The Martial Unity

Rui’s Hydro Lens technique was designed to deal with gamma radiation, indeed, but a storm of gamma radiation was a whole other matter entirely. He hadn’t expected that each of the Dragon Emperor’s scales was its own laser. None of the intelligence that he had read had indicated that. However, the intelligence that he had read had also specified that the Dragon Emperor engaged in slow, but sustained evolution over long periods of time through gamma radiation.

It was possible that he had developed this mutation in longer sustained periods of time, which would explain why Rui hadn’t known about it before. This complicated his task considerably.

Refracting a single wave was one thing.

But refracting tens of thousands of lasers that converged on him was a whole other matter. The techniques that he had were wholly insufficient for dealing with such a menace of an attack. Rui briefly considered relying on pure evasion to evade each and every single laser, but that wasn’t feasible in his current environment.

Even with foresight, avoiding gamma radiation while his own movements were deeply hindered by the water was too much. He would need to rely on another mechanism to refract the incoming gamma radiation attacks.

Spontaneously, he created a new technique with the Forge of Creation.

“Fractal Hydro Lens.”

He changed his little hydrolens domain into one made up of several hexagonal frames, resembling the eye of an insect. Each hexagonal frame was dedicated to its own gamma radiation laser that the Dragon Emperor unleashed upon him.

He dedicated all his attention to dealing with the lasers of the Dragon Emperor, making sure to refract each one of them with great care and accuracy. He couldn’t afford to allow even a single one of them to hit him, lest he end up in the same condition that Amare was in.

VMMMM!!!!!

A maelstrom of gamma radiation lasers converged upon Rui, all but eager to consume the organic matter his body was comprised of, only to be refracted away by the domain that Rui had erected around him. The sheer energy that the Dragon Emperor unleashed ravaged the environment around them, causing the ocean floor to crack and rupture violently.

RUMBLE!!!!!

The world shook as the oceans quaked perilously, causing tsunamis to erupt once more from its very epicenter, spreading to the entire world, this time delivering irradiated waters that slowly began poisoning all aquatic environments across the entire world.

The heat the gamma radiation generated began boiling the oceans perilously, causing them to begin to bubble at their surface.

It was an environmental catastrophe in the making.

And yet, Rui didn’t have the leeway to focus on the environmental effect of their battle. It took him everything just to defend himself against the storm of lasers that the Dragon Emperor unleashed upon him.

With tens of thousands of lethal doses of gamma radiation washing over him, it took him every ounce of his attention to deal with all of them. This was especially the case when his movement speed was greatly hampered at the depths of the ocean.

This meant that he had to move much, much earlier than he normally would. This meant that the burden of foresight was much larger than it normally would be for him, especially since he was dealing with gamma radiation.

He needed to foresee each and every single attack that the Dragon Emperor unleashed well ahead of time and then perfectly counter all of them while ensuring that no more than negligible amounts of gamma radiation reached him.

All while running away from the Dragon Emperor, maintaining his distance while the Dragon Emperor charged at him, trying to close the distance so that he could reduce the amount of time Rui had to deal with the incoming attacks.

And yet, he sustained.

Tens of thousands of attacks converged upon him, threatening to inflict critical damage to his health, and he successfully refracted each and every single one of them perfectly.

The motions of his body were smooth and graceful. His arms swayed about in the water in elegant motions as they manipulated the water currents that his Water Breathing generated to create the domain that protected him from death.

It was a branch of water manipulation that he had developed in his ten days at the Hlakaschken Trade Empire and had refined on his journey to the Continent of Kiriket. His only discomfort came from the fact that he hadn’t tested it under the extraordinary pressures that they were currently in.

Those pressures put an immense amount of stress on his diaphragm, threatening to rupture it if he pushed it too far. He needed to balance internal pressure with the external water pressure just perfectly, or he could potentially break bones, tear muscles, and skin.

And yet, he sustained his defense of the gamma radiation laser, refracting them away while maintaining his distance from the Dragon Emperor. His eyes remained focused on his charging enemy, the one and only source of light in what was otherwise endless darkness.

He had nowhere else but to look at the frenzied Dragon Emperor who hungered to consume him.

RUMBLE!!!

The waters of the ocean roared in his ears from the maelstrom of energy that the two warriors unleashed upon each other.

The battle dynamics had settled as the outcomes became clear to both of them.

The Dragon Emperor was on the offensive.

Rui was on the defensive.

That didn’t mean that Rui was unable to go on the offensive, just that he knew he had a stamina advantage. The longer the battle went, the more he benefited. Eventually, the Dragon Emperor would need to return for air. And that was the moment that Rui could strike to win.

Until then, he had absolutely no qualms simply withstanding everything that the Dragon Emperor threw at him and remaining on the defensive with minimal energy expenditure.

Even as their intense eyes bore into each other, they could tell that they each had the exact same idea.

It was the dynamic that would determine the outcome of the battle.