The Martial Unity

“That won’t be easy, and they do not cooperate easily.” Mother Maeria shook her head. “It’s not worth the effort.”

However, Rui immediately understood what the Divine Doctor’s motive was. “Are you sure? You just healed after a century and a half in one vessel. Moving to another one will restore your psychopathy, right?”

The Divine Doctor shook his head. “The psychopathy was originally the result of an imperfect prototypical process that we refined only after my original soul transfer. If I do it with my current consciousness, I will not turn out the same way as before.”

Mother Maeria’s eyes widened at those words as she began to understand the gist of what they were communicating with each other. Finally, his age made sense to her. “You… plan to transfer your consciousness into an asklepion vessel?”

“Not exactly.” The Divine Doctor replied. “More like recreating my consciousness after subjecting it to the same experiences in a hyper-accelerated manner and passing on my identity to the vessel.”

Her expression darkened at those words. “That… is madness.”

“Yeah, it’s crazy, especially when it happens to you without you even knowing it,” Rui heaved a sigh. “It gave me years of an existential crisis that I only resolved after gaining Enlightenment of Self.”

Her eyes widened at those words. “Wait, you mean to say that you—”

“Yep.” Rui cut her off. “I don’t know who, why, or how, but yes.”

“…That’s rather shocking to hear,” she turned towards the Divine Doctor with a curious expression. “The asklepions will not tolerate you taking one of their people.”

The Divine Doctor shook his head. “I don’t need one of their people; I just need DNA samples from across the body, or even a single skin cell at the worst. That will be enough to create a clone from start to finish.”

“…Impressive,” she admitted. “I can see why the Dawnbringer holds you in high regard. If you succeed in what you hope to achieve, you might truly become an extraordinary pathwalker.”

Rui had to concur. The Divine Doctor was tremendously able despite possessing a human vessel. He couldn’t even imagine what kind of miracles he would be capable of if he inhabited a vessel with the Path of Healing.

Rui was able to resurrect people with the right information five minutes after death, with great effort, not to mention Gigabrain.

Would the Divine Doctor be able to effortlessly replicate that feat if he entered the body of a pathwalker?

It was terrifying and exciting to think about.

“More importantly, you can save it for after our most immediate and dire objective.” Rui directed a pointed gaze. “Gaia comes first. You need to find the ’virus’ or any foreign entity that is causing or did cause the expansion of the planet.”

“…Virus?” Mother Maeria’s eyebrows rose. “What is this about?”

“Ah, right, we didn’t even tell you all of our recent insights. Well, buckle up. It goes like this…” Rui began explaining to her all the insights and inferences that the two of them had made, along with the cobbled theory that tied all of these deductions together.

Mother Maeria listened with a harmonious and calm, yet interested lesson, growing more serious as she learned about several secrets that she hadn’t yet learned off.

“Alien manifold tree…” she murmured with a knowing expression. “This… I must see this for myself.”

“You might get an opportunity when you complete your negotiations with my father. The dark elves had already gotten a chance to study it from afar,” Rui explained. “More importantly…”

He continued explaining how the presence of an alien lifeform responsible for the manifold proved with great certainty that it was a foreign alien entity responsible for all the changes that had occurred in Gaia.

“…And you think the Source of the enlargening of Gaia is in the Panama Continent,” she connected the rest of the dots herself with an amazed tone. “You think the exotic matter that the Panama Continent is pumped full with is not a blessing but rather the machinery with which the virus is creating matter and antiparticle matter to expand the planet in the way that viruses pump host cells with genetic material to cause changes to them.”

Rui nodded. “Something like that. I don’t want to get too caught up in analogies since, regardless of what the doctor says here, Gaia is not equivalent to a cell in almost any way. But essentially, I think all exotic matter embedded in the Panama Continent interacts with the planet of Gaia in esoteric manners that we simply cannot even fathom. I can’t imagine that a negatron-producing process can naturally occur with normal matter. However, I can imagine such miracles occurring with the presence of exotic matter that can trigger conditions at the center of the planet similar to those of particle accelerators that create negatron matter.”

“…And assuming that the ’intentions’ of this ’virus’ are divergent from us, then whatever it is trying to achieve within Gaia is likely, undoubtedly destructive to our entire world,” she realized. “In other words, it cannot be allowed to continue. And it cannot be allowed to exist.”

She turned towards Rui with a severe expression. “Your continent might be an existential threat to all of Gaia.”

The air tingled with a hint of tension as the obvious remained unsaid.

If Panama were an existential threat to all continents, including Genora, then the interests of the elves and homo martialus could clash. A thought that was extremely dangerous in a world war when Mother Maeria had yet to forge an alliance with the Panama Continent.

“…You have courage and selflessness for choosing to reveal this to me,” she remarked. “You have decided to put the interests of the entire world above your own greed and self-interest. That is commendable, and in honor of that, you have my word that I will do everything in my power to cooperate with Panama in a peaceful manner to resolve this issue should your speculations turn out to have merit. However…”

Her expression grew a little grave.

“Should a peaceful cooperation prove to be impossible and the threat prove to be sufficiently great, I may have no other choice but to… employ more forceful means.”