The Martial Unity

With most of them on his side, Rui could finally convene another meeting with Divine Mother ooo—o- and acquire the information that he needed to eliminate a Divine Mother of the War Faction. It had taken a while, but he had finally laid all the groundwork needed for him to get to eliminating.

Before he could contact her through Sage Sayfeel again, his secretary informed him of another matter that demanded his attention.

"Your Majesty, the Laminar Embassy just sent us a message," Secretary Claris told him the moment he teleported back to his office. "The Tendril of Light seeks to speak to you immediately."

Rui paused, turning towards her with a knowing expression.

The Tendril of Light was one of many leaders of Laminar Civilization, who commanded a worldship of his own, containing nearly a trillion individual laminar individuals. Enough to wage war with an entire civilization with their own might.

They had kept in contact over a handful of shared matters of importance, one of which was the creation of Paths for the laminar integuments. A project that Rui had undertaken in order to earn a mutual security agreement with the laminars.

Unfortunately, it hadn't been a project that Rui had been able to complete even in thirteen years, though he did keep at it in his spare time inside the manifold. Laminar integuments were fundamentally different from any kind of lifeform in Gaia, and he simply wasn't even sure what kind of potentials they had that he could alter to create a Path of some sort.

Even for a normal human being, creating a path was something that would be extremely difficult, but for an alien like the laminar integuments, creating a stable, fertile lifeform that possessed the same personality traits as they always did, it was a project that would either demand his full attention, which he simply couldn't afford to do, or a dedicated research department of path experts.

While path experts did exist, they were of the purely theoretical kind. There were no 'path engineers' that he could employ for the problem. Thus, ultimately, the project had stalled among the many things that demanded Rui's attention.

However, he highly doubted that the laminar integument was calling about that. Most likely, if Rui had to guess, he was calling about something else entirely. Although he wanted to speak to Divine Mother ooo—o- immediately, he couldn't afford to miss this call.

After all, the laminar integuments were one of the most powerful civilizations in the Milky Way, although they were in a distant star strand entirely, and the Tendril of Light was his liaison to the mighty civilization. If their relationship soured. Then it was entirely possible that the Laminars would choose to undertake a hostile method to get their hands on Paths.

"I'll speak to him right away, make the arrangements."

He teleported to the embassy, where he found himself standing in front of a floating bubble-like structure that was the size of a district. It was translucent from the outside, allowing anybody from the outside to see what was happening in the outermost layer of the structure.

The embassy was situated in a district of the Kandrian Empire that was dedicated to civil infrastructure relating to the Ministry of Extraterrestrial Affairs. They weren't the only alien-related building in the empire either.

There were buildings dedicated to the crystal striders that had been discovered shortly before the Era of Expansion, little creatures made up of silicon crystals in one of the earliest star systems that humans had ever visited.

The crab-like creatures had an aesthetic charm that drew a lot of supporters from the common population, leading to alien rights groups and fan clubs that screeched when the Kandrian Empire even considered annihilating all life on the planet and conquering it. With the immense amount of public pressure, the Kandrian Empire ultimately decided to preserve the planet and its indigenous life and environment, creating a state tourism enterprise for people to visit and even meet the crystal striders.

Of course, comparing the crystal striders to the laminar integuments was nothing short of an insult.

He quickly floated up to the bubble-like structure, passing through it in a strange sensation, like it was permeable after it was stretched to a certain point. Inside, he found two laminar integuments who offered a sequence of flashes of light greeting him.

"Greetings. Chancellor. Emperor. Transcendent," they broadly addressed all of his important identities. "We. Welcome. You. Tendril. Of. Light. Ready. Speak. With. You."

Unlike with the arakai, whose minds were still somewhat similar to that of humans, the laminars had a completely different model of consciousness and integrated information, creating a permanent language barrier that even he wasn't able to resolve.

There was only so much that could be translated from a species whose mind was made up of chromatic color stains across countless layers, whose thoughts were some complex interaction between light and chromatography.

Rui floated deeper inside the embassy until he reached the core, where the laminars indicated for him to enter alone.

WHOOSH

When he entered, he found himself alone with a familiar laminar integument. The same laminar integument he had met when he destroyed the virus within Gaia Prime. Its appearance had changed in the past thirteen years, as the colors on its outer layers were different.

After all, laminars maintained memories by adding more layers of chromatographic stains on their bodies, the colors etching the memories across their body, making them grow bigger. The Tendril of Light was much larger than any of the other laminars in the embassy, indicating his seniority.

Rui smiled, releasing a sequence of light pulses to the creature.

"Hey, it's been a while," he told the laminar. "What brings you to Gaia?"

The Tendril of Light's body lit up with a series of light flashes in response. Communication and cognition were one and the same, as far as the laminars were concerned.

He responded with the truth.

"Galaxy. Is. Changing," the laminar replied with a grim light. "Anomalies. Caused. Shifts. Future. Uncertain. Orion. Star. Strand. In. Trouble."

That didn't bode well.

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