บท 31: Chapter 31 — Psychic Energy
The early rays of dawn shined on the still battlefield. The mutilated and bloody bodies cast long shadows on the ground. The beautiful sunrise gave an artistic feeling to the cold carnage below. From the sky, a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft escorted by flights of fighter jets slowly landed on the long runway cleared by the Space Marines over the previous few hours.
The cargo door opened as the aircraft rolled to a stop. The bloody Space Marines were saluted as they entered, two of them carrying their fallen battle-brother. The cargo door closed, and the plane took off. None of them cared about the aftermath, it wasn't up to them. Soon, the People's Army would be sent in and credited with the victory. They would clean up the survivors and subjugate the Kingdoms.
In high command, a soldier was reporting the origins of the battle, the outcome and the predicted future.
[Intelligence has shown that the coalition has collapsed, and the Kings have either been preparing for a last stand or fled the country. The People's Army is expected to face minimal resistance in subjugating the group of resisting countries]
The battle would never have happened if the Kings simply surrendered. But Ichigo had amplified the possessiveness and greed inside of them. Konrad felt some slight heartache for the wasted human resources. The soldiers could have done so much more, they could've been farmers, workers, or his own soldiers. Instead, they died a worthless dead for a Kingdom who would soon be forgotten by history. Their deaths were so worthless that the report ended there, and High Command never discussed it ever again.
Next, a soldier gave the Space Marine's battle report. The mission could have been accomplished by the regular army, but the Space Marines were sent as a combat test. In the report, the strengths and weaknesses of the Space Marines derived from the mission were identified.
[This battle highlights a serious flaw of all our forces, not just the Space Marines: We only have access to physical attacks. Whilst we currently no doubt dominate the physical attack battlefield, we have virtually no solution to spirit attacks]
[In the battle with Ichigo, in theory, we should have won easily as his body is hardly bulletproof. However, he managed to drag the battle for a prolonged time, consume much ammunition, and even kill one Space Marine]
The staff murmured. This problem had been known ever since the inception of the army, but it never had been solved. They had been putting off the problem, but the price of this was a dead Space Marine. The traditional solution would be to use magic against spirit bodies, but none of the source personnel could use magic and it would still be a while before the country could produce powerful native magic users. They needed an immediate solution now. It would be bad if other countries exploited this weakness.
[There are two ways to resolve this. One is to create a field nullifying magic and spirits, to bring them to the same playing field as us. While we can't defeat their spirit form, we can drag them down and force them to fight us in their physical body. And with our firepower, we are guaranteed to win. However, this method is not omnipotent and if the field is nullified, we will be back to square one]
[The second solution is while we can't use magic, we can achieve the same effect with physical attacks able to damage spirit forms. For example, the Holy Church is known to have enchantments and materials which can cause damage to spirit bodies. They come in many forms, from swords and arrows to holy water. It is what allows their mortal soldiers to kill spirits and ghosts. If we could get some of those materials, we could make bullets and armour with them. This will also let us keep our current platforms of attack. We have invited over an Archbishop of the Holy Church to begin negotiations]
Through research, Konrad had found that his source power actively rejected magic. While he could not release source power directly, he found he could concentrate it and output it directly to the world as "Psychic Energy". Psychic energy seemed to reject the world itself and would bend and distort space. It would literally twist and break the rules of the world and had a devastating effect on magic.
In its presence, any magic would spiral out of control and completely break. Magic consisted of carefully manipulating the rules of the world to serve one's interest. Psychic energy simply came through like a truck that absolutely destroyed those rules, rendering all magic impossible in its presence. Konrad's scientists theorised that if there was enough psychic energy, it would even tear apart the world itself and reveal what lay outside the world barrier.
Konrad had to refuse the excited scientists eager to reveal what lay outside the great barrier in the sky. He felt a faint resonance with what endless expanse lay outside, and he felt a faint feeling of mortal danger whenever he thought of releasing enough psychic energy to break the barrier. He would not even touch the barrier until he was confident enough. However, even if he wanted to, he was far away from having enough source power to do so. After all, converting source points to psychic energy was incredibly expensive.
Konrad also had a feeling when he released psychic energy that he was channelling it very inefficiently. The current way he used it was just releasing the raw psychic energy unfiltered, bursting out everywhere. It would affect everything near it, even injuring Konrad's body. Even with the superhuman enhancements of Gene-Seed, he could only release a tiny quantity of psychic energy before the uncontrollable energy injured himself.
Subconsciously, he felt that he had barely scratched the surface of psychic energy. It was a route of endless potential and power, even more so than any magic could ever dream to achieve.
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