Chapter 271: Operation: Leapfrog (Patreon)

Stepping through the exit is surprisingly easy after all the effort we put into locating it.

My fears that we’d end up in a highly public location turn out to be unfounded, as we pop out floating in an unoccupied bit of void.

Or space, I guess I should say. After all, the Yin-Yang Realm doesn’t have voids; any otherwise unfilled space contains Aether.

It’s not all unoccupied space around us either, thankfully. There are enormous landmasses packed with structures floating all around us, bathed in a cool light radiating off the distant, cracked face of the massive Frost Star, Big Bortha.

I don’t immediately spot the Twinstar, but that probably just means it’s in its inactive, fused state.

We did it. We’re in Peilinor!

It’s the first time I get to take a good look at it—albeit through a borrowed set of eyes.

Before I can take much more of it in, however, Suri has the large conjuration of a trigot serving as our disguise slowly turn around. After the motion stops a moment later, I quickly realise that she was simply righting herself.

There isn’t really an up or down here in terms of gravity, but there is one in terms of hierarchy.

I realise this mostly because I suddenly recognise the landmass at the bottom as Suri’s old ‘neighbourhood’—the Pillars of Society. It took me this long only because from this distance, the skyscrapers full of apartments seem so tiny, that they make the massive clump of dirt they’re on look like a bed of nails.

Hovering above and to the right of that is a landmass shaped kinda like a potato. Which is covered in similarly tiny-looking, mismatched buildings. I recognise it from Kaitlynn’s descriptions as Facetville, which is the ever-so-subtly mocking name of the place where the Flawed tier resides.

Above that and to our left, is an even more massive, bowl-shaped landmass containing a genuine ocean of Hydrum, which I instantly connect to the name Clarity Cove. Judging from the relatively sparse mansions surrounded by lush gardens and forests, there are significantly fewer Pellucid tier Peilor than there are Solith or Flawed.

More or less straight in front and above us, however, I spot a sight that takes my metaphorical breath away.

The Gleaming Firmament.

The home of the Lustrous tier can’t really be described as a landmass anymore. It’s more of an asteroid belt holding a collection of private estates, except that the bottom of every single asteroid glitters and gleams in various colours in Big Bortha’s Cold, bluish light, as their surfaces seem to be covered in what I suspect are energy crystals.

Moreover, colourful glittering nebulae hang around and between them, giving the estates a truly heavenly appearance.

Finally, above even that, hangs a mind-bogglingly huge, facetted sphere of obsidian with a looming, black palace on top of it that’s covered in tiny blue, pink, and purple lights.

Starlight Palace.

It truly is a magnificent sight, but I don’t have time to play the gawking tourist.

We have a list to work off.

<Suri, report!> I send.

<No spatial distortions incoming,> Suri chimes. <As far as I can tell, we’ve arrived undetected.>

<Excellent. Body locations?>

A moment later, each of us conveys a sense of direction. Kaitlynn and mine both point at a large, inconspicuous lump of Boreum floating beneath the Pillars of Society, but Suri’s... Suri’s points almost straight up, directly at Starlight Palace.

<Curious,> Suri chimes. <It would appear that both of your bodies were placed in the military storage depot. As for mine, well... It seems your suspicions of our bodies being monitored may not have been unfounded.>

A shiver runs down my spine at the thought of having appeared in either location. <What do you think it means that your body is in Starlight Palace, Suri?> I send. <Isn’t that place supposed to be completely off-limits?>

<Nothing good,> she replies curtly. <Though I suppose my body might have been moved there after we cut the tether. Perhaps Starmother just wanted a nice paperweight.>

<I’m sorry, Suri,> Kaitlynn sends. <You’ll have it back someday. We all will.>

Suri remains silent for a moment, before she abruptly switches topics. <You know, it’s funny. Not too long ago, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see this place again, thus I had kind of expected this swell of sentimentality—and it is rather nostalgic—but seeing it now...>

She trails off, but from what I see before me, combined with the slightly bitter aftertaste of her communication, I get the feeling I know what the problem is.

Because one thing that immediately stood out to me, is that every next tier of Peilor society, despite clearly having fewer members, actually takes up a larger amount of space with their living accommodations.

<It’s really quite beautiful up there,> I send back. <Shame they couldn’t spend some of that effort into making the lower-tier residences look a bit nicer, huh?>

<That’s one way to put it,> Suri chimes. <After all I’ve been through in the past months, all this societal stratification feels so... so pointless. I guess I’ve just always taken it for granted.>

I nod, even though neither of them can currently see my spiritform. Perhaps a kind of revolution can be sparked among the lower-tier Peilor? Food for thought.

<Hey Suri,> Kaitlynn sends. <Could you turn us around a bit? There’s something I want to show Emma...>

The conjured trigot turns its head, revealing a few smaller landmasses in various shapes behind us.

Unlike the previous ones, these clearly aren’t residential. The lowest ones feature a variety of differently shaped arenas, tents, and other large structures seemingly geared towards entertaining the masses, even including what appear to be a couple of theme parks.

Above that are what look like various kinds of shops, theatres, museums, casinos and other public attractions.

In the highest strata, I spot what appear to be luscious resorts and parlours.

I guess even the retail and entertainment industries are stratified.

However, that’s apparently not what Kaitlynn wanted to show me.

<Okay, it’s a little hard to see right now,> Kaitlynn sends, <but... oh.>

Light floods the commercial district from the opposite side of Big Bortha, as the Twinstar enters its active phase.

It also illuminates some landmasses a little farther away.

The regular rows of plants on a few suggest they have an agricultural purpose, which throws me for a momentary loop as Peilor obviously don’t need to eat. Thankfully, I realise that their hosts do, before I can make a fool out of myself by asking about it.

However, then my attention falls on a rather odd landmass, shaped kind of like a flattened penny, which quickly starts to look awfully familiar.

A portion of it is covered in desert, a portion in lush jungles, and a third in Hydrum. And in each of those portions, there are smooth, grey walls, forming a hexagon.

I swallow. <That landmass... Is that... what I think it is?>

<Yeah,> Kait replies. <That’s the set of Humanity unleashed.>

Shit...

According to what Suri told us, the next season should already be underway; perhaps even nearing its end. Under the angle we’re viewing it, we can’t actually look down into the Hubs—and we’d honestly be too far to make anything out from here anyway—but odds are, there are humans facing deadly situations down there right now.

And there’s nothing we can do about it. Not yet, at least.

<Look at what hangs to the right of it,> Kaitlynn suggests.

I shift my attention within the trigot’s field of vision, and it falls on something which floats to the right and beyond the set, probably barely still within what officially counts as Peilinor.

A massive, gleaming black octahedron with a ring of crystal around it.

The thing that brought us here. The Voidcannon.

And beyond even that, I spot a distant collection of enormous, mismatched landmasses. Some flat as pancakes, others huge hollow cylinders. But also, a couple of massive spheres.

Planets.

I wonder which of those belonged to the Hoig...

My money is on one that appears almost entirely covered in tiny islands surrounded by water. Well, I guess that’s probably Hydrum now, but it must’ve been water once, as the Hoig supposedly came from the Entropic Realm as well.

<Quite the collection the Peilor have there,> I drawl, a bit of my anger leaking through. <I’m almost surprised they didn’t just dump all those landmasses on a trash heap somewhere after they were done abducting the survivors.>

<We Peilor are many things, but we’re not wasteful,> Suri sends with a mental sigh. <Abducted planets and the like are usually left to settle for a while. Once the local flora and fauna have finished adapting and the biome has stabilised, they’re turned into a sort of safari parks.>

Kaitlynn mentally winces over the connection when I squeeze her hand too hard, momentarily flattening a portion of her spiritform.

I take a deep breath and, with difficulty, pull my attention away from... all that. <Sorry Kait,> I send. <So... Where do we find Lyrack?>

If the buildings in the Flawed-tier commercial district looked mismatched from a distance, it’s a thousand times worse from up close.

It’s not a mere matter of there being no consensus on architectural style, I’m not even sure if there’s a consensus on what constitutes a building.

Structures have been drawn up in every imaginable shape, from materials that range from simple stone and wood to glued-together skulls and flowers encased in Boreum.

To make matters worse, each building has not only a unique height, but also a unique orientation, making it so that even two structures standing next to each other with relatively rectangular floorplans are angled away from each other.

Navigating the narrow, constantly winding streets that are left in between is nerve-wracking at first, but as Suri predicted, the Peilor on the streets here don’t pay us the slightest bit of attention.

Only the occasional other Solith-tier Peilor has their host nod to us in greeting.

Apparently, there’s nothing stopping lower-tier Peilor from moving around in an area above their tier—as they’re often required to for menial tasks—but they better not count on receiving a friendly word while there. Or any word, really.

Frankly, I find the treatment appalling, but it’s definitely working in our favour right now.

In order for our disguise to remain realistic, Suri doesn’t just have to mimic real Lavi Flows and Qi inside of it, but also the way Peilor and their hosts move around.

She naturally chose to disguise our rhino-sized trigot ‘host’ as a Yin creature, which means she’s mainly pretending to use a combination of Negative Inertial Energy, Spatial Energy, and Breath Control to move us around.

One benefit of her Imagining these things, is that it actually does allow us to travel. A downside is that her fake energies can’t actually affect anything physical, so if she bumps into anyone—or even envelops them in an Imaginary energy field, probably—the jig will be up.

Frankly, it sounds hellishly complicated to do, so I’m glad the majority of the Peilor we come across are deliberately avoiding and ignoring us.

Especially since, even with the help of public holographic maps, it takes us quite some time to navigate our way through the confusing mess of winding streets and mismatched buildings.

<Who designed this place?> Kaitlynn complains after a while.

<No one, dear,> Suri chimes dismissively. <Such is the nature of the Flawed, they...> She trails off.

<What? What is it?> I ask in alarm.

<Son of a bitch,> Suri curses. <It’s propaganda! It’s all friggin’ propaganda!>

Did Suri just say friggin’? That’s... weird.

<Talk shows and podcasts and comedians... they’re always joking about what a mess the Flawed made of this place, but it’s the Council of Stars itself who set up the rules and grant the construction licenses. They created this situation on purpose, or allowed it to come into being, at the very least, just so they could laugh at the Flawed for making a mess! >

<Huh,> Kaitlynn sends. <Yeah, I remember Kai joking about it on stream as well. Sounds like they’re trying to push a narrative about the differences between the tiers, to justify the social stratification.>

<Well, that sucks, but it’s not exactly their worst crime,> I drawl. <Can we stay focused on the mission please?>

<Yes, of course,> Suri chimes, more calmly. <Actually, I think... yes, here we are.>

She turns the corner and brings us to a halt in front of a building with a huge, broken crystal embedded in the front, and the words ‘The Cracked Joke,’ spelled out below it in gaudy, glowing crystals.

<Welcome to the second-best third-rate comedy club on this side of this particular street,> Suri chimes drolly.

Yikes.

Author's note:

Thanks for reading! ^^