Chapter 632 Not on Her Watch

Chapter 632 Not on Her Watch

Everyone at the conference table seemed to be focused on a different part of what they had seen in the reconstruction of events. Their concerns were, for the most part, what one would expect from their fields of expertise.

General Frances Robespierre, the commander of Task Force Proxima’s marine contingent, was stunned by the trees’ ability to create life, and on such a grand scale. Though there were only five new species—high elves, dark elves, fae, hill giants, and dwarves—multiple billions of each had been birthed and brought to full maturity in a much shorter time than any human could even give birth to full term infants. ‘Four months.... Four months!’ he thought. ‘It only took them four months to outnumber the entire human population, and that’s just their adults!’

The thought of facing a potential enemy with that kind of ability to raise troops in that quantity was frightening, to say the least.

Commander Bryce Harrison, the admiral’s personal awakener-cum-bodyguard was sitting in a daze with his eyes glazed over as everything he knew about mana and what it could do was being overwritten in his mind. He couldn’t fathom the thought of a human awakener ever becoming strong enough to terraform an entire planet. Not even a small one, let alone Proxima Centauri b, which was almost a fifth again the size of Earth!

Dr. Standing Bear was considering the ramifications of the trees’ demonstrated ability to replicate the biology of other species well enough to not only replicate them, but improve upon millions, if not billions, of years of evolution in such a short time frame. Not only that, they had done... something to separate Warrant Officer Lee’s consciousness and sustain it outside his physical body for an extended period of time. It was a feat that would potentially redefine a number of fields in quantum physics, specifically those that sought to discover whether or not humans actually had measurable, detectable souls.

As for Ayaka, she was caught between laughter and tears that the trees had just happened to catch the one person in the entire task force that would guide them in creating races specialized for something other than their strengths in combat. Perhaps the Terrible Teenager’s obsession with fantasy had come in handy after all!

She didn’t know whether to be thankful for that, or exasperated by the thought of all the sex objects the hormonal teenager would have dreamed up. The thought of a nine-meter-tall giant, naked and aroused, flitted past her mind and she couldn’t help but shudder at the size of his “weapon” in the mental image and what it would do to... someone else, but definitely not her. Nope, she would never be in a position to see a naked hill giant at all, aroused or not. RêAd lateSt chapters at novelhall.com Only

But it was certainly better, she knew, that the races created by the trees were bred along the lines of suggestions made by a horny teenager than if they had been influenced by a scientist—or even worse, a marine! If THAT had happened, the only solution she could think of would be to have the fleet back off to a safe distance and bombard the planet with c-fractional spinal-mounted kinetic penetrators until it shattered, then use manipulator fields to send the debris directly into Proxima Centauri itself.

If any of the marine’s twisted life forms were to spread around the galaxy, it would be an unrecoverable blow to humanity’s prestige and ruin their chance of standing on the galactic stage alongside any other civilized life they met.

“Ten billion...” Fleet Admiral Bianchi sighed. The number... changed things.

What had begun as a mission of exploration with the possibility of first contact diplomacy had just become more complicated by several levels, and his was the head that wore the crown in the Proxima Centauri system. It would take at least a year to send a dispatch back to Earth and receive updated orders in return, so as the de facto plenipotentiary of the Terran Empire, his decisions over the next few hours could potentially steer the entire empire’s future direction.

“I don’t know, General,” Joon-ho replied. “They haven’t been born yet. I think it’s safe to say that they’ll be awakeners from birth, though.”

The general visibly paled at the thought. Humankind only had a few hundred million awakeners of their own, and the thought of a species with ten billion of them terrified him. He had seen the devastation a single awakener was capable of producing and the thought of that many of them would fuel his nightmares until the day he died, most likely.

“They’ll soon have ten billion awakeners then, all birthed and raised to maturity in a matter of months. Did they give you any indication of whether or not that would be a repeatable achievement?” he continued.

“It won’t be, Sir. They used all of the mana that they’d accumulated on and in the planet to create the variety of life they have now, or will have once they’re finally grown. There’s also the terraforming they did with their personal mana reserves, Sir. Unlike us, the trees are capable of storing mana within them and drawing from their own reserves, like other plants that have been mutating back home. But they emptied their tanks, Sir, and won’t be able to repeat the growth process anytime soon.”

The general nodded and fell silent, lost in thought, as he signaled that his questions were done.

The presentation and debriefing continued for a few hours before Fleet Admiral Bianchi called a halt to it for the day.

“Go back and meet with your teams. Poll them and bring a list of questions for tomorrow....”

Joon-ho’s eyes rolled back in his head and his vision turned black. He fell to the floor and began convulsing and frothing at the mouth; everyone in the conference room began panicking, especially Ayaka.

She refused—absolutely and categorically REFUSED—to let the annoyance she had recently realized was like a little brother to her die.

Not on her watch.

Not again.

Not... EVER... AGAIN!