The Martial Unity

It was a lesser version of what Rui had done with the eldritch chimera to master its language.

An astronomically inferior version of that feat that allowed Rui to stop the Beast Incursion.

“I would like to get more data first,” the Psycher replied to the Linguister. “Let’s continue.”

The Psycher’s skills of psychological observation were so great that the Esoterist and the research teams didn’t even need to bring in a Martial Sage or use highly advanced detection programs.

His observation, especially with his evolved blood-red eyes, were more than enough.

The process, of course, took time.

It was grueling.

Methodical.

Systematic.

And exhaustive.

They needed to show the entity countless images to rigorously gather an endless amount of data.

The entity was clearly intelligent enough to get a rough understanding of what they were trying to do, stifling their reaction as much as possible.

And yet, it didn’t realize that doing so actually helped the Psycher.

Because it couldn’t stifle subconscious micro-non-verbal communication, but instead stifled everything else that would have muddied in its reactions. Thus in an attempt to hide the truth, it only purified the truth and gave them a clean non-verbal micro-signature for each image they showed it.

They had considered drugging the entity with special kinds of drugs to get it to be less guarded. However, they ultimately scrapped this plan.

This entity was far too divergent from the human beings of the Panama Continent to possibly undergo the same effect from drugs used on the continent for the indigenous population.

At the same time, they temporarily abstained from hypnosis until they gained more data on its non-verbal communication.

They also abstained from methods like plain torture, which was unlikely to yield anything useful when they were so different and couldn’t even communicate, although the Psycher was willing to use pain to get more data from it than they would have otherwise had.

However, with a full brainwave detection technological headset, based on neural interface technology, attached to the top of the entity’s head, they were also getting data from its brainwaves, which were remarkably human and the only organ that wasn’t mechanized in part or whole.

They simply needed a bit of time to continued gathering data on the entity and feed it through their analytical systems.

Time passed as they featured a variety of elements.

One of the most telling non-verbal signatures that they got was from showing a map of the true world to the alien prisoner of war, getting a particular pronounced micro-expression from its body language.

What was even more precious in its insight was its reaction to each individual continent among the six new and unknown continents of the true world.

There were some continents where it displayed a negative reaction of displeasure while neutral reactions to the others, as much as it tried to hide it.

However, there was one continent that it had a positive association with.

“I see…” the Psycher glanced at the image of the western continent of the two northern continents, his gaze returning to the entity with a knowing smile. “Does that remind you of home?”

He zoomed in on the map on his screen, shifting his finger across different places on the continent. “Hm… not here, it appears. What about… here?”

The smallest of reactions was all it took.

The slightest twitch in its cybernetic eyes was all it took for the Psycher to glean the truth.

“Home.”

His gaze shifted to a camera in the corner of the room. “Did you get that?”

“Yeah, we got it,” the Esoterist’s voice emerged from the earpiece in his ear. “I’ll have my satellites look into the area soon to the best of their ability.”

The Psycher’s gaze returned to the map.

The continent that was presumed to serve as home to the entity was North, slightly west of the Panama Continent.

This made sense given that the origin of the aircraft on their radars was well North of the Panama Continent, which stood to reason about the origin of the entity in the true world.

This was extremely precious intelligence given that they previously knew nothing about where the entity came from,

It was entirely possible that the entity had actually come from the south and had circled around the continent to target the Esocline Federation, but with this new evidence, that possibility was increasingly less feasible.

This meant that their one enemy was to the North.

A fact that would undoubtedly affect the deployment of Martial power and the concentration of people and allocation of resources, among other things. This decision would likely inspire the Emperor of Harmony to focus more on the development of economic corridors in the North of the Panama Continent to ensure that they would sooner be equipped to collectively defend the North from attacks.

Another precious piece of intelligence that they got from this revelation was the fact the civilizations atop each continent likely didn’t have the best relationships with each other.

This made sense, considering that prior to the existential threat of Beast Incursion and the true world, the Panama Continent was also extremely divided between different nations, organizations, sectors, and movements.

Why would multiple continents, even larger than the Panama Continent, be in lockstep with each other?

But the first hint of evidence that they could very well be politically divided was a good sign.

It meant that there likely were great fault lines that could be exploited by the Emperor of Harmony, who had essentially crowned himself as the de facto emperor of the Panama Continent. This was something he was particularly good at, given his track record in the previous Great East Panamic War where he singlehandedly fought three Sage-level powerhouses with clever political and military strategies.

The investigation progressed as they began displaying words, characters, symbols, and sentences obtained from the alien aircraft to the alien entity to gather its reactions and compare them with the previous images.

They managed to decode a handful of words.

A handful of names that popped up frequently in the captured aircraft.

The Linguister directed a deep gaze at the successful translation.

“The Imperial Tekvorian Federation and the Continent of Acherialis.”

They had finally identified their enemy.

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