The Martial Unity

Not only had he been working under the Divine Doctor, who was a national treasure by himself, but he also had worked on the alien lifeform, which was responsible for the manifold, another treasure of immeasurable value.

“Why didn’t you tell them the truth?” Julian asked him after all the others returned to their busy day working at the orphanages.

“…What’s the point?” Rui heaved a sigh. “It’s not like they can do anything about the fact that three Sage-level powerhouses have joined hands to destroy the Kandrian Empire with extreme determination. It will just cause them stress.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

He didn’t want them to suffer anxiety over something entirely outside of their control. It was within his control; thus, all they needed to do was trust him to ensure that no harm would befall them.

“The Minister of Research and Development has recently implemented a directive from the Emperor of Harmony to focus on higher-end esoteric research and development for a variety of rare and scarce esoteric resources,” Julian informed him. “Normally, we would never focus on the application of resources that we have little of and can obtain even less of, but recently, that has changed.”

Rui knew what he was referring to.

“The Beast Domain harvesting.”

With an abrupt spike in these high-end resources, there was a sudden need to get better at harnessing these powerful esoteric resources. In other words, the Kandrian Empire needed to shift the gears when it came to its research and development philosophy.

“The Kandrian Empire has signed several joint R&D endeavors with Esocline Federation,” Julian further informed him. “There is no other organization in human civilization that is more qualified with esoteric technology than the Esocline Federation. Thus, I look forward to collaborating with them once I’m done with the project with the alien lifeform.”

Rui raised an eyebrow at the news.

There were plenty of minutiae of his father’s political strategies that Rui was unaware of as a result of having voluntarily divested himself from the politics of the Kandrian Empire.

However, it made sense for him to collaborate more extensively with the Esocline Federation when he thought about it. If they already were military allies, then collaborating on R&D was hardly unwarranted.

“That’s good,” Rui nodded. “If we can improve our long-range siege weapons, then they can serve as a much stronger protector of the Kandrian Empire when the second assault unto Kandria comes.”

Apocalypse-class siege weapons were too inflexible to be taken away from their home nations and deployed elsewhere with ease.

These were highly delicate and demanding weapons that required immense care and attention almost around the clock due to the dangerous Sage-level esoteric substances they contained.

Deploying for international operations was possible, of course, but highly difficult and tedious.

For one, they required a lot of infrastructural support for their operation. One of the reasons that the Kandrian Empire border fort wall was as large as it was was to allow these powerful Sage-level weapons to be mounted upon the Kandrian border while having the infrastructural support to maintain their operation, such as its cooling systems and the manual oversight interface.

Thus, when the East Panamic Treaty Alliance finally decided to wage a second assault on the Kandrian Empire, they probably could not leverage their siege weapons in the attack. Thus, if the Kandrian Empire’s esoteric siege technology grew enough before that time came, it could give them a crucial advantage.

“Also…” Rui perked up at some of his brother’s words. “Did you say when you’re done with the alien lifeform research project?”

“Well, yes. We have long achieved control over the manifold, so any research going into it at the moment is purely academic and scientific in nature,” Julian threw a curious glance at him. “Really, I suspect that even the Divine Doctor will eventually get bored with it.  Yes, it is alien, but ultimately, it’s one of the little lifeforms that we have limited ability to research upon in fear of damaging the specimen.”

Rui’s eyes narrowed at his brother’s words.

The Divine Doctor getting bored of the specimen was not a good sign for them. One of the things that anchored him to the Kandrian Empire was his deep curiosity about the specimen. Ordinarily, research into an alien lifeform could keep any normal team of scientists invested for decades. There was so much unknown and so much more to learn about that one could spend their entire lives just barely making a dent into tapping into everything there was to be learned about.

Not the Divine Doctor.

He was too competent for his own good.

His genius intellect, vast insights, and experience with life itself allowed him to make far quicker progress in uncovering the secrets of the alien specimen.

Rui recalled that very early in his research into alien life, he had already modeled the anatomical structure of the creature and the microstructures underpinning its body. Not even Rui had realized that the alien lifeform was not comprised of countless cells, but rather, it was comprised of countless layers with a metabolic system that relied on osmosis of substances through pressure differentials that served as its circulatory system.

An enormous breakthrough that Divine Doctor had made very shortly after he began his research voyage.

Not even the alien lifeform could keep his interest forever.

Perhaps that was why he was so obsessed with healing the allegedly alive and ill Gaia. If the latter was true, then this case was one of the few cases that even someone of his caliber could not possibly be certain of solving.

“More importantly, if the Divine Doctor grows bored of it. Then, the only anchors keeping him where he was were the prophecy he was owed for healing the Emperor of Harmony. Or… me.”

It did not bode well that they did not have a firm grip over him, considering how important he was to the Kandrian Empire.

“I’ll need to speak to my father about this.”

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