The Martial Unity

Her blood-red eyes widened at those words. ”You want me to absorb the Blood Cult? Have you lost your mind? They’re brainwashed cultists.”

”Then feel free to kill them,” Rui remarked apathetically, turning back to the frozen homoararchnoid. ”You can take their resources. Kill the cultists. Reform those who can be reformed. It’s your choice, really.”

She froze. ”…Genocide my own kin?”

”Do you think of them as kin? The war, was it not ultimately to annihilate the other?” He raised an eyebrow, turning back to her for just the briefest of moments. ”Regardless, what you do with them is your business, Arastia. As long as human civilization emerges from this stronger than before, I don’t particularly care about what happens.”

She stared at him with an intense expression. ”Is that the only calculus that drives your decisions?”

The air grew a little electric as she confronted him with the grievances and resentments that she had slowly developed against her elder brother. All the power that he had, and his unwillingness to simply deploy it in a unilateral manner. His fixation on power at all costs, even at the cost of allowing the Blood Cult to rise to power, along with the Evolutionary Army, which was an even bigger problem.

She disdained it, but ultimately, there was nothing she could do about it.

”If it were, I would not have intervened yesterday,” Rui replied, turning towards his little sister.

”Yes, because Ria is the only thing that can get you to do anything,” she huffed with a hint of resentment in her voice.

”That’s partly true, the implicit accusation notwithstanding.” Rui smiled at the mention of his daughter before directing a deep gaze at his little sister. ”Your resentment reveals an immaturity, Arastia. It means that you’re still not looking at the big picture. Perhaps you can’t be blamed for that because you are the leader of only the Blood Humanist Society. But I am the leader of human civilization. Every decision I take…”

He shrugged. ”Personal decisions aside, is for the sake of human civilization.”

”And just how does having the Blood Cult and the Evolutionary Army rise to power benefit human civilization?” She folded her arms, glaring at him. ”What is it beneficial to have these two treacherous organizations rise to power and become thorns in everybody’s side?”

”You know the answer to that question is yes, Arastia.” Rui turned back towards her with a calm expression. ”Would the Blood Humanist Society be as strong as it is today if it weren’t for the threat of the Blood Cult? Would you be as strong as you are today if it weren’t for them and the unsavory things that they want to do to you to take my throne?”

Her expression tightened.

The answer to that was a resounding no.

The reality was that when she learned that the Blood Cult wanted her blood and wanted her to bear an heir that bore Kandrian blood to brainwash into the perfect hemosapien emperor to further their cause, she trained like a madwoman. She abused the manifold and put herself through hellish tribulations to become one of the most powerful pathwalkers across ten thousand stars.

If not for that threat, she doubted she would even be a Blood Sage at this juncture in life.

”And what about the rest of human civilization?” Rui asked with a calm and composed tone of voice. ”All those star empires and polities, would they be as strong as they are today if not for the threat of the Evolutionary Army?”

”…You want to allow cancers to grow in our civilization just so that our civilization can grow stronger fighting against them,” she remarked. ”And one day they will betray humanity in their maddened pursuit of superiority and power.”

”And when they do, they will be disposed, just as the Blood Cult will be soon enough,” Rui remarked calmly. ”The reason I don’t just rush over and do it myself is to enforce the power of the institutions that I painstakingly built precisely to create law and order across ten thousand stars. Their power will be assimilated into yours, and we will have preserved the gains while rooting out the liabilities, which is the ideology of the Blood Cult.”

She simply stared at him with an upset expression. His logic was cold and ruthless, even if it led to frustrating outcomes for many others. She wanted to retort that it was too dangerous to let them grow as powerful as they had, but the reality was that there was no such thing as too dangerous when it came to her brother.

His power the previous day had proven that. He was so far beyond them that it wasn’t even funny. That gave him the confidence to simply allow them to do as they pleased, but she couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if one of them ever came to gain the power that he had.

”That would be good,” he remarked, reading her mind. ”The reality is that we need more Transcendents. I alone cannot fight all of the Divine Mothers’ homoararchnoids myself. At least not all at once if they ever decided to go that far.”

He directed a pointed gaze at her.

She winced. ”Yes. I know. I am trying. I have understood the importance of Transcendence after seeing your fight with the Divine Mother, so rest assured—”

She froze, turning towards him. ”You said… Divine Mothers.”

”Yes,” Rui replied calmly, studying the frozen homoararchnoids.

”Mothers,” she emphasized the s. ”As in plural. Multiple.”

”Correct,” Rui confirmed. ”It’s the first piece of information I have managed to extract. There are other Divine Mothers in homoararchnoid civilization.”

Pure horror emerged in her blood-red eyes as her blood chilled, almost literally. ”H-How many are we talking?”

”Hmm…” Rui stepped closer towards the crystal, sharpening his translucent eyes. ”Seventy-eight that I’ve confirmed so far.”

She stumbled at those words as her face grew pale. ”S-seventy-eight Transcendents?”

Her heart rate rose while her breathing grew strained.

”We are doomed.”