The Martial Unity

”The procured machine has arrived, Your Transcendence.”

Dwight looked up from his workstation, his attention drawn towards a dwarf who stood at the entrance to his forge. The younger, female dwarf wore a smithsuit similar to that of Dwight’s. He bowed down to the Transcendent Craftsman with deep awe and admiration.

”Enough of that, Serrah,” Dwight huffed with disapproval. ”I may have become a Transcendence, but you do not need to show me more deference. You are my apprentice, after all. You should know that I don’t care for stuff social protocol.”

Serrah looked up at Dwight with stars in her emerald eyes. ”You are the first and only Transcendent in the history of dwarvenkind; lesser craftsmen like myself can’t help but look up to you. Especially since you have gained an extraordinary presence.”

The dwarf simply shook his head in resignation. The past few days after his breakthrough to the Transcendent Realm had been extremely hectic and had completely changed his life. He had been reeling with the many changes it brought to his work and his social life.

Dwarves were a deeply social race. Perhaps not to the extent of the elves, where community dominated everything, including the structure of their civilization, but certainly more than the rest. Their strong social bonds were ingrained in their people from ancient times, for the only way the weak could ever hope to survive was by banding together. This attitude hadn’t changed even after the dwarves carved an entire continent for themselves.

After all, the power of creation was not a power that existed innately in any one person. In order for dwarves to create, they needed tools, they needed energy, they needed a fitting station, they needed raw materials. These were all things that they could never do all by themselves, not without compromising the time they spent on mastering the craft.

Unlike Martial Artists who were among the most independent pathwalkers, the dwarves were only as strong as the institutions of their civilization, which were bolstered by a powerful social fabric.

That also meant that any one person who was so great that he could bend that social fabric with his social standing, like a Transcendent, would experience an overwhelming social response. The past two days had been so overwhelming that he hadn’t even had the opportunity to get to work.

When Serrah told him that his next project had arrived, he eagerly teleported to the storage wing of his forge, arriving at a massive container that stood nearly a hundred meters long and thirty meters tall. The dwarf’s forge was even larger, however, comfortably accommodating the giant container.

CLACK

The container was unlocked, revealing a giant machine that resembled the fusion between a cannon and a telescope. The long tube-like body of the machine grew wider from one end to the other, capped off by a giant white lens at the larger end. The smaller side had a seat and a control panel that was dwarf-sized, clearly meant for the operator of the machine.

The body of the machine had countless little ridges that held many components. A prominent power socket was visible at the midpoint on either side of the machine, while data sockets were visible at the operator’s control panel.

The intricacy of the machine was so extraordinary that a non-dwarven mind would have simply failed in even trying to comprehend it. The sheer complexity it clearly harbored greatly exceeded the technological products of the other civilizations, existing in a class of its own.

This was the Photonic Phase Induction Catalyzer machine that was to play a central role in Operation Light Fury. Having been apprised of the operation, Dwight knew that the work he conducted on this machine would determine the outcome of the opening of the war. It could alter the trajectory of the war for the better or for the worse.

”So Emperor Ranoua has deemed it fit to allow you creative control over my invention, has he?”

Dwight turned around in the direction of the familiar voice, finding a dwarven woman. She looked a few decades younger than him, with her dark, braided hair only just beginning to gray. She gazed at him with a strange mixture of respect, admiration, and resentment.

”You know we don’t have a choice, Steth,” he told the woman with a serious expression. ”This war is too important to allow creative ownership to impede. The machine that you have invented is indeed extraordinary, but with a single glance, I can think of at least eighteen ways to improve it, several of which I can apply within the day.”

Steth scowled at those words as she studied his presence with scrutinizing eyes. She had been in a different star system when she heard that the Elder Sage had become a Transcendent Craftsman. This was her first time meeting him in person since his breakthrough.

She now fully understood what the fuss was all about.

The world was in his palm, no matter how personable and amicable he acted. Even now, the ground and the air around them hummed as the disharmony of heat was converted into the harmonies of sound.

The laws of physics that she had mastered herself and regarded as absolute were entirely subjugated to the Harmony of Dwight’s mind. She sensed that he could break them if he wanted. It was a form of mercy to allow them to exist as they were in his presence.

It was an absolute power.

The only other time she had sensed this kind of power was the few times she had beheld the Emperor of Water deploy his power.

She felt deeply envious in her heart at the power that she felt from the dwarf. Even though he had always been the best craftsman in the Bournyvrne Empire, she had never been too far behind the dwarf.

Now, all of a sudden, a whole Realm of power had opened between them. A chasm vaster than she could even fathom had opened up between them all of a sudden, and what was worse was that she had to give up creative control over her own creations for the sake of human civilization.