The Martial Unity

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

A devastating catastrophic explosion erupted many thousands of kilometers away from the Shionel Confederation, flinging away multiple Martial Sages with the sheer concussive force of the blast wave.

“COME ON!!!” Sage Damian roared with a maniacal grin. “IS THAT THE BEST YOU CAN DO?! MY SON HITS HARDER THAN YOU, MAGGOTS!”

The nine Martial Sages of the enemy alliance grew grim as they glared at him with spite.

Yet, they didn’t seem so eager to go anywhere near him. Despite that, they were in far better condition than the Martial Sage and the two others who stood behind him. They had a vast numeric advantage that guaranteed them a victory.

The only problem was…

“What’s the matter with you pussies, huh?” A hint of madness lingered in the depths of his eyes. “FIGHT! I LOST AN ARM, YOU WORTHLESS SHITHEADS. THERE’S TWICE AS MANY OF YOU, AND YOU’RE STILL SCARED!”

The problem was that Sage Damian was an absolute demon who would be fully capable of killing several of them despite his severe wound.

DRIP DRIP DRIP…

Blood leaked from the arm that Sage Shia had severed with his greatsword before Damian tore his head off in battle.

Sage Roschem and Sage Sariawar were bruised and wounded, standing behind the Devil in support.

They would have been dead if not for Damian being an incredible deterrent with both his combat prowess and notorious insanity.

They could defeat him with the nine of them, there was no doubt.

But, whoever went first was undoubtedly going to die a painful death.

In fact, it was not unlikely that multiple Sages among them would die painful deaths before they could take him down.

None of them wanted that to happen.

That was why they had settled for a strategic group battle where each Sage chips in simultaneously to ensure that no one or two Sages solely bore the burden of fighting Sage Damian.

It took longer in order to prevent sacrifices from occurring.

But slowly and surely, they were on the winning side.

“I’ll lead the charge,” Sage Lela, interim leader of the Sage-level force who had assumed control after Sage Shia died, remarked. “I’ll engage him, make sure you engage the other two and pressure him so that he can’t direct all his power at me.”

BOOOOOOOOM!

She surged forward at extraordinary speeds that very few could ever hope to reach.

Unfortunately for her, Damian was one of them. Her eyes widened as she found his fist flying straight to her face.

“Die.” Damian’s grin widened.

Except, she didn’t.

WHOOSH!

The attack crashed into an empty image.

A feint.

BOOOOOOOOOM!!!

A powerful blow crashed into his head.

Yet, it didn’t seem to do anything other than rile his bloodlust.

“DIE!!!” he roared as he exhaled heavily, activating a powerful breathing technique that raised the temperature of his breath to such extraordinary degrees that the very shackles of the atom broke away, unleashing the full might of the boundless energy that was hidden within.

Nuclear Fission.

One of the most fundamental forms of destruction that Damian had ever harnessed.

BOOOOOOOOOM!!!

A titanic nuclear explosion of unparalleled might erupted inside his mouth, only to be channeled against his opponent with destructive ferocity.

Yet again, the attack crashed into an empty image.

A feint.

‘No.’ Damian realized. ‘That was not a feint.’

He was able to sense her Body, Heart, Mind, and Soul in the image.

Feints could recreate a person’s presence. They simply exploited one’s innate predictions to misdirect one’s attention.

What she was doing was something that merely resembled feints but was far superior.

BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!!!

He tore apart at concentrated beams of light, heat, and sound that crashed onto his body, distracting him away from his opponent while she surged in from another direction.

WHOOOSH!!

She surged in, threatening to land yet another lethal blow to his head with her supreme swiftness.

“BURN!” he roared, unleashing his nuclear breath on her.

WHOOSH!

Yet again, she merely disappeared when the attack struck her, appearing elsewhere.

“I am here, yet, I am everywhere,” her voice reached his ears. “You cannot hurt me. Not while you’re distracted and wounded.”

BOOOOOOM BOOOOOOM BOOOOOOM!!!

Before Damian could even respond, a massive blast of plasma and light struck him, threatening to burn him if he didn’t defend against them. He barely had time to react when Sage Lela surged at him again with, preparing her disappearing technique.

This time, however, Damian was prepared.

“If you’re everywhere,” his grin widened. “Then I’ll just destroy everywhere!”

Her eyes widened as an omnidirectional blast of pure light scorched all of heaven and earth as far as even they could see.

BOOOOOOOM!!!

“Rrrggh!!” she grimaced as her body struck even after it initially disappeared and reappeared.

“Hahaha!” Damian’s grin grew gleeful. “That technique of yours. It’s based on the high principle of Materia-Wæfer Harmony, isn’t it?”

Her expression grew grim at his words.

He had nailed it.

The principle of Materia-Wæfer Harmony referred to an extremely high principle of nature that was discovered after the Advent of the Sage Realm, discovered by none other than the first Martial Sage, the Martial Primordial.

A high principle that stated all things behaved like waves and particles and thus possessed the properties of both waves and particles.

Had Rui heard the description, he would have recognized the principle from his background in physics.

Harnessing this high principle in Martial Art was almost absolutely impossible. Yet, the few that succeeded ended up becoming high-grade Sages just from the sheer power that they gained from the miraculous, seemingly reality-defying high principle. In this case, the ability to upgrade feints from merely optical illusions caused by fooled predictions into the actual rewriting of the space-time position of her body by traveling as a wave and attacking as a particle.

To be here, yet everywhere.

Materia-Waefer Harmony was an extraordinarily powerful principle that gave birth to entire schools of thought on martial philosophy and questioned what it meant to be anywhere.

Yet, as proud of her Celestial Duality Step technique as she was, it was not enough to defeat the Devil himself.

Not by itself, at least.

“Your technique is meaningless if I just destroy everything everywhere,” Sage Damian grinned as he evoked a horrifying amount of materia prima from the root of his existence.

And that was when it happened.

RUMBLE!!!

All the Martial Sages froze as they detected the faint but unmistakable emergence of a new Martial Sage.

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