The Martial Unity

Two months into the war, and NOVA had deemed this war to have failed its objective, especially since they had been unable to even force Rui Quarrier to join the battlefield.

[If I am to win this war, I need to eliminate the greatest factor of success that the Panamic Alliance has.]

BZZZT

An image of the Emperor of Harmony emerged in her mind along with the rest of his profile.

It was very rare that NOVA would place such great weight on one individual, that too a non-pathwalker individual, but she had to straightforwardly admit that the Emperor of Harmony was simply too dangerous.

That was why she had decided.

[He needs to go.]

There was no question about that. The wily emperor was even more dangerous to her war efforts than the Dawnbringer, who was merely a tactical powerhouse in comparison. She could handle the Dawnbringer rather confidently as a top-ten powerhouse herself; she had already overcome him in their little game of cat and mouse.

Of course, that didn’t translate to a combat victory, but given that his greatest strength was his mind, she was certain that being plainly superior to him in his greatest avenue of power was enough to keep him in check.

Of course, her recent realizations about the fact that Rui Quarrier had information on the higher Realm of power made her wary that he could potentially break through at some point.

But that was all the more reason to win this war and get a hold of him and anybody else on the continent who had information on the higher Realm of power. But that was not likely to be an acute threat, considering that someone as ancient as Mother Maeria had yet to succeed and didn’t appear to be too close either.

What she feared more acutely was somebody whose diplomatic ability was truly beyond even her comprehension.

She had been trying to find his location, but the wise Emperor had gone into complete hiding, never showing his face in public or even in private, even once after the press conference that led NOVA to trigger her war. Finding him in a nation in which she had almost no intelligence network set up was impractical.

[An assassination is unlikely, but… there are other options.]

BZZZT

She brought up several project files before her.

[Project Infiltration]

This was a project that employed and built upon the cyber infiltration technology that she had deployed to singlehandedly take over the entire continent and enslave all tekvores. She had already conceived of deploying the same idea against enemies that it could work on.

The sentinels came to mind, for they were half tekvorian and had many of the same weaknesses to a lesser extent as tekvorians. There were also the dwarves who relied heavily on technology.

Unfortunately, it was extremely difficult for us to deploy these mechanisms against forces that had their own top-ten powerhouse. It was also difficult to deploy these measures outside her domain of influence, since these measures required institutional support systems for long-term control, and also because they were far outside of her range of influence to directly infiltrate.

[Negatron matter is a potential solution. If I open a wormhole directly to one of them, I could theoretically take over them, but…]

The issue was that it was too dangerous.

Her new brain was composed of a quantum supercomputer; it was extremely delicate and fragile. The wormhole would give her enemies direct access to the core of Greater Tekvoria. And if, by chance, they managed to get in like Rui once had, she would be put in great risk. She would need to infiltrate them before they could get through the wormhole, which was extremely difficult.

[I need a powerful agent.]

Someone who could put up a fight against a top-ten powerhouse. Someone who could fight while also creating an opportunity for her to infiltrate and enslave her enemies. Preferably, a powerful pathwalker who could fight top-ten powerhouses, who also used technology that could serve as an anchor for her to infiltrate her enemies.

BZZZT

She received a notification from a long-range surveillance on the western coast of Greater Tekvoria. A notification of a lone distant machine emerging from the depths of the ocean, unnoticed by then.

It was a humanoid machine.

It was pitch-black with a surface so smooth that it was nothing short of a perfect mirror, reflecting the bright light of the afternoon sun.

RUMBLE

The world shook under the sheer presence of the great machine as the very fabric of space and time curved underneath its weight.

Within the depths of the machine was an extraordinary surge of energy.

An unfathomable source of energy.

One that only a single civilization was able to produce.

[Dwarven zero-point energy core system.]

It was the cutting edge of energy systems, exclusive only to the dwarves.

It contained all the advantages of black hole energy generators, without any of the shortcomings, such as the gravity or the risks and dangers that hampered mobility.

The technology harnessed omnipresent quantum energies that existed in the vacuum at all times, gaining a limitless energy source. The only disadvantage to the technology, the one that prevented all other civilizations from harnessing it, was that the precision demanded was a margin of error that had to be indistinguishable even on the femtometer scale.

It required an extraordinary production quality that only the best of the best dwarven craftsmen could achieve.

That was the extraordinary power that she sensed within the mech.

Except, it wasn’t a mech.

It was too tall and not stout enough for a dwarven mech.

Instead, its style resembled the increasingly common Martial MECHAs of the Panama Continent.

More importantly, the combat power of this individual and his vessel vastly exceeded any MECHA she had been made aware of. She had no records of any such combat vessel in her intel on the Panamic Alliance.

It was a variable outside of her models.

Yet, she instantly realized that its slow approach was to indicate that it came in peace. A MECHA allied with the Panamic Alliance would not come in peace or alone, for that matter.

BZZZT

The MECHA translated a single message to Greater Tekvoria.

“I seek alliance.”

His tone was cold.

“I seek war against the Panama Continent.”

NOVA grinned metaphorically as she smelled an opportunity.

An opportunity to overcome the impediments to her goal in one fell swoop and achieve her objectives.