The Martial Unity

Kane heaved a sigh as he thought about Transcendence. He had previously thought that simply being one of the strongest pathwalkers after the Transcendents would have been enough to achieve the security he wanted and evade the perils of life for both him and his family, but unfortunately that was increasingly no longer the case.

Increasingly, even pathwalkers as strong as him no longer held the power that they used to. Increasingly, they could only be swayed by the currents that swept the stars. This hadn’t always been the case in the Era of Expansion. For the first thirteen years of it, he had been fine. More than fine, even. He was one of the strongest Martial Artists, especially after Rui introduced the Corporeal Realm to everybody.

Rui had been the strongest, as a Transcendent. But back then, he used to avoid interfering in the unfolding of their civilization, at least overtly. It was much easier for people like Kane to avoid getting caught up in things that he didn’t want to get caught up in.

Now, however, increasingly, only Transcendents had the power to evade the sway of the circumstances around them. The allure of its power was much greater than before, when it was not necessary.

He ultimately heaved a deep breath, shaking his head. ”Whatever. What will happen will happen.”

He turned towards Rui. ”How has Runark’s training gone?”

”...”

Rui paused, taking a moment to even parse what Kane was talking about. Only then did he remember one of his undertakings. Runark had suffered greatly from the prison of darkness in his subconscious mind after being resurrected by Ria.

The boy had developed a particularly intense nyctophobia. Rui, however, sought to convert that trauma into an extreme talent. He had helped him with the training and laid out the path ahead of him, before taking a step back and letting him go through it.

After that, though, it slipped from his mind.

”You completely forgot about it, didn’t you?” Kane remarked knowingly.

”Yes,” Rui admitted honestly. ”But I gave him everything he needs to achieve his goal himself. I also gave him a means to contact me, but it seems he hasn’t used it yet. He’s training hard right now. He should be ready soon, in my estimation.”

He briefly checked up on Runark, who had been training by himself for the past two years inside the manifold. It appeared that he had hit a smooth improvement streak, rapidly making progress towards his goal. Indeed, he was his father’s son. The two of them were extremely talented individuals.

”When he’s done, he’s definitely going to go find Ria,” Kane huffed with an exasperated tone of voice. ”He’s taking his crush too seriously.”

Rui smiled at the mention of his daughter. In the past month and a half in the real world, six new infected worlds had been discovered and had been shared with human civilization, its many mining firms and state mining enterprises. A surge of esoteric matter from the operations had begun to flood human civilization as the lengthy mining processes had finally begun to bear their fruits.

This was one of the reasons that humans were able to hold off the arakai within the Arima III System despite the massive gap in military capital. The enrichment of human civilization’s esoteric reserves meant that their ships and weapons would be stronger. Their defenses would be tougher. Their pathwalkers would be stronger too.

Unfortunately, this also meant that his daughter would be exposed to more risks and danger. It was only a matter of time before the arakai noticed the abnormal esoteric reserves of human civilization and realized that something wasn’t adding up. There were only so many successful Gaia offspring in human civilization. The arakai could estimate how much esoteric matter that should have yielded. They could estimate how much was consumed for visible infrastructure.

They could even consult the public record on how many infected worlds had been discovered as a result of the expansion of human civilization and realize that there was a stark disparity between what they could expect and what they were observing.

Although EsoQuest Solutions was disrupting the mining industry, these disruptions were much harder to observe when the entirety of human civilization was being disrupted by the war to a much greater extent.

It was like trying to observe smaller ripples in ocean water while a tsunami was barreling past them.

And the Arakai’s surveillance was still external physical surveillance. It was more difficult for an alien species to try and understand the inner workings of human civilization in a short amount of time. It wasn’t that long ago that they thought that there were multiple Emperors of Water.

Rui’s goal was to draw all the attention to himself and away from his daughter. That was one of the reasons he dangled the ability to wield Transcendence with impunity before all of the civilizations involved. The more they focused on him. The more they obsessed about him. The safer his daughter would be.

He didn’t know where she was at the moment. She hadn’t returned to Gaia Prime because it would draw too much attention.

Her actions had destroyed the virus-hunting industry of space adventurers and private companies. She had made a lot of enemies, many of whom were powerful. Thankfully, the war absorbed the industrial diaspora. Martial Artists and pathwalkers who lost their virus-hunting jobs could accept war contracts from the Gaian Alliance to serve in the astronavy.

Another thing that was concerning was that his own relative power in human civilization was diminishing. In the past, one of the reasons he tolerated his daughter taking obscenely risky and dangerous paths in life was the certainty of his absolute control over human civilization as its sole Transcendent, at least its sole active Transcendent

It didn’t matter what institutions, power brokers, politicians, industrialists, and other power blocs in civilization did. He was the Martial Transcendent, the Emperor of Kandria, the Chancellor of Gaia.

But with Dwight becoming a Transcendent, and now especially Argenton, he no longer held absolute sway in human civilization.