The Martial Unity

The emergence of the second Transcendent in human civilization send shockwaves across human civilization. Each and every single power was affected by this event, and it permanently altered the balance of power across human civilization.

Of course, nobody knew what to expect from a dwarven Transcendent. They didn't even understand what it meant for a craftsman to be a Transcendent. Would they be witnessing a dwarf hurtling through outer space, destroying war fleets with a single punch?

Regardless, nobody underestimated the dwarves. Although it was ancient history, the dwarves had managed to hold their own throughout the eons despite being neighbors with the giants, who were a constant threat. They managed to do so by relying on extremely powerful constructs of their creation that did the fighting on their behalf.

When their enemies fought barehanded, the dwarves fought with bows and arrows.

When their enemies fought with bows and arrows, the dwarves fought with guns.

When their enemies fought with guns, the dwarves fought with cannon fire.

They were always a step ahead technologically, allowing them to survive and thrive despite their weak, diminutive bodies. Now, the dwarves had reached Transcendence. There was no telling just what kind of absurdities they would begin producing.

People held their breath, expecting superweapons that could delete their targets from reality, defensive fortresses that were utterly indestructible, and mechs that could vanquish any foe.

"This isn't good."

Far away in Acherialis, a silvery male being sat at a high-tech smart table with numerous intelligence reports that described all the information that could be gathered on the breakthrough of the craftsman they called the Harmonious Hammer to Transcendence. "It was bad enough that human civilization gained a Transcendent, now the dwarves too? Dammit. If only we had our powerhouse."

That was, of course, Argenton, the strongest pathwalker and the elected technocratic leader of Greater Tekvoria. The tekvores had always been among the most prominent races; however, that had changed in the past eighteen years or so.

The defeat of Greater Tekvoria in the True World War was something that had crushed their standing in the world. But that wasn't the worst wound. A worse wound they had suffered was the death of NOVA five years later at the hands of the Emperor of Water and the complete subjugation of tekvorian civilization at the hands of the Kandrian Empire.

They did eventually set them free and even set up a technocratic democracy, but it was a humiliation. But not even that was the worst part. The worst part was the psychological damage that people had taken from NOVA's slavery; it had crushed the entrepreneurial spirit of independence in the minds of the tekvores at the time, and it had taken a long time for them to truly recover as a people.

Unfortunately, time didn't wait for anybody. While they recovered, the Era of Expansion had already come, and it raced forth, leaving them in the dust. Out of all the races in human civilization, the race that had underperformed the most was not the giants, as many had expected because of their rationality issues of the past.

The race that had underperformed the most was the tekvores.

Their technology had grown the slowest. The territories were the least expansive and the most humiliating of all; they didn't have a single pathwalker in the top ten anymore, and hadn't had one since NOVA perished.

Argenton, to this day, was the strongest tekvore, and he had stagnated ever since he had been enslaved by NOVA. He had no idea how to even progress beyond his current stage of power.

He had, of course, received instruction from the Emperor of Water, who graciously imparted to him the truth of the Transcendent Realm despite their historical conflicts. But not even that had been enough.

How the hell was he supposed to achieve this so-called phenomenological uniformity? Tekvores didn't think of the world in this manner. The Integration Path was a deeply practical and material path that involved pathwalkers to cultivate their body to prepare it for technological integration.

Their path was devoid of 'enlightenments' that Martial Artists and even Craftsmen seemed to have. The Integration Path was a very physical Path. Tekvores possessed a genetic trait known as immunological apathy, which was among the many things that allowed them to integrate to technology into their body without much rejection.

The Path that they tread was a path of acclimatization, endurance, and continuous perseverance, along with the building of knowledge and skill to be able to progress their own technological integration.

"…I've heard that Dwight's Transcendent power is very different from the Martial Transcendent," Argenton muttered. "And I've heard that elven Transcendence is also very different in nature."

After all, Mother Maeria, who had disappeared thirteen years ago, had been on the verge of achieving Transcendence and had reportedly had a different kind of Transcendence compared to that of Martial Transcendents.

Thus, Transcendence varied radically by race. Perhaps he was being poisoned by the Martial perspective on Transcendence. Maybe he was thinking about it completely differently. Perhaps Tekvores had a completely different path to Transcendence than the others before them.

Frankly, the only entity in tekvore history that had struck him as close to achieving Transcendence was NOVA, but she had been a complete and utter failure. In fact, when he thought about how useful the top-ten powerhouses were to their races, he was deeply infuriated by how much she had sabotaged her own race.

But it was also true that she was the only one who had ever undergone a qualitative transformation that was the logical path forward.

The brain was the only organ in his body that was still as it had been, save for the neural inlays. Even his nerves had been replaced with high-speed fiber-optics.

But NOVA had already tried that, hadn't she? She transferred her consciousness to a computer.

"…Which means if I want to reach Transcendence, I can't simply make a copy of my mind and uploaded to a computer," Argenton realized. "Maybe there's something more. Maybe there's a crucial element that NOVA missed that prevented her from reaching Transcendence…"

Argenton wasn't sure he wanted to entertain the line of thought that led to NOVA's downfall, but the truth was that he had had enough of stagnation.

"If I die, then I die. But anything is better than this humiliating stasis."

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