The Martial Unity

Those words bore down on the atmosphere heavily. The cavity in Mother Maeria’s trunk was illuminated by bioluminescent flowers that spread a warm glow across the task force headquarters, while the odor of wood sap hung in the air.

Rui’s attention remained focused on the whole slew of data that they had collected in the past five years. Mother Maeria, along with the other means of data collection that they had diversified, had collected a whole slew of data that had been fed into the Ieyasu machine.

The machine itself had improved and had been upgraded many times since its original conception as they managed to create a perfect reality simulator for a man who was reduced to a brain, not even merely a head. Rui could see the pitch-black head, courtesy of the gu, that served as a shell for the brain that Rui protected with his own Anthean cells.

It was connected to a neural interface, where it was fed the raw sensory data, while the brain activity was measured to understand if Tokugawa Ieyasu experienced fear while being subjected to a certain dataset.

It was a long, thankless process that required subjecting him to an ocean of data, measuring his reactions to it to try to evaluate whether they were closer to the fear or farther away. It took five years of data collection to test and measure his reactions to try to narrow down the location of something that could be causing him to experience fear. By comparing certain sets of data to other datasets, they could create a sort of map of fear to try and narrow down the location of the source of the fear, which they strongly suspected was connected to the alien entity that had entered Gaia a hundred and eighty-seven thousand years ago.

“Start from the start,” Rui began with a serious tone of voice. “I want to understand how we have reached here.”

The Divine Doctor huffed. “You were supposed to be a part of the task force, you know? Instead, you dumped it all on us.”

“I delegated it to qualified individuals,” Rui corrected. “I was busy. I am the Emperor of Kandria and the Supreme Commander of the Panamic Alliance, after all.”

“I think you were busy with something else, or rather with someone else, but I digress.”

“Focus,” Mother Maeria chided the two of them lightly, before turning towards him with a serious look. “As soon as we began our process, one thing became very clear. There is only one location in Gaia that inspires fear within the Ieyasu machine.”

Her eyes sharpened.

“The Panama Continent.”

She waved her hand, causing the screens to shift in displaying several graphs and maps featuring a spectrum of colors that measured fear readings from the Ieyasu machine. Out of all the seven continents in the world, the Panama Continent evoked an entirely different reaction from the Ieyasu machine.

Fear.

Fear was marked as yellow, while green was marked as a calmer reaction, even if still partly fearful.

Rui’s eyes widened at that as a realization dawned on him. “Is that one of the subconscious reasons that Tokugawa Ieyasu left the Panama Continent after betraying the Kandrian Empire?”

He hadn’t even considered it, but it made sense. If the Panama Continent was a place where he was tormented with fear, then maybe the incentives for betrayal weren’t just dealing with the consequences of attacking the Silas Clan. Maybe he was also acting to mitigate the terror that the Panama Continent evoked within him. “It’s truly shocking how the Ieyasu Machine always reacts with fear no matter what data from the Panama Continent you show it,” the Divine Doctor continued with an intrigued tone. “Even if you show the machine only a highly limited close-up image of random soil in the Panama Continent indistinguishable from any other soil, it will still evoke a spike in brain activity correlating with the phenomenon of fear. Large secretions of cortisol, neural signals that would cause higher blood pressure and higher heart rates if there was a body attached to the head. The causation of any data from Panama and the corresponding fear is extremely strong, to the point that it truly feels like there’s some sort of extra-causal link.”

“Extra-causal…” Rui’s ethereal eyes sharpened. In the past, he would have dismissed that, but not so much anymore. Was Ieyasu’s mind experiencing the fear outside of the material realm and through some higher plane?

For instance, the information dimension?

It wasn’t impossible. Perhaps the same was true for when Rui entered Gigabrain; perhaps that was the condition that needed to be fulfilled to experience the fear.

‘Wait, does that mean Gigabrain isn’t just a simple self-hypnotic trance?’ Rui’s eyes widened with shock. ‘Is there some correlation between Gigabrain and the information dimension? Is that why I’m able to experience the Fear in that state?’

It was a fascinating thought, but one that he had no way to confirm or deny, outside of entering the state. But he couldn’t do that anymore, unfortunately.

‘If I enter Gigabrain as strong as I am currently, not even Jormungandr will be able to bring me out of it.’

It was why he was terrified of using it. With infinite stamina and extraordinary power that made it impossible for virtually anybody to stop him, it was too dangerous to be used. Thankfully, he had become among the most powerful beings in the entire world, making it unnecessary for him to ever use it again, hopefully.

He shook his head lightly, putting irrelevant matters away, returning his attention to the data being presented to him.

“So there’s no doubt that at least part of the Fear is within the Panama Continent?” Rui sharpened his eyes. “However, Ieyasu told me that the source of his fear was… everywhere.”

“Well, considering he always experiences fear, that appears to be true,” Mother Maeria offered with a thoughtful tone. “It’s not that his fear completely disappears when he experiences data from other continents; it’s just more muted. From his perspective, he must have been experiencing fear of everything. But it must have been far greater in the Panama Continent. Which means…”