The Martial Unity

The mechanics beggared the mind, boggling their very conceptualization of reality.

The basic tenets of what they considered hard, cold facts of the world were now shattered in the blink of an eye.

“Good question,” the Esoterist smirked with excitement. “It is the exact answer I tried answering with my satellites.”

He waved his hand as an image of the Panama Continent and the Great Nam Ocean appeared on the screen.

The old familiar continent had a much greater degree of green from the esoterified and expanded Beast Domain, while the landmass itself occupied most of the surface of the planet, exceeding the area of the Great Nam Ocean.

The image was associated with other layers of the same image taken with different sensors, including infrared and ultraviolet.

“This was the world before the recent anomaly,” the Esoterist remarked with a tone that tingled with anticipation as a second image of the same continent emerged on the screen. There were many changes in the environmental data gathered, most notably the half of the continent drowned in night was completely doused in daylight.

“There is no detectable change in the sizes of anything in the Panama Continent,” the Esoterist remarked. “It’s unlikely that the expansion has also affected the satellites themselves, although we can’t rule that out. However, we know that the world has gotten larger relative to the continent, otherwise night would not have turned to day. And so…”

He grinned with excitement.

“I altered the surveillance target and range of my satellites remotely.”

The Emperor of Harmony’s eyebrows furrowed with surprise.

“Proprietary nanotechnology gives me endless modularity from home,” the Esoterist shrugged. “It allows me to change my satellite configuration. More importantly, I altered the satellites at the deepest ends of the Great Nam Ocean…”

His finger traced the borders of the map. “And had them focus their surveillance outward.”

Several leaders froze as they understood the implication of his words.

His eyes lit up with profound excitement.

“I had them capture an image of the expanded world.”

His grin widened.

“I had them get a glimpse of the world out there.”

The air tingled electrically.

“And this…” he waved his hand. “…is what I found.”

The projection of a new map appeared before all of them as an excited whisper escaped the Esoterist.

“Behold the true world.”

The leaders of human civilization shook.

They shook where they sat.

Their expressions crumbled with raw, unadulterated horror.

Their eyes grew aghast with pure shock.

Their body language grew erratic.

Some began sweating like they were in a desert at noon in Summer.

Others found themselves hyperventilating.

Some of the leaders of human civilization found themselves frozen, unable to move and so much as even breathe.

Many found their hands quivering involuntarily because of how utterly shocking the situation they were in was.

There were a few who silently began panicking at the revelations that the map of the true world showed them.

The Solaris King has grown so pale with what he saw that his skin tone shifted from a bold golden to a light yellow.

The consul of Terra gritted his teeth, clenching his fists as his expression crumpled.

Not even the interim Abbot of the Gen Temple was able to maintain his legendary composure, losing the tranquility and inner peace that characterized him.

Each of them cracked in their own way.

The Emperor of Harmony’s presence grew unfathomably intense with reckoning.

His powerful golden eyes were fixed on the map before him.

The map of the true world.

A single whisper escaped him.

“This is beyond anything I could have fathomed possible.”

The map displayed a world beyond the Panama Continent.

A world with other continents.

Six other continents larger than the Panama Continent.

They surrounded the Panama Continent just beyond Great Nam Ocean.

The Great Nam Ocean, which used to one body of water was now reduced to a ring around the Panama Continent that separated it from the other unknown continents and oceans of the world.

The map of the true world was almost an order of magnitude larger than the map of the Panama Continent and the Great Nam Ocean in area. It was larger than anything that they could have ever fathomed in their entire life.

The continents were dense.

Thick.

They were domineeringly expansive and towered over the little Panama Continent threateningly. It was almost as though a set of predators had cornered their prey from all directions, giving it no room for escape.

Almost as if being consumed by larger predators was their only fate.

The two continents at the bottom of the map, south of the Panama Continent, were even connected with what appeared to be an archipelago of islands to form one super-continent that dwarfed even the Panama Continent.

Collectively, the land of all the unknown continents was vastly larger than not just the Panama Continent but even the island belt that surrounded the entire continent. Gaia as they knew it was unfathomably large as a planet, but Gaia as it was now was even larger.

“Where did all these continents come from?” King K’uk’ulkan of the Marinaera Kingdom whispered with a stunned expression. “Where did all these oceans come from? How can that planet just expand out of nowhere randomly?”

He voiced the question that ate away at everybody.

Not a single one of them could even begin to fathom where so many oceans and so much land could randomly appear from. Even as they studied the mysterious true world with shocked expressions, they struggled to parse how such an event was even remotely possible.

While reality was strange and exotic, there were still limits to the kind of nonsense that actually happened. There was no possible explanation that they could come up with that could explain just where the true world came from and where it had been hiding all this time, assuming it wasn’t spontaneously created on the spot.

“This is just a guess, but I have a hypothesis about the origins of the true world.”

The Esoterist remarked with a lowered tone.

–