The Martial Unity

Chapter 4372: Discovered Truth

”What. Are. These. Creatures?” -o- muttered as her eyes swept the frozen crew. ”They’re. Half. Arakai. And. Half. Something. Else. How. Very. Strange.”

-oo—oo- narrowed her six eyes with a sharper feeling. The more she studied the spaceship and its inhabitants, the more she felt like she had stumbled upon the key to solving the mystery of what had happened in the Strehegeld Star System and to their outpost world and Divine Mother o-o-o-o.

She passed on a message to the forensics team aboard her own spaceship, requesting them to try and conduct more light-harvesting operations, painstaking as they were, to try and get as many details on the spaceships that were in the star system at the time of the battle between Divine Mother o-o-o-o and whoever killed her.

She had a feeling that they would find faint similarities between those spaceships and the spaceship before them.

”These. Aliens. Know. About. The. Infected. Matter. In. This. Star. System,” -oo—oo- realized with a more enthused expression. ”They. Came. Here. For. Infected. Matter. Specifically. This. Ship. Has. Equipment. And. Technology. That. Is. Clearly. Purposed. For. Harvesting. Infected. Matter.”

That would not be very plausible unless they had foreknowledge about this star system having infected matter, which should not have been possible unless...

”...They. Are. Connected. To. The. Ones. Responsible. For. The. Death. Of. Our. Divine Mother,” -o- also made the connection quickly, directing a shocked sweeping gaze at the frozen human crew members. ”Could. It. Really. Be. These. Individuals. Or. Their. Civilization. Who. Were. Responsible. For. The. Death. Of. Our. Sister?”

-o- immediately felt a horrible tingle in her gut at the realization of this possibility. If these creatures and their civilization were responsible for the destruction of Planet Amadeus III and the death of the Divine Mother, then the aquadites weren’t responsible for it.

That meant that the arakai had invaded aquadite territory and civilization under a misguided belief. They had started a war based on a fundamentally wrong reason. They had taken great sacrifices and pains for a rationale that was simply invalid.

And she was undoubtedly the core reason for that. -oo—oo- had wanted to keep the aquadite angle as merely a possibility before confirming it. And although -o- didn’t explicitly confirm it either, she had reported the matter in a way that she knew would make it hard for her sisters not to act on the possibility.

She was part of the War Faction, after all. Any valid excuse for war was something that she supported. But even she found the possibility that her entire reason for wanting war with the aquadites was potentially completely false to be quite terrifying.

She may have doomed her civilization to great suffering for virtually no reason if this were true. Every bone in her body wanted the news to be completely wrong.

”We. Must. Look. Into. The. Web. Of. Their. Minds. And. Confirm. This,” -oo—oo- insisted. ”I’ll. Take. This. Female. She. Appears. To. Be. The. Leader. You. Take. One. Of. The. Others. And. Start. Sifting. Through. Their. Most. Recent. Memories. That. Should. Provide. Us. With. What. We. Need. To. Know.”

She placed her hand on the head of Captain Flia as she began scanning the information in their minds. Ordinarily, trying to crack the mind of an alien would require a lot of time.

But she was an Administrator.

She didn’t need time.

She immediately began scouring through the web of Captain Flia’s mind. She searched for the most recently formed connections of memories after she acquired an understanding of how information was integrated in the human brain.

Understanding their language was also quite easy. Words had associations with other words, which had associations with the real world. An intricate web of meaning that a Divine Mother was most well-equipped to untangle.

She sifted through the memories of the woman, how she spent her time during their travel to the destination, and how they planned for the operation.

Immediately, her suspicions about their knowledge were completely confirmed. They mentioned names she had never heard before, like the Gaian Alliance and the Seralia Syndicate. They talked about the infected matter that awaited them. They talked about the potential risks with the arakai.

’They know about us,’ -oo—oo- instantly realized. ’They also know what we are called translated into their own native tongue. Where did they get this information from?’

It wasn’t exactly top-secret information, but it was the kind of information that a civilization that wasn’t connected to the interstellar community wouldn’t know and she was confident that she had never seen these lifeforms before.

She continued, sifting through their memories, learning more about human civilization. She was surprised to learn how close human territory was to the Strehegeld Star System. Just ten light years away, and one would arrived at the Arima Star System, which was the edge of the human frontier, for now.

”They. Were. Just. A. Few. Stars. Away. The. Entire. Time...” -oo—oo-’s six eyes glinted with anger. She felt like she had been made a fool off. The forensic tracks had been covered up so well that she had assumed that they had come from afar, but she couldn’t have imagined that they were literally next door.

She continued searching for the piece that would confirm the guilt of this civilization for the death of their Divine Mother, skimming through countless lines and conversations.

”...is how the Blood Cult has been annihilated...”

”...and so the Gaian Aliance should not be underestimated...”

”...is why the Seralia Syndicate seeks to...”

Her six eyes intensified as she stumbled upon a keyword that triggered her suspicions.

”The Emperor of Water is absolute. This proves it,” an old man sitting upon a dark throne-like chair at the head of a table remarked.

Don Seralia of the Seralia Family.

”He is humanity’s sole Martial Transcendent, and that means his de facto power is unstoppable,” the old man remarked. ”Do not underestimate him.”

-oo—oo- searched more for the term, almost as if she were using a search engine. She skimmed through the memories of the woman, searching for anything related to the Emperor of Water.

What she saw made her eyes widen with shock.

She came across a distant memory.

A distant memory of a tsunami of water swallowing an entire solar system.

From more than thirteen years ago, shortly before the Era of Expansion began.

It was the exact kind of phenomenon that had been observed from the light-harvesting forensics in the battle between Divine Mother o-o-o-o and the one who killed her.

”I. Found. Him!” -oo—oo-’s expression crumpled with wrath. ”I. Found. The. Culprit!”