The Martial Unity

Having lived through Anthea’s life in his shoes, Rui had inherited all the muscle memory of the former supreme commander. It was a curse and a blessing at the same time, being forced to live through each and every single experience that the supreme commander had gone through without being able to actually do anything.

The prize was that he inherited Anthea’s mastery of genetic adaptive evolution. The only issue was that the philosophies of the Evolutionary Path and the Martial Path were different.

The Martial Path was a path of controlled and efficient violence. Every layer of one’s existence was harnessed through highly efficient and impactful movements. The sum totality of one’s existence was harnessed into combat.

The Evolutionary Path did not center on violence; it instead centered on one’s genetics. Everything revolved around genetic adaptive evolution, and the body was the main star. Violence was not the end goal of the adaptive evolution path, which had originally evolved to help the descendants of ancestral homo sapien to survive the tumult of Moridia during the Age of Tumult.

Even the memory and muscle memory that Rui had inherited from Anthea, the man used genetic adaptive evolution as the core of everything he did. Every movement he made was for the sake of bettering his genetic adaptive evolution at a given moment.

That was incompatible with the Martial philosophy, where everything served violence as the ultimate end.

’I must reconcile these two paths.’

Even as he was pressured by the three extremely powerful opponents who sought to crush him, he couldn’t help but divert a significant portion of his attention towards overcoming this issue.

If he didn’t find a way to properly integrate his evosapien physiology into his Martial Art, then he would never be able to make the most of his evosapien physiology. There would have been no point in making himself a hybrid.

BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!!!

Sentinel Prime continued bombarding him with randomized attacks of blunt force and plasma with last-moment choices, while Ieyasu operated at the mid-range, using his highly magnified heaven manipulation to pressure Rui with powerful winds.

Suneater operated at long range, blasting Rui with powerful shockwaves from his movements quite frequently.

And yet, Rui’s mind submerged into the problem at hand.

If he didn’t overcome it, he would not be able to overcome his opponents. It wasn’t just a lack of power that he would suffer as a consequence; he would grow weaker as a result of not being able to reconcile two halves of himself. Not even more desperate measures like Gigabrain would be able to make up for such a fundamental error.

’My evosapien half is too large a part of me, and also too fundamental, for me to treat it like an ordinary technique system

.’

When it came to the gu, or exotic pluripotent matter, or the negatron matter, he could essentially treat it as its own fundamental technique system like the Hypnomatrix or the Yggdrasil System.

Of course, these categorizations were a bit archaic ever since he created the Forge of Creation, which broke all of them down to their fundamental elements and building blocks.

Still, it was helpful to categorize them that way to understand different parts of his Martial Art.

It was why he knew that his evosapien half was very different from anything that came before it. It was different even to the genetic blood evolution he had undergone at the Blood Cult; it was different even to the Blood of Solaris.

It was even very different from Project PluriBody or even the Metabody System, which was closest to his evosapien half conceptually.

’No, my evosapien half is not merely an upgrade to the Metabody System.’ Rui sharpened his ethereal eyes. ’It’s… beyond the Metabody System. It’s beyond any other technique system or system thought. The evosapien is better thought of as…’

His eyes lit up with realization. ’…as its own realm of power.’

Realms of power were essentially large pools of potential across different aspects of one’s existence.

The potential for evolution, the potential of hidden physical power, the potential of unused cognitive power, the potential of the subconscious, neuroelectrical harmony, and the potential energy of matter itself, materia prima.

His evosapien half was much closer to its own Realm of power, the potential of genetic adaptive evolution, than it was a technique or technique system like the Metabody System.

It deserved that much respect.

’That framing allows me to understand where my evosapien half fits in my Martial Art and my Martial Path.’ Rui mused with a satisfied expression. ’But in order to fully integrate Anthea’s muscle memory into my Martial Art, I will need to reconcile the conflicting philosophy that comes with it. Thankfully, I figured out just how.’

RUMBLE!!!

His mindscape shook as he did to Anthea’s muscle memory what he had done to his own muscle memory.

He broke it down.

He broke all of Anthea’s muscle memory right down to its fundamental sequence of actions. He had done this to his own foundational mastery when he trained the Forge of Creation with Tokugawa Ieyasu. The Forge of Creation created brand-new techniques by building them together from fundamental actions that built other techniques.

He did the same with Anthea’s muscle memory in order to get rid of the conflicting philosophy that his muscle memory possessed.

’I am a Martial Artist. I don’t need Evolutionary philosophy.’

RUMBLE!!!

He broke down Anthea’s memories into fundamental actions of genetic adaptive evolution.

Then, he activated the Forge of Creation.

’I need to upgrade it.’

His eyes sharpened.

’From this day forth, all of my techniques will contain an additional dimension of genetic adaptive evolution!’

Just like how all of his techniques necessarily needed to make use of Body, Heart, Mind, and Soul, all of his Realms would necessarily need to contain an aspect of the Gene, his newest Realm.

RUMBLE!!!

Rui quickly altered the Forge of Creation, adding a new set of protocols to it to incorporate genetic adaptive evolution.

RUMBLE!!!!!

His mindscape shook as he fully incorporated his evolutionary side and his inherited memories into his Martial Art!