The Martial Unity

The Kiriket battlefront had changed. One moment, the therianthropes and the tekvores fought against each other in the ocean as the latter defended their territory from the former. The therianthropes, led by none other than Lord Vakratunda himself, had forced the tekvores to dedicate large swathes of their military capital to the absolute safety of their continent.

After all, every path had its weakness. And the weakness of the tekvores was their industrial dependence, not just for the maintenance of their cyborg bodies but also for the energy that fueled their technology as well. There were very few other paths in the world that were as industrially dependent as the technology path. It made the home continent of Acherialis the greatest weakness of the tekvores.

It should have been an extremely safe war for the therianthropes. The tekvores had fought with defense and only defense in mind, with virtually no hope of inflicting any meaningful damage against Lord Vakratunda. The latter even used the war to increase the unity and temper his newly expanded faction to ensure that it was stable.

Everything had been going just fine until that evening.

RUMBLE!!!

The world shook as the beasts of the therianthropes began going wild. The therianthropes themselves began losing control as the animal side integrated into their body began to fall under the influence of Weapon Authority. Weapon Authority exerted dominance over each and every single one of them, while NOVA exerted control over the weapon itself.

She coordinated her projection of power with the will of the creature as it tried to dominate the beasts. As long as she could convince the beasts that the creature was effectively the one that ruled over Greater Tekvoria, the absence of power was hardly problematic.

“ROOOAAAARRRR!!!”

“RAAAWWWRRR!!!”

“KRRRIIIEEEKKK!!!”

The monsters began gaining an aggressive disposition as Weapon Authority subjugated all of them.

Or at least, most of them.

[I’m impressed that you’re able to resist and push back this well despite being caught entirely off-guard.] NOVA’s text messages appeared in front of the giant war elephant that was Lord Gajanan. [No wonder Shenlong wasn’t able to completely conquer Kiriket.]

He was the only beast that had managed to bat away the beast’s authority, while projecting his own power to protect as many of his underlings and subordinates as he could. The war elephant unleashed a powerful war cry that rallied as many beasts back from the brink.

“Retreat!” Lord Vakratunda resolutely called his forces back. “We must retreat from this battlefield as soon as possible!”

A chunk of the therianthropes and their beasts managed to fall back, holding on and maintaining control thanks to the influence of their leader. The remaining, however, were soon completely subjugated by the authority of Weapon Authority.

A metaphorical grin emerged on NOVA’s metaphorical expression. [With this, I have eliminated Kiriket from the war.]

While it was possible for them to contribute even still, it was too difficult for them to do so, and even more risky considering that they could lose even more therianthropes to NOVA’s influence, something that Lord Vakratunda definitely wanted to avoid.

She directed her attention towards the Panama Continent.

In comparison to this goal, the therianthropes and the Continent of Kiriket were irrelevant. She could always revisit dominating them in the future after she dealt with the Panama Continent.

[It is time to eliminate this threat, once and for all.]

This diverged from the origin of the war. The original objective with her attack on the Panama Continent and the Kandrian Empire was merely to have them recall the sea monsters that they had deployed to the Great Nam Ocean. It was a simple and rational objective with the goal of harvesting negatron matter, the key resource that unlocked the universe itself.

Over the span of a year, however, her objectives had evolved.

Negatron matter was still very important, without a doubt. NOVA had manufactured countless deep-sea battle submarines to lay siege on the monsters while stealing as much negatron matter as she could just to ensure that she wasn’t completely and totally out-resourced and could counter threats of negatron-empowered teleported attack with the equivalent of her own threats to maintain a mutually-assured-destruction-based deterrence.

However, she saw much, much greater threat from the Panama Continent itself this time. She understood that this continent and the people within it were vastly more threatening than she had ever understood, with the greatest threat manifesting in the form of their power.

It took a hundred and eighty-seven thousand years for all civilizations in the true world to reach the level they had from the Epoch of Evolution and the Age of Tumult, which had reduced a technologically advanced civilization back to the caveman days.

It took the people of the Panama Continent just one thousand and three hundred years, in comparison to reaching the level they had from a primitive state.

This was an astronomically superior rate of growth, and rather than slowing down, they were actually growing faster. It meant that even if the true world had achieved parity with the Panama Continent for now, it would take perhaps less than a century for the Panamic Civilization to completely surpass all other civilizations.

Their technology was improving at a frightening rate; it was only after Ieyasu revealed to her the existence of the manifold that she fully understood exactly how horrifying the rate of improvement of the technology actually was.

They had already developed and were even manufacturing space infrastructure just one year after the Unfolding, although that had slowed down with the explosive return of deep-sea warfare and submarine manufacturing.

Once they integrated true-world technology with their esoteric technology, they were going to be unstoppable without any shadow of doubt.

However, what truly terrified her was the existence of these so-called Martial Transcendents and their eventual return. The Panama Continent already had reached the higher rank beyond Potential Singularity fourteen times, it was only a matter of time before it happened again, and when it did, the Panamic Continent would become the most powerful force in the world.

[I cannot allow that to happen.]