Chapter 4637: Reckoning

Despite the fact that Rui had just killed the final Divine Mother, his expression was ugly. Even as he faded away, paying the price of the Transcendent Realm, his eyes were filled with reckoning.

He understood, better than most, the gravity of what had just happened. He had succeeded in the objective of killing all of the Divine Mothers before they escaped. But he had ultimately failed in stopping the underlying goal of preventing the arakai from learning the secret of Transcendent impunity.

He hadn’t been able to stop the final pulse of information that the Divine Mother had released just before she died. His Verse had already shut down by then. He hadn’t been able to interpret her message, but he didn’t need to. He already knew exactly what information she had sent to the other side.

The portal behind him had already closed, most likely because whoever was administering it saw that the recipient had already died, so he couldn’t even see who had received the message. But the details didn’t matter. The Divine Mother had transmitted that pulse of information, sacrificing her life, and she had done it knowing that it would bring about the glory of the arakai, as her dying words echoed.

In other words, the arakai had now obtained Transcendent impunity.

The Divine Mothers would now be able to fight without any consequences to the Transcendent Realm.

His mind reeled with the consequences of this failure. They had managed to kill six Divine Mothers, and yet... it hadn’t been enough. Now, the Divine Mothers had gotten rid of the one shackle that had always held them back. He could scarcely imagine the carnage that they would inflict upon human civilization.

His mind was filled with visions of dozens of Divine Mothers invading human civilization and wiping out star system after star system, completely and thoroughly annihilating human civilization.

It was a vision he soon feared would become reality.

"Rui..." Amare reached him just a moment later with a confused expression. She had expected him to be quite satisfied and jubilant at the victory that they had narrowly pulled off, but instead, she found a grave and severe Rui whose body had almost completely faded away. A single remark escaped him before he was gone.

"Come home now. We need to talk."

WHOOSH...

When Rui woke up in his new body, he was in a bit of a stupor. The aftermath of the battle had already escaped him. He simply entrusted the clean-up process to the relevant authorities, giving them full authority. He couldn’t even remember a single word he’d said to them right after he said it.

He quickly handled the most immediate, pressing issues before moving on to the matter that truly consumed his mind like a black hole consuming light.

"The arakai have learned our secret."

His words caused shock in the eyes of every Transcendent at the conference table in the Vargard Royal Palace. Amare, whose Verse was still kept active to a bare minimum, stared at him with a stunned expression. "What...?"

"Before I killed her, the Divine Mother managed to transmit a pulse of information through the portal," Rui revealed with a grim expression. "The contents of the message are undoubtedly the secret to Transcendent impunity. In other words, the arakai have already acquired the power to abuse Transcendence virtually limitlessly, save for stamina constraints per active session."

The air darkened as the gravity of the situation bore down on all of them. Argenton’s expression crumpled with frustration and anger. Out of all of them, he undoubtedly bore the biggest share of blame, not that anybody would do that, for this fiasco. He was the weakest link in the chain, and he was the reason that the Mindstitch acquired the information in the first place, and his failure to stop her at the final moment was why she had succeeded in transmitting the pulse of information.

He clearly was self-reproachful, so Rui didn’t see the need to rub salt in the wound and antagonize someone who had put his life on the line to save Rui when he was cornered by five Divine Mothers.

Another Transcendent who expressed some self-loathing was Dwight. He was the only Transcendent who hadn’t participated in the battle directly, though nobody could blame him for that. He was a pure creator who created products that did the fighting. Although God’s Hammer was definitely the weakest person on the battlefield, it still had done a phenomenal job engaging Divine Mothers. Although it struggled to hurt them, its defenses were quite impressive considering that it didn’t have a Verse.

The other Transcendent who was listening was quite silent. So much so that Rui wasn’t even sure if Mother Maeria was actually listening or not. They had included a botanical communication interface that connected to, well, ’nature,’ but she hadn’t said a word yet.

Rui knew that this was how she had been when she broke through to the Transcendent Realm. With the death of her Ego, she was simply subconscious, and that came with a lack of agency and awareness. Her presence felt sleepy, so communicating with her was difficult. But it appeared that she had indeed registered the sheer gravity of the situation.

She had managed to remain after exerting her Verse thanks to the principle of Transcendent impunity that Rui had shared with her. The Divine Mother’s subconsciousness remained while a large patch of nature in Central Genara disappeared instead. The Transcendence of the elves, which they had yet to give a proper name for, was quite suited to his method of Transcendent impunity. Since the Divine Mother had shed a distinct body, it wasn’t that difficult for her to execute his method with every little help once he explained it to her.

’...Gaia is... in danger...’ A drowsy whisper echoed in their minds. ’Must prepare for... war...’

Rui’s expression tightened at those words. She wasn’t wrong in her statement; they absolutely needed to prepare for war, but simple war preparations weren’t anywhere near enough.

They would be annihilated. The disparity in Transcendent power between human civilization and Arakai Web Civilization was astronomical. Just six Divine Mothers, even if high-tier, had pushed them to the very limit. The arakai had around a hundred Divine Mothers remaining, a portion of whom were at the same level of power as the six that had attacked them.