The Martial Unity

While her father got to work, Ria found herself moving on to her next project. She had taken a few days to grieve the loss of her friends, to do them right, and then to recenter herself. Her father’s warnings about the threats she faced were concerning, but they didn’t stop her.

She had already found her next target.

”Planet A-57-17216 in the Sermentil System.”

It was seventeen light years outside of human territory, but it was in the opposite direction from human civilization as Planet Pinky. She did this to ensure that the logistical burdens of mining and transporting esoteric ores would not fall disproportionately on one part of human civilization but would be spread across all of it.

”Everything is prepared,” her amber eyes sharpened. ”Time to get going.”

That very day, she bid goodbye to her father, who nagged her about being safe, careful, and cautious before Ria finally got fed up, gave him a hug, and then stormed away. She boarded the Stellarch that very day, which zoomed off away from the Solar System with its cutting-edge, state-of-the-art stealth technology.

They left the Solar System without almost anybody noticing, zooming through outer space at high speeds. They never once made pit stops at colonized star systems to refuel or even check in, leaving no trace of their travel through regular channels. It was as close to absolute secrecy as one could possibly achieve, save for the added presence of Sage Sayfeel.

In nine days, she reached the Sermentil System.

A rather dim system with the standard small red dwarf stars that were commonplace in the Local Bubble that human civilization was well within. It had a few other barren planets in the system, but her interest was in A-57-17216.

The planet was clearly fertile even from space. It had a lush, bluish-green tinge across the continents, which scans very quickly revealed to be a form of exo-flora. Much of its surface was water, however, making it resemble Gaia more than the information gathered prior information revealed.

The planet had several human probes that revolved around the planet, most of them belonging to research organizations. Ria felt a little bad that they were going to lose their subject of research, considering she was going to blow this planet up.

Preliminary scans revealed no esoteric matter. However, the quantum entropy scans revealed the presence of entropy anomalies, which of course pointed to the existence of a manifold.

It wasn’t long before she suited up with her Water Integument exo-Martial suit.

”Time to get to work.”

WHOOSH

She was launched from the Stellarch’s orbital launch hatch, flying straight down towards A-57-17216, aiming straight for the entropic anomalies.

She didn’t even need a tracker anymore, she realized belatedly. Her already heightened senses had been extraordinarily enhanced ever since she had become a Martial Sage, allowing her to detect things that she could have never detected before.

WHOOSH!

The drag from the increasingly dense atmosphere rippled against her suit, causing her descent great turbulence. The red sky of the planet, and the twin red dwarf stars in the center of the sky, became visible to her as she fell deeper and deeper. She simply doubled down and pushed down faster and faster, heading towards the most prominent entropic anomaly she could detect.

It was a volcanic mountain. An active volcanic mountain with an opening at its center that led straight into lava. In the past, she would have been less certain about her safety, but this time she had fewer compunctions despite what had happened in the last mission, or perhaps because of it.

Her amber eyes sharpened as she dove straight into it, almost falling straight into the lava.

WHOOSH

She disappeared moments before she touched the lava, appearing instead inside a new world.

WHOOSH

She found herself falling in an ocean all of a sudden, halting her descent as she maintained her elevation, spreading her senses across the manifold. The sky shared the same red tinge and the two red dwarf stars at their center, while her senses failed to detect even the slightest smudge of land across the entire manifold.

It was a world of water.

”Papa would love this place,” she muttered, directing her attention downwards into the depths of the ocean. The color of the ocean was a strange reddish-green, reflecting the light from the two red stars mixed in with its own innate color.

Within it, she sensed a deep, rich ecosystem of life filled with all kinds of aquatic flora and fauna. The surface layers of the ocean had shoals of fish that swam around at its surface. There were anatomical differences between the fish here and those in Gaia, such as gaping holes in their bodies instead of gills, or the presence of flagella-like rotors instead of fins.

But they were fish, even if weird alien ones. They had the same sleek bodies, the same kind of scales, and the same anatomy. It was a manifestation of the concept of convergent evolution, which was that different branches of the tree of life could converge upon the same kind of life structure because of how optimal it was for a given environment.

As her senses permeated deeper, she found that lifeforms grew larger and larger.

They grew more dangerous with depth.

”So that’s where the manifold tree is.”

She didn’t even hesitate.

She plunged into the ocean, diving straight towards her goal. Her suit was equipped with aquatic oxygen sequestering systems, though as a Martial Sage, she didn’t need oxygen anymore; she could generate energy for her cells through materia prima.

She dove deeper and deeper, manipulating her Water Integument suit to have waves ripple from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet in a paddling motion to help her move through the water at high speeds.

The deeper she went, the darker it got. Light couldn’t reach her beyond a certain depth, leaving her drowned in darkness. The only occasional light she ran into was bioluminescent light from creatures generating it to attract prey. The only sounds she heard were the infrasonic roars from the aquatic creatures using SONAR, as well as bubbles from her mouth when she exhaled.

If Runark were there, he would definitely suffer from his condition. The thought made her sad and angry, with nowhere to direct her emotions.

Until she reached the bottom of the ocean.

Where she found a bright, shining white tree, ethereal in its luster.

And there it was.

A guardian with its eight tentacles wrapped around the tree protectively.

A giant alien octopus stood in her way.

Her amber eyes flared with bloodlust as her Realms of power ignited with ferocity.

RUMBLE!!!!!