The Martial Unity

The battle between the Martial Sages and the Inferno Serpents raged on violently for quite some time as various factors affected the flow of the battle and its dynamics.

The Martial Sages were individually stronger, on average, as combat assets. Despite possessing the power to lay waste to much of the continent with raw destructive power, they didn’t have the seamless and perfect control over their power the way the Martial Sages had. Despite possessing more than an order of magnitude more power than the sages, they could not do much more than waste it by spreading it across the entire battlefield.

The Martial Sages, with their tiny bodies, only ever experienced the minutest of the total heat of the serpents. On the other hand, the serpents experienced the full concentrated and strategically optimal deployment of the Sages.

And then, of course, there was Damian.

“RAAARGGHHHRGGR!!!” he roared with gruesome bloodlust as he unleashed blows that quite literally melted his opponent’s body, unleashing extraordinarily high principles to trigger the phenomena of matter annihilation, one of the purest forms of destruction.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!!

“SSS!!!”

The snakes writhed with agony and even fear as they watched their flesh erupt into a blinding and horrifyingly destructive wave of energy and light. He was unstoppable.

Even though even his skin had begun to fray and burn under the weight of the heat that the serpents doused him with, he was domineering in the battle nonetheless. But unfortunately, even he had limitations.

“Retreat, Damian,” the Flashing Flier remarked. “You have been pushing yourself too hard. You need to recuperate from the consequences of abusing your Realms of power.”

The Sages had already implemented a shift system that allowed them to make sure that there was a constant supply of Martial Sages to the very frontlines at all times while exhausted Martial Sages could recuperate.

Damian reluctantly retreated, as did several others, while a surge of new Martial Artists such as the Sage Roschem, Sage Ourlen, the Drunk Dame, and even the Sloth Sage took the place of several Martial Sages who were exhausted.

One by one, all of them fell back and were replaced by their peers.

All except one.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!!

Rui evaded blast after blasts as he he snuffed the flames of the inferno serpents is that Niflheim, allowing him to snuff the worst of their flames as he dulled their metabolism. He stayed even as other Martial Sages retreated, recuperated, and returned. “How the hell is he lasting that long?” Kane marveled as he circled around the serpent that Rui was fighting, worming his way through the holes in the creature’s infernos, leaping towards a single objective.

SPLAT!!!

With a smooth maneuver, he dug his blade into the eye of the serpent, unleashing an extraordinary surge of electrical current.

BZZZT!!!

The creature shivered, writhing in agony as Kane gritted his teeth, trying to inflict as much damage as he could. The serpent coiled about, directing all its scales towards Kane, intending to incinerate him while his daggers were buried in the serpent’s eyes.

And yet, Rui intervened before it could, redirecting the Niflheim domain around the serpent, concentrating the domain across the skin of the creature to snuff the scales from generating their infernos while dulling their metabolism even more.

While Rui suppressed the counter-offense of the serpent, Kane went all out, deploying immense materia prima into the principles of thermoelectric conduction to generate extraordinary currents to paralyze and fry the serpent’s nervous system and brains alive.

RUMBLE!!!

The continent of ash shook as the creature writhed and shivered as its muscles spasmed before eventually falling prey to the tremendous current that Kane charged through its body.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!!

The dead creature collapsed entirely, sending massive tremors across the continent of ash, quaking the very fabric of heaven and earth.

“SSS!!!”

The other serpents hissed at the sight of one of yet another one of their dead kin, drawing their attention away from the battlefield.

“You should pay more attention,” Sage Zentra’s tone was chillingly calm. “You will be joining your kin very soon, after all.”

Before the serpent could even react or notice, it froze as green blood began pouring from its eyes profusely. It writhed as Master Zentra’s bioweapons had infiltrated the serpent’s systems, destabilizing some of its vast yet delicate organic systems and causing the serpent to fall into a long, protracted death spiral.

Across the battlefield, Matriarch Nephi surged from one end to another, launching well-timed strategic attacks with her foresight and future vision to make extremely effective attacks that struck the vitals of the serpents inside their body.

She shined in large-scale battles with a lot of chaos because there was always more opportunity for her future vision to shine due to a greater avenue of possibilities, allowing her to always be affecting the battle positively in favor of the Martial Sages of human civilization.

The Sloth Sage acted as merely a buffer for shift changes because of how long he could last on the battlefield, engaging with the serpents and drawing their attention as he weaved about the battlefield, evading attacks and launching token attacks.

One of the important goals for all the Martial Sages was to ensure that the serpents didn’t emerge from their ash continent and run into the aircraft that served as their haven in the Beast Domain when they needed to recover. This constraint meant that they couldn’t allow the battle to get too chaotic within its positioning, leading to all the Martial Sages positioning themselves in between inferno serpents and the direction in which the aircraft was hidden.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!!

The Mountain of Fortitude, the Eastern Shield, and the Tempestuous Fortress took on the primary responsibility of not just tanking much of the infernos of the serpents but also ensuring that the serpents didn’t somehow slither past them to exit the ash continent, either to escape what was shaping up to be a slowly losing battle or because they understood that targeting the shelter of the Sages was a way to deprive them of victory.

The Martial Sages had been sent to prevent the quasi-Transcendents from emerging from the Beast Domain, after all.