supervision. That is my punishment for not enforcing your debt before it came to this.”

Alistair frowned. “That doesn’t seem fair. Not that having me as an employee would be a punishment. I’m very industrious.”

“Nothing’s fair in this life or the next one, young one,” Farsa said. “Next time, be careful with your Karma. Entangling the wrong thing within your web can lead to ruin.”

Alistair considered those words very carefully as he left the cultivator’s sauna.