The Martial Unity

A little over a year had passed in the true world while Rui had spent sixteen years in the manifold in the metamorphosis. The world war had stabilized into a long, grueling stalemate between the two sides as the two alliances engaged in a grinding conflict against each other.

The first half of the year was characterized by flux. Both alliances scrambled to gather allies that could fight on their behalf. The Emperor of Harmony went on a war footing, literally, to gather as many allies as he possibly could that would contribute to the protection of the Panama Continent without the need to bring back the sea monsters situated in the Great Void Ocean.

NOVA relied on a combination of the stick and carrot to expertly manipulate several species and civilizations to attack the Kandrian Empire or their allies, while the Emperor of Harmony relied exclusively on the carrot in the form of negatron matter.

Many civilizations erred on the side of the sentient quantum supercomputer, but the Emperor of Harmony managed to reel in his fair share of fish as well, creating a powerful alliance and consortium centered around negatron matter.

The core powers of their alliance were composed of an increasingly united Kiriket, all of Genora, and the Bournvyrne Empire, as well as the West Moridian Alliance. On the other hand, NOVA managed to gain the full might of all giants, all tekvores, the Evolutionary Army, much of the more martial Pasupati Clans of Kiriket, and the North Dwarven Consortium.

Between the two sides, all six pureblood civilizations and their continents had been largely divided up.

The Panamic Alliance side had roughly four continents on their side, while NOVA only had three, including her own. On a purely territorial and militaristic level, one might have expected that the former would retain a dominant advantage, but that wasn’t so, for the two sides were not symmetric.

The biggest factor was that all the forces of the major powers that were on the anti-Panama alliance were extraordinarily dedicated and invested in the war relative to many of their enemies.

The giants did not hold back, going absolutely all out in their assault on the Kandrian Empire from their home continent, directly east of the Panama Continent. The tekvores also dedicated almost every single fathomable unit of power and war against their enemies from the very get-go, under the absolute control of NOVA. The Evolutionary Army was more subdued by the West Moridian Alliance and their own protection of the generation of miracles, but this was an organization that was dedicated to war itself.

The parts of Kiriket and Sirinwel that NOVA had managed to earn the support of, despite the best efforts of Lord Vakratunda, all went all-in into the war.

In comparison, despite possessing a greater portion of the seven major powers on their side, the elves were the least invested in the war simply because of their pacifist nature. Thus, despite Genora being the largest continent, neither the dark elves nor the light elves could bring themselves to throw their female warriors towards death and destruction for the sake of war.

While the growing reserves of negatron matter in their strategic stockpile had allowed them to project their power further and further, unshackling them from their range limits, it was still not on par with the giants.

The dwarves also did not dedicate their entire civilization to war in the manner of the Evolutionary Army, the giants, or the tekvores. The Bournvyrne Empire was an industrial empire with outputted powerful artifacts and was often regarded as the weapons central market of the world, they weren’t very willing, even if partly able, to become a wartime economy.

Thus, despite possessing a larger alliance when observed on a world map, the Panamic Alliance was unable to achieve any real advantage in the first year of the war.

By the end of the first year, most second-world and even third-world civilizations of the true world had chosen their side, facing an extraordinary amount of pressure to participate one way or another. Both the Emperor of Harmony and NOVA dogged all of them so hard that it was actually more dangerous to stay unaffiliated than to join one side!

In such times, fence-sitters often received almost as much pressure due to having to face scrutiny from both sides! Usually, rejecting an offer invited displeasure from one side, but was countered by the protection and friendship from the other side that they did accept.

In this case, a nation would incur displeasure from both the Panamic Alliance and the anti-Panama Alliance at once, isolating them entirely. Thus, even if many nations did not have much of a stake in negatron matter due to their inferior technological prowess, they still partook in a perfunctory role, if only not to stand out and not to experience too much pressure.

Secondary powers involved the seafolks, the sentinels, the skinwalkers, as well as many pluralistic nation-states like the Hlakaschken Trade Empire that managed to mobilize whatever it was able to. Many of these were the most eminent powers after the seven major races and civilizations, and could materially impact the balance of power, especially when some of the top ten most powerful pathwalkers emerged from some of them.

All in all, the entire surface of the planet was largely drowned in war by the end of the first year.

However, it wasn’t just the surface.

Deep-sea war had commenced just one month after NOVA declared war on the Panamic Alliance and attacked the Kandrian Empire. Over the span of the previous year, deep-sea naval military technology had received an astronomical spike in investment and production as nations rushed to expand their submarine fleets.

Countless submarines were born over the span of a year as each side went about developing its own unique submarine fighting methods. The Panamic Alliance had created a Panamic Deep-Sea Fleet Alliance, headed by none other than Princess Ranea of the Kandrian Empire, that was exclusively dedicated to producing and organizing all deep-sea naval military vessels and military resources under a single banner for maximum efficiency.