Hestia noticed the change in Adrian's expression as he looked toward her. His attention had returned to the space around them, but his gaze remained troubled. She kept Nerion beside her and moved a little closer. "What did you find?"
"They are demons," Adrian replied. "A type of Beastborn. The same kind I fought in the Milky Way." Hestia's fingers tightened around Nerion's arm. The word brought back parts of the memories Adrian had shared with her, but before she could answer, his gaze grew distant again as he turned his attention inward.
Hestia remained beside him and opened her node. She sent the damaged ships' locations to the sect and contacted the crews still able to respond, directing them to help the vessels whose passengers had not regained consciousness. Several ships had lost sections of their hulls, and injured travelers waited among people who had collapsed under the foreign Will. She kept Nerion supported near her while passing on the requests for help, her awareness remaining on Adrian and the surrounding void.
Within his consciousness, Adrian opened another of the recovered fragments. A broken stone wall appeared, with a row of unfamiliar buildings beyond it. The mana moving through the horned man's body placed this part of his life around S-rank. He was pulling a wounded opponent through a gap in the wall while others fled between the buildings.
The scene ended before Adrian could follow it further. Another fragment showed his hands pressed against a deep wound, trying to keep blood from spilling between the fingers. A cultivator with grey scales stood farther down the street, and the horned man stumbled backward before turning to flee. Much of what came between those two battles was gone.
Adrian continued through scattered pieces of his growth. He saw fights beneath unfamiliar skies, retreats through ruined settlements, and later battles among starships in the void. Different races appeared before him, some falling to his attacks and others leaving him wounded or forcing him to escape. In one fragment, he waited for an injured enemy to crawl beyond his reach before following, taking his time even though he could have ended the man's life immediately.
Pieces of his cultivation survived as well, but Adrian moved past those for now. He followed the surviving connections to the Bloodfang Sovereign Sect and the tailed man, searching for anything that might explain the Will that had stopped him.
What remained gradually revealed the difference between the two men's positions. The tailed man was the son of a senior elder within Bloodfang, one of the powerful figures whose decisions carried weight throughout the sect. The horned man had no such family connection. He had reached Anchor through his own cultivation, but staying close to the elder's son had given him opportunities that his strength alone would not have secured.
At one gathering, the horned man waited until his companion had spoken before adding his own opinion. Another fragment showed the tailed man arranging for him to attend an elder's lesson. Their familiarity allowed him to laugh and speak freely beside the son, but when a decision had to be made, he usually followed the other man's choice.
Adrian searched farther and found the father himself within a surviving memory. The horned man had stood behind his companion during that meeting, careful to keep his gaze lowered. Adrian recognized the pressure the horned man had felt from the elder's consciousness.
It was the same presence that had risen from the tailed man moments earlier. Other fragments confirmed the elder's attainment: his consciousness had reached Weave. The protection carried by the son belonged to his father, and Adrian had been stopped by a portion of that man's Will.
Adrian kept the memory open a little longer, searching the fragments connected to the elder. He needed to know how the man would respond when his son told him what had happened.
One recollection concerned a dispute in which the son had been injured. By the time his father intervened, the fighting had ended and the other party had offered to pay for his recovery. But the elder still ordered those responsible killed. The horned man had accompanied his companion afterward and heard him speak of the matter as something already settled.
Another memory revealed something even more extreme. A faction had once supported someone opposing the elder's son during a conflict over territory. When the dispute ended, that faction lost its holdings in the region and the surviving members attempted to withdraw elsewhere.
The elder still ordered them exterminated. Their direct involvement had been limited to supporting his son's opponent, yet that alone had been enough for him to decide that none of them should remain alive.
The elder's character was clear in these memories. The bloodlust inherited by this kind of Beastborn could be overcome as they cultivated and gained command of their minds. Many achieved that control while progressing through Rule. Most who advanced far into Astral had already learned to control their urge to kill. A mind repeatedly thrown into disorder by its own impulses could not sustain the careful work such cultivation demanded.
But overcoming those impulses did not mean one had given up the pleasure they took in hurting others. What Adrian saw of the elder showed his character, along with enough power and influence to make others carry out his decisions.
With all this, Adrian understood the father would not dismiss a threat against his son merely because the son had escaped alive. He continued searching, and among the later fragments he found a memory of the elder preparing to leave.
The horned man had been standing beside the son when his father informed them that the sect had given him an important assignment in the war. His son asked where he was going, but the elder refused to tell him. The purpose of the mission was withheld as well. He only made it clear that the work took priority and that his son was to deal with his own affairs while he was away.
The memory ended without a destination or a date for his return. The father's refusal to explain the assignment had been clear, and Adrian found no surviving account that filled in what he had withheld.
That led Adrian back through the memories of the war itself. The Bloodfang Sovereign Sect controlled forty-eight galaxies, with its authority extending across smaller sects, clans, and empires within them. Established Upper Major Sects could rule entire galactic clusters, and their holdings reached far beyond the single galaxy that usually formed a Lesser Major Sect's territory.
Bloodfang was in a war against three other Upper Major Sects. One controlled twenty-four galaxies, another nineteen, and the third sixteen. They had joined their forces against it, supporting one another across fronts that stretched far beyond any single galaxy.
A surviving memory placed Nerion among the cultivators of the sect that controlled twenty-four galaxies. Adrian recognized the sky-blue face and eyes, though the fragment broke apart before it showed much of the encounter. The connection explained why the two men regarded him as an enemy, but it gave Adrian nothing about the pursuit that had brought them here.
The horned man had joined a war already underway. His memories contained orders to attack, glimpses of defending captured territory, and battles from many campaigns against those three sects. He understood the campaigns in which he had served, but the decisions that began the conflict had been made before his involvement. Adrian found no full explanation of its original cause.
Together, the three opposing sects held fifty-nine galaxies. Even against that combined territory, Bloodfang continued launching attacks and pressing into their holdings. The number of galaxies alone did not tell Adrian how many powerful cultivators each side possessed, but the campaigns he could see showed an enemy capable of maintaining the war against all three.
"One hundred and seven galaxies," Adrian thought as another memory opened before him. A line of damaged starships waited outside an enormous repair facility, their hulls scarred and several of their weapons missing. Farther along the same approach, transports were being loaded for another departure.
He began to understand how much stood behind the battles he had witnessed. Smaller sects sent cultivators, clans supplied materials, and empires supported the production and transport needed to keep the armies moving. Ships returned for repairs while replacements left the same facilities, and Alchemical supplies passed through depots that served forces fighting far from their home worlds.
There were memories of hired cultivators arriving as well. Some fought beside Bloodfang's disciples for a time and left when their contracts ended. Others appeared again in later campaigns.
A war stretching across more than a hundred galaxies was exponentially larger than anything Adrian had ever been directly involved in. Even the conflicts that once seemed enormous within the Milky Way or Andromeda had existed on a scale almost impossible to compare with what these memories showed.
With this, he began to understand the importance of the elder's assignment. A war this large would naturally create missions important enough to require someone whose consciousness had reached Weave, and the way the father had spoken to his son suggested that he considered those duties seriously.
That gave Adrian one possible advantage. If the mission was important enough, the elder might not be free to abandon it immediately after receiving his son's message.
Adrian next tried to find the events nearest to the horned man's death. A few images remained, but the connections between them were gone. He could not follow the beginning of Nerion's pursuit or discover how the chase had brought them into Andromeda. The encounter he had witnessed above the moon filled none of those gaps.
Adrian drew back briefly and looked toward Nerion. The man's eyes remained closed, his injured arm resting against his side while Hestia kept him nearby. She was listening to a report through her node, occasionally looking toward Adrian before checking the surrounding starships. Once Nerion woke, Adrian could ask him about the chase and what had led them here. For now, the person who had escaped mattered more.
There was still a large amount of recovered material Adrian had not examined. Fragments of the horned man's cultivation, missions, personal relationships, and service within Bloodfang remained sealed inside the isolated portion of his consciousness. He left those contained.
Even if the memories had been perfectly intact, they could only reveal what the horned man himself knew. Reaching Anchor had made him powerful, but it had not placed him among the people who decided every movement of an Upper Major Sect controlling forty-eight galaxies.
For now, the tailed man could already be trying to contact his father. Whether he could reach him, and what the elder would do after hearing the account, remained uncertain. The mission might be important enough to keep him where he was, but Adrian could not assume that a man with such a history would set aside an attempt on his son's life.
Even if the elder refused to leave before completing his work, the assignment would eventually end. It might take months, or Adrian might have far less time than that. He had no way to know how long he had, and waiting until the father was on his way would leave him with even less time to prepare.
His right hand slowly closed. The moment when the foreign Will descended returned clearly to him. Under that pressure, Adrian had still understood what was happening. He had managed to think, move his body, and force his arm toward the tailed man.
Back at the Providence Hub, he had barely been able to form a coherent thought beneath Androxus's borrowed protection. This clearly showed Adrian's improvement, but he had still watched the tailed man open a passage and escape because he could not sustain the intent needed to act quickly enough.
If the father eventually arrived in person, Adrian would be facing the Weave-stage cultivator himself!
And if Adrian could not maintain his own intent beneath that pressure, then it would not matter how many Divine Concepts he possessed, how much mana filled his Mana Sea, how powerful the Source was, or how many techniques he had spent thousands of subjective years refining, he would not be able to protect Hestia.
He would not be able to protect anyone else.
The confrontation at Providence had already pushed Adrian to spend years strengthening his consciousness. He had trained toward Weave because he understood that opponents with deeper consciousness mastery could suppress him in a way ordinary cultivation strength could not answer.
And now someone with exactly that strength had a reason to come to Andromeda, and Adrian could no longer assume he would have another long period of training before facing him.
He kept the horned man's memories sealed within the isolated section of his consciousness and turned his full attention toward the state of his own mind. Whatever time the elder's assignment gave him, he would have to use it to prepare.
"I have to reach Weave before he comes," he thought. "If I cannot hold my intent against him, I will not be able to face him."