The Martial Unity

Soon enough, Arastia departed, heading off to deal with the fallout from the intense battle that had erupted around the perimeters of the camp. She knew that she had much work to do, given all the damage that had been inflicted around them. “What’s the fall-out like?” She asked Schoel as they made their way through the developing camp.

Around them were rapidly developing structures that seemed to be growing from the ground with no apparent reason. But the two pathwalkers could see the nanobots developing the structure bit by bit, gathering minerals, refining them in a distinct refining processors, before using them to construct the scaffolding and structure of what would become their makeshift base.

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT

The gray soil was caked with the blue of homoarachnoid blood and flesh, making it wet and soggy, while a strange odor hung in the air. Not that they knew, since they relied on internal breathing apparatuses to supply their lungs with oxygenated air. They walked about an array of scaffolding as the base that the Blood Humanist Society sought to erect was rapidly being developed.

“Twelve pathwalkers have died,” Schoel replied to her question with a grim tone. “Hundreds had been injured, but your blood helped heal them, so they’re fine now.”

It was one of the techniques that she had mastered within hemokinesis. There were many different applications of blood manipulation, and not all of them involved using blood as a weapon. Even though the Blood Path had inherited the martiality of the Martial Path, it wasn’t entirely martial in nature, either.

“Transfer the bodies of the pathwalkers back,” Arastia replied, directing a sweeping gaze around at the pathwalkers who stood, on edge, at the borders of the perimeters, deeply wary about another attack. “Ensure that the pay-outs are sent to their dependents or family.”

“Yes, ma’am, will do.”

“What about damage to the camp itself?” she asked, taking a good, long look at the rapidly developing infrastructure. “Some minor damage, but nothing too severe. Most of the battle took place away from the camp near the perimeter that we set up,” Schoel replied. “For now, we will have to settle with tents for some time longer.”

He gestured to the tents cordoned off in one section of the territory that they had chosen to establish a base in.

“They certainly got too close for comfort, though,” Schoel continued with a severe tone. “They managed to come out of nowhere and completely catch us off guard. We don’t know how they did it, and it poses a grave security risk.”

She turned towards him with a serious expression. “I think they’re tunneling.”

Schoel frowned at the president. “I don’t think that’s the case. I would have sensed them if they were merely underground. We have excellent seismic detectors meant precisely for this kind of thing.”

“Those clearly are not entirely reliable enough.”

“What makes you think they went underground?”

“I spotted a trail of a homoarachnoid that I thought I killed, but actually discovered a trail of blood running underground,” she remarked with a serious expression, turning towards him pointedly. “Conduct a deep scan of the planet with our advanced seismic gravitational sensor array. I want a detailed result on exactly what the hell is going on with this planet. There are simply too many anomalies.”

It wasn’t just the strange homoarachnoid creatures that seemed to be able to pop up out of nowhere and disappear out of nowhere. The entire planet was an anomaly.

If this planet had complex life like Homoarachnoid, then where the hell was the rest of the ecosystem? Where was the flora and fauna? Where was the environment that was hospitable to complex organic chemistry? She would have expected to be a rich biosphere with immense biodiversity, like Gaia Prime.

And yet, they were on a planet with an environment so gray that it literally put psychological pressure on the mind. There was something deeply off about the planet they were in, and it couldn’t be chalked up to regular infected world shenanigans. As the leader of the Blood Humanist Society, a lot was riding on her, which was why uncertainty was the worst state to be in. “I’ll leave you to handle the development of the base. Let me know if there’s anything else.”

“Yes, Madam President.”

She secluded herself in her temporary tent that would serve as her humble abode until the cosmobuilders built their military base, sitting at a table within the spacious tent, falling into thought.

A familiar presence arrived at the entrance of the tent. “Come in,” Arastia called out.

FLAP

Ria flipped upon the fabric opening to the tent, closing it behind her while taking a good, long look at the more elaborate setup that her aunt possessed with a glint of envy. “Why do you get such a big tent while the rest of us have to share?”

“Because I’m President,” Arastia smiled at her niece. “And that comes with privilege. If you want to be treated this way, then get stronger and make something of yourself. And you can have a whole tent to yourself when in alien territory, too.”

Of course, it was more comfortable to just live within human civilization and its highly advanced developed lifestyle of tremendous convenience.

“So?” Ria took a seat opposite her aunt. “What do you want to talk about?”

Arastia directed her niece with a pointed glance. “You went all out. If you don’t hold back, the probability of your true identity being revealed gets much higher. Ria Quarrier Silas Kandria is known to be an extraordinary Martial Artist who can cross the gap between Realms. You know this.”

She did, of course. Ever since she was young, she had accrued a name for simply disregarding the gap between Realms and crossing them nonetheless, being able to stalemate Martial Artists of a higher Realm in battle when she went all out. There was only one other Martial Artist that had ever done that, making it extremely rare to run into anybody capable of it.

“You’re going to have to hold back if you don’t want to everybody to know that you are Princess Ria, Your Highness,” Arastia addressed her niece with royal honorifics and protocol, knowing that it irked the young lady.