The Martial Unity

Rui could understand why his father was so stubborn about not wanting to get rid of the esoteric matter on the continent on a psychological level. It spoke to just how ingrained the presence of esoteric matter in the continent was for his father. The very notion of exorcising them from the continent was simply entering intolerable territory as far as his father was concerned.

Of course, his father was smart and offered extremely good reasons not to remove esoteric matter from the continent. For one, it was nigh impossible, not without immense economic and environmental catastrophe that would likely rival what ancestral humanity in the true world had experienced during the Age of Tumult.

Esoteric matter was ingrained deeply in the continent at almost all levels of the continent and the crust beneath it from all the geological research that had been done in the Panama Continent, getting rid of it would cause the continent to crumble, perhaps even to the point of allowing the ocean to flood their land.

That was obviously an apocalypse that they couldn’t allow to occur.

There were also the ecological consequences, which were next on the list of being as disastrous as the direct environmental consequences. A vast majority of life on the continent had esoteric matter in their body. Homo martialus had evolved to filter out the most commonly occurring esoteric substances that were too ubiquitous to avoid, even if it had not integrated esoterics into its physiology, likely because 1300 years was too little time for such drastic evolution to occur.

However, the future of homo martialus, homo hemosapien; the blood children did indeed have esoteric matter in their body as a matter of life function, and given that there were already plans of integrating this species into the homo martialus genome, getting rid of esoteric matter from Gaia was suicide.

Still, he could tell that these were rationalizations, very good rationalizations of course, but rationalizations to justify his father’s complete revulsion at the matter. For whatever the consequences of the removal of esoteric matter would be, it would not compare to the consequences of the enlargening process reaching whatever plan was in play by the ’virus.’

Asking Rui and the Divine Doctor to find absolute proof was essentially the same as saying that he would never accept this prescription, since very few things in the world have truly absolute proof.

Rui shook his head. “Fine. We will find absolute proof and force you to accept reality.”

“You do that.” The Emperor of Harmony remarked. “For now, let us put this matter aside.”

“Not quite yet,” Rui refused, much to the annoyance of his father. “You need to get the Divine Doctor in touch with Mother Maeria when you negotiate with the light elves. She can be of help with her vast network and her great power as a Mother of Nature; she is the only person who could help us find proof of this.”

The Divine Doctor waved him off. “You can teleport the doctor to East Genora yourself; that is not a matter that I care to bring up in the urgent negotiations I’m holding with powers around the world. I am more focused on more acute threats that seek to destroy at this very moment as we speak.”

“…Fair enough.”

With his Worm Step, he could just go back and forth to East Genora, now that he thought about it. Since it was negatron matter, he could easily pierce through their space anchors and go speak to Mother Maeria in person.

Getting the Divine Doctor to speak to the World Serpent would be more difficult, but he was sure that the Divine Doctor could figure something out himself in that regard.

“More importantly, Rui.” Emperor Rael’s tone was serious. “We need you on the battlefield. Your presence is crucial to crushing the opposition that we will experience in the true world. I will need you to get to work immediately regarding the arrangement that we previously discussed.”

Rui winced. “Yeah, about that…”

Emperor Rael frowned. “What now?”

“I have some things I need to take care of…” Rui began to describe the training that he intended to undergo soon.

Emperor Rael’s expression darkened. “You intend to undergo a long training session now? Now?? Of all the times to pick a time to train, you choose to do it now?”

Rui winced at his father’s words. On this particular issue, he had to admit that his father had every right to get mad at him, given how much of a pain he had been in this regard. He had sparked the current world war by harnessing the sea monsters of the Great Nam Ocean, and then just dipped to handle his own personal business after leaving the mess to handle for the entire continent.

“We need you, Rui.” The Emperor of Harmony stressed. “You are our powerhouse and the only person from this continent, along with Amare to a lesser extent, who can fight the top ten who will soon partake in this battle.”

Rui leaned back on the comfortable chair opposite his father. “Why not get all the top tens on your side? We have esoteric matter and negatron matter, what could possibly beat that?”

“Your arguments would make sense if we weren’t dealing with the most intelligent entity in the world.” Emperor Rael’s golden eyes sharpened with severity. “It hasn’t been very long since she awakened, but she already managed to completely subjugate an entire continent under her iron-grip rule with just five days of preparation, despite being a century behind on all the technological development that has occurred. And unlike you…”

He clenched his fists. “She’s able to apply that intelligence to everything, not just combat.”

Rui grew serious at those words as the threat of NOVA was reiterated to him. Indeed, Rui was not an all-purpose supercomputer. The cognitive endowments of the Apprentice Realm, the Martial Mind, and even the Martial Soul were explicitly Martial powers.

He could use them for any other purpose.

The same could not be said for NOVA.