The Martial Unity

“And so, that brings us to you two,” Arastia leaned forward with a knowing expression. “I’m sure you two were considering undertaking the Amadeus III mission, weren’t you?”

The two of them nodded. “But you were probably concerned about where you could get access to a double-shift spaceship or a self-sustaining nuclear spaceship that would allow you to go to Amadeus III and get back in time,” Arastia remarked. “Martial Masters like yourselves would be able to pay the fees, nor have the connections needed to acquire such a service.”

Again, she hit the nail on the head. There was a time in history when Martial Masters would have been able to get access to any service there was, almost. But that time was long gone. Each individual Martial Master was a much smaller and less remarkable part of a much vaster civilization than before.

A spaceship was much, much more valuable than any Martial Master.

“Rest assured, we have our own nuclear fleet carrier,” Arastia smiled with a hint of pride.

“What?!” Both Ria and Runark widened their eyes at those words. A nuclear fleet carrier was one of the most independent forms of the largest class of spaceships, which were the fleet carriers. It was a military spaceship that was designed for long-term operations outside human civilization, where there was no established energy infrastructure. Even though nuclear technology was archaic compared to the most cutting-edge forms of energy technologies, it was actually the most suited for these kinds of operations. Although black hole energy generators were also self-sufficient, black hole-powered ships had very limited mobility due to the immobility of black holes themselves. They were heavy; they couldn’t be touched, so they needed to be moved with gravitational wave generators, making them very slow to accelerate and very slow to retreat.

They required specialized FTL warp drives that required ten times as much negatron matter as ordinary FTL warp drives to ensure that the singularity could be moved at FTL speeds without disrupting the space warping.

Nuclear fusion cores, on the other hand, simply needed hydrogen atoms, which were extremely ubiquitous across the universe and were known to be present in the Strehegeld System based on spectrographical analysis. Thus, the ship could remain in power indefinitely, even at max output, despite the fact that fleet carriers were ships that were generally greater than ten kilometers in length, yielding a massive output. They were usually reserved as the greatest assets of any first-rate space force. The fact that the Blood Humanist Society had managed to get their hands on one showed just how much power, not to mention political clout, they had managed to get their hands. Since such a resource couldn’t be obtained with just money alone.

Arastia smiled with a hint of adoration at the two kids with dropped jaws staring at her with wide eyes. “Impressive, aren’t we? We managed to get our hands on one recently after I completed a major operation as a favor to the CEO of Interstellara. The waitlist for these things is a decade, normally. But thankfully, I managed to get priority.”

“Are you planning to wage war against the infected world or something?” Runark muttered with amazement. “I mean, with such kind of firepower and naval power, we’d be invincible in such an operation!”

Arastia’s expression grew a little serious. “Don’t be too certain. We’re dealing with a potential infected world here. Infected worlds are extremely dangerous and are capable of producing powerful anomalies. We are one of them, for example.”

It was known that Gaia was an infected world. One that had produced Paths, a cosmological anomaly that was still beyond even cutting-edge science in its understanding. Gaia would have become a fully infected planet if not for the fact that it overcame the infection.

Or more specifically, the Emperor of Water did.

This was a story that everybody knew, whether they were at the very heart of humanity in Gaia Prime or at the very edge of human civilization, in the frontier, like on Planet Sarantel. The infection spread across Gaia, then known as Earth, and had divided the world between the true world and the Panama Manifold, keeping the infection hidden from the rest of the world, while subjugating all life within the manifold with the Eldritch Chimera.

And yet, humanity revolted.

It began conquering the Beast Domain after the first Martial Artist, Esil, known as the Martial, began fighting back against it by spreading Martial Art, proliferating it across humanity across centuries, giving it the tools to fight back against the guardians of the infection. Eventually, in an operation led by the Emperor of Water, then the Dawnbringer, they broke out of the manifold.

The Emperor of Water had then gone on to eliminate the virus from within Gaia, before commencing the Era of Expansion.

And here they were, more than thirteen years later. Ria found the story to be almost mythological and surreal. The two protagonists of the stories, the Martial and the Emperor of Water, were her parents. And they had changed the trajectory of humanity permanently.

But to her, they were just her mother and father. Arastia smiled at Ria knowingly. “It is because miracles like the Martial and Emperor of Water rose from the infection to resist it that we should be wary of infected worlds. That is why we’re going all out with a nuclear fleet carrier. We have even gone as far as to invoke the Infected World Provisions Act passed by the Gaian Alliance after the infected world in outer space was discovered to get access to the tools needed to destroy the virus on the planet without allowing it to call for reinforcements.”

She pressed a button on her keyboard, causing the projector on her table to feature a hologram of a vial containing a single drop of what could only be described as a maelstrom of chaos and death.

“A drop of the Tide of Samasara,” Arastia spoke with a breath of deep intensity. “The Transcendent poison of the Emperor of Water himself. A weapon of unparalleled death and destruction, authorized only for use against the virus of an infected world. Violating this law of the Gaian Alliance is said to provoke action from the Emperor himself. So nobody dares to misuse his power meant solely to destroy enemies of humanity and enemies of the universe.”