"The Vast tree realm holds billions of different aliens species including our own, billions have gone extinct and many more will come into creation, think about how fortunate we have been to survive so long. We have gotten lucky, very lucky that the life around us does not have the same requirements to live"
- Dominic cree ~ Guardian of the east
Five years later
Year AC+V 5 of the new era, a vast number of ships could be seen traveling in clusters through the endless void, the last five years since the fall of the Vast tree realm could be said to be eventful for the survivors within the Arks.
The moment they had made their way across the rift leading out of the Vast tree realm, all Flying ships that had not been designed to travel in the endless void instantly ment with tearing forces sucking away all the spiritual energy inside, millions of transports recognized the need to join an ark convoy.
Shrinking the flying vessels they used for travel they made quick deals with ark owners for entrance into an ark, others choose to commander arks rather then negotiate.
Once that ordeal was over the next problem they faced was the attack from various void dwelling beasts near the vast tree realm, battle Arks instantly took to battle followed by the elite fighters to carve a path out, even while most ships had yet to make it out of the rift a giant battle was wagged.
After 3 days of constant battle with lesser void beasts, Lerim the last lord of the Vast tree realm and God Haven the last God appeared, carving out multiple paths heading in different directions.
Only one direction would be taken the rest would be distractions made with simple visual illusions created by peak experts, enough to fool the beasts but not the experts.
Heading away from the Vast tree Realm Lord lerim and God haven encountered their own problems with multiple heaven defying experts attacking them, leaving only the Void realm experts to lead the armada forward.
Befor any semblance of safety appeared, a spatial storm erupted near the center pack of Arks splitting the group of Arks into many smaller groups, some arks were destroyed instantly, others transported over vast distances never to be seen again and some directly captured.
One of the larger groups was built up of over a billion Arks from several tens of thousands of different races.
The human race was partially amongst this group, and was considerably powerful among this group but still not powerful enough to claim a spot in the top 10 races left in this group.
The Five family union was one of the human groups whom had lucky evaded most trouble up to this point and only suffered minor damage to their Arks.
They had made an alliance with several other small mid size powers of the human race and 2 other races known as the Dwarf, and High Elven race.
The Dwarf race was smaller then humans both in number and height, but tougher and was rather focused on improving the lives of its denizens regardless if they could cultivate or not.
They had managed to bring almost every member of their race besides those staunch defenders of the Vast tree realm, their unity was nothing to laugh at even if 4 forces the size of the Five family union were to attack them they would successfully repel the attack and inflict more damage then they had suffered.
This dwarven race branch consisted of many different types but the one that had chosen to ally itself was from a middle caste branch of the greater Dwarven armada, specialists in defensive battles.
Unfortunately this branch lacked the greater ability to cultivate to higher levels often ending up stuck in the late deity transformation stages with few to none amongst them breaking through to the next stage of cultivation.
The peak cultivators among them are at minimum 4,000 years old with 2-5 thousand years inbetween each new member that joined their ranks.
They had chosen to ally to humanity to make up for their numbers as large numbers are intimidating regardless of strength plus they themselves lacked good attacking methods, being focused on pure defensive battles.
But truly their numbers being to few they could never hope to rise to the same level as other branches or even other races.
This was by design of the main branches of the dwarven race, they who lacked materials to cultivate chose the best among their clan to become the staunch 'protectors' while the rest would simply be sent out in order to form connections with other races or be instilled a sense of duty inside them willing to sacrifice themselves for the upper caste.
The High Elven race on the other hand was more numerous with great talent for cultivation with none amongst their race ever being born powerless.
The biggest drawback they faced being low birth rates, lower then what was already suffered amongst cultivators and the fact that they could almost never produce an offspring with those of other races at higher levels, unlike the vast majority of races which once they reach the middle heavens of cultivation they could reproduce with almost any other race.
One of the few races that the elves were known to have offspring with were humans.
They could have offspring with humanity but it came with a drawback of the offspring being closer to humans then to their own bloodline which among elven society was looked down upon.
Elfs enjoyed relatively peaceful lives amongst cultivators, being of the wood, water, and wind elements primarily, they generally took supporting roles in wars or should they have too, they set down massive array formations obliterating their enemies without spilling elven blood.
Humans are individually weak as most of the human race could not cultivate, but as a whole humanity was still far more numerous then the Dwarfs and Elven race.
Just the five family union in its current state could contend against both of them together, although they couldn't win they could force a draw.
Considering the 7 million or so cultivators on board the FFUs various arks - canon fodder wasn't hard to find.
If one compared the total power each of these 3 races held, the elven race would rank 1st, followed by humanity then the dwarves.
Humans had numbers but elves have innate talent.
Elfs had talent but lacked manpower and hardiness
Dwarves lacked manpower, talent, and attacking power but their defense was simply too great to disregard.
The drawback humans faced was lower talent on average then that of other races along with higher death rates plus a lack of cultivation resources for the vast number of cultivators they had to supply, otherwise humanity would become a far greater power then now.
Elfs also had another major drawback while their young enjoyed quick growth in the early stages in terms of power, it was much more difficult for them to enter the middle heavens and often found themselves stuck in late~peak deity transformation not due to a lack of luck or talent but due to age.
Elf cultivation was rather peculiar, while they are young they can cultivate with accumulation based on innate talent just like any normal human would, but once they hit the peak of the early heaven (which can be referred to as the mortal stage) they can no longer cultivate using techniques and instead must wait hundreds to thousands of years without being able to gather spiritual energy until finally a 'spark' ignites inside them.
The longer it takes the stronger they will be once they break into the middle heavens but if it takes too long their cultivation will simply disintegrate regardless of circumstances.
This is the biggest factor as to why they could also never hope to rise much further as a whole, few ever managed to attain that spark, to many enemies willing to train a few suicide solider's to get rid of any sparks.
Other then the five family union, three other human forces had chosen to ally with the high elven race and the dwarves, both of these powers had similar strength to the five family union.
When these forces were first introduced to each other by either the dwarves or the elven race they instantly seemed to like each other as they had similarities between each other -being humans but few to no conflicts of interest could be found while many benefits could be seen.
Each of the six forces had gained at least one ark that became a small world or almost achieved this, which was a major factor as to why they could get along.
The Dwarfs and Elves both worked their own angles and had unintentionally become allies by default even if they never interacted with one another much to their dismay.
So the alliance talks started.
Sadly not everyone got along by the end of it, one of the human groups desired a greater control of the alliance due to being the largest of the six forces with 104 Arks at their disposal almost double the amount of the others individually.
While their overall power could not be considered greater than anyone individually, overtime the amount of resources and manpower they could supply would certainly be greater than anyone else, at least this was their line of thinking.
In the end the others had chosen not to become allies with said power as it would be better to have an external foe then an internal one.
Soon a replacement was found that has similar overall in power compared to the rest although they had a relatively different background.
So an alliance of Six Ark fleets had formed numbering to a total of 324 Arks, 52 Arks from the FFU, 83 Arks from the Four kingdoms, 50 from the Towering merchant group, 61 High Elven Arks, 46 Dwarven Arks and finally 32 Arks from the Golden flower sect.
324 arks could be considered a small power in the overall scale of this billion Ark fleet.
A meeting was about to take place on one of the small world Arks at this moment.
This was an ark world under the control of a sect which couldn't be considered large or strong but good enough to hold their own Ark fleet and weak enough to join this alliance without worrying too much about the ark world they owned being seen under greedy eyes.
This was the Golden flower sect, they only have 32 arks the smallest number among the alliance but considering they are a single sect this did not affect them in the slightest.
Most Arks in this multi billion ark fleet could be considered family or kingdom based powers but the truly powerful one's who controlled large armadas of ships were sects and sect alliances.
Around 58% of all arks could be considered family or kingdom owned, the rest varied greatly with only about 19% of them being sects.
This sect was primarily a female cultivator sect with very few males in the sect, this was not due to NOT wanting to train male cultivators but simply that the area they originally inhabited was particularly efficient at growing spiritual plants with yin energy and yin empowered materials as such they had become proficient in yin arts and medicine concoction which made it harder to cultivate male members of the sect unless special circumstances allowed for it.
"Llylia I've heard that the Nordaine family head was coming today, this is a great surprise. She has never shown herself in any of the previous meetings we've held befor and not even the other family's in the Five family union know much about her, other then being the previous heads wife and having the direct bloodline of the Nordaine's" A golden haired beauty spoke.
"Mmm, the five family's are particularly closed lipped when it come to the major families... Maybe she choose to appear today specifically, today our alliance introduces the youngest generation to one another in hopes they make friends, become acquaintances or possible life partners" A brunette haired woman named Llylia replied.
The golden hair woman gave her a look "Her husband died over a hundred years ago and while we can hardly get any information on the Nordaine's we do know no marriage's have happened in over 80 years, no current members are married - they are basically the embodiment of single for life, are you saying she had an affair? Although it wouldn't be an affair at this point I guess"
"No, but I'm saying that certain special circumstances could have happened... much like how Rose and several of those kids were born perhaps?" She looked at the golden haired woman with a slight smile.
"Like Rose..." the golden haired woman thought for a second
"Boy or girl?" The Llylia said
The golden haired woman thought for a second, "maybe both?"
"Hopefully a boy, Rose needs a good partner" Llylia said looking more cheerful as time went seeming to tease the sect master
"Rose will make her own choice. Besides it's not like we are acquainted to them, the entire Five family union is new to us we would be going in blind with no chance of a pay off" said the Golden haired woman
"But it would be the best choice if they do have a male child to introduce to us today right? After all I doubt they would allow their female family members to join our sect, the Nordaine's number too few and the five family union as a whole is as stated a family run power so its doubtful they would even think of sending their kin to our sect without a guarantee of them returning" Llylia questioned and responded
"fortunately for us that is so, it allows us to get more members from the various lower family's still, enough to replace those that die, and as for wanting for there to be a boy in the Nordaine household... Of course! The Nordaine family is the only female led family of the Five major families, and while we're not only looking at the five family union we do want to establish deeper connections between our allies and it's best to look outside our already established acquaintances as to not put all our eggs in one basket" the golden haired woman was looking more energetic now
"Plus the Nordaine's own 6 Arks" Llylia said offhandedly
"Well we can't just let Rose marry anyone, if they are without background they need to be powerful enough to protect her or to help us in a time of need, otherwise it's better to find an established power" the golden haired woman said.
"Not that a child could help much in the Endless void or will help anytime soon" Llylia said in a mocking voice
"But their family could!" The golden haired woman retorted.
Llylia simply rolled her eyes, it was clear this golden haired sect master of her's is simply looking for a good husband for her adopted daughter otherwise a single family would only make a slight difference for them.
Of course this family could possibly draw on additional forces from the whole of the FFU so it couldn't be looked down on.
"How about you find yourself a partner dear sect master, your cultivation has reached a point that any mistake could lead to your death shouldn't you get some befor an untimely end?" Llylia brought up another point
"Hmph- like your one to talk miss 7 failed proposals" the sect master retorted
"Oh looks like the first quests have arrived, ill go prepare the final arrangements sect master" Llylia simply ignored her and walked out on the conversation