The Talis Sisters’ Encounter with Muar on Uriva is a decisive reversal during Raine Talis and Leese Talis’s attempted rise from Gold to Platinum. What begins as a defense quest at Okrik Town becomes an encounter between two escaped Sydeans and Muar, now a well-equipped Paladin closely supported by the Temple and the divine System. The sisters can overpower him in direct combat, but his escape transforms their victory into exposure: the Temple learns that Cato’s agents are alive on Uriva, and the sisters must abandon their ascension with less than an hour remaining.

Causes and Background

Muar arrives on Uriva as an outsider to a world populated largely by insect-people. Their sliding movements and clicking claws make the streets unfamiliar, but the presence of a temple honoring the planet’s god and the divine System gives him a destination that feels intelligible. Inside, the temple produces an immediate spiritual and psychological effect. Muar experiences it as relief from the blank, System-less space he previously endured, a place he remembers as silent, lifeless, and devoid of status, purpose, and meaning. The System is therefore not merely a tool in his understanding; it is the structure that makes existence legible.

His devotion is reinforced by temple practice. Muar meditates and communes with the System crystal for several days, seeking a Skill through religious communion rather than through an ordinary drop. The experience restores his sense of contact with the divine System, and his devotion is rewarded with the Divine Insight Skill. The temple also supplies the support that Sydea could not provide: equipment, Skills, and access to Essence Tokens sufficient to accelerate his advancement. By the time he reaches peak Gold, Muar believes Platinum is only one step away and that the System is actively rewarding its defenders.

The immediate occasion is the Town Defense Quest at Okrik Town, the barrier between Gold and Platinum. Muar completes the final portion of his preparation quest only hours before the timer ends, then claims three Charged Defensive Emplacements. These crystal-topped poles are intended for the town walls, where they join at least two groups of Gold defenders and a dozen existing Defense Emplacements. The quest notification announces that the defense will begin in three hours and two minutes, with peak Gold as the recommended rank. A Platinum remains inside the town’s Nexus, ready to intervene if the defenders fail, although such intervention would undermine the Golds’ own ascension attempt.

The Encounter at Okrik Town

Muar patrols the walls and assesses the Urivan defenders, some heavily armored behind massive shields and others equipped as casters with orbs or discs for focusing their Skills. During his second circuit, new arrivals land near the town gate. They are Sydeans who must have fled before the portals closed. Muar initially reacts with excitement at seeing people from his own world, but that recognition turns to alarm when he Appraises them: Raine Talis is peak Gold, and Leese Talis is also peak Gold.

Their presence is impossible within Muar’s understanding of the situation. The sisters should have remained on Sydea with Cato, where a Bismuth could have killed them if they had not already died. Their appearance on Uriva therefore reveals more than their survival; it indicates that Cato is present or operating beyond the closed Sydean portal. Muar has only a few moments to absorb the discovery before Raine notices him.

Raine and Leese attack together. Muar draws his shield and braces as Raine drives her spear into it, the collision producing a thunderous impact. Although divine protection, superior equipment, and multiple Skills should make him exceptionally difficult to overcome, Raine’s strike pushes him backward across the wall. Muar manifests his mace and barely deflects Leese’s blow; the force travels through his arm with a shock that exceeds anything a normal Gold should produce.

The sisters’ apparent equipment does not explain their strength. Muar concludes that they are using Cato’s heretical power. Their weapons and armor appear inferior to the temple equipment he has received, yet their attacks hit as if a Platinum were striking him. A second shield block sends him backward again, and the Urivan defenders do not intervene because they regard the clash as a dispute between outworlders. The value at stake shifts rapidly: Muar begins with the confidence of a favored System defender, but the encounter turns that confidence into immediate physical and institutional vulnerability.

Muar’s Flight and the Temple Alert

Muar does not attempt to preserve his honor through a prolonged fight. He flees because survival is only one part of the danger; the Temple must be informed that Cato’s agents remain alive on Uriva. He believes a genuine Platinum, and perhaps one of the planet’s Bismuths, could deal with the sisters even if he cannot. His movement Skill turns him into a streak of golden speed. Fire and ice crackle behind him, but Raine and Leese cannot catch him before he bursts through the Nexus door and reaches the teleportation pylon.

The Temple becomes a sanctuary in Muar’s eyes. He expects the sisters to be suppressed if they attempt to follow, and he rushes to the High Priest’s quarters without pausing to negotiate. There he reports bluntly that he has spotted Cato’s agents in Okrik Town. The High Priest immediately activates a Farcaster and summons an honored Bismuth, while Muar supplies the identifying details: the enemies are two Sydean peak Golds named Raine and Leese Talis who strike with Platinum-level force.

The High Priest and Muar return to Okrik Town through the teleportation pylon, followed shortly by the Urivan Bismuth. Yet the sisters have already disappeared. The Bismuth questions a Gold defender, who confirms that the two Sydeans left through the teleportation pylon. Their rapid withdrawal prevents the Temple from turning the encounter into an arrest or a larger battle. Muar’s escape has succeeded tactically, but it has also triggered a much larger pursuit.

The Sisters’ Retreat

Raine and Leese recognize the danger as soon as Muar vanishes. Raine identifies his equipment and divine Skills as signs that he is closely connected to the local Temple and the World Deity. Through their communication link, they report the encounter to Cato, explaining that Muar was better equipped and had reached peak Gold, though he had not been strong enough to defeat them. Cato is equally surprised that Muar is on Uriva and orders them to leave the world.

The sisters had already planted communication ferns outside the city walls and across the capital cities they could reach from Uriva, giving them a fragile means of maintaining contact through the portal network. Cato also tells them to use the opportunity to distribute the spears he provided, expanding the network of versions of himself and strengthening his support structure. The practical consequence is that the encounter becomes more than an interrupted fight: it redirects the sisters from personal advancement toward the wider strategic work of building Cato’s network.

Raine and Leese abandon the defense quest with less than an hour remaining before the attempted ascension. The decision physically pains Raine because Platinum is within reach, but remaining on Uriva while higher-ranked System authorities search for them would be reckless. They teleport from Okrik Town to a major city, pass through its portal to Milau, transit to Reszen, and then continue to Ikent. Their escape is therefore a chain of hurried relocations rather than a clean retreat, and the communication ferns function imperfectly through the portals.

Their status as outworlders makes every stop dangerous. They have no local powers or clans to protect them, and their failure to ascend leaves them more vulnerable than Platinum status would have made them. The encounter thus converts an almost-completed advancement into a forced evacuation. The promised step toward independent power is postponed to another quest on another world.

Consequences and Significance

The encounter establishes a sharp contrast between Muar’s faith and the sisters’ resistance. Muar interprets System-less existence as a dead void and the temple as a return to meaning; Raine and Leese treat the same System-linked institutions as surveillance infrastructure capable of locating and suppressing them. His religious certainty gives him access to Skills, equipment, and powerful allies, but it cannot overcome the sisters’ Cato-enhanced combat ability. Their strength, in turn, cannot secure the objective that brought them to Okrik Town, because Muar survives long enough to summon forces they cannot safely confront.

The meeting also demonstrates how the System’s hierarchy turns a local defense quest into a political and theological crisis. Okrik Town is nominally a Gold battlefield, but the presence of a Platinum in the Nexus and the arrival of a Bismuth reveal the authority behind the quest. Muar’s report upgrades the sisters from unexpected combatants to recognized agents of Cato, making their presence a matter for the Temple and the World Deity rather than merely a dispute among adventurers.

Muar leaves the scene convinced that he will meet the sisters again and must grow strong enough to face them. Raine and Leese leave with the opposite lesson: even a successful fight is not enough when the enemy can invoke a higher institutional order. Their encounter becomes an early demonstration of the wider conflict between Cato’s expanding, System-defying network and the System’s ability to mobilize temples, ranks, and world-bound authorities against it.