The Martial Unity

2913  The Siege of Sages

The siege of Sages commenced with a fiery inception as Martial Sages across all of human civilization dove into the depths of the Central Highlands as they faced many a quasi-Transcendent Beast and Monster.

Each Sage-level powerhouse faced its own set of challenges one after another. Each Sage confronted quasi-Transcendent beasts and monsters.

The joint assault upon the Central Highlands of the Beast Domain became a fiery, drawn-out war between the most powerful of human civilization and that of beastkind. What they had hoped would have been a short, one-sided battle became a longer, protracted war between Sages and monsters. The environmental advantage could not be understated. Even though Martial Sages were the most powerful combat assets beneath the Transcendent Realm, the beasts and monsters could compensate for that with their astronomically greater raw power and their environmental advantage.

They could last longer, they tire Martial Sages easier, they could even kill them under these circumstances. It forced the Martial Sages to be more careful, more methodic, and more reserved.

It was a jarring experience for these Martial Sages to experience such a level of physical insecurity. They were accustomed to being so powerful that their safety was almost guaranteed all time in human civilization.

But in the Central Highlands, they were reduced to an ordinary human in an unknown, dangerous forest where they could easily die. The nonchalant sense of security that they has cultivated in the Human Domain was all but gone. The Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire had the most exemplary performance in the Central Highlands of the Beast Domain. Their progress was much higher than that of the average, demonstrating the sheer power that they had cultivated thanks to the treasures of the Kandrian Empire. The Inferno Serpents fought long and hard, and yet had ultimately failed to stop the Martial Sages from chopping their down their numbers. Their tenacity was extraordinarily high, allowing them to achieve a degree of resilience that they would not have been able to otherwise. They even lasted long enough for another generation of Inferno Serpents to emerge from their eggs and contribute to the battle, slowing their progress, but the battle soon became one-sided again.

Their biggest problem was the Devil, who simply could not be contained by any of them. His destruction was so overwhelmingly powerful that it prevented any of them from being able to prevent him from culling them.

Additionally, even though their environmental advantage allowed them to be extremely resillient in their battle, the fact of the matter was that they simply didnʼt have anyway to win. They hadnʼt even managed to inflict a single casualty on their opponents while their numbers fell with each passing week.

Rui was another force that they were unable to stop. His mastery of the Gu poison was light years behind that of the near Transcendent mastery of poison that the Demon of Asmodeous had. He barely managed to gain a little mastery over the Gu poison that he had assimilated from the Demon of Asmodeous beyond simply being swallowed like a poisonous frog.

His training with the Eye of Prophecy was also quite slow, as Matriarch Nephi had foreseen. Conscious thought was fundamentally central to his foresight, leaving him nothing short of disabled without it. His nascent precognitive power, however, has slowly began to stir and had begun to show to tiniest signs of growth under the sheer pressure of the fear of death.

The Martial Sages of the Britannian Empire fared quite well against the dragons in the Realm of Drago as Sage Knight Vermillion fought long and hard against the King of Dragons. Their battles never ended conclusively, recurring over and over. Yet with each battle, the King of Dragons left it a little weaker while she returned as strong, or even stronger. It was projected that she would eventually be able to slay the powerful King of Dragons, who had managed to go toe-to-toe with a peak Sage and come out with a draw.

The other Martial Sages of the Britannian Empire also made slow and steady progress against the dragons. They couldnʼt keep up an endless dominant win streak and needed to be more strategic and selective about their operations.

They didnʼt just wage wars against the dragons. They hunted them strategically. Over time, they managed to lower their numbers, making great significant progress towards eventually culling the entire quasi-Transcendent dragon population.

The Gen Temple also made great progress exterminating the basilisk of the Central Highlands as Bodhisattva Maitreyi led a powerful campaign against monsters capable of paralyzing and killing with their gaze and venom. Her indomitable power of light was unstoppable in the Beast Domain and she overcame every single hurdle before her with an overwhelming dominance.

The Nest of Terra, however, was the first Sage-level powerhouse to experience losses as one of their weakest Martial Sages perished in battle. Surprisingly, however, they gained a new peak Sage in combat.

Sage Kyria, according to reports, had discovered the Scriptures of Terra on the verge of death, elevating her from a high-grade Martial Sage to the regular peak of Martial Sages. The optimal line of action allowed her to overcome the resistance to her earthbending against the golems and the literal moon they were atop.

Together with the Nestforger, the two peak Sages managed to rally and slowly begin making extremely labored progress towards exterminating the quasi-Transcendent golems of the Central Highlands.

The Martial Sages of the Heaven Sect, on the other hand, had a much better display of power, wiping out much of the foam atmospheric lifeforms while Elder Diana had managed to gain the upperhand against the quasi-Transcendent angel that ruled over the entire kingdom.

Unlike their earthbending counter parts, they had not been unfortunate enough to experience a particularly devastating antithetical environment and opponents that were perfectly adaptively evolved against them. The Martial Sages of the Virodhabhasa Theocracy also had an successful siege, allowing them to slowly cull the jotuns in the realm of frost within the Central Highlands of the Beast Domain.

-