The Martial Unity

Lord Sheshank seemed to be intrigued by the request. His three eye-like organs fixed on Rui’s face. He hummed ultrasonically.

”…Can I presume your civilization to be on the smaller side, Chancellor Rui?” Lord Sheshank asked.

Rui remained silent, clearly unwilling to confirm.

If he confirmed it, then the other side would gain a lot of bargaining power simply by the power disparity between the two civilizations. However, he didn’t want to lie that his civilization was large, either. If he lied and it was revealed by chance, then they would be a lot more distrustful of his words, given that he blatantly lied in their very first meeting.

He remained silent, but the silence was loud.

”…Given that you mentioned that the pressure from the arakai is great, I can only infer that your civilization is small,” Lord Sheshank continued with his inference. ”A few weeks ago, a relatively small minor unit of war was transported to an unknown region of the Orion Star Strand using the Gate of Conquest. Now, however, I am quite certain that the arakai were waging war with your civilization; am I correct?”

Rui remained silent.

”And if your civilization was having trouble with a web of war that small, I can’t imagine that your civilization could possibly be larger than, say, fifty thousand stars at the very most,” Lord Sheshank continued sharply. ”In other words, you represent a very small, weak, and vulnerable party, am I wrong?”

Rui heaved a sigh. Indeed, the leader of an advanced civilization wasn’t strung along so easily. The man—at least, he looked like a male—was sharp and intelligent, understanding the other party very well based on their demands and actions.

”We are a civilization of a little over ten thousand stars,” Rui offered. Given that he had come within an order of magnitude of a margin of error, revealing the truth wouldn’t hurt. Perhaps he could convey sincerity with the offer. ”Indeed, we have faced great pressure from the Web of War. However, that doesn’t affect the calculus of this arrangement. We still both have a lot to gain from this. The arakai are a plague on all of us.”

Divine Mother ooo—o-’s six eyes shifted towards him with a hint of what he came to recognize as recrimination. She didn’t appreciate her entire species being regarded as a curse because of the actions of the War Faction.

”Ahem, the War Faction is a plague,” Rui corrected himself with a wry smile.

”Your offer is intriguing, Chancellor Rui,” Lord Sheshank leaned forward. ”But I must say, it’s not particularly alluring.”

Rui raised an eyebrow.

”I believe you have overestimated the value of your offer to us,” the Alpha of the Firebreather Clan remarked with an ultrasonic hum. ”We are not in a dire situation in this war. With the aquadites allied with us, the two of us can easily handle the pressure that the arakai are applying. The damage you have already inflicted on them makes our lives easier. At most, you offer to end this war a little sooner. In return, you ask us for greater commitments; why would we accept such an imbalanced offer?”

Rui knew what he was doing. It was a negotiation tactic that he had seen many times. One that he had used many times himself. Essentially, the Alpha of the Firebreather Clan correctly estimated that the humans were under much greater pressure. He also estimated that even if Rui personally wasn’t too pressured, he was tied to his civilization by the hip, and any pressure on it would translate to him.

Otherwise, there would have been no reason to go out of his way to seek a deal with the dessandrites if that was the case. They understood that he had more of a need from them than they did from him.

However, he also knew that the chosen representative of the Dessandrites was not being entirely sincere. He was downplaying the value of what Rui was offering. Rui wasn’t ’just offering to end the war a little sooner,’ but instead to help them preserve an enormous amount of militaristic capital.

The difference between a war ending soon and a few years later was enormous. The dessandrites had already been fighting the arakai for more than ten years. That undoubtedly took a toll on their civilization in all kinds of ways. He also knew that it would be personally advantageous to the ten Alphas of the ten major dessandrite clans to end the war sooner.

They were hoping to gain more from this deal, however, which is why they tried to downplay what he was offering. He knew that there was no point in pressing them on that. They would simply deny it, and he would look dumb.

”You say it is imbalanced, what do you have in mind?” Rui asked calmly, reclining back in his chair.

”We would like for you to share the information on how you manage to overcome the price of the Verse,” the Alpha of the Firebreather Clan replied with a hint of what Rui recognized as eagerness. ”If you do that, we are more than willing to commit to applying more long-term pressure on the arakai to prevent them from redirecting too much war capital towards your civilization.”

And there it was. Their true motivation. Rui had known that they would be greedy for the ability to wield Transcendence without a price. Transcendence was tactically absolute and invincible. Virtually omnipotent within the scope of a battle. Only another Transcendent could fight a Transcendent.

What limited them was the price, turning them into passive deterrence and one-time trump cards rather than sustained miracle workers.

From the moment they learned that he could overcome the price of Transcendence, they wanted to get their hands on this secret. In fact, in the face of such a miracle, even the war mattered little, given that the combined alliance of the Dessandrites and the aquadites had no chance of losing.

Rui heaved a sigh. He realized that this was going to be a pattern with all advanced civilizations that he would interact with in the future. There was no way they wouldn’t focus on this ability of his over everything else.