The Martial Unity

Rui gazed at him with a stunned expression. If this was what he thought he was then it explained why the Divine Doctor was acting the way he was. He also grew more excited as he realized that they had one more comrade among them who understood the threat of the fear properly and could work with them towards finding the source of the fear and eliminating it.

The World Serpent, Mother Maeria, and Rui could feel or had felt the fear in the past.

Mother Maeria, of course, could only feel the fear when she resonated with her sisters, while Rui could only feel the fear when using Gigabrain. He hadn’t met anybody else who he had confirmed to feel the same fear, unfortunately.

If the Divine Doctor was feeling the exact same fear, then they had gained a useful comrade who had experienced the very same gut-wrenching terror. Rui had realized, but from his experience and from the experience of Mother Maeria, that it didn’t matter if they told others; it simply didn’t click unless they came to experience it themselves.

For instance, Rui had told his father, who was wiser than most, and even his father hadn’t been able to truly grasp the danger associated and act in a manner that was optimal for dealing with said danger. He simply hadn’t been able to comprehend the severity of the matter because he simply hadn’t experienced it himself.

He was also dealing with other crises, to be fair, but he would have acted very differently had he understood the severity of what they were dealing with.

“I once told you about the Transcendent Fear,” Rui remarked with a careful tone. “A fear so great that only the Transcendents could experience it. Is it…?”

“I do not know.” The Divine Doctor closed his eyes. “I should not be capable of feeling fear in the first place. Fear is a primitive evolutionary psychological mechanism meant to keep the organism alive. I had disabled it in my mind, for I believe that fear is primitive compared to the power of the mind and of thought. And yet…”

He gazed at his hands.

They quivered.

“…What is this, if not a primordial fear that has eluded even my understanding of the human brain?”

Rui’s eyes lit up with enthusiasm.

A fear that transcends normal fear, to the point that even someone who had modified their brain to get rid of the neurological phenomenon of fear could feel it and be paralyzed it.

And yet, Rui didn’t understand.

Why was the Divine Doctor able to experience this fear?

Wasn’t it strongly connected with power, in some way?

The Martial Transcendents could experience it because of their power. The same could be said for Jormungandr. Neither Maeria nor Rui could experience it under normal circumstances; they could only experience it when in highly special states of mind.

No one who was weaker than a certain threshold had experienced it, as far as Rui was aware, and yet the Divine Doctor described something that was almost certainly the same fear that they had experienced.

How was this possible?

Rui intended to get to the bottom of all of this.

He hadn’t forgotten about the original visit to the Divine Doctor, of course. He intended to get that done as well. However, right now, he deemed this matter to be more pressing.

“Before we continued discussing this fear, there is something that I should tell. Something that you have probably missed, given how long you seem to have been in space and the fact that I didn’t sense any communication between Gaia and you,” Rui remarked with a serious expression. “It is related to your theory of Gaia’s life and illness. We have made… a shocking discovery. One that has perhaps vindicated everything that you have ever believed of Gaia.”

The Divine Doctor shifted his gaze towards Rui with a hint of clinical interest.

“New symptoms? You made the right decision coming to convey it to me.”

“Well, I would have done it sooner if I had known that you weren’t even on Gaia.” Rui huffed. “I thought you were already aware of this, given how large the news is on Gaia. But more importantly…”

His eyes sharpened. “We have discovered that there is likely an anomaly deep within Gaia. Most likely, an anomaly encompassing her entire core. We have strong reasons to be quite certain that… her entire core is made up of negatron matter. A particle with negative mass and energy.”

The Divine Doctor’s eyes lit up with great interest as he slowly returned to his old self. His eyes grew clinical while a smile of detached intrigue emerged on his face.

“Fascinating,” the man murmured deep in thought. “That would explain the gravitational anomaly. How could you have possibly discovered this reality? The core of the planet would have pressures so astronomical that not even a Martial Sage could survive it, given that the planet itself has as much mass as a small star.”

Rui nodded. “That’s true. It has entirely replaced other theories, such as the Porous Mantle Theory or the Hollow Gaia Theory. It is indisputably the reason that Gaia’s gravity is nowhere near as strong as it should be.”

“And what exactly is the proof for this?” The Divine Doctor’s tone was clinical. “Surely such a claim is supported by irrefutable evidence.”

“Of course.” Rui nodded. “What happened was…”

Rui briefly gave him some background information on the battle between him and the Dragon Emperor that inflicted severe damage on the ocean floor of the Great Void Ocean, which was the lowest point on the surface of the planet and closest to the core of the planet.

The Divine Doctor’s eyes lit up when Rui informed him of how negatron matter began emerging from the cracks with the lava and began forming negatron-laden igneous rock at the bottom of the ocean floor, which ended up triggering a mining war at the bottom of the ocean and later a surface world war.

The Divine Doctor appeared not to even slightly care about the latter.