The Martial Unity

His eyes sharpened, wandering about the little three-dimensional model that Mother Vyia spontaneously crafted atop the surface as he tried to make sense of what he was looking at.

It screamed of modern civilization on Earth, and yet there were important differences that refuted it being Earth.

’Still, what is the probability that it would be so similar to Earth, yet not Earth?’

Very low, unfathomably improbable.

’And yet, what is the probability that Gaia is Earth?’

Also very low, equally unfathomably improbable.

Even as he gazed at the replica, he couldn’t help but recall his perfect memory of the Lost City of the Epicenter, as it has come to be called, where the eldritch chimera was within.

’I need to pass on that information.’

It had completely slipped his memory since the moment he awoke after that fourteen months late in a whole new world, there were existential threats that sought to destroy all of human civilization and steal the exotic resources of the Panama Continent.

There still were.

Human civilization was in a precarious position where its very survival was at stake, so Rui hadn’t had time to engage in archaeological research of any kind. But seeing the replica in front of him and learning of the revelations of the manifold plant having a purpose in this world made him regret his decision.

“This is human civilization from 187,000 years ago.”

Mother Vyia remarked, drawing his attention when she had completed her little three-dimensional replica with the living wood across the surface of the table.

“The homo sapien species,” she explained. “Ancestral humanity, as it is more commonly referred to as by the six species. It was the sole species that comprised the ancient civilization many years ago. We estimate that it was a Type 1 civilization that had harnessed all the energy of its planet, based on all the archaeological evidence that we have managed to get our hands on. They had sophisticated inorganic and biotechnology and had fully colonized the entire planet about one hundred and eighty thousand years ago.”

“The same species as humans from the Panama Continent, right?” Rui mused knowingly.

“No, actually.” She shook her head. “They were not.”

Rui frowned. “…I’m pretty sure you have said that the human civilization of the Panama Continent is the same as the ancestral species that eventually gave rise to the six races of the true world.”

“This was before we gained access to DNA samples from your people,” she remarked. “We sequenced them with the tiniest iota of DNA that we have found in some better preserved fossils in the six continents, and we have found that the human civilization of the Panama Continent is as divergent from ancestral humanity 187,000 years ago as the six races are. In other words…”

Her elderly eyes bore deep into his.

“You humans from the Panama Continent are also evolutionary descendants of the homo sapien species, just like us elves.”

Rui’s eyes flew wide open with shock. “What?!”

She frowned with a hint of confusion. “Why so surprised? It has been 187,000 years. No species remains completely unchanged in that timeframe. You people are not human beings of ancestral human civilization. You are a different species altogether.”

The revelation seemed to have struck Rui harder than Mother Vyia had expected. In fact, in hindsight, it was strange that the human beings of the Panama Continent thought that they were the same human beings from a civilization that existed 187,000 years ago.

Her elderly eyes sharpened with a hint of suspicion as she studied Rui’s reactions.

’These humans… are hiding something from us.’

Of course, that was hardly unexpected, given that the elves had not divulged their deepest secrets either. It would be foolish to do so when their relationship was still in its infancy, after all. She was curious as to what their secret was, but she didn’t push it. Perhaps one day, the humans would trust the elves enough to actually share it.

Rui, on the other hand, remained frozen.

His astonishment was understandable.

In the Panama Continent, only 1300 years had passed because of the manifold time dilation effect.

How could the homo sapien species evolve to become a different species in just 1300 years?

’We hadn’t realized it because of the Great

Singularity.’ ¹The Great Singularity was a term coined by the Scrier, the immortal sage of history. It referred to the event 1300 years ago that destroyed all evidence of the past, including archaeological evidence, records, fossils, writing, structures, and even legacies.

Something had happened in the Panama Continent 1300 years ago that had destroyed all information of the past, leaving human civilization of the Panama Continent completely drowned in doubt.

The only source of information that the human civilization of the Panama Continent had was the Lost Cities of the Beast Domain.

That was why human civilization never realized that it was not the same species as the human beings of the ancient civilizations of the Lost City. They didn’t have the DNA needed for someone like the Divine Doctor to conduct a DNA analysis to evaluate their genetic relations with us.

That was why the revelation struck Rui so hard.

“You are not a ’human’ of ancestral humanity. You were not a homo sapien even before you became a Martial Artist,” she explained patiently. “You are of a different race entirely. We dark elves have taken the liberty of dubbing you homo martialus in our Tree of Life taxonomy.”

“…Homo Martialus?” Rui murmured with a stunned tone.

She nodded. “It translates to Humans of the Martial Path. Fitting, don’t you think?”

It truly was a fitting name, all things considered.

“For the record, we elves are homo elvenus, while the dwarves are homo floresiensis, the giants are homo gigantus, while the tekvores are homo technopithecus, the therianthropes are homo therianthropis, and the evolutionaries are homo evosapien.”

Rui was aware of that, of course.

“Then again, you can’t be considered homo martialus either,” she remarked with a wry smile. “Your Martial Body is of a different species entirely, as all Martial Squires are.”