The Martial Unity

With the decision to accelerate the needed reforms through the manifolds being made, Central Human Command had a blueprint for the immediate future. It was unlikely that any immediate conflicts would ensue in the span of just a week. The Web of War had taken a lot of damage to its breachhead and its interdiction force.

In modern interstellar war between advanced civilizations, an interdiction force was as necessary as the main army itself. Wormholes were simply too overpowered in war, and means to negate or at least significantly impede them were necessary. Thus, everybody predicted that the Web of War would remain tightly balled up until the interdiction force had sufficiently been repaired.

But once that was done, they would resume their conquest and control of the Arima III System, which was all but stripped bare of any meaningful defenses. The worst part was that Central Human Command couldn’t even do anything about the Web of War while they recuperated within Arima III. Their ships were too weak to survive and too weak to harm meant that until they had more dwarven ships in their hands, there was simply no point in even trying to attack the highly well-defended and lethally armed Web of War.

Just the fact that they had managed to harm them to this extent was considered a strategic victory. However, the deaths of hundreds of millions of people in Arima III certainly crushed any sense of triumph.

It was the largest number of deaths that human civilization had experienced since the Era of Expansion. While wars between pioneers and would-be conquerors did occur during this era, they did not lead to the complete genocide of ordinary people.

After all, if one attacked another colony in order to conquer and annex it, there was little point in killing all the qualified personnel who had managed to get a valuable ticket to be a part of a new state.

The people who led these colonial enterprises never wasted a seat on their ships for incompetent people. Thus, regardless of who won or lost in inter-human conflicts, the people remained. The shock from the blatant killing of so many human beings rippled across human civilization and bore heavily on the minds of ordinary people. Central Human Command knew that if they didn’t demonstrate an ability to defeat the arakai, this fear would continue snowballing until it ripened into total desperation, which would inevitably lead to the collapse of the fabric of human civilization.

That was why the moment the meeting got over, Dwight rushed over to his labs to begin his new job. He was not only to take part in the development of new R&D, but he would also help with creating dwarven-grade ships that all pathwalkers would use.

The latter was easy, even if tedious and tiring. He and his fellow dwarves would have to take on the identity of ship production machines and behave like the assembly lines of a factory. They hated it; mass production was scorned among the dwarves, but they were wise enough to understand the dire necessity.

The Web of War could not be allowed to destroy human ships like they were popping bubbles.

”Hmm…” he sat at the table in his laboratory, peering into a microscope.

He was studying a sample of prothanite. One that Sentinel Prime managed to retrieve somehow. The substance was an astonishment among the R&D community of human civilization. It was the proton version of the composition of neutron stars, comprised entirely of protons.

It should have been impossible for such a substance to exist. Protons repelled each other with such great force that one could only hold so many of them together in such a dense lattice. And even then, one needed neutrons in between to increase the distance and reduce the repelling electromagnetic force.

It was fascinating how the arakai had managed to synthesize a substance where they could stably have protons bound together with a strengthened version of the strong nuclear force.

None of the other research teams across human civilization that had managed to receive a sample understood how the arakai had managed to strengthen the nuclear force to such an extent. Dwight himself was unable to identify the means when he relied purely on the data collected by his instruments.

But he had something that was greater than his instruments.

He had his Creationverse.

His consciousness, when in a state of phenomenological uniformity, could extend into the information dimension. When he studied the substance, he wasn’t merely perceiving the electromagnetic radiation and light it released, his consciousness itself was washing over the information that described it, understanding what was happening.

He had just managed to crack some clues when a presence suddenly appeared behind him.

”Have you had any luck with that?” The Emperor of Water asked in a serious voice.

The world around them shifted in its flavor. The absoluteness of reality made way for a strange fickleness, as if the world was merely an image reflected upon the surface of a calm lake, easy to dispel with a single splash of water.

Dwight felt the influence of his Creationverse get pushed back by the much more dominant Martialverse of the Emperor of Water.

It wasn’t a fair contest, he thought to himself. After all, Rui had thirteen years of experience with the Transcendent Realm. Of course, his power was more developed. He also didn’t appreciate the Emperor waltzing into his private forge, an extremely important and deeply personal space for every dwarven craftsman and blacksmith.

But he kept those thoughts to himself. Even though he was a Transcendent, there was a gap in power and leverage. The Emperor of Water’s dominance was not shaken by the appearance of another Transcendent.

Dwight turned around to Rui, stroking his beard. ”I have. I think I understand how the arakai have managed to create such an impossible substance. Take a look, you’ll understand.”

The Emperor shifted his gaze to the prothanite, sharpening his eyes upon inspection.