The Martial Unity

Chapter 3668: Shocking Sequence of Deductions

Mother Maeria immediately understood the goal that she had in mind. She was hardly surprised, given how prominent her momentary breakthrough to a higher rank of power was. It had undoubtedly signaled to all powerhouses in the world that there was an extraordinary plane of power beyond their fathoming, but within their research that could serve as the source for their next astronomical boost.

NOVA deeply desired knowledge of this power. She deeply desired to understand what the secret was. In fact, she had partially expected that converting her mind into pure information would allow her to reach a new rank of power.

But alas, while it made her more powerful than she had ever been before, it did not feel like she had achieved a greater realm of power.

”I’m afraid I cannot tell you,” Mother Maeria’s tone was frosty. ”Nothing good will come of giving you access to that kind of power when you’re an inhuman machine. Even if I were willing to give you that kind of power, I do not believe that you will be able to reach a higher realm easily, if at all.”

[...]

NOVA remained silent as she digested that answer before finally replying.

[I will win this war. It is not wise to truly become my enemy. Cede the truth or become an enemy to me forever.]

”I think I will take my chances against you.” Mother Maeria smiled knowingly. ”I think you might find this war not to be nearly as in your favor as you might have expected. I will tell you again. You may be the most intelligent entity in the world, but you are not omniscient.”

BZZZT

The call was cut, leaving NOVA to her own thoughts.

Indeed, she was not omniscient.

Still, she was the closest thing to it that currently existed. The only truly divergent event was that the light elves went from hating Rui to loving him.

[No, that cannot possibly be the case. Most likely, this is Mother Maeria’s initiative. I can’t imagine that those light elves would truly try to get along with another race.]

It begged the question as to why Mother Maeria was so willing to go this far for Rui Quarrier when none of the other light elves were this eager. In the first place, NOVA had been a little surprised when she woke up to a world where Mother Maeria had returned to elven society as a leader.

The Mother of Nature had been an elder that the other Mothers of Nature revered, but never actually participated in worldly matters. To see this ancient, solitary figure become so involved in leading the light elves in the Age of Unfolding was rather bizarre.

What was especially suspicious was that it coincided with when Rui was in East Genora, being hunted by the light elves who struggled to find him across the entire continent despite all of the flora surveillance apparatus they possessed—

[...Oh.]

The truth dawned on her. She managed to deduce what nobody else had caught on to. The relationship between Rui and Mother Maeria definitely went deeper than she could have ever imagined. That didn’t explain everything, of course. She still didn’t know who that human with Mother Maeria was, even if she could tell that he was no ordinary man.

The question was why Mother Maeria had chosen to protect Rui in East Genora. The elderly mother of nature did not strike NOVA as a race traitor. All the data she had at her disposal suggested that the Mother of Nature truly cared for her sisters.

On top of that, elves were even more bonded with each other than any of other races in the true world. They were the most collectivist and selfless bunch of people in the true world, as far as other members of their race were concerned.

Thus, the probability that Mother Maeria would betray her own race was especially very small. Most likely, she was doing what she thought was best for her own people.

Most people would have abandoned trying to parse the thoughts and intentions of someone as elder and powerful as Mother Maeria, not to mention someone as large as her. Mothers of Nature had heightened intelligence due to possessing greater organic processing power.

Predicting or understanding them was extremely difficult because of how complex a lifeform each of them was.

Yet, for NOVA, even such a scale of complexity was hardly a problem. On top of that, NOVA had a pretty good understanding of what kind of existences Mothers of Nature were. The same was true for converged beasts of the Beast Path.

The reason for her great familiarity was rather straightforward. Studying how elves transferred their consciousness to trees and how therianthropes transferred their consciousness to beasts was what allowed her to create a similar process for her own consciousness transfer to a quantum computer.

She immediately began processing the wealth of information that she had on Rui Quarrier and Mother Maeria, trying to find the answers to her questions.

Why did Mother Maeria save Rui?

Given his identity, it was possible that she simply wanted to avoid war, but if that was the case, why did she allow the light elves to wage war against the giants for as long as they had? She later extinguished the war, long after it had begun.

It was possible that she wanted to essentially take him hostage and extort the Kandrian Empire, but if that was the case, why did Rui mysteriously return to the dark elves without any complications?

Another possibility was that she sought him for his strength. But she didn’t seem to have actually used his power for anything. It would have been too conspicuous in East Genora and would not have gone unnoticed.

That left only one real possibility.

She sought information.

But what information could she seek from a man who had just killed her sister at that point?

NOVA’s metaphorical eyes widened as she recalled what had happened soon after. [...That was when Mother Maeria broke through.]

Was it a coincidence that Mother Maeria broke through shortly after seeking Rui for information?

[No... that’s impossible. The only real conclusion is that Rui Quarrier is the one who supplied information of a higher rank to Mother Maeria!]