The Martial Unity

The report was shortly dispatched across all of human civilization, causing yet another uproar across the leadership in human civilization. What shook them was the sheer horror of know that all this time, they had simlly been trapped inside a manifold.

The fact that the true world was not some new phenomenon or new change to the world but had been exactly the way it was since time immemorial was what stunned all of them.

And yet, it didn’t change what they needed to do.

“It doesn’t change the calculus of our situation at all.”

The uncharacteristically mirthless voice of the Esoterist was stern.

He threw one last glance at the digital copy of the report of the Emperor of Harmony in his augmented reality headset before putting it away.

He was not interested in details of the past.

What mattered was the future.

Not just the short-term future, which was the most urgent, but also the long-term future. The recent attack upon the Esocline Federation had served as a dire warning to him of the threats that they faced.

If not for the Gatekeeper and the Omni-Martial, they would have undoubtedly been destroyed. Never before had all the technological power of the Esocline Federation been so utterly negated by the superior defense technology of the alien aircraft.

The Esoterist had spent the past nine hours conducting thorough and scrupulous scans and documenting of the captured alien craft along with a research team from the Kandrian Empire.

He had also spent several hours extracting all the antimatter from within the captured foreign entity, still unconscious after the beating that it had gotten from Amare.

“What progress have you made with the captured true world entities?”

The gruff older voice of the Beggar Sage emerged from his three-dimensional projection across the table from him.

The Estorist snorted with a hint irritation.

“Why ask questions to which you already know the answer to?”

Although the Beggar Sage never confirmed it, the Esoterist knew for a fact that Beggar Sage had thoroughly infiltrated hjs technocracy.

“Hah,” the Beggar Sage grinned. “It was a rhetorical question. I need to you accelerate your investigations as soon as possible.”

“Hey! I’m already working as fast as I possibly can! Give me a break!”

“Hah! Get to work, you little runt!” The Beggar Sage snorted. “I refuse to be denied of its secrets any longer!”

His eyes glinted with a deep greed for knowledge.

The knowledge of the true world.

“Those Transcendent bastards…” the Beggar Sage grin widened with anger. “They kept this secret hidden from me. From us. And then disappeared on us the moment the manifold opened up.”

The Beggar Sage was the only person in the world who noticed their absence.

“So not fault them, old friend.” The Psycher’s young voice emerged from beside the Esoterist as his lively red eyes shifted towards his colleague knowingly. “Had you known that this world was a manifold, you would have done everything in your power to pop the manifold, am I wrong?”

His tone was calm and composed as ever.

“YOU’RE GODDAMN RIGHT I WOULD,” the Beggar Sage roared with rage. “THEY HAD NO RIGHT TO HIDE THE TRUE WORLD FROM US.”

His anger was palpable.

He had already experienced the frustration of a world of knowledge and information being hidden from him by Rui, being used to squeeze him of precious intelligence.

Now, upon realizing that the Transcendents had deprived him of knowledge of the True World, he truly couldn’t contain contain his anger.

His resentment against those who sought to deprive him of knowledge and information heightened.

“I don’t blame them.”

The clinical tone of the Divine Doctor drew their attention to his projection across the table, still donning the white lab coat with a myriad of tools across his utility belt.

“However…” his frozen smile was chilling. “Now that they are gone and the manifold has unfolded, nobody can stop me from diagnosing Gaia’s ills.”

The other immortal sages gazed at the Divine Doctor with pointed eyes. An inhuman light lurked within his eerie eyes as his smile remained as frozen as ever.

He was absolutely inscrutable.

Not even the Beggar Sage or the Psycher could read him despite all the centuries they had known him.

“All these years I searched Gaia…” he continued with a clinical tone. “All the years I had the Dawnbringer search for source of her illness in my stead…”

He closed his eyes slowly even as his expression remained unmoved.

“I never found anything.”

He opened his eyes with understanding.

“And of course I did not,” he continued with an eerily composed tone. “For I had conducted all my searches on a small portion of my patient’s body.”

His gaze slowly shifted up even as his smile remained frozen as ever.

“With the true world at my disposal, I will succeed.”

Within the depths of his tone lingered a profound will.

“…I am still not convinced of this so-called illness that you allege Gaia has,” the Ecologer frowned at him, standing out like a sore thumb in her attire fashioned organic fibers and leaves. “However, I too am eager to explore the true world. I can’t wait to see how life has evolved outside of our manifold. I can’t wait to see how the biosphere has been shaped by natural selection. I cannot wait to see how much the other branch of the Gaian Tree of Life has changed in how many ever years since the true world diverged from our continent.”

Her tone was one of genuine academic curiosity and passion. The Panama Continent, as large as it was, was still a single continent and landmass.

The introduction of mew continents, new oceans, and new biospheres was everything that she needed to be excited.

“I don’t care about the True World.”

The projection of a young man declared with a hint of frustration. His attire was comprised sleek, white bodysuit that bound to his body tightly.

“I just want to know how the hell I studied the cosmos from within a manifold for decades without ever once noticing I was in a manifold,” he growled. “All the readings from mpy soace laboratories and satellites have changed. They’ve grown intense was as though I was being sabotaged by the universe itself. That is far more important than the true world.”

He was the first Immortal Sage who declared the true world unimportant, a sentiment he was certainly alone in harboring in this rare gathering of Immortal Sages.