The Martial Unity

The economic pressures from food shortages made it so that nations would either need to divert industry away from the war to produce food, either through farming or more technologically taxing means, which would benefit the Panamic Alliance.

Or it would mean those nations would simply break up with Greater Tekvoria and try to defect to the Panamic Alliance to regain the flush supply of food from Genora.

NOVA attempted to ameliorate this process through technological innovation, but nothing could compare to the virtually infinite food that the elves supplied to the world, causing food prices to hit rock bottom for many centuries, eliminating famine as a concept in the true world until the war broke out.

It meant that a war of attrition was favorable to the Panamic Alliance in the long run.

A lesser leader would have collapsed like a house of cards under such pressure, but NOVA intelligently found what was perhaps the only fitting retaliation to such a means of attack.

She executed a similar strategy of employing great pressure, but for the Kandrian Empire alone, not the Panamic Continent as a whole.

After all, the original purpose of the war had been to force the sea monsters to return to the Great Nam Ocean so that everybody could return to mining the negatron matter.

However, it was because she realized that only the Kandrian Empire mattered for this decision that she had wisely decided to exert tremendous pressure on it.

After all, the Panamic Alliance did not control the sea monsters.

In fact, even the Kandrian Empire did not control the sea monsters.

The only people who truly controlled the sea monsters were Rui Quarrier.

This was the person whom she needed to apply pressure upon. And she had indeed done just that. Except, for some reason, he seemed immune. She didn’t even know where he was. He hadn’t once shown his face after sweeping the Great Void Ocean with sea monsters.

She assumed that he was simply biding his time, keeping watch over the war until he deemed it important to partake in it.

She didn’t understand why he didn’t just participate, but she suspected it was likely because he was consumed with an important personal matter, which likely meant training.

[I can’t imagine delaying the war to train, but perhaps all Martial Artists were like this.]

Regardless, she was grateful that Rui had yet to partake in the war. Because she had underestimated how unified Panama could be and because she had underestimated the Emperor of Harmony, the war had not been as good for her side as she had hoped.

Thus, the calculations she had made to keep Rui in check were off, meaning that if he had partaken in the war, the Panamic Alliance could very well have achieved a dominant advantage by now.

Regardless, the world war had become a grueling deadlock with virtually no new developments just one year after the war.

It was because none of the leaders were enterprising or active.

No.

It was because they were waiting.

They were waiting for an event that they had long foreseen coming.

An event that had been triggered by the battle between the Dawnbringer and the Dragon Emperor.

It was one that half the world had been enthused about and the other half had been terrified about.

And now, the time had finally come.

BZZZT

She knowingly glanced at a telescope feed from one of the satellites of Greater Tekvoria.

It featured a giant object.

A giant human.

A giant.

The most giant of giants.

[He has finally returned.]

RUMBLE!!!

The very fabric of space and time tremored violently, causing space waves to spread throughout the entire solar system. Ordinarily, a top-ten pathwalker would not have taken a year to travel from the sun to Gaia. But the Suneater was uniquely impaired for this voyage.

His body’s volume and mass greatly exceeded that of a moon, dwarfing even the giant Mothers of Nature.

He was the largest organism after the mysterious World Serpent that none of the races dared to provoke that rested around the Panama Continent. That meant that escaping the Sun’s gravity was exponentially and astronomically harder for him than it was for any pathwalker. It didn’t help that space manipulation was not his strong suit, meaning that his acceleration was truly gentle compared to the overwhelming and domineering gravitational force that refused to let him go.

It took more than a year of barreling back towards Gaia at an agonizingly slow pace that he finally managed to return.

[The Suneater has returned after a long, long feast.]

RUMBLE!!!!!

The world had prepared for this moment for a long time, ever since the giant had begun his long voyage back to Gaia. The Panamic Alliance had named building forces and measures to deal with this eventuality.

In truth, even the anti-Panama Alliance had been wary of this barreling celestial body of a top-ten pathwalker. It was likely that he would be on their side, considering the giants were firmly on their side.

But it was impossible to say.

Giants were irrational, after all.

It could be that the Suneater would attack his own side at the moment of his return.

RUMBLE!!!!!!!!

The atmosphere of Gaia began to rock and quake violently as the giant made contact with it, barreling towards the surface of the planet with enough momentum to destroy all life on the planet.

The fact that the giant was visible from outer space relative to Gaia demonstrated the sheer scale of this unfathomable creature. His sheer gravitational field slightly altered the orbital trajectory of the entire planet, changing the amount of sunlight ever so slightly.

All civilizations and nations had already prepared seismic and oceanic energy absorption systems that would prevent an apocalypse from tearing Gaia asunder. They were especially terrified of him exacerbating the cracks at the bottom of the ocean, causing all hell to break loose.

As destructive as the Dragon Emperor was, he truly did not hold a candle to the most destructive lifeform native to the true world.

RUMBLE!!!!!!!!

The world shook as the Suneater descended upon the Continent of Samarkha.