The Martial Unity

Rui closed his eyes, meditating with a deep, engrossed expression. He sat on the floor in his hidden laboratory with the frozen, crystallized body of Divine Mother o-o-o-o placed right before him, head-first. Scattered around him were three-dimensional holograms featuring all the information that he had managed to extract from the complex mind-web of the Divine Mother.

He activated his Realms of Power.

He activated the Eye of Prophecy.

His control over his power was so precise that despite the tremendous amount of power that was being mobilized, he didn’t generate so much as a single sound or send so much as even a single tremor through the ground around him.

He deployed the sum totality of his mind into scrying the future. His mind had grown astronomically powerful over the years, with him even having upgraded it into a pure light consciousness that processed information at unfathomable speeds.

On top of that, he leveraged his perception of the information of the information dimension to further fuel the input into his prediction and prophecy.

And despite all of that, visions and glimpses of the future were all he was able to get.

He saw visions of an invading army of arakai. Wormholes opened across human civilization as a series of highly coordinated, well-planned, surgically precise, and accurate strikes struck humanity across its vast body.

Energy infrastructure was targeted first, as were interstellar communication systems. They cut off the blood and the nervous system of humanity, rendering it unable to resist effectively.

He saw visions of himself facing a dozen Divine Mothers. He saw visions of the Jormungander being bound with webs that shackled his body. He saw a shocked Amare being forced to end her risky, isolated training in the face of an existential threat. He saw a universe of nature struggling to protect Gaia from their attacks.

That was where the visions ended.

The prophecy didn’t explicitly show him how it ended, but he was able to infer.

”Complete destruction.”

Despite the horror of the visions he saw, he remained calm and composed. He schooled his emotions while his mind surged with thought.

”There has been a leak.”

That was the first conclusion he deduced from the prophetic visions. Based on how well-executed the invasion was, he could see that they had undoubtedly gathered a comprehensive understanding of human civilization before they attacked.

”Given that the Eye of Prophecy is showing me this vision. I can deduce that the leak has already occurred,” he further reasoned. ”Rather than about to occur. These visions are far too definitive for the latter. Given that they invaded the aquadites recently, I can only assume that the leak is extremely recent. Most likely within the past week.”

He had learned that the arakai had invaded the aquadites after sending Sayfeel to spy on their civilization recently. The man had noticed that the civilization was in war with not one but two major civilizations. From the memories of Divine Mother o-o-o-o, Rui knew that this second war had to be very recent, and he could further deduce that the reason they had waged war against the aquadites was because of his Martialverse being Water.

”Truly convenient, but that also means that they weren’t actively investigating to find the culprit. So that begs the question…”

How did they find out about human civilization?

Most likely, Rui reasoned, human civilization must have found them.

”Someone must have traveled to the Strehegeld Star System despite the prohibition,” he muttered with an exasperated sigh. ”Oh well, I predicted that would happen eventually.”

Not because of his Eye of Prophecy technique, but rather because of human nature and the fact that space was too vast. It was not possible to absolutely prevent every single person from ever going to the prohibited star system. He had assumed that it was only a matter of time before the arakai would discover humanity.

That was why he had spent his time trying to gather as much of an information advantage on his enemies as he possibly could, rather than trying to prevent the impossible. But based on his visions, it became clear that the arakai were too powerful. Even with the information from a Divine Mother, their intelligence capabilities were extremely high. They would learn everything that they needed to from human civilization.

”If they have already learned about humanity, then…” he turned in the direction of the Strehegeld Star System. ”…there’s no point in being passive anymore.”

However, being mindlessly antagonistic wasn’t good, either. The goal was not to provoke them into being determined to destroy human civilization. The goal was to prevent the arakai from waging war against human civilization effectively.

And getting rid of Divine Mothers was a key part of that.

Unlike with other civilizations, Divine Mothers were connected to the fertility of their civilization. And as the saying went, demographics were destiny. If he could eliminate as many Divine Mothers before the war comprehensively began, then he could constrain the arakai’s long-term considerations as much as possible. He had already been able to guess the identity of the Divine Mothers sent to investigate thanks to the intel that he had managed to get on them from Divine Mother O-o-o-o’s memories. Most Divine Mothers were extremely busy and preoccupied with reproduction, among many other highly important agendas. He could outright eliminate more than half of them from consideration.

There were a handful of names on the list of Divine Mothers that were left that could viably be sent based on the political affiliations of the respective Divine Mothers. He knew that the War Faction and the Virus Faction would want to send at least one of them to investigate, which left a handful of Divine Mother candidates that they could choose from.

Of the possible candidates, the one with the least influence and power was likely to be sent.

”-o- the Deathweaver,’ he remarked. ”And her partner is most likely -oo—oo- the Webhunter. An unaffiliated and relatively neutral Divine Mother. The former must be responsible for the arakai attacking the aquadites, ah, the lovable idiot. For now, however…”

His ethereal eyes sharpened.

”Both of them must die.”