act34side

...Ægir never truly wound down the Abyssal Hunter project, following the strike on the Firstborn.

I've not been involved, but my countrymen have every right to interrogate me for my awareness of it alone.

For a short time after the Firstborn died, the project went through major upheavals. Anomalies plagued the experiments, and the Church grew only more fixated on the Hunters.

This suggests there are urgent, hidden truths about the Hunters yet to be found. Yet it also proves that the project can no longer run publicly.

To this day, it still operates in secret. But even now, Ægir has only three Hunters including Gladiia... No, four.

For how constantly we iterate on our technology, we have never succeeded in making another Abyssal Hunter.

No matter how stable the subjects' signs and psychological indicators are, they lose their reason the moment they awaken, immediately corrupting into Seaborn.

They don't even make it out of the chamber, let alone to the ocean proper.

'Abyssal Hunters are bound by blood.' We forgot...

What IS this blood binding them?

We don't know.

We still don't know why Gladiia's group have kept their reason intact.

Sounds like they're your key to solving this.

Yet you chose to send them to the front.

...Indeed. For Gladiia, Laurentina, Skadi, and all the participants, it was an irresponsible act.

But the front lies at Milliarium now.

We made it in time to cut off the Seaborn tide as it laps at dry land, but Milliarium is far from impregnable. If we fail to open the Waterway now, it is only a matter of time before the city is lost.

The Seaborn have organized to seize that Waterway by the throat. Storming them head-on will invite a large-scale counterattack.

At which point, I fear none will survive.

Is risking the Hunters a necessary cost here?

The Hunters may well give their lives. They may well transform. But right now, they are our greatest hope.

Gladiia has always been skeptical of the Waterway Program's feasibility. It was for that exact reason that she did not hesitate to serve as a link in its chain.

Your doubts and struggles may differ, but all roads lead to the same place in the end. That seems to be an unspoken yet shared understanding among the Ægir.

...One not without its sorrows.

Upon the bricks of the Sophontheatrum entrance, the architect Mártus left this maxim: 'There is no justice here, only the path ahead.'

In later generations, some criticized Mártus as being overly fixated on material value, squandering his energy on comparing worth against worth.

But ultimately, all that mattered to him was Ægir's path forward. Justice was merely a value cherished by the masses; and he preferred to apply his thought elsewhere.

Perhaps Gladiia and I have been acting on his philosophy without realizing it.

Dr. Kal'tsit, everything you have said rings all too true. I am bound in the end to carry 'Ægir's arrogance' with me, and nothing will change that.

I would like to amend that wording. 'Arrogance' as a word seems insufficient to describe Ægir.

You respect equally the humanity of your every citizen. To realize each individual's worth is the guiding star for your entire society's development.

Yet at the same time, you are capable of making the cruelest judgments, and calmly accepting them, for the sake of Ægir's survival as a whole.

'Calmly'... you say?

We Ægir are not cold-blooded. Whenever you would feel wrath, our own hearts are far from unstirring.

These are feelings I had wished to convey to Gladiia, once upon a time, but I realized I had no right to.

Every decision I made for her, I based in pure rationality. How natural, then, that I lost that right. How dare I ask for an emotional pardon.

The same is true, even now.

And so, 'calmly,' I accept my own judgment.

The designated individual has been contacted. Advisor Blandus did not pick up.

Dr. Kal'tsit, Doctor. I am deeply sorry I could not give you an appropriate answer.

But right now, I ask that you permit me to carry out my duty.