Seven hours later.

"Now there's something you don't see every day," John mused. He was in CENTCOM, watching his emperor and empress float in the emptiness of space, a brilliant halo surrounding them on the viewscreen as the Henry's Eyes monitors included in the sensor rings detected all the mana flowing toward Aron.

It still lacked a little in terms of fidelity and resolution, so it showed up on the screen as an enormous blob. If the monitoring system had had that level of fidelity and resolution, however, it would have shown something entirely different. Instead of a formless blob that shifted and flowed like an amoeba, reaching tentacles out here and there, it would have shown the intricately detailed runic construct growing out of Aron's figure like spider silk from a trapdoor spider's spinnerets.

But even without that level of detail, the staff of the CENTCOM monitoring center could still enjoy the view. And enjoy they did; especially as they knew that the emperor was putting the final touches on the defensive net that surrounded "their" planet in an impenetrable cocoon of protection. That final layer was what would guarantee their lives in the inevitable future invasions of the Sol system.Yes, they all believed that invasions would be inevitable. Perhaps not in the short term, or in the near future, or even in the far future. But they couldn't count on every species that humanity was about to interact with being, if not friendly, at least not outright hostile. Especially not now that the species had left its cradle to investigate its surroundings for the very first time.

Rina, too, was enjoying the view of her husband at work. Except that, unlike CENTCOM, she not only had a front row seat, but she also had the ability to see the mana he was spinning out of him as each tiny rune linked with the next, and the next, and so on, until they grouped together to form pieces of a runic construct. Then, those larger pieces mirrored the actions of the parts they were comprised of and joined with other pieces of runic code almost like a puzzle being put together by an omniscient being. The process sent a shiver down her spine, as well as... other places.

"Yeah, it's been awhile, hasn't it," another of the founding members of ARES reminisced. "Five years or more, I think?" He looked around at the other founding members, all of them generals and admirals now, and they also fell silent as they remembered the hopeless situations that Aron had lifted them out of.

To them, news of the emperor being an awakener wasn't actually a surprise at all. They had all been healed by him in the beginning. Whether their physical forms, their emotional traumas, or even something as simple as age-related illnesses, they had all been healed by Aron's hand. Though they were still under a runic contract that prohibited them from discussing his abilities, they still wouldn't mention them; after all, Aron had awakened to mana years before the Three Percenters underwent their far more... traumatic awakenings.

Therefore, Aron’s ability was something of a mystery to everyone else in the monitoring center, but not to those few individuals. Aron had never disappeared, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, for long enough to undergo the awakening process. At least not when the rest of humanity was beginning its awakening, anyway. Just the opposite, in factlightsnovel

lightsΝοvεl ƈοm —he had been extremely visible, running to and fro to deal with the aftermath of the progenitor cult’s “greeting” to the rest of the world.

Therefore, he had to either have awakened early, or later. Some people felt that he had awakened after the Three Percenters, but detractors of that school of thought pointed out that he was well outside the age range when the event began, much less to have awakened even later. But those who thought he had awakened earlier were stymied as well... after all, nobody had ever had even a hint of the existence of the “strange particle” before Aron had announced it to the world.

That said, the current conversation between the founding members seemed to imply that the emperor had indeed awakened long before any of the Three Percenters had.

And that terrified the others in the monitoring center. They were well aware of the risks a person would run when they knew too much. Thus, a sensor technician softly cleared his throat, reminding the founders that they had an audience and perhaps shouldn’t be speaking on the subject so openly.

Not that any of those in the room would exactly go blabbing the secret to any who would listen. Even if they hadn’t been loyal to the empire at large, and the emperor specifically, it was still a question as to who would believe them if they did talk. “Everybody” knew that the Three Percenters had all received their blessings within a specific period of time, after all, and furthermore, nobody had since. And if anyone had been blessed before the awakening event, surely they would have been noticed by at least one person!

But none of that was the case, so to the public at large, Aron was just a normal, albeit very intelligent, man who had just the right power in just the right place at just the right time to accomplish everything he’d achieved so far.

And since that most prolific expert—“Everyone”—knew that Aron was just a normal person, some among the blessed who deemed themselves superior to the unblessed masses also saw themselves as superior to the emperor himself. They were vocal advocates for the empire to be led by a blessed individual, all the while completely unaware that it actually was.

But since they only left their thoughts online, or during peaceful rallies on other issues, they were mostly left alone by the imperial government. Or so they thought, anyway; the akashic librarians assigned to each of them had already increased their monitoring level in case there were to come a day when the empire had to make a move on them.

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