The Martial Unity

It was surprising to find a village this rural out and about that hadn’t been crushed by the Beast Incursion. Billions had died since the Beast Incursion had commenced, and most of them were from smaller and less secure settlements and villages just like the one that they had happened across.

It appeared that as a stroke of fortune, they were simply able to survive the Beast Incursion for more than two years.

And much to his dismay, even in some godforsaken village an enormous distance away from the Kandrian Empire, they still somehow recognized his name and began bowing down in worship.

“We are honored, Dawnbringer!”

“He has come!”

“We are saved!”

Rui heaved a sigh, gently lifting the bowing village chief up. “Please, do not feel the need to engage in such prostration.”

He directed a sweeping gaze across all the villagers. “Rest assured that we are here to help.”

Many of them broke down sobbing at his words, shedding tears of painful relief.

It took only one look at all of them for Rui to understand just how poorly they had fared against the Beast Incursion despite their profound fortune of not being utterly decimated by the Beast Incursion.

Their villagers were malnourished and wounded. They were all sleep-deprived.

On top of that, he could sense that the strongest Martial Artists in the village were Martial Apprentices.

“Hmmm…” Rui fell into thought. “Well, let me start by relieving your nation of outside pressure quickly.”

WHOOSH In the blink of an eye, he disappeared, appearing at the other side of the village where the Beast Incursion washed away at their defenses, which were led by Martial Apprentices and bolstered with sword-wielding normal men.

He protected all the villagers from his Embodiment before unleashing it on all beasts and monsters a good distance away.

In the blink of an eye, the hapless creatures died, rendered braindead under the flood of water that his very being had turned into. While more powerful beasts and monsters possessed a brain that was usually large enough to survive his Martial Embodiment, these paltry beasts and monsters were certainly not enough. “Wha—?!”

“…They all just died!”

“Look, there’s someone in the sky!”

The exhausted defenders of the village gaped at the descending Dawnbringer.

“I’ve eliminated all the beasts and monsters for a great distance,” Rui patiently explained to them. “Get inside for the breakthroughs; I would rather complete them all at once than do it twice.”

And thus, it wasn’t too long before Rui had gathered all the able warriors of the village, and began conducting breakthroughs to the Apprentice Realm to bolster their numbers.

Much to his surprise, however, it yielded very few Apprentices.

“Ah… right, because the breakthrough rate gets lower the weaker the nation,” Rui realized. “Hm, then that means that there’s a limited avenue for making a permanent impact on this village and helping it survive.”

His breakthrough to the Apprentice Realm only worked on those with a Martial Foundation. That was why he didn’t just apply to an entire civilian population and spawn millions of brand-new Apprentices.

“Tsk, I don’t have the time to get them to that stage either.”

He wasn’t willing to spend too much time to get these people to the stage that they needed to be. On top of that, they didn’t have any Squires that he could break through to the Senior Realm.

And it wasn’t like he could break Martial Apprentices to the Squire Realm.

He froze as his eyes lit up.

“What if I could?”

In the past, he had always dismissed this possibility because the breakthrough to the Squire Realm was a controlled medical and technological process for genetically evolving the body through Darwinian evolution applied to the cells of the body.

There was no way that he could possibly replicate that process as a Squire or a Senior.

“But I’m a Master now…” he murmured. “One of the strongest Masters.”

Not only did he have a tremendous amount of power, he also had a tremendous amount of control over that power.

What was impossible for Seniors for they could replicate such a finely controlled process was well within the capabilities of a Master, especially one like Rui.

The reason that Masters didn’t take over this process was because it required an academic understanding of science rather than just an instinctive one. There were very few Masters with the needed qualifications.

Rui was among them. “It would have to be a domain technique, and I would need to… need to do a lot, but it should be possible for me to at least create a partial and lesser Martial Body with my Martial Art.”

His eyes lit up with a hint of interest.

“Wait, what if I create a technique that can facilitate the continued acceleration of physical evolution through a domain that engages in Darwinian evolution for my cells without the need for radiation to my brain?!” Rui grew even more excited at the potential of such a technique. “Damn, I wish I could speak to Sir Armstrong right now…!”

This technique was right up his alley.

In fact, it was entirely possible that he had already created such a technique. After all, more than thirty years had already passed in the manifold back in the Kandrian Empire. That was plenty of time for Sir Armstrong to start and complete many projects from start to scratch.

Unfortunately, he would have to work with himself and his own insights at the moment. “It won’t take more than a day.”

With the Forge of Creation, his scientific knowledge, his mind, and broad proficiency in many fields didn’t need more than a day to create a technique that could help a Martial Apprentice through to the Squire Realm and gain something resembling a Martial Body. Thus, he set out on a mini-project that he intended to complete within a single day to hopefully give the village a Martial Squire to ensure that it would be able to survive longer.

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