The Martial Unity

Chapter 3469: Biotechnological Evolution

Rui and Amare’s journey to the capital of the nation of Minala did not take as much time as they had feared. Perhaps they had been assigned the fastest elephant or something of the sort, or perhaps there had been special instructions to expedite their journey to the center of the nation that served as the home of the Gajanan people.

Regardless, they zoomed through the landscape at remarkable speeds despite being in a vehicle as massive as the elephant. They surely had had a hard time trying to create fast vehicles with a body structure as that of an elephant, but it appeared that they had found biomechanical solutions to this sub-optimality.

Within, many kinds of sectors of the nation passed through, including agriculture, where elephants carefully aided with all stages of the process of agriculture, but also with extensive industry in biotechnology, with an absolutely titanic structure that spanned kilometers, mass-producing biotechnological products through more automated biotechnology, producing all manner of organic, living products.

The sheer scale of production of all manner of organic items, much of which was used within the nation, but also much of which was clearly meant for export. He could even recall seeing some of the products that he had seen in the Hlakaschken Trade Empire.

”Elephant tusks...” Rui murmured with a shocked expression. ”I thought that would be illegal.”

A few remnants of the sensibilities he had from modern Earth.

However, they weren’t killing or harming elephants to get their tusks. They had biotechnological production lines with elephant stem cells and osteoblasts that could produce elephant bone, including their tusks. He had a harder time shaking his intuitions off the matter, but if no elephants were harmed, then there was no reason for him to take any issue with it.

Not to mention, this was a culture that was entirely vegetarian from everything that he had seen, making it rather much better than other clans among those in Kiriket who were more predatory of other species and engaged in the active hunting and killing of other species in the nation.

Other sectors of the nation were also different from anything he had imagined. What he was especially moved by was space elephants that took off into the skies and came back down from deep within the skies. There was an entire city dedicated to elephantile biotechnological crafts the size of a hundred meters in length, taking off to the skies empty and bringing back with them innumerable ores of some of the most useful and versatile substances in the world.

”An active space sector,” Rui murmured with immense fascination. ”Even their space crafts are elephants.”

What he found curious about space infrastructure on land was that it implied that there were extensive operations that the therianthropes conducted in deep space, just like the dark elves did. It explained why these civilizations could build absurdly massive, resource-intensive infrastructure without ever experiencing shortages.

What drew his attention the most, however, was that their obsession with elephants made them shape even their organic biotechnological spacecrafts to be in the shape of an elephant.

It was a truly absurd civilization.

Everything was an elephant. Not just in the shape of an elephant, but also actually an elephant. He could sense these space elephants that could carry massive cargo within their body, possessed their own minds and consciousnesses, and also radiated the same kind of emotional energy that one might release after a good long workout.

The Gajanan had designed a new species of elephant that could clearly reproduce and seemed to actually do so. What struck as fascinating was the fact that these elephants were then also subject to the laws of evolution by natural selection ,which would help evolve this ’technology’ to be more suited.

”The therianthropes can use Darwinian evolution to naturally evolve their technology...” Rui realized. ”This means that they don’t need to do active research for them to evolve their technology the way that the dwarves or humans have to...!”

In fact, he realized in hindsight that the same was true for the dark elves to a lesser degree. Since their environments were more nourishing and nurturing without much competition for survival, unlike Kiriket, it would undoubtedly be much less evolution than what the therianthropes would be able to enjoy.

This was the benefit of biotechnology. In addition to actual research and development that people conduct, biotechnology could have its own evolution capabilities.

It would explain why the therianthropes had kept up despite not being as predisposed towards research and development as several other species might have been. Their technology was naturally able to refine and grow better with each generation; all they needed to do was ensure that the evolutionary pressures were exactly the kind that they sought, ensuring that only the most fit of the elephants successfully reproduced. By installing a sexual selection filter with the selection criteria of female elephants when it came to male elephants, based on their performance with their tasks and duties, one could naturally ensure that each generation possessed the best genes.

They could accelerate their process even more if they made the lifespans of the elephants shorter, which Rui found to be a lot darker. Though he had no idea if the Gajanan Clan was actually doing that, and frankly didn’t want to know.

He shook his head, putting the matter aside, trying to focus on the task at hand, when Amare made an interesting remark.

”Aren’t elephants matriarchal?” She raised an eyebrow, watching some agricultural elephants tilling land within artificial environments. ”So shouldn’t that make the Gajanan Clan matriarchal too? In fact, shouldn’t that make a lot of Pasupati Clans of Kiriket also quite matriarchal?”

Rui frowned at the question with a hint of curiosity and confusion. ”You know... you’re right. That is strange. There are a lot of species where the male half simply got the shorter end of the stick. Many of these species were also bonded with the therianthropes, who still somehow retained patriarchal structures that systematically favored all males above all females within power.