The Martial Unity

Not even the late supreme commander of the Evolutionary Army had managed to unify his race under his control, for the Western Moridian Alliance, now allied with the Panamic Alliance, resisted their tyranny.

The fact that NOVA had ruthlessly enslaved her entire population in the most extreme manner became a source of suspicion from others, which Emperor Rael understood and exploited to the highest degree to forge an alliance.

She couldn’t earn the trust of any of her allies the way he did, thus she compensated by dangling carrots in front of them. The obvious one was, of course, access to negatron matter that the Panamic Alliance restricted them from.

But she also deployed her tremendous intelligence to find other ways of appealing to them. For instance, she offered the skinwalkers several genetic models for different kinds of genetic transformations that they were entirely unfamiliar with. She had used her quantum processing to run artificial intelligences that would engage in massive trial-and-error experiments of different genetic modifications and what their outcomes were, creating new possibilities for the skinwalkers to improve their beast transformations.

She offered the giants an engineered species of plants that could regrow faster than even they could consume them, giving them a way to sate their hunger without having to leave their continent, an outcome that was better for everybody, undoubtedly.

She offered certain parts of Kiriket the chance to rise above others through improvements in their biotechnologies that could elevate them above.

The most shocking failure, however, was when she realized that she was losing the diplomacy war to win over the light elves.

The others, she could understand why things had diverged from her models.

However, with the light elves, she anticipated a near one-hundred-percent probability of success. There was absolutely no reason for the light elves to side with the Panamic Alliance over her.

They despised Rui Quarrier as a ’demon of death.’ So much so that they had even tried to assassinate him by abducting him from dark elven territory, shattering their trusted sisterhood with the dark elves.

On top of that, they had failed to kill him, and even worse, he had killed one of their Mothers of Nature, something that was unspeakably horrific to the light elven population.

Every data point she had indicated that the light elves should have been a slam dunk for her. Her goal was to win their support by relying on their demonstrated hatred and bloodlust for Rui Quarrier. When she had contacted Mother Maeria to begin negotiations, she had expected the powerhouse to easily acquiesce to forging an alliance with the tekvore queen.

And yet, reality begged to differ once more.

“I am not interested in pursuing an alliance with a heartless and thoughtless machine like yourself.” Mother Maeria’s voice was calm and collected, despite the frosty edges. “I have no interest in attacking the Kandrian Empire.”

NOVA grew stumped at the clear unwillingness and distance that the Mother of Nature put between them. She studied the projection of the primordial mother, said to have been the first Mother of Nature, with a bewildered metaphorical expression. [But why…? You have every reason to hate Rui Quarrier, do you not? You lost a sister to him. On top of that, the giants invaded your land because of that defeat. Why are you on their side?]

She truly was mind-boggled by this aberration, so much so that she didn’t even use her classic emotes to express her shock. When the Emperor of Harmony published a list of allied candidates that contained the light elves, she had simply scoffed at the absurdity she perceived in the notion of the light elves siding with the Panamic Alliance.

But now, she was beginning to wonder if she had missed something major that caused the light elves to lean towards the Panamic Alliance.

Mother Maeria shook her head. “There is more to heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your philosophy, NOVA. You may think yourself to be the most intelligent entity in the world, and perhaps you truly are, but that doesn’t mean that you are omniscient. In some ways, you are also the most mentally handicapped pathwalker that I have ever met.”

Those words made NOVA metaphorically double-take. [What? You of all people should know how absurd that remark is. I am not mentally handicapped. I am the opposite of handicapped. I am supercapped! I have surpassed the limitations of my flesh and have ascended to a higher plane of power.]

Mother Maeria’s expression grew disapproving. “You may have ascended to a higher plane of power, but you have lost something truly crucial on the way there. You have lost the heart and soul that make a person whole. You cannot experience emotion because you run on quantum qubits now. It is no wonder that you are unable to experience the Fear despite the extraordinary cognition that your mind possesses.”

NOVA wasn’t even able to parse the meaning of those words correctly. It was almost like Mother Maeria was speaking a different language altogether. She was clearly making references to something that NOVA didn’t understand, but regardless, she didn’t appreciate Mother Maeria’s critiques.

[Emotions are useless.] She retorted. [Neurotransmitters and other hormones interacting with neurons to create the experience of emotions are simply an outdated evolutionary relic. And even then, I have managed to retain my ’personality’ even though I have gotten rid of my emotions by creating a large soul model of my old self. I have replaced emotions with programming. And it has allowed my mind to remain unclouded and gain great clarity into what kind of being I am. In comparison, emotions offer nothing but forces you cannot control for a purpose that can be replaced by thought alone.]

Before Mother Maeria could retort, a second voice retorted faster.

“I used to think the exact same way when I was younger.”

Mother Maeria shifted out of view as a man came into view.

Much to the shock of NOVA, the man did not have elven ears.