The Seventh Tier, Spiritual Realm, and Gate World (Part 2)

As for the cannons aboard warships in Gate World, they had been developed by factions below the fourth tier. Those factions did not have the financial resources to support armies of mecha; the maintenance costs alone were enough to overwhelm them. Forced by circumstances, they developed cannon technology as a substitute for mecha forces.

Yet a substitute was only a barely adequate substitute. The more powerful a nation or faction in Gate World was, the less likely it was to equip cannons. After all, expecting solid shells to hit mecha capable of teleportation was little more than wishful thinking.

Thus, to the nations and factions of Gate World, cannons were still merely "toys" that offered scant comfort when they lacked armies of mecha.

The technologically backward nations and factions in Gate World, aside from the seventh tier, posed no threat to the species. These nations and factions had almost no capacity for technological research and development; they devoted all their energy to training mecha pilots.

But such increases in strength were nothing more than increases in numbers. There might have been a few exceptionally gifted geniuses who could use the Spiritual Realm with greater finesse, but that was all. There was no place for individual heroism in real war.

The only genuinely threatening force was probably the seventh tier. But if the seventh tier merely confronted Amoeba head-on, the Collectors would not find it troublesome. What troubled them was the possibility that the seventh tier might regain the right to use the Spiritual Realm. Although they had been stripped of that right and expelled from the Spiritual Realm because of their final wish, the possibility the Collectors feared was not impossible.

A simple change of perspective made it clear. Even if the circumstances then had made every successor reject praying