Chapter 1140
Hundreds of tiny creatures threw themselves at Anton, trying to cut off his every line of movement. He wasn’t able to directly escape encirclement, even with a significant advantage in his individual speed.
Killing the dart shaped things would be easy enough, if he was willing to risk it. With completely new creatures, however, he didn’t want to judge them merely based on appearances and a single encounter. He could only manage that because he had the luxury of power, however.
They seemed to have no reaction to bursts of light, so Anton began throwing out concussive blasts of natural energy. He could certainly burn them up, but he didn’t know which organs were vital or how much damage he would cause by puncturing their bodies. If he wanted to kill them he could have managed that easily enough, but he just wanted to stop them.
It took a bit for him to test the limits of their sturdiness, but soon he was knocking them unconscious with expert precision. Once he got used to their swarming patterns, Anton also found himself more able to dodge them. When he got the opportunity, he broke through an opening and accelerated away from them- moving further from the system.
As he watched their behavior after he was gone, some of the creatures began to fight among themselves and devour each other. That didn’t speak of any sort of sapience Anton wanted to be associated with, but he could afford to take his time.
He considered binding the star for his own safety. There were certainly more powerful individual life forms in the system that might be able to cause him trouble otherwise. But if there was anyone who could actually care and with the potential to give permission, Anton didn’t want to just assume. There could even be human residents somewhere he hadn’t sensed, hiding from what he presumed were beasts.
The way a great number of them lived among the stars was quite unique. Now that he’d seen their capacity to hide among nothing at all, Anton was content to observe from further away.
One of the largest individuals was a great sheetlike thing. If he were to compare it to anything, it would be a deep sea jelly- except without any sort of gathering tendrils, and without a curved body. It was more or less flat, except for round pustules that Anton thought were captured bits of food.
Watching for a few days, it seemed to be drifting towards a particular pocket of natural energy, catching anything in front of it. That included many smaller life forms that Anton hadn’t previously noticed. Everything had ways to hide from the others, both their physical form and natural energy.