The Martial Unity

While the homoarchnoids made their own preparations, the human pioneers hadn’t merely been sitting idle.

No, they had deployed every technological means they had to learn more about the planet they were on.

And what they learned was shocking.

They had begun to pry into the secrets of Planet Amadeus III.

”Madam President, we’ve just conducted a deep-dive scan of the planet, and we’ve found some shocking results!” An analyst from the team of the seismic exploration division shouted at the president in a manner that was devoid of result, breaking into her tent.

Arastia frowned as she looked up from the table she was sitting at, where countless documents and holograms were scattered about. ”What is it?” She demanded with a serious expression, staring at the analyst with a hint of severity in her expression.

”Your Excellency, we have been looking at the geological structure of the planet, and we have come to the conclusion that this planet...” She continued with a severe tone of voice. ”It’s... hollow!”

Arastia’s eyes widened with shock as she stood up with a stunned expression. ”What... what do you mean by that?”

”Here, look, Your Excellency,” the analyst immediately strode forth, showing her the data that they had gathered from the seismic exploration study.

She showed Arastia two-dimensional and three-dimensional scans of the data that their sensory array had taken. The camp of the Blood Humanist Society on Planet Amadeus III had immediately set up a makeshift science base that would allow them to gather information on the planet that they were on, beyond just the geological samples needed to launch the superweapon that was the drop of the Tide of Samsara.

Arastia studied the data with a frown on her face, carefully poring over the graphs and the strucure of the planet in the scans that were featured before her. Her blood-red eyes widened as she realized what she was looking right before her very eyes.

Much of the planet was indeed solid and filled with the layers of matter that one would expect it to be filled with.

But at the center of the planet, there was a massive open cavity where there was no real matter, based on the gravitational signature that they had collected from the sensor arrays installed on the surface after Phase II had begun.

”What... what is this world?” Arastia murmured as chills crawled across her skin. ”Is this the same as the gap between the negatron core and the rest of Gaia?” ”No, Your Excellency, this is not the same phenomenon as that,” the analyst spoke with a serious expression. ”The gap is much larger than the hollow gap between the core and the rest of the planet in the case of Gaia Prime. It accounts for around fifty percent of the volume of the planet! This is likely not a natural phenomenon since a planet cannot naturally develop in this manner; we strongly suspect that this planet...”

Her expression grew amazed. ”...is likely an engineered marvel by the aliens that we have encountered in this world!”

While the scientist was enthused by this discovery, Arastia’s expression grew severe. She didn’t like the revelation that this discovery brought to her. It meant that they weren’t just dealing with a regular kind of infected world, even if there wasn’t any kind of regular infected world, so to speak. Infected worlds were all anomalies, but they had commonalities that made them all alike in certain ways.

She had never seen an infected world like this in her entire life. She had thought that the infected world they were on was different. It was too sterile, too devoid of life, and a biosphere like other infected worlds were. The other infected worlds that she had encountered in the past thirteen years were generally teeming with life. It had a rich and vast biosphere with many kingdoms of life that each had different kinds of lifeforms with radically different biology at every scale and at every stratum of the planet.

However, Planet Amadeus III was the opposite of that. It was a gray world, literally. The sky and the land, the soil and the bedrock that composed it, were all shades of gray. She didn’t detect the rich life that she had expected to see if it was an ordinary kind of planet.

Instead, they ran into one and only one kind of lifeform. The homoarachnoids. That was extremely unusual and divergent from the regular patterns of infected worlds that made for extremely diverse biospheres infected with esoteric matter.

FLAP FLAP FLAP

Several other figures entered her tent with grave expressions, other hemosapiens on the task force leading their own squads and divisions had immediately rushed to Arastia’s tent with grim expressions. She spotted familiar colleagues among them, including Schoel, who nominally led the pathwalkers that they had hired and commissioned for the job.

She turned towards the Director of the geological survey division, an older man who didn’t have the blood-red hair and eyes with a serious expression. ”Have you gathered the sample of the mantle and the crust yet?”

”Soon we will have, Your Excellency, setting it up took a little bit of time, but even as we speak, the drill is drilling into the ground and deeper and deeper into the planet where it can collect samples to send back to the Blood Arc and to the poisonj for evaluation,” the man replied with a serious tone. ”I believe that we will have to wait for perhaps an hour for that to happen. I think that we will likely get a confirmation of the virus in this planet, however. This planet is simply too exotic for it not to be an infected world.”

He gestured to the data that Arastia was studying knowingly. The shocking data did indeed confirm the essence of his words. Planet Amadeus III was undoubtedly one of the most exotic planets they had come across. So much so that Arastia wasn’t even sure if this planet was merely an infected planet.

”It’s too different in too many ways,” she spoke with skepticism in her tone. ”I cannot help but feel that the homoarachnoids aren’t merely denizens of this world but are more than that. The first wave of homoarachnoids that we fought were weak and unsophisticated. The second wave, however, was composed of individuals who possessed a much greater capacity for conflict. They were also more complex creatures; they had attire, they were more intelligent, and they had stronger esoteric matter in their body that made them stronger in combat.”