The Martial Unity

The air grew tense as the atmosphere grew electric upon those words. Rui gazed at that point on the hologram with a profound intensity in his ethereal eyes. The two deputy leaders of the task force simply waited in silence for Rui’s response. He closed his eyes as he parsed through all the information they had thrust on him.

The Panama Continent brought out more fear from Ieyasu than any of the other continents. Within the Panama Continent, the epicenter of the continent, where the eldritch chimera resided, brought out the most fear from Ieyasu.

Under the surface of the Panama Continent, the crust and the inner core brought out the most fear from Ieyasu, but the single most fearful point anywhere within Gaia that evoked maximum terror was directly straight downwards from the epicenter of the Panama Continent.

If one kept digging straight down from the epicenter of the Panama Continent all the way to just outside the inner core, there existed something that utterly terrified Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Rui wasn’t just certain that this point contained what he was looking for out of pure instinct. It was simply too much of a coincidence. The epicenter of the Panama Continent was where the manifold tree had taken root, casting a manifold over the entire Panama Continent.

They had already concluded that it was likely to hide something. To protect something. To protect something that was too widespread to be hidden by ordinary means. It must have been something that was equally spread across the Panama Continent for the manifold tree to have taken root at the epicenter, rather than any other point.

Now, they find that directly straight downwards from that epicenter to the inner core, there was something that inspired tremendous fear in Ieyasu.

Was that just a coincidence?

Rui couldn’t bring himself to believe that. He was certain that this was the same reason that Mother Maeria and the Divine Doctor were so certain that they had found the alien entity.

“Tell me more about this point of maximum fear.” Rui’s tone was intense. “I’m sure you guys must have tried to grasp at more information, right? The more we know about it, the more we can prepare for it.”

Mother Maeria and the Divine Doctor exchanged glances before shaking their head.

“We tried, but almost all means of trying to gather information about this point have ended in resounding failure. Even the data that we showed the Ieyasu Machine was actually scrambled information that could not cleanly identify anything about this point of maximum fear. But even that scrambled data inspired terror from the Ieyasu Machine.”

Rui’s eyes widened. “You’re telling me that Ieyasu fears whatever is at that point so much that even highly inaccurate and imprecise data inspired terror within him?”

“Yes, that is exactly what we’re telling you.” The Divine Doctor calmly clarified. “We tried seismic, gravitational, even esoteric means of identifying the composition of whatever was at this point, but we were unable to find almost anything. Meaning it’s a highly isolated system. There is no energy or matter that moves in and out of this region. Almost nothing can move back and forth for us to estimate what is happening.”

Rui raised an eyebrow. “Almost anything?”

Mother Maeria nodded. “Gravity. Gravity is the one thing that seems to be able to move in and out of this point. We know this because we used one million gravimeters to try to measure gravitational fields around the epicenter of the Panama Continent, and found that gravity is a little weaker. We suspect that this means that…”

Her expression crumpled with grave severity. “…that there is an enormous cavity at this particular point of maximum fear. A large hole that is causing just a little less gravity at the epicenter of the Beast Domain. Since gravity is merely a warp in space and time. It appeared that the isolated system at this point of maximum fear is unable to stop gravity, or lackthereof, which allows us to deduce that this is a massive hole at this point deep underneath the epicenter of the Beast Domain.”

“A hole…” Rui’s ethereal eyes widened with shock. “A hole right outside of the inner core of the planet? A hole deep underneath the epicenter of the Beast Domain?”

Such a thing was not possible normally.

A singular surge of pure certainty emerged deep from within him.

“This is it.”

It was a confidence that came from countless unfathomable sources. His own experience of the Fear twice before, as well as his many, many enlightenments, his powerful primordial instinct, his body-consciousness, as well as his prophecy.

Everything he had whispered to him was but one thing.

“This is it.”

His tone was even more certain. His ethereal eyes bore deep into the specific point in the hologram as he nodded with growing confidence. His hands clenched into fists as his mind surged, processing all the information that he had been thrust with.

The point in all of Gaia that evoked maximum terror from Tokugawa Ieyasu was a hole deep within the Panama Continent, deep underneath the epicenter of the Beast Domain, where nothing but gravity emerged to and from.

That was it.

He could feel it in his bones. “I’ll take it from here.” Rui’s ethereal voice was filled with confidence. Mother Maeria’s expression grew serious. “What do you intend to do?”

“I will go to this point of maximum fear and personally investigate it,” Rui remarked with a solemn tone of voice. “I will find a way to get to it, no matter what it takes. And once I get there, I will pore over everything there is, understand what it has been hiding from the rest of us and…”

He sharpened his ethereal eyes. “…Exterminate anything that dares to threaten Gaia.”

A flicker of bloodlust emerged in his eyes.

“Anything that dares to threaten the world that my daughter exists within.”

It was an unforgivable sin, as far as he was concerned. Nothing that posed a threat to his daughter was allowed to exist. Nothing that threatened the Age of Prosperity he had created was allowed to exist. Nothing that threatened to impede Project Water was allowed to exist.