The Martial Unity

Once Ria felt better, she grew embarrassed at how she had acted. But more than anything, she appreciated her aunt trying to make her feel better. But it also made her feel childish for getting excited at the thought of a sleepover with her aunt. Runark, to his credit, didn’t linger on the topic after she got over it. Which she appreciated. It wasn’t too long after that Arastia left, drawn to her never-ending duties as President of the Blood Humanist Society, of course. “Head to the operational facility now, the briefing program is starting soon,” Arastia had advised her. “The other freelancer pathwalkers we hired are also present there. Go there. Find three other pathwalkers to befriend and create a party out of. Our standard operation requires groups of five in accordance with industry norms. True adventurers work together with others. We can have the sleepover tonight and catch up some more later.”

Having said that, she left the two young Martial Masters behind by themselves. Ria and Runark exchange glances with each other before following her words. They wound through the expansive branch office of the Society, arriving at the operational facility, where all things related to internal operations of the Blood Humanist Society were handled.

The facility was composed of two sections, one of which was an office section with many hundreds of employees working at various computer terminals. Ensuring that the operational apparatus of the Blood Humanist Society operated smoothly. All of them had red hair and red eyes, the telltale feature of the hemosapiens.

Just like any other race, most hemosapiens were civilians. Even though they were superhuman by nominal standards, they didn’t necessarily pursue that combat power and blood manipulation. They possessed superhuman intelligence in addition to superhuman combat prowess, especially when they utilized their blood to empower their brainpower. One of the reasons that the Blood Humanist Society was able to run smoothly despite being dispersed across human civilization was precisely because it had a small but highly elite group of managers who kept the entire system running.

More interestingly, however, they arrived at the more interesting part of the operational facility, a facility that served as a logistical management warehouse, containing all of the necessary resources to launch Pathwalker operations. The particular sub-section that they were told to go to was a conference room comprising a large number of seats. Within the little conference room were a large number of pathwalkers gathered, taking their seats across the conference room. They directed a sweeping gaze at the various pathwalkers gathered with a hint of curiosity in their eyes as they spotted numerous pathwalkers of different races.

There were a lot of Martial Artists, of course. Martial Artists were the most abundant pathwalkers in the world. They even outnumbered the hemosapiens in the room despite the fact that they were in the branch office of the Blood Humanist Society. Most of them wore less novel exo-Martial attire compared to the EvoArmor that Runark had and the Water Integument exo-Martial suit that Ria wore. Except, of course, for the Martial Sages who wore more extravagant exo-Martial suits befitting their status, even in its diminished form in the Era of Expansion.

They also spotted evosapiens, making them raise their eyebrows. It wasn’t an appropriate reaction, but given just how much of a menace the Evolutionary Army was, in the Era of Expansion, it was hard not to have that reaction.

The Evolutionary Army was one of the most belligerent forces in the Era of Expansion, having conquered the largest number of stars after the Gaian Alliance, outpacing even the Kandrian Empire, which came in third despite its vastly smaller population.

Of course, not all evosapiens were part of the Evolutionary Army. It would be racist to assume that. Even among the Generation of Miracles of the Evolutionary Army, the evosapiens of the West Moridian Alliance had managed to get their hands on the DNA of Anthea, thanks to the cooperation with the Emperor of Water, and had created their own generation of miracles, allowing them to produce super-evolved evosapiens without the memory download from Anthea.

This made them weaker than the generation of miracles of the Evolutionary Army, since they not only managed to inherit their father’s DNA but also his experience, muscle memory, knowledge, and skill, to a partial extent.

This made them extremely formidable pathwalkers, rivaling those of the hemosapiens who inherited the blood of the Blood Goddess. Both the hemosapiens and the Evosapiens were presently the most powerful pathwalkers on an individual basis.

However, Martial Artists were still the most dominant force, overall, due to their sheer numbers. Because the breakthrough rates were especially high for Martial Artists of the Upper Realms, Panamic Civilization could essentially mass-produce Martial Artists of virtually every Realm without end, for all practical purposes. They were also thus especially overrated at the strongest levels of power, with Martial Sage accounting for ninety percent of all pathwalkers at their level of power or above, even if hemosapiens and evosapiens were literally a realm above them in power from the very start line.

This made for imbalanced power dynamics between the paths. Some paths had quality, others quantity, and others had both quality and quantity at different rates.

Aside from the Martial Artists, hemosapiens, and evosapiens, they also spotted tekvores taking their seats in the conference room, all of whom had significantly altered bodies, with metal sticking out from underneath their skins.

The tekvores had been on the worst footing at the start of the Era of Expansion due to the devastating effects of the enslavement of their entire race at the hands of NOVA. However, the Era of Expansion had proven to be good fertilizer for the Technology Path. The innovation boom that had occurred in the past thirteen years had served them well, systematically increasing their power.

On top of that, the expansion of new stars and new planets had proven to be exactly what the tekvores needed to grow stronger and stronger. Their pathwalkers were extremely powerful in combat, but they required tremendous energy to fuel their systems, for they generally sequestered their power from power plant establishments.