The Martial Unity

The Divine Doctor turned to raise an eyebrow at Rui. “You are strong, but the Fear was powerful enough to induce fear in Transcendents. What makes you think you can possibly get rid of it?”

It was a fair point, but not one that Rui hadn’t considered. “I’m not certain of anything,” Rui replied with a serious tone. “I don’t know if I can ‘win’ or not, but the longer we let the threat linger, the greater the risks associated. And even if we can’t get rid of it, we should do our absolute best in investigating thoroughly. That should be our highest priority, above all else.”

“Perhaps it would be more prudent to wait for pathwalkers to become Transcendent,” Mother Maeria remarked. “That way, we could have the largest number of Transcendents to deal with the problem.”

“That would take too long,” Rui shook his head. “It took centuries for us just to get thirteen Martial Transcendents, and even with the rising number of Martial Sages, those rising numbers are of highly brittle newborn Martial Sages that are a universe away from Transcendence. As for the true world, none of you has actually broken through to Transcendence. I don’t want to place my eggs in baskets that may not even exist.”

Mother Maeria directed a pointed glance at Rui. “I know you’re close,” Rui raised his hands. “But for the Transcendent Realm, ‘close’ is still very far away. Like I’m close, but I have no idea when I’m breaking through. It might happen tomorrow or in a century from now. It might be that in a century, decade, or even a year from now, whatever the ‘intention’ of the esoteric virus is, it might have already achieved its goal. We should not yield on this issue unless we are able to confidently estimate that it is not at all an acute threat. I would prefer that it isn’t acute, but I’m not naive enough to take that as granted.”

Mother Maeria heaved a deep breath. “Even if it is acute, we should account for the many ways this could go wrong. Perhaps your intervention with the alien entity will cause an escalation in whatever it is trying to do. Let me remind you that Ieyasu’s fear reading are also uniformly high across the entirety of the crust of the Panama Continent, if the esoteric matter in the Panama Continent becomes a threat to your civilization, then you are doomed. Nobody will be able to protect your people from such a threat. Not even you.”

Rui’s expression grew complicated.

He had been faced with an impossible calculus, one that not even his Eye of Prophecy was able to help him solve. On one hand, the alien entity represented a threat, very clearly. It was not clear exactly what the threat was, but it was a threat; nobody denied that. The Fear alone that seemed to be correlated with the alien entity and the Panama Continent was proof of this. Why would Transcendents and even Jormungandr experience this fear if not for the threat that it posed?

09:09

The Fear alone that seemed to be correlated with the alien entity and the Panama Continent was proof of this. Why would Transcendents and even Jormungandr experience this fear if not for the threat that it posed?

Additionally, they had already concluded with great confidence that all of this wasn’t just a mere coincidence, that there did appear to be some intelligent thought behind the manifold hiding Panama, the Beast Domain, and the eldritch chimera guardian of the manifold tree. What was the probability that this intelligent orchestrator’s goals were consistent with the survival of Gaia?

Most likely, the probability was very low. On the other hand, however, the Divine Doctor and the Mother of Nature had inescapably good points that were more sober than Rui’s impatience. It was possible that even probing this point of maximum fear, where they strongly suspected the alien entity was, would blow up in their face.

For instance, it was possible that there was a contingency mechanism that caused some sort of self-destruction process if the alien apparatus was ever compromised, leading to the destruction of the Panama Continent and potentially catastrophic consequences for the six other civilizations.

It was also possible that he was just way out of his depth, and even attempting to confront the Fear would lead him to getting squashed like a bug. The question was how he was able to navigate these stakes when he was placed between the ultimate rock and a hard place.

He heaved a deep breath. “If it truly is the case that doing absolutely nothing until we have an army of Transcendents in all six continents, who knows how many millennia that will take, then I will accept that. But I think the probability of that being true is very low. I think we should investigate, and we should be prepared for the worst.”

“The worst? As in, if you do die and trigger some contingency mechanism that wipes out all life atop Gaia?” The Divine Doctor raised an eyebrow. “Well, there’s nothing that can be done in that contingency, but for the first part, yes,” Rui replied. “I think one obvious contingency is to have the seven civilizations cooperate on this issue. We have reached the stage where it no longer makes sense to keep this as a small task force. We have found what we need to find, and now we need to get the powers of the world to move together to mitigate risks and dangers.”

“And what exactly do you mean by that?”

“I mean that we should minimize our seismic radiation susceptibility by maximizing our energy absorption means and methods,” Rui replied. “We can also have the seven civilizations form a sort of ‘shield’ of technological mitigation of seismic radiation and magma activity of the mantle.”

All six civilizations of the True World were well beyond a type-one civilization. Like the elves and their highly advanced energy-absorbing roots, each civilization had its own solution for absorption of heat and seismic radiation from the depths of the planet. However, they were not coordinated efforts, even if coordination would lead to better results.

That needed to change as far as Rui was concerned.