Agent047
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968 - A Trillion Reasons
🕑 Added 2025-08-22 00:46:56 +0000 UTCShip after ship came and absorbed the mana Aron was expelling, as the situation didn’t seem to be subsiding at all.
As Nova scanned the collected mana that was delivered to one of the labs on Mars she was now commandeering. It took a few minutes before the first round of results started coming out.
{He is experiencing mana poisoning from the inside,} Nova said, realizing what the problem was after going through Aron’s mana, which had something that was not native to him or normal for his mana, something she was very knowledgeable about as she interacted with his mana on a daily basis.
She instantly started simulating potential causes, and after only a second, having repurposed a full quantum server supercluster for the simulation, she came up with at least a trillion reasons, but only a single one was at the top, having a more than fifty percent chance of being the cause: the mana contract they had with the Conclave that Aron had unfortunately personally signed following the first war with the Conclave.
Though it was the most plausible reason, she realized that in the current situation, although Aron was the aggressor through Dreznor, it wasn’t much of a problem as it was done through proxies, something they knew for sure was one way to circumvent the mana contract. Since mana itself was acting as an arbiter because its sentient form wasn’t really bothered to oversee these petty mortal agreements and use of mana, the same way Laifu was only attracted to reveal herself to Ayaka because something interesting happened, and she had made it clear that the chances of her appearing again were nearly none.
If that wasn’t the cause, then it was his counterattack against the Conclave. Although they were attacked first, the Conclave had yet to fire an actual shot in what would be considered imperial territory other than the Nexus, which in itself was a gray area. Since it was planned to be the connecting hub for the Conclave, it could be considered international, and the majority of the imperial citizens' casualties were a result of their citizens' actions, and only a small portion of them was a result of the Conclave forces acting directly. Still, all things considered, they were yet to attack a planet or even enter the star system of one, while the empire had already done all of those things, going so far as to even hold a thousand planets hostage.
It wasn’t a perfect theory, but it was the only explanation Nova could come up with that could actually overpower or circumvent the initial detection of Aro’s all-active and powerful system: mana poisoning administered by mana itself as a response to Aron's side meeting all of the criteria for breaking the contract from the point of view of the unintelligent, ever-technicality-following mana. And for someone with near-infinite mana, that is like throwing a match into an oil well.
The instant Nova came up with a hypothesis, she immediately moved on to potential solutions. Despite knowing that Aron’s system would most likely be doing the same, she didn’t want to be just watching in case the system didn’t have a solution to this, and she immediately took action.
………………..
“I really wanted to be able to custom-make my avatar,” Lee Joon-ho said to Ayaka as they continued their research while waiting for any new orders, should their services be needed for the war.
Ayaka, who was still working on searching for the Fountain of Life (FOL), didn’t even raise her head from her screen as she read the information on it and said, “You can ask the empire. I don’t think they will deny you that.”
“But we are still active imperial government personnel. They will agree, but I might only get it in my hands once I retire,” Lee Joon-ho said, a veteran who kept being promoted as a result of the services and benefits he had earned for the empire, which included the ten billion newly awakened citizens in Proxima.
“Then retire.”
“I’m the pride of my entire bloodline. Do you think they will let me do that when my position in the government is one of the few things my mom holds dear? She would most likely choose to die than hear me say that I resign……” but before he could finish his sentence, Nova, the empire-wide known Emperor’s secretary, materialized, making everyone in the room instantly know that she was the actual one, as the empire had banned any likeness replication of her, any imperial government AI, and all imperial officials under the promise of pretty heavy punishment for anyone who could even break the encryption protecting their likeness in the first place.
{Ayaka, you are needed for an emergency. Get ready to be collected in a minute,} Nova said, and without wasting a single second more, she disappeared.
“Shit,” Ayaka said as she digested the information, realizing that the only reason the imperial secretary would personally be calling for her in that way was that something had gone really wrong.
……………………
While Nova was working hard on finding potential solutions, Aron, who had expelled enough mana to increase the mana density on Mars by 0.1 percent, was finally regaining a portion of his clarity, but the excruciating pain was still there. His eyes, which were already having difficulty focusing on anything, managed to focus for a moment, and he laid his eyes on the system screen that was hovering in front of him, constantly updating as both readable and unreadable words appeared.
[The user is currently experiencing mana poisoning from a broken mana contract.]
[Looking for a solution………………….]
[Not enough SP to counter the enforcing entity directly]
When his eyes fell on the line about him not having enough SP to counter the situation, he immediately felt a pit in his heart. He had trillions of SP in his hand, yet it seemed to be a pittance now that the system was trying to directly counter the embodiment of mana.
But even that in itself acted as a consolation, as it meant the system was capable of fighting this situation; it was just a matter of finding a solution, one that the current Aron could handle and afford.
[Looking for a solution……………]
[#QVTWRPBU4531VVQWTIUBPVTQ93]
[...............................]
He didn’t just stop with reading, as the pain itself was making him try to think of ways to stop this by himself. If he had the option to deal with it without spending his SP, he wanted to try that first.
And finally, a light bulb lit in his mind as he pushed all of the focus he could to reach a knot in his heart (soul), the very location where the mana poisoning was originating, and triggered it, praying that it was enough of a solution or a start of one.
Comments
Sol_Invictus(Hail the Terran Empire)
TYFTC!!
Zabulus
TYFTC.
