The Martial Unity

“Ew,” Ria muttered as she lifted her foot from a puddle of blue, alien blood and flesh. “This is…”

“The blood of the native creatures,” Misha remarked as her white cybernetic pupils shifted, analyzing the compound. “I am detecting a high presence of copper. They have likely evolved copper-based oxygen-delivering system since their biosphere has a lower oxygen presence.”

They immediately began taking stock of their environment, spreading their senses out to regain their bearings in their new environment. It was very different from most terrestrial environments within the territory of human civilization.

It was as if they had found themselves in some monochromatic grayscale world where color did not exist.

The sky was composed of shades of gray.

As was land.

For some reason or another, the chemical composition of both the ground beneath their feet and the atmosphere was such that it absorbed all colors except for shades of gray in a manner that felt deeply inorganic.

It sent chills across their skin.

As if they were in a world that was engineered.

Instead of merely being an infected world.

RUMBLE

Another wave of seismic tremors made them freeze as they shifted their attention in the direction of the edges of the crater they had created. Their eyes widened at what they saw, before immediately sharpening with grim severity.

TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP

At the edge of the crater was a wide and dense gathering of homoarachnoids. Their turquoise fur was the only color in the gray-scale world around them. Their little insectile legs produced eerie, and unnerving tapping sounds as they arrived at the edge of the crater in greater and greater numbers.

Their head was checkered with what black eyeball-like organs, with single white pupils that turned and moved around, directing itself towards the gathered pathwalkers. A mouth-like opening on the front of their head was covered in pincer-like appendages that struck each other to produce a clicking sound. CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK

The speed, frequency, and intensity of the clicking varied.

As if they were speaking a language.

Ria sharpened her eyes as she felt a surge of bioelectric activity within their bodies that was awfully similar to that of a brain, conveying what felt like an emotion.

An eerie, unnerving alien emotion unlike anything she had ever felt.

It was directed towards them.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then, everything happened all at once.

The stinger-like appendage shot web fluid at them in the blink of an eye, threatening to swallow them whole in a moment’s notice. It would have caught them all in one fell swoop if not for a tsunami of blood. Washing away the web fluid.

BOOOOOOM!!!

The powerful wave of red blood washed away the series of web splatters as a powerful presence elevated into the air. Schoel, one of the hemosapien leaders leading the pathwalkers on the field, glared at the stunned pathwalkers. “Wake up! Execute perimeter protocols right away!”

His words broke them out of their reverie as they immediately mobilized their power. RUMBLE!!!

The world shook as many Martial Hearts, Minds, Souls, and other sources of power erupted across the battlefield. The pathwalkers of Gaian Civilization showed off the miracle of the power of Paths. An all-out conflict erupted between the pathwalkers and the indigenous aliens of Planet Amadeus.

And it was an overwhelmingly one-sided battle.

Time slowed down in Ria’s side as she came face to face with her first homoarachnoid. A female, based on distinctly secondary sexual characteristics. Her opponent’s stinger pointed towards her, threatening to wrap her up in a cocoon of web.

And yet, it never stood a chance.

SPLAT!

With a single swing of her hand, she decapitated the homoarachnoid in the blink of an eye, manipulating her Water Integument suit to become sharp along the line of contact, turning her arms into literal blades.

Blades that became the final thing any of the homoarachnoids saw before she ruthlessly delivered death upon them.

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!

Her arms became blurring waves of death and destruction as she smoothly faced each and every single homoarachnoid that charged towards her. She could have easily rushed forward, mowing through her opponents at a high speed as she left them as distinctly sliced and diced pieces of alien meat, but she ensured that she didn’t move ahead of the pathwalker army front. It was very easy to get ahead of oneself, before finding oneself far from human support, surrounded by angry, murderous native alien lifeforms.

BOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

A distant wave of materia prima blasted a massive explosion of pure force, killing hundreds of thousands of homoarachnoids all at once. The Martial Sages had adopted a pronged formation along the perimeter that the pathwalkers had formed, meant to take on stronger homoarachnoids while letting the weaker ones go through and be dealt with weaker pathwalkers.

This tiered-pronged defensive battle formation was one that had been developed by Panama Civilization during the Beast Incursion many years ago, where they had to deal with an endless invasion of beasts and monsters.

Now, it had become standard protocol for ground invasions into alien worlds above a certain level of power.

BOOOOOOOOOM!!!

Massive explosions erupted across the battle along with volleys of web fluid attacks that struggled to take hold of the pathwalkers that had invaded their territory. Before long, the pathwalkers had managed to carve out a massive area that they could defend for sustained periods of time, establishing the first stable human presence on Planet Amadeus III.

RUMBLE…

Once the battle cooled down upon the defeat and destruction of the first homarachnoid wave, Schoel transmitted a report to the Blood Arc ship.

[Phase I of the ground invasion is complete. Green-lighting the initiation of Phase II.]

That report triggered a series of protocols as the Blood Arc maneuvered to position itself directly above the area that the pathwalkers had tentatively conquered, before deploying several packages that were launched towards the surface of the planet at high speed.

They were composed of Cosmobuilder packages, a technology invented by Terrestria Industries for rapid terrestrial development, along with supplies of food, oxygen packages, and sequesters.

And, of course, the deep-planet sample extractor.

They intended to wipe out the virus as soon as possible.