It'd been more than three weeks since Jacob rescued Caps, despite all the apparent instances of messing with the flow of time. When Dei got his story, Jacob mentioned that it'd been less than a day by the time he crash-landed on Minerali, despite it being around two weeks from Dei's perspective. He could only credit this to some weird time-stuff after Jacob dove through the portal in the sun.

When they stepped into the snowy mountains at the North Pole of Caps, Dei felt the divine pulse emitted from his soul search for The Champion.

As expected… radio silence.

He'd expected it ever since hearing Jacob's story of there being no dragon in the sun, but he couldn't be sure. The Champion of Caps might've hidden, or maybe Jacob never passed over his part of the sun, or maybe even he just wasn't home at the time, but this confirmed it- Caps was without a guardian, though they'd, so far, fared better than the Elves had.

There was something about the section of this section of the multiverse that prevented frequent occurrences of Primordial Children, or perhaps Gods in general. There was a chance the scarce divinities were a symptom everywhere outside of System space, but he doubted it considering The Champion considered it an absolute blessing there was only one Leviathan near him, and he'd never received "Check ins" from other Gods. Why would they go searching if it was practically a guarantee they'd find the same thing over infinity?

'Actually you know what? If they don't have a Champion here, I can probably tell Earth's Champion and he can pay visits here to balance them out. He's not The Step Champion, he's The Champion that stepped up! Ha!

'He'd definitely be ecstatic to have a new unclaimed planet as well, considering how hard he fought with his Primordial Siblings.'

Now that they'd actually landed in Caps, Dei pulled out a device he'd gotten in Gate City so long ago.

Back then, he'd asked for examples of every magic type in the hopes that it would upgrade his Cycle of Sealing with variety, but they were unable to procure any of the rarer ones or any in large quantities on the timeframe he gave.

Not just that, but his Skill at the time was filled to the brim with The Mother's soul, and it'd leveled up his Skill anyway. Now, he was max level in Cycle of Sealing, and he had no use for a variety of affinities. He later changed his request to the little hand-held metal box and screen he pulled from his storage now.

A "Mana Scanner" as it was called, though it only worked in theory as it couldn't be calibrated properly in the System space that had the proliferation of all affinities equal.

What would it do? Simple! It looks into what the most abundant sources of mana near you are. When in places where mana was too silent to muddy the waters, such as imbalanced universes, it could be used to see what kind of universes they were, as he'd tested on both Earth and Minerali.

Turning it on now, he fiddled with the controls a bit and checked the ten most common affinities on Caps.

"Let's see… Dwarf, Earth, Ice… Duplication?!"

"What?" Jacob asked, "What's that thing?"

"Mana scanner. Tells me what kind of universe I'm in, and Caps has an unnaturally high level of Duplication mana."

"Oh, yea that makes sense. Didn't Boris say he'd take Jean to a place with a lot of Duplication? And I stopped some kind of plague when arriving here?"

"Oh… yea. I kinda forgot about that… I wonder why. If it seems like the dwarves themselves have nothing to do with Duplication and it came from outer space, but that's not really possible, is it?" Dei said, thinking aloud, "The Champion said aliens are from distant planets, protected by their own Dragons because life tends to kill itself without a big gardener, as we've seen with the elves and now again with the dwarves- though you've saved them from their own actions. If Duplication came from outer space, and there's no Duplication on Caps, the only way that'd be possible is if there was…"

He paused, jaw going slack as he looked to the stars. "No way…" he whispered under his breath, not believing it.

"What?" Jacob asked, concerned.

"No way!!" Dei shouted into the air.

"What?!"

"There's a feral Dragon in this universe that's building its planet dangerously close to the anchor world!!" He couldn't help but shout, jumping into the air for joy and letting out a holler.

His companions all looked taken aback, and Perumah openly laughed at him, but Jacob looked irritated, bordering on furious. "How is that a good thing? A feral Dragon sounds pretty fucking dangerous!"

"Oh, it is! But visiting one of their alien worlds is an incredible Achievement, and I'm trying to build up a lot of those. Not just that, but we now know why the Duplication ship arrived in the first place! You treated the symptom, but we've located the cancer… we can exorcise it from the body, likely with The Champion's help."

Jacob relaxed when he realized Dei wasn't celebrating the dangerous situation all dwarves had found themselves in, and understood it a bit better.

"When we go visit this Yalda character, we'll have to ask her what planet the expedition went to. If I had to guess, I think they might've spotted remnants of alien life in the stars and tried to make contact, only for it to go horribly."

"Yea, I could see that happening. Where should we even start for our search, though? I'd rather my return not be very destructive or calamitous to the general population, but I think if I just appear one day, it will be."

"I'll do some sneaking and reconnaissance, find Yalda, and explain the situation to her. She may not be a world leader, but she sounds like she has a good heart, and that's what's most important when it comes to first contact really."

"Okay Mr. Deep, wh-"

"Don't call me that."

"-atever you say."

"Found her," Perumah said, and they all looked at her. She'd been silent the entire time they spoke.

"This is… frozen water." Thadria also threw her two cents in, kicking the snow around. "It's powdery. I saw this on both Earth and Caps, how?"

"Permah, how did you find her so quickly?" Dei asked her while Jacob went to talk to his girlfriend.

Perumah shrugged, "There aren't many dwarves, around twenty million? They're all located in the same area on the planet so I just started reading their memories and found a few of their celebrities. Yalda was one. I located her from there."

Dei stared, stunned at everything he was hearing. "There's only twenty million? And they haven't even conquered their planet fully?"

"Yes, I imagine such a low population would make that difficult?"

"How did these motherfuckers reach the stars already!?"

"Their technology is… unique. It's not futuristic nor primitive, but some lateral evolution of anything I've ever seen…"

'Okay, so Perumah is just insanely good at collecting information when she wants to be I guess. Not even gonna ask how far she can spread her roots. Although… We'd barely even mentioned Yalda by the time Perumah found her, and I got the distinct feeling that she was not listening to the plan before.'

"Perumah, why were you spreading your roots out?" he asked, fearing the answer.

"Hm? I was hungry."

He sighed, 'you're always hungry nowadays.' "You didn't eat any dwarves, did you?"

"Yes?" she asked, confused.

"Perumah!"

"What? They're not even human. You could eat a dwarf and it wouldn't be cannibalism."

"That's not the point!" he groaned, "Don't you have a connection with Kindness already? Where's the empathy for your fellow Sapients?"

"Oh. I made sure they were either horrible people or born psychopaths."

He still wanted to complain, but again she'd provided a good argument. 'I'm sure they were absolutely awful people if she said so. Perumah isn't dumb, and she's not as cold or careless anymore. I have to give her some trust and stop ragging on her for every little thing. I bet I would've killed them if I knew what they'd done if Perumah acts like I wouldn't care. She knows me, she knows the limits she can push to ensure I'm not uncomfortable about it.'

Instead of trying to impose his morals onto her, his gaze softened and he could only chuckle drily, "Well… Okay."

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She raised her eyebrow at him, "You're usually more stubborn."

He shrugged, "You're usually right."

She giggled, "That I am!"

A snowball hit her square in the face, and both of them turned to see Thadria standing there smiling as Jacob cheered her on.

Dei laughed, picked one up, and hit Perumah as well. Everything devolved from there, and they took a small break to relax in the snow.

* * *

"Rain of Frost" Thadria declared, and hundreds of flying snowballs rained down on Dei and Perumah. He watched the edges of Perumah's root-wall slowly get sheared away, the projectiles that missed burrowing feet into the stone around them.

When it ended, he leapt out from cover, muscles bulging under the weight of the spatially-compressed ice in his hand.

Red-faced, he threw it as hard as he could while shouting "Blooming Death."

Thadria attempted to swat the attack away, but his control over Void flickered and died the moment it left his control, the previously hand-held mass growing to be two stories tall, moving fast enough to catch fire, only held together by the lines of Connection he'd imbued into it.

She wouldn't get out of the way fast enough, so the only escape was through. Using Kinetic, she punched a hole in the ball just large enough for her to dive through.

When she was in the dead center though, his trap sprung, and grasping hands flew from the lines of Connection, autonomous constructs generated by Good Samaritan collapsing the entire web to seal her away in an impossibly durable cocoon.

The gigantic snowball exploded from the force, and Thadria dropped. Still, he knew she'd get out after only a few seconds if she blasted out a wave of force that loosened her bindings.

They wouldn't give her the chance.

He didn't have time to create a snowball, but Perumah was ready. He took hold of her, teleporting her with Roving Gate right onto Thadria's head as she swung down with the force of a meteor.

The snowball exploded and Thadria was knocked into the ground, a plume of snow kicking into the air.

Jacob, who'd been sitting off to the side watching in awe, ran over to check on her as Perumah landed close by and Dei walked closer.

He heard muffled giggles though, so he wasn't worried about her taking it badly. It brought a smile to his face that she was capable of interacting with people outside of Jacob healthily.

* * *

Flying over the landscape, Dei realized why they called it Caps: there were only mountains on this planet. It was all jagged and rocky terrain, as far as the eye could see. The dwarven country Perumah told him about was built around the largest recorded volcano on their planet, though it was dead.

Most of the population settled around the base, a short distance underground to avoid the icy surface, but the top twenty percent or so had their own city- one placed in a ravine inside the dead volcanic crater at the top.

Dei snuck through the bustling steampunk city, looking around in wonder. He hadn't understood what Perumah meant at first, but all the technology was very lateral to what they had on Earth, following a different line of reasoning.

Artifacts ran everywhere, and people on hoverboards flew up and down the levels. He thought that'd be somewhat dangerous, but nobody fell even a single time. Despite that, he eventually spotted some official-looking dwarves keeping watch over the crowds, and Perumah told him they were essentially sky-lifeguards.

Speaking of, she was burrowing through the rock. Dei had to keep up a perpetual line of Connection to her to communicate properly, but she didn't want to be left behind this time. She said she'd take her main body through the stone and meet him at Yalda.

When Dei finally found the right… burrow? He asked something he'd wondered before.

"Perumah, do you know where the alien planet is?"

"No?"

"Why not? Can't you read their minds?"

"Sort of, but not really. I read the communication between their emotions, so I can read what they're currently thinking or talking about, but not deeper into their past."

"Oh, why are people talking about Yalda?"

"She's going to talk at Jacob's funeral."

"His what?"

"I thought you knew?" she said, baffled, "You mentioned a holiday around Jacob. They're having the official funeral in four days, so everyone's talking about it. The whole dwarven population is going to be up in the crater, with a stage set up for the speech and everything."

"This… changes things…"

"How?"

"Cause it'll be the perfect opportunity for Jacob to return! Every dwarf will be there, and Jacob will be on their minds anyway. It'll turn a solemn event into a celebration, not to mention there'll be guards and people organizing the entire thing, preventing chaos from breaking out. Huh, yea, that'll be great."

"Then we came here for nothing?"

"Oh, no, give me a second. Let's go inside, I'll discreetly Connect with her and search her memories for the coordinates of the alien planet, then we can go get advice from The Champion on how to handle the feral Dragon."

"I guess you aren't done with Earth just yet," Perumah joked.

"Nope. Not going there."

"Hm? What other Champions do you know?"

"No, I'm gonna see him, I'm just going straight to signal him from space instead. The divine packet he gave me lets me do that."

Perumah shrugged, and Dei phased into the wall. Yalda sat on her couch next to her husband, both silently drinking heavily.

She looked haunted.

He didn't need to be a psychologist to know why. She'd told Jacob that the infection would've killed him either way, but it was only after the process was too late to stop that they realized that wasn't true. Even before Jacob was blasted into the sun, he'd likely gained some Achievements that would empower his body or give him certain surviving abilities to go along with his "Rejecting change" state

She'd never given him the choice of another option. He hadn't known there was another option, so she wasn't sure if he actually would've chosen to sacrifice himself for their people if given the chance.

'Hold out just a bit longer Yalda, he's coming back.'

He did as he said he would, looking into her soul. Though he said he'd use Connection, it wasn't necessary. Her soul's defenses were so weak that even his regular soul sight was enough to see deeper.

He found that there wasn't a set place the Dragon had settled in the solar system- it'd dragged a whole planet through space.

The dwarves had watched it as a celestial body for a long time, and its slow circling movements hinted that it was alive or being controlled, though they'd never seen a large beast such as a Dragon, from what Dei could see. The dwarves just assumed some advanced civilization was watching over them from a distance, and wanted to make contact.

Dei thought the Dragon slowly drew closer to Caps because it wasn't entirely sure if The Champion was still there, and now it was testing the waters; It seemed cautious and on guard, but hadn't fled yet.

His theory was further backed up when the planet stopped growing closer after its Duplication ship flew into the sun. If he had to guess, it was trying to figure out if that was The Champion's work, or if one of the survivors had done that to save their people.

'It's kinda funny how scared this thing is of The Champion. I know he said that he "Drove all the other Dragons away," but something tells me he killed more than a few- and considering how it seems ready to run at the drop of a hat, I don't think he stopped when they'd only gone a short distance.'

The upper dwarven government was frantically trying to come up with a solution to the invader, and their new plan was actually not all that bad- figure out how to pierce the dimensional boundary to Earth and beg The Champion for help, as Jacob had actually told them about the old lizard back when he was recounting the story of humans.

The last odd thing Dei found in Yalda's mind was the timeframe. Supposedly, there'd been billions of dwarves not that long ago- maybe two or three thousand years ago- but some kind of glacial catastrophe killed them all, and these were the survivors that were left.

While it was possible this was true, Dei found it far more likely that this dimension was even newer than Earth, and that was simply the start of their history. Everything before that was likely ancestral memory of their time in the supreme-universe that continuously flaked away into smaller ones.

If the elves were older than Earth, and the Dwarves were younger than Earth, did that mean the next dimension in his path would be even younger? He had no way to tell.

For now, he'd gleaned the information he needed, so he slipped away and told Perumah what he'd found.

"I'll stop by The Champion really quick. Go back to Jacob, I'll meet you there."

Zipping away, he appeared deep in space and, as usual, the act of crossing a dimensional boundary sent out a ping. Normally, the Earth Champion would just ignore it, but he tapped on it again to send a second one- this time getting a response.

"I take it there is a reason you contact me outside of Earth?"

"A few yea, but that's not important. Remember the dimension of dwarves Jacob saved? I just got back from there and they're unguarded, so if you want to step in and help, I'm sure they'd appreciate it."

"Hm, not possible yet, I'm afraid," The Champion said sadly.

"What?! Why?"

"Old agreements. There are supposedly just as many Champions as there are universes, though I know this is not always true. Still, to prevent territorial disputes, I am not allowed to step in unless the people consider him a failure and seek me out for help."

"Well I mean… they are. They're trying to pierce the boundary now and tell you they need help."

"It must be of their volition. You are marked as a third party, not of Caps, so you cannot speak for them- and before you ask, no, you cannot bring one either. They must discover a way to escape themselves, as that is proof of desperation."

"That's ridiculous! In that case, how were you able to interfere with Minerali?" Dei insisted.

"I did not enter their world or conquer their universe, merely destroyed them. The restrictions on destroying a universe entirely are more lax, as no version of The Champion would ever do so without an objectively justified cause. It is a system that has prevented widespread genocide across the multiverse, though I agree that this is a fringe case where it fails, I am still unable to take control without permission. Fret not, however, as if they are currently in the process of breaking into this world, it should not be much longer before I will adopt them."

"Okay, but that might be something of an issue… there's a feral Dragon circling the planet, and we wanted your help to scare it off."

"What is its domain?"

"Uh, not sure, but it really likes duplication."

"Rapid growth of complex life or infestation-type Duplication?"

"Infestation. It infected one of the dwarven ships with a sickness and tried to spread it back to their homeworld."

"Hm, it must be Cralokragora-T'zthitinit'ia then. He is weaker. Kill him."

"Really?" Dei asked, "Just like that? Not drive him off or anything?"

"The Caps universe has feral Dragons. If you drive him off, they will get the message that Caps is weak. Turn him into a warning for them to heed."

"Damn, you're stone cold with your species, aren't you?"

The Champion was silent for a time, before asking "You know of Celestial Parasites and their names, so I will tell you this: The last user of Collapsing Horizons was a Dragon. It held immense power, and you know what it did with that? In the little time I gave it before cutting it to pieces?"

"Uh… what?"

"She shattered the universe into the little bits and pieces we have today, causing untold deaths. I will never allow another Dragon near an anchor world for fear of The Mother's Celestial Parasites reaching out once more."

Dei got a sense of great shame emanating from The Champion, and before he could respond, their connection was cut.

Even if another Dragon caused the damage, it was clear The Champion considered himself responsible for the failure to stop her, whoever "She" was.

He left The Champion in peace, and returned to Caps.

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