The Martial Unity

The words of the Esoterist weighed heavily on the Human Summit.

He was right.

The Martial Artists had momentarily got caught up in their dislike, aversion, and even fear towards MECHAs, causing them to lose sight of the big picture.

The Beast Incursion was the absolute highest priority without even the tiniest shadow of a doubt. Nothing else mattered in comparison to it. These same Martial Artists had personally fought against the horrifying and endless wave of beasts and monsters that threatened to wipe out every corner of human civilization. They knew exactly how much of a crisis they were in.

It didn’t matter if they didn’t like MECHAs on an instinctual and emotional level.

It didn’t matter if they didn’t think sMECHA Martial Artists were ‘real’ Martial Artists because they were cheating with technology.

It didn’t matter if they couldn’t help but look at the cold, lifeless, and eerie humanoid form of the MECHAs as abominations of a Martial Path.

It didn’t matter if they were afraid of being rendered obsolete before the might of these extraordinary weapons.

They were pragmatic and rational enough to recognize the sheer utility of these machines in the Era of Darkness against the beast tides that washed over human civilization, eroding human civilization bit by bit.

“And that, leaders of human civilization,” the Esoterist smiled, “brings us to an end to the presentation of my solutions. I plan to release extensive documents on the esoteric technologies underlying MECHAs and the systematic design process that my tests have revealed to produce the most effective outcomes. I plan to release all the data that I have gathered to help accelerate the development of MECHAs in nations around the world and plan to cultivate a MECHA developer community to foster the better development of MECHAs. That’s not all.”

His gaze swept over the audience. “I also intend to release the paradigms on MECHA development that I have created thus far so that they can be built upon and expanded by the entire world. I plan to release the MECHA growth model that established protocols and guidelines for the development of a MECHA as the pilot develops. And finally…”

His expression grew more excited. “I hereby found the Panamic MECHA Association and declare our mandate to foster the spread and development of MECHA!”

A wave of murmurs spread across the Human Summit as the air tingled with turmoil.

None of them had missed the obvious resemblance between the Panamic MECHA Association and the Panamic Martial Federation.

Many of the Martial Artists in the audience gritted their teeth at what was perceived as a challenge to authority!

Technically, he wasn’t doing anything wrong. There existed groups centered around weapons like the sword or the spear and this would be something similar with the MECHA. However, each and every Martial Artist couldn’t help but perceive it as an attack on conventional Martial Art.

This wasn’t entirely fair, but their paranoia at being rendered obsolete made it rather difficult not to assume the worst from the Esoterist and his MECHAs.

‘Hm… this might cause a rift within the Martial World,’ Rui wisely realized. ‘Given the dire circumstances, this will most likely be aggressively adopted and developed worldwide. It would cause an inorganically accelerated growth of this new weapon system that would be faster than many people can come to accept it.’

Rui especially foresaw immense hostility from Martial Artists of the Lower Realms, since they would be the first on the chopping block to be rendered sub-optimal combat forces. ‘This is especially true for the many Martial Apprentices in the Kandrian Empire.’ Rui felt a headache coming. ‘Already, Martial Apprentices have become less valuable due to their overabundance. With the mass adoption of MECHA, they will experience even greater pressure on them. Most likely the most immediate fault line we will discover is the fault line between MECHA pilots and Martial Apprentices.’

In time as MECHA Martial Artists began emerging, Rui knew that eventually this fault line would grow deeper and deeper into the higher Realms. He knew that this problem would not be easy to solve, especially given how much the aggressive pursuit of MECHA would exacerbate the situation. If it had more time to gently integrate into society the way Martial Art did, it would lead to less friction and fractures, but alas, the Beast Incursion was not kind enough to wait five hundred years for this to happen.

Rui could easily foresee and even model many sociocultural and economic problems that this inorganic and aggressive pursuit of MECHAs would produce, but he wasn’t too concerned.

If he could foresee them, then his father had most certainly foreseen them as well. There was no doubt that he would act accordingly to manifest the very best outcome possible. Compared to the politics of MECHAs, Rui was more interested in them as a Martial Artist. He had already realized that they could serve as a powerful wheatstone for him if they managed to catch up to the Realm he was in.

Unfortunately, he was already at the peak of the Master Realm.

There was too much of a gulf between them for MECHA Martial Artists to catch up to him and pose a threat to him under ordinary circumstances.

‘The Kandrian Empire might be different.’

The Kandrian Empire had the manifold that allowed time to pass fourteen times faster within it. Perhaps in a decade, he would run into a MECHA Martial Master from the Kandrian Empire itself.

That was why he predicted that most of the pressure against MECHAs would come from Apprentices and Squires who were most immediately threatened by it. It was a shame that not everybody could look at MECHAs as an opportunity of challenge and use them to grow stronger, but alas, not everybody could regard the possibility of being rendered weak in a positive light.

Regardless, he knew that MECHA Martial Art would begin growing to become a part of human civilization from this day forth, and he was perhaps the one and only Martial Artist who looked forward to it.

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