The Martial Unity

Chapter 3276: Potential Applications

Rui’s manipulation of nature continued growing stronger as he continued harmonizing with nature, understanding the causality of how to get it to move how he desired it to. Understanding what he needed to communicate to nature in order to ensure that it responded the way he wanted it to was no different from understanding the temperament and personality of nature.

He almost wondered if the Hymn of Mind and Soul involved a form of Enlightenment of Self, not for one’s self but for nature that helped one take the final step towards the Singularity of Nature and becoming a Mother of Nature.

He wasn’t sure.

There were a lot of secrets to the Nature Path that they had yet to reveal, perhaps because it was too sensitive.

Regardless, he didn’t intend to go down that path, so it wasn’t that big of a deal that they weren’t willing to divulge the full truth of the later parts of the Nature Path.

Now that he was making steady progress with nature manipulation he had but one concern.

”How the hell am I going to apply this to enhance my adaptive evolution?”

That was the whole point, after all.

To elevate his adaptive evolution to a higher level with the six paths.

However, knowing how to do that, in and of itself, was a great challenge. Rui had thought about several models and potential applications even while he was learning nature manipulation, but had yet to finalize anything.

”I think I can rule out the Inner Realm of the Nature Path,” Rui remarked to himself. ”It has the least benefits and the highest difficulty.”

Barring the final, strongest dark elf he had fought, the Genoran Guardian, he didn’t really think too highly of the Inner Realm of the dark elves. It involved enhancing one’s body with botanical biotechnology, making them physically more able.

Even though he relied on his physicality, he wasn’t too impressed by the gains it offered. On top of that, it needed to be able to survive the Gu within him, which was almost absolutely impossible.

On top of that, he had reserved all of his body enhancement and evolution for Anthea’s cells, something he had yet to crack the secret to. Turning himself into a human-evosapien hybrid was one of his largest goals.

Rui was more interested in potentially other applications of nature manipulation.

”Using it as an energy source would be really cool.”

The dark elves used it as an energy source, transferring vital energy to them to keep them going in combat. It was also efficient for nature to convert natural energy, the energy of the environment, into life energy that could be stored and used within one’s body. It directly or indirectly sustained the entirety of the Tree of Life.

Of course, Rui didn’t strictly have such a need for nature, given that he, too, could turn the energy of the Sun directly into his stamina thanks to the Blood of Solaris. Still, it didn’t hurt to have an extra energy source to give him an even greater stamina advantage.

However, what really drew Rui’s excitement was learning to tap into the root network for flora and using it in combat. He knew that the dark elves could harness it and turn it into an external cerebral implant that increased their cognition and processing speed.

That excited him more than anything else.

Manipulating forests to attack his opponent or protect him, in turn, sounded nice, but he didn’t really need those as much. His defense and offense were powerful enough, that wasn’t the issue by any means. He was looking for nature manipulation to introduce a new element of auxiliary support rather than blindly throw it in without giving it much thought.

”Although, with the addition of nature manipulation, the possibilities are endless when it comes to the Forge of Creation,” Rui realized. ”Perhaps that is the benefit in and of itself.”

Rather than focusing on getting one big thing from nature, he could focus on getting many small things from nature each time he used the Forge of Creation to create a new technique.

He tried imagining adding a ’nature component’ to every new technique he created, techniques that leveraged the power of nature in some way that enhanced their capabilities.

”That could systematically evolve my adaptive evolution,” Rui realized. ”Although I am also attracted to the idea of focusing on using nature in one particular way, that is a very rigid way of thinking that is not conducive to adaptive evolution.”

He grew excited at the potential that lay within nature manipulation, but he was also cognizant of its shortcomings.

”It depends on the quality of the nature in the environment, and if I’m in a place with very little nature, then I won’t be able to get anything useful out of it. Whatever I create will be the strongest on this continent, but it will be weaker everywhere else.”

This was the price of the Nature Path, of course. It was why the elves were more concentrated in one place compared to any of the other five pureblood races. It was simply in their favor to stick together in Genora.

Although there were elves that existed in other polities and other continents, they did so knowing that they were weaker there, but still found it worth it for whatever reason.

Regardless, even as he dreamed about what he would be capable of when he mastered nature manipulation, he still continued grinding away, using the Eye of Prophecy to skip through a lot of trial and error as he absorbed the training in his bones.

Months passed as he gained a deeper and deeper mastery of nature, trying to overcome the impediments that his deathly vibes created when trying to bond deeper with nature. That, along with the guidance from Mother Alicia, allowed him to reach much greater degrees of manipulation of nature than he would have been able to otherwise.

His proficiency had already crossed that of the Gate of Harmony, now entering the long stretch of the Hymn of Mind and Soul, where he hit a hard limit.