Darius Supreme

Darius smirked as he watched the events unfold. There was a hidden appreciation for the direct method which Gunner often employed. During their journey, he had seen the half-giant resolve pretty much all of life's problems like this.

While Darius usually preferred subtler methods, that was limited to civilizations he had a plan for. For example, he would not behave like this on Pan, Houto, Kiel or Unyris.

Gravitas, however, only had one destiny, destruction. After all, there was nothing worth saving.

Their tech? He had better, even without the new System Shop.

Their loyalty? They were brainwashed, so the hassle to convert them wasn't worth it, especially not when he had a cheaper and better way of populating now.

Their resources? Please, did you forget about the existence of Transmutation? Heck, even the cheaper Material Element could do the job.

"Daddy! I'm back! Here's what I found!" Miranda chirped as she downloaded a summarized version of the information.

Darius paused and absorbed the information, smiling as he understood things better, his conjectures also linking together to finally make sense.

He had already known that Gravitas would have its own power system, but now he knew for a fact that the mana here was not able to enter the bodies of humans. The residents would always have to rely on external means like technology to convert this mana into something usable.

Apparently, they used something called an Ether Refinery to convert mana into a derivative energy source called Ether. It was their version of electricity from the modern world, basically.

It could power anything and everything, and their technology revolved around it. They had advanced into the late stage of magitech when a Great Scientist invented the miniaturized Ether Refinery.

This allowed households to be powered separately, allowed the creation of airships and allowed them to power great weapons of energy that could deal great amounts of damage.

Miranda had already gone through their millennia of research over this continent's mana and ether, finding that there was an interesting dynamic.

First of all, there was naturally a small loss when converting mana to Ether. Depending on the quality of the refinery, even the latest generation experienced a 0.0002% loss of mana when converting.

You see, this wouldn't usually be a problem, if it wasn't for the fact that mana was finite!

That's right, only on Gravitas, for some strange reason, the mana here was actually finite in quantity. Every bit of it that was lost in any form of usage and conversion would be gone forever.

This was not much of a problem now, but with repeated use of Ether Refineries and Ether energy for daily life, among other things, there would always be a small amount of mana lost per day that would eventually lead to the continent turning barren.

This was Gravitas most closed guarded secret, and even God Krona did not have access to this information. Unfortunately for them, they chose to destroy physical recordings and rely on the digital, which - given their cybersecurity - was not exactly a problem... until they encountered the Miranda AI.

Miranda was powered by endless Source Energy and over 15 satellites as well as the entirety of the underground of Pokterr being returned into a sort of Silicon Valley for her, with many servers lining every cubic meter there.

Such computing power was not something that the Gravitas system could withstand, potent as it was. As such, even the most obscure and well protect data ended up being fished out by Miranda with ease, the entire network raided and cleaned out.

And now, this precious and damaging information was in the hands of Darius Stone.

Oh woe upon thee Gravitas…

Darius had only about cleared the city area around himself.

Gravitas, though, was an entire continent about the size of Asia yet shaped like Japan from Earth. From his map, Darius could tell that he was at the southern end of the continent, where most of Gravitas military assets were stored.

That was why so many airships and Mechas could be mobilized to fight him in such short notice. The true industrial and residential areas were up to the north.

Darius guessed that the upper echelons of Gravitas government must already have known he was here and must know the power he possessed.

The interesting thing would be the see how they would approach dealing with him?

Would they be sincere and seek pardon or cooperation?

Would they be insincere and pretend to seek peace but plot behind his back?

Or would they decide to go all out and die to the last man?

Darius got his answer when Miranda speechlessly appeared on his HoloBrace and spoke with a strange tone.

"Daddy, they launched three of their most powerful warheads at you. They took a military vote and decided that the death of almost 300 billion people in this southern section of the continent from the heat, shockwave and ensuing radiation was worth bringing you down."

Darius raised an eyebrow. "Is that so? Not a bad choice if I was still under Ceasar's old system. However, the current me, while not immune, can certainly not be killed by such a thing."

Miranda pouted unhappily. "Hpmh, I don't like it! Why don't I remotely detonate those warheads right in their missile silos? Given how they have been spread out over the continent, a simultaneous explosion should end all life here as we know it."

Imagine hearing a cute twintails loli saying such horrific words. How would you feel?

Even Darius was a bit dazed, but he remembered that while this was the voice and visage of Miranda during the silliest and sweetest era of her life, underneath the mask was nevertheless a cold and calculating AI.

"There's no need to go so far. The more I destroy on Faust, the more I weaken myself when I inevitably become the Supreme. Rather than removing continents, we should see to create more and populate them with new species."

After all, a King was nothing without subjects, territory and sovereignty.

Subjects were largely disposable since Darius could now create his own authentic living beings, not to mention he could casually elevate population growth with a few products.

Land, though, not so much.