Chương 67: Chapter 22: Slowly, Then All At Once

Everyone watched the recording of Mishkell vanishing.

"So that is what we have to contend with," Cato-Heimdall said.

"I had to check, but that's Misse's own world," Mii-Es said from one of the monitors in Cato's virtual office. Both she and Initik were networked in, as the event had caught their attention too. In fact, it had been a System-wide broadcast to all Deities.

"So either she or her father are behind this."

"Misse herself," Initik opined, leaning forward toward the pickup.

"I don't have personal experience with her, but Neyar did mention her a few times. That she was dangerous, and it was only a matter of time before she was running the Nine Great Clans. I guess that time is here."

"The question is how? It's been a long time since a world was taken into the Core, but I still remember it. There was an entire set of quests.

Alums got involved. It didn't just happen," Mii-Es said, clearly troubled.

"The best theory I have is that I've done enough damage to prompt a change in permissions," Cato-Heimdall said. While several other Catos were on the call, there was really no reason for more than one version of him to present the findings available to the collective.

"A lot of what Deities do is essentially administrative control. The essence aspect is something I can't speak to, but System functions seem straightforward, based on what I've heard from the Interfaces."

In many ways, it seemed the System operated a lot like a computer network. Of course, the System certainly didn't run on ordinary digital logic, and no computer system could operate directly on reality like the System, so the comparison went only so far. But he could at least guess that there was some superuser somewhere that could dictate the processes of the System with more authority than was granted to Interfaces.

He suspected that authority was rarely used, given how easy it'd be to break the complex functioning of the System's architecture, but that kind of access could completely change all the rules Cato knew about.

"If Misse has become some kind of deity overlord – or any other Eln, for that matter – then it is only a matter of time before the entire System is subject to her whims." Mii-Es said and Initik clicked agreement.

"If she can simply decide what the System does, rearrange portals as she likes, then any world may be cut off or absorbed into the Inner Worlds or Core at any time."

"That's what I was afraid of," Cato said grimly.

"I would have liked more time to try and get more people from the Core, but I always knew there'd be a cutoff." He switched to the emergency band for a moment, dispatching a summary as well as a simple message targeted at the Sydean Lineage.

"Get out now. Project Exodus. Tell everyone." The assimilation of Mishkell was in some ways worse than the exterminatus. With the planet purges he could save the populace, but with the assimilation, it was much more difficult. Then there was the way it could utterly wreck his communications network, which was the only tool he had to evacuating people and coordinate his use of force. There was now a danger of the Inner Worlds – including Heimdall – being taken into the Core.

Perhaps even the frontier could be integrated, or at least made far more hardened against Cato's assaults. He didn't know the limits of this new approach, and whether one world now would translate into a dozen or a hundred in the following days.

It wasn't just the capability, either — it was the change in the political situation from squabbling groups to a monolith.

"It may be time for you two to leave," Cato said, returning his regard to Initik and Mii-Es. The pair of gods had been an enormous help, especially since they were the only gods he could reach that were still in the System. Marus' attempt to put Cato in contact with others had gotten only four responses, and none of them had followed through. Since Cato had no way to force them to respond, there was nothing he could do.

Initik let out a long whistling sigh, and Mii-Es nodded slowly. Cato considered the two for a moment, thinking about what this transition meant for them. While he had discussed postbiological opportunities with them before – and Mii-Es even had a second version of herself – it was different when the choice was actually upon them.

"Do either of you want to duplicate yourself to Heimdall?" He offered.

"I've got a number of other gods here already, and a lot of System expatriates, and Heimdall is in a denser star area than you are." Both Mii-Es and Initik were so far away from both each other and any other System worlds that the round trip on communications ran into the hundreds of years.

"No," Initik said, though not after giving the idea some genuine consideration.

"I admit that it would be nice to be able to stay in touch with others, but I love my own world too much."

"It is tempting, darling," Mii-Es drawled. Cato had known her long enough that she was genuinely tempted, despite the flippancy.

"But I have enough here on Ikent to hold my attention for a very long time."

"I thought that might be the case, but I had to offer," Cato said, as he saw the telemetry from Cato-Uriv and Cato-Ikent indicate they'd started the process. Unlike with prior worlds, they had enough time to ease through the System removal, stretching it over days rather than hours.

"We should reach out to all the remaining independents before you go, see if they'll cooperate now."

"That, we can do," Initik rumbled. There wasn't much more discuss – not for him, anyway, the other Catos could coordinate everything else – so Cato-Heimdall closed out the connection and returned his attention to his own business. Such as kicking Heimdall's Phage into higher production.

He had to assume Heimdall might be selected for integration into the Core at any moment, despite the political situation among the Clans, so he had to be ready to destroy all its infrastructure simultaneously and within seconds of noticing anything untoward.

The only reason he didn't trigger it immediately was that he was hoping for more Alums to leave the Core, especially now that he had imposed a deadline. None of the Alums were being sent to Heimdall for the digitization process, so hopefully it was low on the priority list even if someone decided to betray Cato's trust, but it was inevitable that even Heimdall would be unreachable, and soon.

He also pinged the rest of his postbiological population, small as it was. The pilgrimage from the Urivan Habitat had come as a surprise, but it was nice having something more like thirty people in the network rather than just himself, Raine, and Leese. Especially since Raine and Leese Heimdall were making noises about retiring already — not that he blamed them. Without the Bismuth cornerstone rearranging their neural architecture, they got tired of laboring over the same things for decades on end.

Finally, he took a long breath and sent a simple message out to certain versions of himself stationed in certain of the Inner Worlds. Two words: Project Endgame.

The transceivers on twenty-four worlds – all ones physically closest to the Core – accepted the extra message with barely a blip, hurling their electromagnetic payload out toward stars that had recently gone dim. Very, very fortunately, Mishkell wasn't one of those nearby worlds, but Cato couldn't afford to lose communication to the only weapon he had that could contest the Core.

Lightspeed delay meant that it would take years to come to fruition, but once the message was sent it really couldn't be recalled. For all the inroads he'd made into the System, he still had no way to infiltrate the Core and no ability to speak directly to those within it. The time had come to stop delaying and commit. He would still have years for any last efforts, but they would be last efforts.

"Get out now. Project Exodus Tell everyone."

The message pinged Raine Talis the moment she stepped through her portal into the guildhouse, surprising her and Leese enough that Lorraine noticed their hesitation.

"What's going on?" Lorraine eyed them suspiciously, and Raine held up a hand to indicate she needed a moment as she sent a reply.

"What happened?"

"The world of Mishkell was taken into the Core," Cato said, clearly unhappy.

"Which means that the Inner Worlds could all go away and you'd be stranded. You and every Azoth or Alum you've managed to talk with need to get out right now."

She and Leese glanced at each other, sharing their thoughts over their link, and then Leese sighed.

"Time to go," Leese told Lorraine, who understood what Leese meant instantly.

"We're coming," she sent to Cato, across the link.

"I guess that's okay," she said, stretching and then conjuring a whirl of elements around her hands before dismissing them.

"Kind of grindy now anyway."

Raine reached out to Leese, the two of them together trigging the thing in their combat brains that was Project Exodus: a complex series of instructions broadcast out to every single bit of Cato's technology on the Core. Portals opened in stutter-step to provide connection, dumping instructions into pieces of The Phage they had planted all over, farcasters clicked on and off in quick messaging code to a number of contacts.

Everything condensed down to a few seconds, straining their Alum bodies to ensure that it did happen, and no god or watching Alum could block it. Only moments after the data-dump, Raine's farcaster lit with Shiel-Ruyu's signature, and she took a second to blink and shake her head, feeling faintly overheated, before answering it.

"What happened?" He asked, unknowingly mimicking Raine's own question.

"Time is up," she replied.

"Cato needs everyone to leave the System now, or they may not be able to."

"Something to do with Mishkell?" Shiel-Ruyu asked, and Raine found she was unsurprised that the Alum already knew what was going on.

"Very well. I will spread the word."

Raine didn't know how many Alums Shiel-Ruyu had been able to speak to, but over the past few years Raine, Leese, and Lorraine had managed to convince over a dozen to at least consider Cato's offer. They'd only had to fight one, which had been a surprisingly easy battle, even if it was three-on-one. Whether or not that particular Alum had any resurrections left, they hadn't heard from him again.

"Good luck," she told him, and deactivated the farcaster, then looked from Leese to Lorraine.

"Shall we?"

"Yes," Leese said, though Raine found it strange to contemplate. After spending their whole lives, most of a century, working their way up the System – an incredibly rapid rise to Alum, from what she'd been told – the idea of leaving all it behind was a complicated one. She wasn't sure she really wanted to leave it all behind — but at the same time, she didn't want to be stuck inside the System, either. Especially when Cato seemed quite capable of doing what he promised.

Despite her last minute reservations, the three of them left the War World, traveling out past the Inner Worlds and to the frontier, heading for a particular Hunting World that Cato had established as their exit long ago. Then up into the air, beyond the planet's atmosphere, to the edge of the System's influence.

"Pod incoming. It's got room for the three of you."

Cato said over the link, but Raine could already sense the bit of metal drifting in from beyond the System's bounds. Lorraine opened a portal, one slightly more tidy than Raine's efforts, and the three of them flew through into the interior of the pod.

"Well, that's not creepy at all," Lorraine said, eyeing the strange living coffins that were embedded into the hull of the ship.

"Yes, I apologize for the aesthetics, but getting it to work inside the System was pretty difficult." Cato's human avatar waved from the corner of the pod.

"Good to finally meet you, Lorraine."

"So you're the bogeyman," Lorraine said, shaking her head at Cato.

"I thought you'd look more, I don't know. Digital-exotic, for someone who's got the tech to snuff out stars."

"I'm too old for that," Cato said with a laugh.

"There's a lot of people who are like that, but I haven't bothered for a long time. Anyway, go ahead and climb in, just make sure to pull in your Domains and essence so it can read you. And don't worry, I've got one for your pets, too," Cato said, indicating a pair of much smaller pods next to where he stood.

"Thank you," Raine said, opening her Estate and whistling for her comms-lizard. Even if it had come from Cato originally and she knew it was almost a thing rather than an animal, she'd still grown fond of the little beast and didn't want to leave it behind. Her pet scurried out of the Estate and she picked it up, rubbing behind its tiny horns before placing it in one of the pods. Leese set her own down in the other pod, petting it briefly before murmuring to it and closing the top.

Raine followed suit, and then turned toward the larger coffins.

Leese shared her uncertainty, the pair of them hesitating briefly as the feeling was amplified across their bond, but Lorraine went to take the furthest-away of the three, grumbling under her breath in a non-System language. Raine breathed in, out, and then she and Leese together went to join Lorraine. The lid swung shut, but they weren't in darkness. Instead, they found themselves with Lorraine, in a bright summery clearing that was a far cry from the last time Cato had brought them out of the System.

Her lizard gripped her shoulder, and she reached up to scratch it under the chin as it chirped happily in her ear.

"You're not quite here yet," Cato informed them, entering the clearing from the ring of trees surrounding it.

"The process takes a little bit of time to do right, but we have time so I'm doing it right." He waved one hand and a bar with Lorraine's name appeared in the air, indicating a percentage finished.

"You two have the hardware for a transfer, but I figure it's better to just go with an official System exit."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"I thought the transition would be something, I dunno. Weirder? More transcendent, or spiritual?" Lorraine stooped to pick up a blade of grass, putting it between her teeth.

"Like that one time I tried x-hack."

"Some communities do use psychedelics," Cato acknowledged.

"I thought you'd just prefer something more normal." In the middle of his sentence, Raine felt the ever-present essence senses vanish — but her link with Leese did not. If anything, it seemed to expand, other aspects adding into that almost Skill-like feeling in the back of her mind.

"And now you're out," Cato said, gesturing to a stone-lined path on the far side of the clearing.

"Time to think about where you want to go."

"I don't feel very different, except for not having Skills," Lorraine said, and Raine nodded agreement. She was expecting something more profound and unsubtle, a serious shift like the first time.

"I've had a lot of practice," Cato said heading toward the path, the three of them following.

"Although I can't take personal credit for everything. It's been a collaborative effort. There's hundreds of thousands of myself, Raine, and Leese."

"That's a lot," Lorraine said, glancing at Raine and Leese, who just nodded.

"We're used to it," Leese said.

"Though we're the originals, I suppose? The ones who stayed in the System from the beginning, anyway."

"And thank you for doing so," Cato said as they walked along a path that ran through a grassy field to nowhere in particular.

"I'm not sure how often the various versions of me have said it, but without you I could never have gotten this far." Raine stood straighter, proud that they'd done their part.

"I wish I could guarantee you could see the end of the System," he continued.

"But that's only if you want to stay in Heimdall."

"I think," Leese said slowly, sharing her thoughts with Leese over the link, the two of them coming to a conclusion even as Leese spoke.

"I think we'd actually like to go see Sydea again. Then maybe Earth?"

"Oh, hey, yeah!" Lorraine said, suddenly enthusiastic.

"I'd love to see where you guys came from. And get back to Earth, though, it's got to be pretty far…?" She trailed off, looking at Cato.

"The closest world to Sydea is Uriv, at about six hundred light-years distance," Cato said thoughtfully.

"And Sydea is nearly a thousand light-years from Sol. The designs I have are good for between ten and fifteen percent light, and while transmission would be faster, I don't know it's really possible over that distance. Not without more infrastructure."

"We have time," Raine said with a shrug.

"We're immortal, right?"

"You are," Cato agreed, stopping at a crossroads in the path. A sign labeled the directions — Uriv and Heimdall.

"And you still have time to change your mind, but not much of it. I just thought I'd warn you that it's a very, very long road, and you won't know what's at the end of it."

"Not much different than what we've been doing, then," Leese said, and Cato laughed.

"I suppose not," he conceded.

"And it's probably something that needs doing." He pointed along the path leading to Uriv, which shifted and contorted for a moment before it resolved into a short road leading to a small, non-System settlement. A number of modest buildings of a design similar to Cato's constructs, of steel and glass and colored panels.

"I'll pass you off to Cato-Uriv," he said.

"And once again, thank you."

Raine inclined her head as Cato took one step back, along the path to Heimdall, and that branch shimmered and vanished. At the same time, another version of Cato stepped out in front of them, dressed slightly different than the one who had left. He smiled and spread his hands, and a System-like window appeared in her vision.

"Welcome back to Uriv," Cato said, speaking aloud what the window told her, and beckoned for them to follow him.

"And welcome for the first time, Lorraine. I'll get you settled into your own substrates, and run you through an introduction to the network stuff. If you want a physical frame, there are a few being made right now, but you can customize those, too."

"That all sounds good," Lorraine acknowledged, as they headed down the path toward the settlement.

"But what about going to Sydea and Earth?"

"Entirely possible, though it will take some time," Cato said.

"But I'm pretty sure you'd want to be involved in the construction regardless. How often do you get to build your very own starship?"

Misse scowled at her Interface. It had interrupted a perfectly nice party commemorating the induction of her own planet into the Core, which she felt not at all embarrassed about celebrating even if it was done by her own hand. Nobody aside from Muar actually knew that, of course, and she was taking the opportunity to cement relations to truly secure what her new station would allow.

Unfortunately she had been pulled away from the multi-clan gathering by one of the alerts that she'd set — if Cato's presence, in the form of the oddness that had caused the original defense quests, was seen on any world in the System. And not just a single alert either, but scores of them. All of them were worlds controlled by the few remaining independent gods, which confirmed that they had been working with Cato, albeit rather too late to do anything about it.

Worse, with her authority as [True Deity] she could see the genuine cost of Cato's invasions. If the forfeiture of the world was the only loss, it wouldn't be so bad, especially since it wasn't like any of them were clan controlled to begin with. Yet with her far more in-depth view she could see the System was pouring essence into the worlds in an attempt to offset the destruction of the infrastructure.

Suddenly Cato's lack of aggression and odd patterns of conquest made sense. He was bleeding them out, opening wounds they hadn't even realized and then lying low to keep the damage from accumulating to anything instantly obvious. Death by a thousand cuts, but on the scale of thousands of worlds. There was no telling how much essence had already been wasted by Cato's actions.

It only took her a moment to decide to cut off the flow of essence herself, effectively severing the worlds of her own accord. There was no point in sending anyone to fight for such fringe worlds when every moment they stayed open meant more essence irrecoverably lost. With the amount that had been pouring into those invaded worlds, she could have moved a frontier world into the Inner Worlds, or vastly advanced the timeline of ascending Inner Worlds to the Core.

Multiplied by the hundreds of thousands of worlds in the frontier, Cato could practically drain the System dry, if Misse let him. She didn't know how many worlds he could assault at once, but the potential to utterly ruin her reserves and render her nearly powerless to do any real work was too great to ignore. While she had thought that time favored her, it was clear that it was the other way around. The long game gave the advantage to him.

"Muar," she murmured, reaching out through her [True Deity] link to wherever he was among the party-goers. His title had not yet been revealed, only that he was her newly-ascended but favored subordinate, and so was navigating the gathering under that mantle. There would be many people trying to worm their way into her favor through him, which would be instructive all around.

He appeared by her side a moment later, joining her in the small side office that she'd ducked into when her Interface began to chime. Wordlessly, she displayed the worlds under attack, and next to them the essence figures. Muar studied them with a frown, then shook his head.

"That isn't sustainable. Even if we catch every invasion immediately as it happens…"

"Precisely," Misse said, banishing the Interface view.

"The time may have come to simply cut the frontier loose. It gives us essentially nothing, and now that I have direct control over annexation, opening new worlds is easy enough. We simply have to ensure that we are fully purged of Cato's presence first."

"I do not like the idea of giving up so much," Muar said, his face set in disapproval.

"Perhaps it is true that they are already too compromised to be saved, but what of all the people on those worlds? There are millions living there who do not deserve to be abandoned."

"They do not," Misse agreed, once again pleased by her selection of him and summoning a map of the System in all its glory.

"And we can pull as many of them into the Inner Worlds and Core as may be, but it has to be done now. We have to cut off these compromised worlds immediately, before they can be used as weapons against us like the others were."

"That is true, but we cannot simply leave people there," Muar insisted.

"Lower ranks do not require very much to survive; surely there could simply be some space set aside on a War-World to put the faithful until new worlds are brought into the fold."

"Yes," Misse agreed, as while that would previously had been impossible, she now had full access to the System's functions and setting up an area like that would be simple enough.

"Though it will be harder for all the Clan Deities who will be deprived of anything to manage. It may be their duty to serve the System, but they will not take a demotion well, even if it is only temporary."

"There is very little I can think of to appease them," Muar admitted, his tail flicking as he considered.

"You should have the authority to keep them in line, but I have encountered many with aspirations above their station."

"A few years of relative privation won't hurt them," Misse decided.

"Especially since the future promises to be more guided and deliberate than the past. No more fighting over annexations when I can just allot them directly." It wouldn't be so simple, of course. Clan squabbling would occur regardless, but it would be competition for her good graces, rather than to take and hold territory. She could quite easily maneuver people into more prudent methods of competition than merely tearing each other to pieces.

"I think that someone should be held responsible, though," Muar said.

"Whatever happened to Sydea's deity?"

"Marus Eln?" Misse wrinkled her nose, having learned that name well enough.

"He's gone. Registry vanished some time back. Normally I would say he was dead, but…"

"You think he turned coat?" Muar said, disbelieving.

"You think that Cato would let him?"

"It would be a powerful statement," Misse pointed out.

"Welcoming in even the most pathetic of Deities, though some might think that Marus had been working with Cato from the beginning. Which I might advance as an option were it not so transparently impossible. He simply didn't have the will."

"The greater question is — if he managed to defect to Cato, how? Through what agents, and with what communication?" Muar mused.

"We have not yet been able to find any of his people, though we know they must exist. He has learned to be very subtle."

"Someone must have a connection," Misse decided.

"Find it for me. Seek out Marus' fellows, and interrogate their Interfaces. Your [Overdeity] rank should allow you to look at anything you wish. And I…" Misse considered the map once again.

"Perhaps it is time to reveal the truth of my station. This cannot be finessed; it is a matter of urgency if we don't want to bleed out any further."

"I suppose it is," Muar agreed.

"I think that—" He cut himself off abruptly, hand reaching up to touch his Interface.

"We have more trouble. One of my old contacts from the Five Gods Alliance has reported hundreds of Alums heading out toward the frontier."

"Not to join the [Crusade], I imagine," Misse snarled. Alums had never been interested in the [Crusade], and she'd never expected them to be. They were powerful engines of essence generation, but they generally ignored the broader System in favor of the War Worlds. While there were only a few thousand Alums, they accounted for the bulk of essence income within the Core — the well of the True Core aside.

Which meant they were over half of the total essence surplus from mortals in the entire System, which they could ill afford to lose.

With a thought, she blocked the portals at the Inner World confluence points, cutting traffic to and from the frontier. Some Alums could make their own portals, so the block didn't completely stymie either the Alums or block essence flow, but it would make things more difficult. By removing the frontier, that temporary barrier would become permanent.

"Go," she told Muar.

"I want to know who has been talking to Cato. In the meantime, I will ensure the future safety of the System." Muar bowed to her and vanished, and Misse strode back out of the office into the celebration. Obviously the Eln clan was ascendant, but there were representatives of every clan in attendance. Which wasn't sufficient.

She reached out through her Interface and pinged each of the heads of the Nine Great Clans, opening a portal for each next to her. Even her own father, although he was merely across the room, and she smiled when he turned to her in surprise before stepping through. The others appeared in turn; after all, the System itself had summoned them. She had never even seen most of the Clan heads, only Mekkel Lundt being at all familiar, but they appeared nonetheless, looking more than a little startled.

"A moment," Misse told them, and then sent another ping, getting the attention of everyone at the celebration. The sounds of music were silenced, and people turned in her direction.

"Honored guests and Clan Elders, I must announce that the System has chosen me for a grave and transcendent duty," Misse said, forcing her title to be displayed. [True Deity].

"It is long past time that the System be the focus of efforts rather than the Nine Great Clans. Oh, I have no desire to usurp territory or upset any agreements, but there are greater concerns at the moment."

"How? What is this nonsense that—" Antar Shilek, head of Clan Shilek, began, but Misse flicked a finger in his direction and all sound coming from him ceased. She knew that completely abusing her role would only backfire, but she had to demonstrate that she was indeed in charge.

"Thanks to certain incompetent individuals on the frontier, the being known as Cato has compromised essentially all of it," Misse continued bluntly.

"Worse, in the process of destroying our worlds, he is stealing essence from the System. Growing more powerful as he consumes these infected worlds. There is, fortunately, a very simple solution — sever the frontier."

"There are hundreds of thousands of deities managing those worlds," said the head of Clan Hokar, his tone much more reasonable than Antar's had been. He certainly was smarter, or at least had learned from his fellow's example.

"There are, but I also have the ability to open new worlds as I wish, System-wide reserves permitting," Misse said.

"As I said, the entire frontier is compromised." She produced the memory crystal she had gotten from the Alum, duplicating it for the Clan heads.

"We could certainly fight that, but would it be worth it? I submit it would not," she continued, manifesting the essence costs with her Interface for them to see.

"Especially not when each fight would drain our resources, and make us less able to deal with anything that Cato has in reserve." She gave them a moment to absorb what she had shown them, the indelible proof of the threat they faced.

"No, the better solution is to withdraw to the Core, which remains untainted, and expand in a more measured way," she told them.

"A world for everyone who deserves one, rather than fighting over uncontrolled annexations."

"I follow the logic, but can it be done?" The head of Clan Ishe looked skeptical, his feathers fluffed in maximum disbelief.

"Convincing so many of our people to give up their hard-earned territory is not a simple task."

"No convincing necessary," Misse said, conjuring up a visual depiction of the System from her Interface. The panoply glowed behind her, hundreds of thousands of worlds in a great wheel of essence flows. A few brief commands detached all the Deities from their assigned worlds and connected them to the Core Worlds — something that would have been impossible before, but such restrictions were for lesser roles than True Deity.

Another effort of will created a lower-essence preserve on War World Lek, and to each of the worlds in the frontier she assigned a quest for people to leave through the new, one-way portals that led to that preserve, though Misse had doubts about how many would take it. But it was better to retain those who were truly faithful to the System. All of this was reflected on the great map of the System behind her and projected out to every Deity no matter where they were, so all would know what was happening.

"This is but a temporary retraction," Misse proclaimed to those watching.

"The frontier is essentially dead weight to begin with, and we can do better. Cato cannot penetrate the great Core of our divine System, so we will leave behind the dead wood to burn and expand into new and better reaches."

"And who are you to determine that?" The head of Clan Iskul protested, clearly not realizing how outmatched he was. Misse silenced him with a crook of her finger, though she didn't actually harm him. People like Meshan or Neyar showed that, despite what rank might say, there was always the worry of direct action from those who objected to her methods.

"I am the chosen of the System, meant to close out this threat to everyone who wishes to live in the divine light of reality," Misse said.

"And I do not take that charge lightly. If there were some less dramatic way to remove this particular rot, I would take it. But there is not, so we shall have to simply rebuild the frontier. Something better than we had before, one more aligned to the needs and requirements of the Great Clans."

She lifted her hand against the backdrop of the System map, and then dropped it, as each of the worlds within were cut off from the Core entirely. They would last for a little bit of time at least, but not much longer — and if Cato replied, no essence would be lost. In fact, she would simply decide to expunge any world that saw his presence, recovering what the System had invested rather losing it, and the people within, entirely.

It was time to build a better System. One according to her design.