[Currently running a discount on P@tr30n, 50% off!! for +30 chapters on all my fanfic!!]
For as long as anyone could remember, the Moon's surface had been defined by its countless impact craters, both large and small.
Now, however, one section of the lunar surface no longer had any craters at all. Only a perfectly smooth, curved plain remained.
It was as though every pit and ridge in that region had been ground down and polished away.
After more than sixty-five percent of the thrusters were erased, the remaining ones were destroyed by the other forces.
"Barouhcruz, you really have no backbone. I can't believe you were the first to surrender."
"I merely understand the importance of adapting to the circumstances."
Count Barouhcruz, a member of the Orbital Knights' Thirty-Seven Houses, calmly responded to the ridicule of another count over the communications channel.
The situation was already perfectly clear.
A few people were still stubbornly resisting, and their fate was easy to imagine.
Those who refused the current offer of surrender would not receive another chance once the offensive began. They would be completely annihilated.
In truth, Barouhcruz had never supported Saazbaum from the beginning, nor had he participated in the conspiracy to assassinate the princess.
He had suspected that some kind of plot was underway, but he had chosen neither to participate nor expose it.
He wanted to observe how the situation developed and determine which side would offer him the greatest opportunities in the future before making his choice. After all, he had become deeply disappointed with the current Vers royal family.
The outcome was far worse than he had anticipated, but at least surrendering now was preferable to being personally purged by Her Highness.
His gaze shifted toward the man standing beside the princess.
The princess had only achieved this astonishing reversal because of that man's support.
He unquestionably belonged to neither Earth nor Mars. His origins were shrouded in mystery.
Counts Cruhteo and Klancain appeared to know something about him, although they had not revealed everything to Barouhcruz.
Could that man be an alien?
Could aliens really look so similar to humans?
Barouhcruz considered another possibility.
Could this man have some connection to the ancient Aldnoah supercivilization?
The species that created the ancient Aldnoah civilization might also have been human. Otherwise, why would its technology recognize humans as authorized users? Why could humans operate it so naturally?
According to the records discovered within the ruins, the civilization had flourished at least thirty thousand years ago.
It was believed to have perished around that time, but some records suggested that a portion of its people had left the Solar System.
Perhaps Mr. Kain and the faction behind him were descendants of the ancient Aldnoah civilization.
"I understand. Then we can only settle this through force!"
With an emotionless expression, Asseylum declared war on the fifteen counts who still refused to surrender unconditionally.
She had already given them their chance.
She could not continue offering more opportunities out of softheartedness. Doing so would only create further danger and bloodshed.
She could not keep burdening Kain with these problems. She had to eliminate every remaining threat swiftly and decisively.
Asseylum had already spoken with her grandfather on Mars about how the Orbital Knights' Thirty-Seven Houses should be handled.
Although the emperor was shocked by everything that had happened, he did not reprimand her. He simply granted her full authority to resolve the situation however she saw fit.
Unless something unexpected occurred, there should be no need for Kain to personally intervene again.
She did not want to see him injured again.
When he returned to retrieve her, he had appeared unharmed. However, Asseylum knew that he had used a panacea to accelerate his recovery.
Judging by the condition of his recovered machine and the devastation inside its cockpit, she could roughly estimate how severe his injuries had been.
For an ordinary person, they would have been fatal.
The traitorous Orbital Knights could be suppressed by those who now supported her.
In particular, the counts who had not initially sided with her would be required to personally lead their troops into battle.
This would also weaken the military power held by those counts.
If Asseylum had only recently joined the Super-Dimensional Channel, she would never have been able to make such a decision.
She would have remained what Kain called a naive princess, indecisive and hesitant, precisely the kind of princess he disliked.
However, after receiving Tessa's guidance, witnessing the changes that swept through one world after another, and observing everything Kain had endured, she realized that she could no longer afford such naivety.
No matter how reluctant she felt, she had to bury those emotions deep within herself.
Of course, she would also bear the sins created by this war.
Asseylum had never believed herself innocent. As a princess of Vers, she could not separate herself from the blood spilled in the empire's name.
The best way to atone was not to speak vaguely about peace. She had to take real action.
To act, she needed power.
To wield that power, she had to abandon her former naivety.
Before long, four days had passed since Asseylum declared war on the rebellious Orbital Knights.
The purge of the traitors had finally concluded.
They were now preparing to investigate a particular ruin.
"Current depth is 5,340 meters," Nina Klein, the Deucalion's helmswoman, reported with a hint of nervousness.
The Deucalion was currently in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, descending through the depths after transforming into its submarine configuration.
As a side note, the Deucalion had become the Martian princess's personal flagship.
That made Nina something of a semiofficial member of the princess's staff.
The Deucalion and everyone aboard it would serve as a bridge between Earth and Mars.
"Radar contact!" Inko Amifumi announced, sounding both nervous and excited.
"Have we arrived?"
"Does it really exist?"
Even the captain and executive officer found it difficult to remain calm.
"The legendary Atlantis?" Yuki murmured.
Legends of an ancient civilization called Atlantis had existed on Earth for countless generations.
Now, it appeared that those legends were true.
The information had come from Princess Asseylum. Only yesterday, her grandfather had revealed that the ultra-ancient Aldnoah civilization was, in fact, Atlantis.
In other words, the people of the ancient Aldnoah civilization had actually been Earthlings, humans from Earth's distant past.
For some unknown reason, they had migrated to Mars and established another civilization there.
It was said that the harsh Martian environment eventually became uninhabitable, causing their civilization to perish.
However, Earth's environment was perfectly capable of supporting life. Why had their civilization failed to survive on Earth?
That remained a mystery.
The answer might be hidden within these ruins.
After the Deucalion descended another fifteen hundred meters, its scanners finally detected what appeared to be an artificial structure.
"Could that be an Aldnoah activator?"
"It certainly looks like one."
"It's just far too large."
A spherical device mounted upon a pedestal was the classic design of an Aldnoah activator.
However, the object they had scanned was absurdly oversized.
The activator aboard the Deucalion was only about the size of a basketball.
The one on the ocean floor was fifty meters tall.
When the specialized diving craft approached, it attached itself to the surface of the enormous device.
The craft contained two separate airlock compartments. The chamber pressed against the device began draining the seawater and replacing it with pressurized air.
The Deucalion also used its antigravity equipment to project a protective field around the outside of the diving craft. The antigravity field pushed away the surrounding seawater, providing an additional layer of protection.
Technically, anyone from the warship could have descended with nothing more than an oxygen tank, but they decided to take every possible precaution.
"All clear. The pressure is stable."
6O raised one hand and made an okay gesture.
Even with all those safeguards, they did not open the entire hatch.
Instead, they exposed an opening only large enough for someone to extend an arm and touch the device.
The opening could be sealed immediately if anything went wrong, preventing seawater from flooding the compartment.
Kain stepped forward and pushed his hand through the opening, touching the enormous device outside.
The instant contact was made, a faint electrical current passed through his arm, making it tingle slightly.
Lines of light spread across the massive structure.
However, that was all it did.
"Commander? What happened? Can't you activate it?"
"I'm not sure."
"Then let Miss Asseylum try."
Before long, Asseylum arrived aboard the diving craft.
She reached through the opening and touched the device.
It immediately began glowing, and the light was considerably brighter than when Kain had touched it.
However...
"Miss Asseylum, you can't activate it either?"
Not only was she unable to activate the device, but sweat soon covered the princess's body. Her strength rapidly drained away, and Kain caught her before she could collapse.
"I'm sorry. Activating it requires an enormous amount of mental energy."
Asseylum looked apologetic, as though she considered herself useless for failing.
"Mental energy?"
Kain raised an eyebrow.
When he touched the device, he had not felt it drawing any mental energy from him.
Had the Warp power embedded within his soul shielded him from the extraction?
No, if that were the case, he should still have sensed something attempting to establish a mental connection with him.
Furthermore, extracting mental energy was different from drawing upon psychic power.
This was how Kain understood the relationship between the two.
On the scientific side, he could use the Lambda Driver system to convert mental activity into energy capable of affecting physical reality, much like telekinesis.
On the magical side, the mind acted more like a catalyst, interacting with psychic energy to produce supernatural phenomena.
Using nothing but a person's thoughts and willpower to directly manifest something resembling magic through scientific methods was extremely difficult. It required an enormous amount of computation, far beyond what an ordinary human brain could perform.
Additional equipment was generally needed to assist with the calculations.
Furthermore, to manifest any particular phenomenon, the user had to completely understand its underlying principles.
To create fire, for example, one needed to understand how flames were produced, what conditions combustion required, and the principles governing the process.
The magical side was far more convenient.
As long as someone could adapt to psychic energy and learn the correct spell formula, they could make their mind interact with psychic power like the components of a chemical reaction, releasing that power for their own use.
They did not need to understand exactly how fire was produced. They only needed to master the spell and supply it with the necessary power.
However, this second method had a significant drawback.
Direct contact between psychic energy and the mind could gradually corrode a person's psyche. Over time, their personality could become twisted, and their soul might even mutate.
Furthermore, psychic power distorted reality and destabilized the universe's fundamental forces.
The countless bizarre anomalies found in the Warhammer universe existed because psychic power had been used throughout the material universe on an enormous scale. That widespread use destabilized the fundamental forces, causing reality to suffer intermittent distortions.
A wooden stick could occasionally pierce power armor simply because the fundamental forces within that particular region had become warped at precisely the wrong moment.
Hm?
The princess had fallen asleep.
It appeared that too much of her mental energy had been drained, leaving her unable to resist the combined weight of exhaustion and drowsiness.
(End of Chapter)
[Get +30 Extra Chapters On — P@tr3on "Zaelum"]
[Every 300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter Drop]
[Thanks for Reading!]