The Martial Unity

”What about Her Highness then?”

”There are other solutions that should be close to as good as what Sayfeel provided,” Rui remarked. ”Phone up the Esoterist and have him create some high-tech identity scrambler.”

”I can do that, Your Majesty, but I suspect that the Esoterist has reached the end of how much he’s willing to invest in your daughter until she provides results with her first operation. The one that is currently ongoing.”

Rui smiled with a hint of pride.

”Then there’s no worries. My daughter is strong. She is competent. She will emerge successful.”

Of course, even though he said that, his Eye of Prophecy didn’t necessarily agree with that assessment. At the very least, it showed that she would face hardship in her first mission.

He needed to bite his tongue in order to stop himself from running over and telling her to be careful.

She needed the tribulations, he told himself.

And of course, given that human civilization had just entered a potentially highly consequential period of time, he didn’t exactly have the leeway to spend all of his time focusing on his daughter.

He turned back to the Divine Mother frozen in time, heaving a tired sigh. ”Just you and me, spider girl.”

As he continued to peer into her mind through the information dimension, he learned a lot of junk information. Of course, for someone as important as her, even the information that she would consider junk was still quite important, but there was also a lot of basic information that helped him understand their civilization a little better.

For one, they weren’t called the homoarachnoids. That was just the placeholder name that the humans had given them.

They were called ooo—o—- in their native language, the etymological meaning of which was ’six-legged web-weavers.’

In human sounds, it could be translated into a very distinct name.

”Arakai.”

They were the Arakai Web Civilization, a civilization that was a literal decentralized web.

They were a species that had developed life-dependence on the esoteric matter in their world for their webbing and its highly capable chemistry. That meant that if they wanted to expand, they would need more esoteric matter.

And therein came the symbiotic relationship between themselves and the cosmic virus.

If they wanted to expand, they could only do so with the virus.

”This is part of the survival strategy of the virus.”

It had become to the arakai what bees were to flowers. Esoteric matter was to them what pollen was to bees. Just as flowers had evolved to attract such insects and use them to spread seed, the virus had also evolved through Darwinian evolution numerous evolutionary survival strategies.

”By some fluke, that strategy failed with humans.”

Probably because humans had survived the Epoch of Evolution when the cosmic virus seed was planted onto a world. That was not the kind of event that life was supposed to survive, but they had managed to survive.

Not only had they managed to survive, but the humans within the Panama Continent had managed to avoid developing biochemical dependence on esoteric matter for sustenance.

”If we had…” he pondered the alternative before shaking his head.

”It would have been brutal.”

Homo martialus would be forced to go down the same route as the arakai had. They would have become an existential threat to all of Gaia.

Thankfully, because they hadn’t integrated esoteric matter into their physiology and because they developed paths around the same time, they had managed to fight back and eventually foil the plan of the cosmic virus.

It was definitely a topic that he would have to speak to the laminars about; he was certain that they were dealing with their own virus-dependent species. Maybe he could get some intel on how to deal with them.

But more than anything, the information that was most on his mind was actually the information about the other Divine Mothers that he had managed to extract from o-o-o-o’s mind.

She had a good understanding of all of them, and with the pieces that he had extracted from her mind, he could slowly model their responses to what had happened in the Strehegeld Star System and Planet Amadeus III.

”They have undoubtedly taken this extremely seriously.”

The one thing that could unite all of the factions of the arakai was a threat to the Divine Mothers. That was something that affected the leaders of all the major factions of the arakai, which meant that there would be a unanimous alarm at the disappearance of a Divine Mother and the destruction of an outpost world.

”I washed that star system with Water to erase all traces of human civilization, but…” he muttered. ”That’s not going to be enough to prevent them from learning what had happened.”

He could only hope that he had done a good job.

Though given that three months had passed and that they had yet to attack, he could be confident that he had done a good job indeed.

”There’s also the possibility that they suspect the Aquadites.”

He had learned of them while mapping the civilizations of the Orion Star Strand from o-o-o-o’s mind. And to his greatest fortune, his Martialverse was undoubtedly something that would point them towards the aquadites.

Unfortunately, he had no idea whether or not they had blamed the aquadites.

He actually had no idea what the arakai were up to.

”Given that this matter involves the disappearance of a Divine Mother, they have undoubtedly sent a Divine Mother to investigate,” Rui muttered knowingly. ”Maybe even two.”

It was all the more reason that he needed eyes on the arakai, all the more reason that he needed to send Sayfeel on this mission.

He heaved a weary sigh, snapping his fingers.

WHOOSH

The Transcendent Candidate appeared before Rui.

He glowered at the Emperor of Water with eyes of hatred.

”I know. I know.” Rui raised his hands. ”You hate me for separating you from my father and my daughter. I don’t blame you for that, but…”

Rui directed a deep gaze at him.

”This mission will do more to protect Ria than standing by her and hiding her identity will. If you truly care about her as you say you do, then you will accept this. For the sake of Ria and for the sake of human civilization.”