The Martial Unity

The doctor’s diagnosis of the amount of time the Dawnbringer would remain in a coma came hard to the Emperor of Harmony.

It wasn’t easy knowing that the Dawnbringer would remain in a coma for a whopping fourteen months.

But it made sense that given the first time he had used Gigabrain, he had lasted five minutes with the technique while his coma had lasted thirty-seven days. Thus, with an additional hour on the clock, it was understandable that he would take proportionally longer to recover from that point on.

“…I have no choice but to leave him in the manifold,” the Emperor of Harmony realized with a grave tone. “Then, we can reduce the time to one month in the real world. But that also means that we will have to hold out for one month without him.”

That might have sounded easy, but who knew what would happen in the next one month?

So much had happened in the span of just one day, given that the Unfolding had happened a little under thirty hours ago in the real world.

The absence of any intelligence of the true world rendered him absolutely unable to make any judgment on what could happen in the next one month. It left him feeling nervous, a state of mind he rarely ever found himself, and quite uncertain.

This was a rather foreign problem to him, as he was normally armed with information and a great degree of certainty about how things would go. Even in the Beast Domain, they were still dealing with much more known variables native to the Panama Continent.

The Emperor of Harmony turned to the doctor.

“Please oversee his condition.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

His golden eyes shifted to Amare with a serious look.

“Have you made your choice in regards to the Martial Insurance Pact?”

Amare shifted her gaze away from Rui, turning her amber eyes towards the Emperor of Harmony with a simple nod of her head. “I will fight for human civilization through the Kandrian Empire.”

The Emperor of Harmony nodded. “In that case, I can’t have you staying at Rui’s side in that time. The manifold doesn’t allow for quick exit, and in the time we need you, it will take you some time to exit this place.”

She pouted a little. “…Fine.”

She took one last deep look at Rui before following the Emperor of Harmony out of the medical room.

“Here’s how this is going to work,” the Emperor of Harmony informed her. “At all times, one of the three of you, your grandmother, and the Reverend of Reckoning will remain on standby for dispatch through the World Bridge System.”

She turned to him with a thoughtful expression. “Just so that we have one of our very strongest at immediate avail if anything goes wrong?”

“Precisely,” the Emperor of Harmony remarked. “The Kandrian Empire still mourns the loss of our great hero, Sir Armstrong. We can’t ever allow ourselves to be vulnerable in the face of an invasion.”

“…But an invasion has yet to come, since the attack on Esocline Federation a day ago, right?” Amare pondered. “It isn’t very odd for them to just send one craft and one entity randomly without any back-up or follow-up?”

The Emperor of Harmony turned towards her with an appreciative glance. “You are correct. You are also not as clueless as Rui painted you to be.”

“He what?” Amare scrunched her eyebrows.

“Never mind,” the Emperor of Harmony continued along smoothly. “To answer your question…”

The Emperor of Harmony sharpened his gaze. “Yes. It is indeed odd that they have been so spurious to send a single vessel and entity within a few hours of the unfolding of the manifold, but have not done anything since then. In fact, according to the Esoterist and Kandria’s very own research teams that have gone to inspect the aircraft, it doesn’t appear as though the aircraft is particularly specialized for surveillance or reconnaissance. Which begs the question if it was even a scout bogey in the first place. Additionally…”

He heaved a deep breath in thought. “Based on the fact that the entity first attempted to captured and then attempted to destroy the Esocline Federation, it truly does not strike me that this mission was intended to be a scouting mission at all. Scouts do not declare war, or try to capture and destroy their enemy. Their one and only goal is information gathering.”

A mystified expression appeared on his face. “It’s hard to imagine that this was intended to be a scout unless the military culture of this particularly civilization is warped beyond anything we can imagine. At the same time, it’s hard to imagine that this mission was meant to be a proper attack. Who send only a single war unit to fight a battle?”

The actions of the alien entity, who had still yet to awaken, were truly baffling to the Emperor of Harmony.

“It’s especially baffling when you consider the fact that it chose to attack the Esocline Federation of places,” the Emperor of Harmony heaved a deep breath. “That likely means that it identified the techno-signature of the Esocline Federation and chose to attack it nonetheless, apparently not even considering the fact that it could run into resistance that could potentially defeat it.”

The Emperor of Harmony shook his head.

“I cannot imagine that a rational actor could possibly have conceived of the attack. The more I, and my analyst division, consider these circumstances, I simply can’t help but conclude that this was an individual operating autonomously. And yet…”

His eyes wandered about deep in thought. “The said individual was as powerful as a peak Sage. On top of that, it had immediate access to what is clearly a military-grade aircraft, not the kind of thing a random private individual would get their hands on. The same can be said for its combat power. Thus, my conclusion is…”

His eyes sharpened.

“Either the entity in question is a high-ranking official with little discipline or self-control, using its power to arrange for that little operation on the Esocline Federation, or more likely…”

His gaze shifted towards Amare.

“The entity that we’re dealing with is from a civilization that is highly atomized and non-hierarchical, where individuals with a level of power can operate with great autonomy and self-decision.”

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