The Martial Unity

His condition for victory was staying ahead of her prediction.

Inversely, her condition for survival was predicting all of his decisions well ahead of time and preparing for each of them ahead of time with a perfect solution.

The perfect solution was actually the devil in the details.

Even the slightest margin of error would mean that she would sustain some of his attack.

Quantum computing was extremely fragile, such that if even 0.01% of Rui’s energy reached the quantum supercomputer, it would malfunction or be destroyed.

She redirected every ounce of her processing power to Rui and Rui only, ensuring that she predicted everything he did.

She read his SOUL, allowing her to predict his subconscious intent while refining her predictive model on him. Rui was unable to use the SOUL system on a consciousness uploaded to a quantum supercomputer, limited to Prophecy of the Void, which allowed him to pose a continuous question to NOVA.

He activated Neo Godspeed alongside his Megamind as time slowed down in his eyes, allowing him to better keep up with an astronomically powerful quantum supercomputer.

His mind raced with power, calculating move after move as both sides refined their predictive models on each other. Their predictive battle grew deeper and deeper, even as Rui’s existence became increasingly glitchy.

For perhaps the first time in his life, Rui felt what every single person fighting him in the past had felt.

A profound frustration at being out-predicted.

He felt transparent as NOVA remained just a single step ahead of him the entire time, without seemingly any strain whatsoever.

It was a deeply unpleasant feeling.

He realized how obnoxious of an opponent he himself was if he made all of his opponents in the past feel this way.

He pushed his mind close to its conventional limits.

And yet, not once did he ever land a single attack.

For the first time in his life, Rui came across someone even more intelligent than himself.

Someone with even greater foresight than himself.

“I have no intention of giving up, however.” His glowing eyes flared with tremendous power as he pushed himself to the very limit.

WHOOSH!

He teleported to NOVA’s chamber with about one hundred and twenty-six teleportations already prepared, along with superimposing to create alternating light patterns in his light attacks.

NOVA had one hundred and twenty-seven teleportations already prepared, along with many independent wormholes for each separate pulse of light he had unleashed.

WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH…

After a rapid-fire of two hundred and fifty-three teleportations, Rui found himself returned to the Great Void Ocean with a hint of displeasure on his face.

His gaze shifted to the tekvore army.

“You’re good.”

It was a simple compliment.

Yet, coming from none other than Rui himself, it was an extreme acknowledgment.

[Thank you! You are quite impressive yourself. I have not had this much fun in a long, long time! ᕙ( •̀ ᗜ •́ )ᕗ]

Her little cutesy emotes were jarring in contrast with her genocidal and tyrannical intentions to dominate and control the entire planet, but she was being strangely sincere.

Power was good, but it was not fun living in a world where everybody was as intelligent as a frog from her point of view.

The dwarves were better, but they were inherently weak.

The superintelligence of the elves was even better, serving as their trump card, but it was not a singular cogent being.

It was more like the mix of countless intelligences working in parallel to create an even greater emergent intelligence that served as a sort of hive. It was not a singular person she could interact with and engage with.

She had lived most of her life feeling like an adult surrounded by toddlers, and now that feeling had changed to a person surrounded by insects. The sheer gulf of cognition was so great that even interacting with normal people in the true world was about as meaningful as trying to talk to an insect.

And yet, in her little bout with Rui, she felt more alive than she ever had.

She felt a challenge.

An intellectual challenge that required her to mobilize a solid portion of her quantum computing capital to keep up and outpace her opponent. It was like she had been playing Chess by herself for a long time, and now had finally run into an opponent with whom she could have a serious game.

She knew he was her enemy, but she couldn’t help but harbor a highly pleasant impression of him for being able to stimulate her colossal mind in such a deep way.

At the same time, the fact that they were enemies was also quite exciting for her, because it meant that they would engage in conflict with each other many, many times.

“I’m not done yet.”

Rui’s tone was one of great determination.

RUMBLE

His mind surged as he activated the Forge of Creation, spontaneously creating a powerful new technique, one that could counter each and every single counter that NOVA had utilized up till now.

One that could crack her predictive advantage.

“Uncertain Existence.”

It was a technique that utilized the high principle of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.

A principle that stated that there was a limit to the amount of net certainty one could have regarding a particle’s position and velocity. The more certainty one had of one’s velocity, the less certainty one had of one’s position and vice versa. This principle could be scaled up even to massive systems of particles, like a human being, especially when at high speeds.

The way that the technique worked was by using this fact to maximize his certainty of velocity, and then projecting that information to everybody through his Martial Embodiment.

Thus, he could maximize NOVA’s certainty on his velocity, but make her entirely uncertain on his position.

This was a technique that could bypass even the SOUL System and predictive models because it relied on a fundamental law of physics.

WHOOSH

Rui teleported to outer space, holding his breath as he rapidly altered his internal pressure. He accelerated himself, launching his entire body at extraordinary speeds with electromagnetic and gravitational fields, approaching the speed of light.