Their disbelief was not unfounded.

Their mighty empire covered much of Eastern Acherialis, leaving them to be an extraordinarily vast polity with more area than the surface of entire super-planets that developed a hundred thousand years on the Continent of Acherialis.

All their power was summated from resources spreading across a massive amount of territory to sustain their extraordinary energy requirements.

“How can a tiny nation, no more than an indistinguishable dot before our mighty nation, possibly muster enough forces to combat twenty ascendent tekvores led by Argenton himself?”

Normally, the feeds from the aircrafts would have long reached their headquarters, but the absence of satellite coverage over the Lost Continent deprived them of any communication until the aircrafts returned home.

They all gazed at the nineteen tekvores, anticipating an explanation for their loss and the resistance of sole technologically advanced civilization on the Panama Continent.

Argenton narrowed his eyes as he recalled those who fought to defend their target.

“…They had warriors.”

The air grew heavy.

The atmosphere darkened.

“Each individual warrior was weak,” Argenton continued with a serious tone. “Yet, they outnumbered us three to one and were able to hold us off with their greater numbers. More importantly…”

His expression crumpled with frustration. “Their leader. An aged female. She…”

His fists clenched. “…was my equal.”

The ascendent tekvores widened their eyes.

“What…?” Transentia narrowed her transparent eyes. “Are you telling me that an indigenous warrior, an aged female specimen of the native species, was your equal in battle?”

Argenton nodded. “Her mastery of light was extraordinary. Even though her knowledge base didn’t strike me as high, her sheer depth of manipulation of light exceeded my Quantum Electromagnetic Supersolid Holographic Systems in efficiency and control.”

A hint of grudging respect emerged on his face.

“She was a fine warrior. But what was especially unfathomable was the fact that despite being able to fight us head-on and even kill Fissionaut, they didn’t have even the slightest ounce of technology in their body, or around them, barring a handful of exceptions among the weaker ones, they also didn’t have any technological support systems of any other kind either.”

Argenton’s tone betrayed his confusion.

“It was almost as if they were individually powerful on their own with the merits of their own physiology.”

The other tekvores grew stunned at his words.

“That…” One tekvore with a body of nanotechnology muttered. “That’s impossible.”

“It was real,” Argenton activated his supersolid holographic systems, displaying images and videos of their enemies. “They were truly devoid of technology.”

The tekvores gazed with bewilderment as they gazed at the Martial Sages with bright blood-red streaks of power running across their entire body while their very existences seemed to shift into something else entirely.

Their Martial Embodiments were entirely foreign concepts to the tekvores.

“…Where are they getting such extraordinary power from?” Transentia asked with a baffled tone in her reverberent voice. “Perhaps they have extremely well disguised biotechnology?”

“No…” Argenton shook his head. “I have one of the best sensors and I didn’t detect any of the classic signatures of biotechnology of any kind. They didn’t have technology at all, though there were a few who were in mech-like technological systems. But the most powerful among them were entirely absent from such systems. I think…”

His silver cybernetic eyes sharpened.

“I think they weren’t cultivating technology on the Technological Path like we are. I think they were cultivating something else entirely. Something that is exclusive to their species alone. A new type of Path, unlike anything we have ever seen in our entire lives.”

This revelation was truly stunning.

To think that there was yet another type of Path outside of the Six Paths of Power that were known, prior to the recent Return of the Lost Continent.

“That’s not all,” Argenton continued as his cybernetic pupils dilated with anticipation and excitement. “I have discovered an abundant wellspring of exotic matter in the Lost Continent. More exotic matter than any of our interstellar missions have collected! More than any of the high-dimensional hadron colliders have yielded!”

His words were nothing short of a bombshell that shook the entire council.

“What…?!” A tekvore whose body was made up of meta-materials stood up from his virtual seat with a boggled expression. “You…! Is that real!”

Argenton nodded vigorously as he projected yet another virtual image of the results he had gotten, featuring the different kinds of particles that he had detected in the new continent.

It featured a model of particles.

On one side was the Standard Model of particle physics, featuring quarks, leptons, neutrinos, as well as the force-carrying particles of pions, bosons, photons, the Higgs Bosons, and even the graviton.

These were known and fully harnessed particles in their technological systems.

The other side featured all manner of new particles, many of which they had never seen before, and some of which they recognized from particles that they had gathered from the results of their extraordinary hadron colliders.

Others they had found in interstellar dark matter.

And yet, the absurd quantities of which they found them on the continent blew their wildest imaginations.

It was countless orders of magnitude above the precious little amounts that they had or could generate.

“This continent…” Argenton’s eyes widened with boundless greed, “…is a treasure trove of endless exotic matter.”

The tekvorian council remained silent as their gaze fell on reports of the preliminary surveys that Argenton had remotely conducted.

In that moment, they came to a unanimous decision.

“We must conquer this continent.”

It was very rare that these tekvores, who were so diverse and divergent from each other that they may as well have been different species altogether, would come to agree with absolute unanimity on such a decision.

Their decentralized power structure atomized their nation into mini-feudal polities that were barely bound within a single state.

And yet they were united by their predation, evolved as a survival mechanism in the Tumultuous Era caused by the epoch of Disappearance of the Lost Continent.

“But we cannot conquer them in the manner that we have tried,” Argenton realized. “We must draw closer. We must prepare for a sustained full-scale invasion.”

Transentia shook her head. “The closer we get, the easier it is for them to attack any attempt to form a stronghold to launch invasions from.”

A cruel smile emerged on Argenton’s silver face.

The air tingled with tension.

The atmosphere grew eletric.

“They will be too busy dealing with the others.”

–