The Martial Unity

Chapter 4290: Humanity Has Him

She grew surprised at those words. ”What about the throne?”

”What about it?”

”Don’t you need an heir?”

”Do I?” He raised an eyebrow with a soft smile. ”I am immortal. I’m not going anywhere. I don’t strictly need an heir. I have no reason to abdicate the throne. Your grandfather was Emperor for four centuries, you know?”

”I suppose that’s true,” she muttered.

”Besides, if I really wanted an heir, then your mother and I wouldn’t mind having another child, if it really came down to it,” Rui remarked, turning towards. ”You can have a sibling if you want.”

”I’m good; I would feel too bad for being on the frontier if I did have an adorable sibling growing up at home.”

”That might be a good reason to have another child then.”

”Don’t.” She scowled at him.

Rui smiled with a hint of amusement. ”I could also pass on the throne to your children when you decide to start your own family.”

She shook her head. ”That’s not happening any time soon, especially with the revelations you have shared with me, Dad.”

”Don’t take it so deathly seriously, Ria.” He patted her shoulder, pulling her closer to him. ”You’re just unique and special in your own way. It’s not easy to often reconcile these things but you’re not alone in that regard. Your mother had to struggle, and I mean truly struggle, to reconcile her circumstances before she finally overcame them. I, too, have had my fair share of struggles. Struggles that come with being different. Very different.”

He smiled at her encouragingly.

”You will figure this out. I have faith in you, my precious baby.”

He waddled her with his arms, pulling her closer to him. She generally disliked being babied by people, since she was a legal adult, but when her father did it, it reminded her of the happiest part of her life.

”...Thanks, Papa,” she muttered.

”Besides, the world is going to change soon,” Rui remarked with a knowing tone of voice. ”The events of the Strehegeld Star System have put humanity on a track towards a destiny that was all but bound to come sooner or later.”

Her amber eyes tightened at those words. ”...Interstellar war.”

Those words made the air darker. A gloomy atmosphere hung over them as the prospects of war seemed inevitable. Ria wasn’t exactly knowledgeable in the ways of politics, but even she knew that what they had done to the homoarachnoid civilization would bring war; there was virtually no other possibility. They destroyed an outpost world, they killed billions of homoarachnoids, and perhaps most egregious, they killed a Divine Mother who was clearly extremely powerful and important within homoarachnoid civilization.

There was no way that the interstellar homoarachnoid civilization would let them off the hook. There wasn’t even any avenue for diplomatic dialogue the way there had been with the laminar integuments. She wasn’t aware of the details, however, of what they were dealing with. She didn’t have access to classified intelligence as to how large the civilization they had angered was.

”We’ll be fine, my daughter.”

Rui spoke with confidence and certainty.

”Our civilization has been preparing for this, even if they didn’t know it,” he continued with a wise tone. ”The near anarchy of the stars without any absolute centralized governmental authority has allowed our civilization to become extremely powerful internally. Every planet is armed with the assumption that it could be attacked at any moment. Every polity, every organization, and every individual takes their security and safety very seriously. Our civilization is prepared for conflict. And more than anything...”

He smiled at her.

”You have me.”

Somehow, those words alone made her feel more confident than any other rationale that he could have offered.

That was right.

So what if their enemy was bigger?

So what if their enemy was stronger?

So what if their enemy tried to destroy them?

Humanity had Rui Quarrier.

That was a much stronger basis for confidence than any other reason she could think of.

”With the war ensuing, demand for esoteric matter will only rise,” he remarked. ”And with it, demand for infected worlds. If you choose to specialize in this field, you will be able to thrive with your advantages. And you will be doing human civilization a massive favor. Not to mention, the universe a massive favor.”

Rui caught himself there, refusing to elaborate on why exactly that would be the case. His daughter was still not aware of the full context of why the virus was dangerous, though she would likely eventually figure it out with all the information that she had been made aware of and all the information that she would learn about the virus as she exposed herself to it.

He didn’t want to stress her out more than he already had with the chilling implications that could be derived.

If she had a relationship with the universe, then she also had a relationship with the virus. And more importantly, if the virus was infecting the Universalis Mensis, then... There was a chance that it could affect her mind as well.

That was the fear that Rui hid in his heart. The confidence, calmness, and composure that he projected were merely to reassure her. The reality was that he didn’t know what the truth was.

The information dimension was vaster, deeper, and more unfathomable than even his capacity to parse. Information phenomena, phenomena exclusive to the information dimension, were difficult to parse. Not even Rui was able to fully comprehend the information flow between his daughter and the universe.

Not that he was content with this. It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that he had spent the past two years researching the matter for a better understanding of it. He had taken precautions and safety measures, but still, he didn’t have the certainty that he needed to have.

If he kept Ria by his side the entire time, he was confident he could protect her even from some sort of infectious attack of her mind through the quantum informational entanglement of her mind and the Universalism Mensis, but he ultimately decided not to do that.

He would protect his daughter while allowing her to live the life she wanted to live.