The Martial Unity

Chapter 3557: You are the Problem

The sheer dominance that Rui displayed was beyond impressive, having essentially defeated an army of powerful elite pathwalkers all by himself. NOVA had tried her best to manipulate the tekvores into defeating him with ease, and yet she found that she was simply unable to successfully outmaneuver him.

This was despite the fact that her raw resources were greater than Rui’s. Rui only had his body and the limited amount of energy that it could produce. She, on the other hand, controlled many tekvores and indirectly controlled the evolutionaries and the giants, too.

She had more raw output than Rui, but Rui had managed to win nonetheless.

”You are a fool for wanting to control your pathwalkers.” Rui’s tone was one of disdain. ”They are weaker under your control. Do you understand?”

His pitch-black eyes sharpened. ”You are the liability, not them.”

Those words were like a slap to her face. [...I am the liability, you say?]

Rui nodded. ”Your biggest flaw is your arrogance. You are indeed extremely intelligent, the most intelligent entity in this world, perhaps. But because of that, you are blind to the merits of others. You look down on them so much that you think they are insects. And perhaps they are, but insects are more intelligent than you think. They can do more with their body than you could if you were controlling them. There is a limit to how much mathematical modeling can compensate for a lifetime of experience. If you had even half as much wisdom as you did intelligence, then you would know to allow your people to regain their autonomy and self-determination.”

NOVA would never acknowledge or even consider such advice from anybody else, but the respect that Rui had earned from her in their brief bout was enough to make her pause at his words.

Was she truly making the right choice by manually taking control of the tekvores under her? With her intelligence, she could simulate battles extremely accurately, and her control over the tekvores she had enslaved was centered around what she calculated to be the most accurate action at any given point in time.

But perhaps she had underestimated the capabilities of the tekvores she was controlling. Perhaps Rui was right; the reason that she could not defeat him despite possessing greater raw power was that she was not able to control those resources in the form of pathwalkers better than they themselves could.

She would not have accepted this conclusion if she thought she could win, but considering that Rui was holding back greatly and still managed to handily defeat the army that she was controlling like pieces on a chessboard quite handily.

[I will take your words into consideration.]

Rui huffed lightly. ”On second thoughts, ignore everything I said. I don’t know why I’m trying to help someone who wants to control all life on this planet.”

[I appreciate your help. ( ᵕ )]

The contrast between those little text emotes and her true nature was jarring and eerie. Rui found it a shame that she was a monster; he would have enjoyed cultivating a relationship with an entity that was more intelligent than he was nominally. But given that she was as much of a threat as the Dragon Emperor, or perhaps even more so, he had no choice but to seek her destruction.

He didn’t just defeat Lord Shenlong to let somebody even worse than him do worse to this world.

[It has been a pleasure jousting with you, Rui Quarrier. I look forward to the day that we can genuinely battle going all out.]

Rui simply watched the tekvores and their submarine fleet retreat into the depths of the ocean, disappearing from his senses. Somehow, they were able to remain invisible even to his senses, which was also how the ambush took place.

’Most likely some kind of aquatic stealth technology. Given that the therianthropes were also taken by surprise, I can only assume that this technology is new. Which means that she has likely been the one to research and create this new technology in the span of four days.’

It was terrifying that one individual’s research prowess could rival an entire civilization’s, or perhaps even surpass it. Rui found it to be almost a shame that he hadn’t managed to destroy her brain. It would have likely done all of human civilization a great service had she been destroyed.

He heaved a sigh as he turned around to the mining bases of Panamic Civilization and its allies.

Thankfully, while the defensive lines had been battered, they had not been severely damaged thanks to his timely arrival and the mining machinery and refineries. His eyes swept over the negatron mines themselves and the negatron matter laden within the magma and the solidified igneous rock on the bottom of the ocean floor with glowing violet streaks across it.

His expression grew serious.

He had no idea why there was negatron matter within the depths of the planet. Nor had he predicted that this would happen when he was battling Lord Shenlong. It didn’t change the fact, however, that his battle with Lord Shenlong had altered the course of Gaian Civilization and life. With such an abundant presence of negatron matter, there was no doubt that the rush to extract every last ounce, or negative ounce, of it would explode its supply, improving and empowering wormhole technology by many orders of magnitude.

Opening wormholes that allow one to travel to the distant stars was especially possible, and the race to space was one that had evolved from a marathon to a hundred-meter sprint, where everybody was racing to be first.

Was this better for Gaian Civilization, or had his battle with the Dragon Emperor accelerated this process before Gaian Civilization had fully matured to begin its transition to a Type-III civilization?

He didn’t know; it was impossible to predict. On one hand, he was concerned about the ramifications of his actions. On the other hand, he was excited for the possibilities that it brought.

An entire galaxy had come to their disposal.