The Martial Unity

Before the Beast Incursion, the beasts and monsters of the Beast Domain were known to constantly try and migrate deeper and deeper towards the center of the Beast Domain. This had also been true for the Mellow Manifold.

The closer the beasts and monsters drew to the center of the Beast Domain, the less space there was, the more conflict there was, and the more filtering of the weak there was.

Only the strong made it through.

Thus, stronger beasts ended up closer to the center while weaker beasts ended up further away, creating concentric layers of growing power the closer one got to the center.

“That was an intentional security purpose to protect the manifold tree, in hindsight.” Rui realized. “The manifold trees and the chimeras acted with purpose. I… cannot help but strongly feel that they came here with purpose. I think this is connected with the negatron core in some way.”

The Divine Doctor nodded. “I agree. When we put all of this information together and zoom out, what we end up with is…”

His clinical eyes grew uncharacteristically serious. “…A foreign entity, perhaps a meteorite, came to our world a long, long time ago. It might not itself have been alive or intentional itself, but it was at least sent with intentionality of sorts.”

Rui nodded. “That foreign entity came here with an unknown purpose, integrated itself in our world in ways we don’t understand. The manifold tree was planted on our continent tree, where it spontaneously created a giant manifold which made our continent disappear from the true world and live in a dilated flow of time where we experienced only one thousand three hundred years, turning the entire Panama Continent into a dungeon that served as its ’kingdom’ filled with esoteric substances that were not there before, as evidenced by the Lost Cities.”

“And on the other hand,” the Divine Doctor continued their analyses. “It began pumping Gaia’s core with negatron matter and ordinary matter, making its mass and negatron mass grow just enough to ensure that its gravity remained constant, ensuring that the planet was not thrown off its axis and that life could endure despite the radical changes the world underwent during the Age of Tumult—”

The Divine Doctor froze.

The air grew tense as his normally calm and collected eyes widened with horror.

“What?” Rui demanded to know what he had just connected in his mind.

“…A foreign entity entering our world and integrating with it, causing seemingly calibrated fundamental changes to it, making it grow bigger and bigger…” his voice shook in a manner that Rui had never seen before. “That… That is something that I have seen before in my practice.”

“What the hell are you talking about—!” Rui froze as he too realized what the Divine Doctor was talking about.

The pieces of the puzzle clicked.

It was just part of the whole picture.

But it clicked.

A foreign entity.

Entering a much larger entity and implanting itself in it.

Changing it in a calibrated manner.

There was indeed another thing that acted just like that in the field of medicine.

“A virus.” The Divine Doctor’s tone was one of profound realization. “Or perhaps a parasite.”

Rui stared at the man with a stunned expression. “But… but viruses only affect living things—”

His eye widened as the full weight of the realization dawned on him.

“Gaia is alive,” the Divine Doctor’s tone grew more fervent. “There is no doubt about it in my mind. She is the most alive entity that I have ever beheld. She is alive in a way that defies our understanding. She is alive in a manner that exceeds our fathoming. A higher lifeform than any of us lesser beings. And based on all the characteristics of this foreign entity, we are dealing with. This is a virus-like foreign entity. But the question is, why? Why have such things happened? What is its purpose?”

His tone was almost frantically desperate, unlike the clinical composure the man had always demonstrated even in extreme circumstances.

Rui stared at him with a horrified expression.

He couldn’t even bring himself to believe such a nonsensical hypothesis. Gaia being alive was something that he had never believed in the first place. He didn’t understand how a planet could be alive, and the Divine Doctor clearly was not making this guess on a scientific basis, else he would have easily been able to prove it to everybody.

This was nothing short of a hunch.

One that Rui wasn’t sure he believed the man. He was a powerful Martial Sage with an extremely powerful mind and senses. With Gigabrain, he dared entertain the possibility that he was the most powerful pathwalker in the world, although he wasn’t sure about the return of NOVA. Yet, he had never once sensed ’life’ within Gaia.

“Even if this is true…” Rui began with a serious tone. “This… this isn’t the source of your fear, is it?”

Rui gazed deep into the man’s eyes with a knowing expression.

“You experienced this fear even before you made this realization, which means that…”

His expression grew ashen.

“Whatever we fear, even if it is not unconnected, is much greater than the possibility that you have espoused.”

The Divine Doctor remained silent at those words.

“What exactly do you fear?” Rui asked with a serious expression. “You said you had departed from Gaia because you wanted to study your patient as a whole for once, to diagnose her. And then you ended up discovering that… everything was ill?”

Rui found it incomprehensible. What the hell did that even mean? How could everything be ill? Was he talking about all life in Gaia, or was he talking about a metaphorical illness that applied to the solar system?

“The universe.”

The Divine Doctor’s expression grew grave.

“There is something wrong with this universe. There is something afoot that vastly exceeds even our hypothesizing. This fear… goes beyond the machinations of esoteric and negatron matter and otherworldly life. The source of this fear encompasses the very fabric of reality. Everything. Everywhere. Everywhen.”

His tone was chilling.

“Whatever it is, it is beyond our fathoming. I suspect that… we have just begun to uncover the surface of the truth of our universe.”