The Martial Unity

The Divine Doctor fell into thought. “…You’re worried the clone will be useless if you die.”

“Worst of all, it might have to retread the Martial Path,” Rui remarked. “The worst-case scenario would be if it is unable to even activate its Martial Heart.”

He had given the clone a Martial Body, but that didn’t necessarily mean that the clone would be able to activate the Martial Heart. Especially if it was different enough from Rui. It would be horrible if he died and this clone woke up to find that it was as weak as a Martial Squire and needed to rework everything from scratch.

“That is why I don’t just intend to give this clone my DNA and my memories. I’m going to give it everything.”

“…Everything?” “Everything,” Rui affirmed with a serious tone of voice. “I’m going to reshape its body on a molecular level until it’s identical to what my body used to be before I integrated Anthean physiology. I’m going to alter its brain until it is perfectly identical to what mine used to be. It’s not going to be a clone. It’s going to be absolutely identical to me from the past. Almost as if I was plucked from the past and brought to the present.”

“That’s a level of molecular and biochemical accuracy and precision that is beyond any of our modern technology,” the Divine Doctor remarked with a raised eyebrow. “How do you intend to do that?”

Rui smiled with confidence. “It’s very simple, actually. I intend to… ‘resurrect’ the clone.”

The Divine Doctor’s eyes lit up as realization dawned on him. “You intend to brute-force it.”

Rui nodded.

His Resurrection technique essentially used quadrillions of quantum gravitational tweezers to tweak the cells and biochemistry of a recently dead body to bring it back to life.

He could only do it if the corpse was close to life. It was too difficult to undo it if it was too different.

“This clone is not dead, but it is close to what I want it to be.”

It contained his DNA. It contained his physiology. It had all of his physical features. What if we treated this living clone like a corpse to ‘resurrect’ him to his old self? Using quadrillions of quantum gravitational tweezers, he could mould this clone to be absolutely identical to his old self by simply treating it as a dead corpse of his old self.

“That’s dangerous, you could kill the clone.”

“The stakes aren’t particularly high; we could always create more clones,” Rui dismissively remarked. “Open the pod, let me in.”

His ethereal eyes sharpened. “By the time I’m done, that clone will truly be Rui Quarrier as much as I am.”

The Divine Doctor heaved a resigned sigh, allowing Rui to enter the pod with the floating clone of Rui that hung weightlessly, supported by a force field that kept it suspended midair motionlessly.

WHOOSH…

Rui found himself at perfect eye-level with his clone as he entered, arriving close before the clone.

“If I die… I’m going to need you to take over.”

He wasn’t thrilled about the idea of being replaced. But for the sake of his daughter, for the sake of the Kandrian Empire, and the Panama Continent.

For the sake of the true world, he couldn’t allow Rui Quarrier to cease to exist.

The information about Rui Quarrier could not be allowed to fade away. Then again, information could not be destroyed, so the information of his existence was always present in the universe to some capacity.

His eyes lit up. ‘Is that how whoever or whatever reincarnated me got their hands on John Falken’s memories?’ It was an interesting thought.

One that he saved for later.

Right now, he has an important task before him.

He studied the clone’s bodies. Indeed, it was his DNA, but it lacked the… wear and tear that his body had gone through.

The conditioning.

It was also only anatomically and genetically identical to his old body.

He intended to increase that resolution to the biochemical level.

His eye sharpened as he immediately got started. RUMBLE…

The world quivered as he activated his Realms of power, immediately activating an unfathomable number of quantum gravitational tweezers. In the past, that would have been a messy affair that would have destroyed the facility and everything within a thousand kilometers of him.

But now, it was silent. He also had needed Gigabrain to perform this and the Resurrection technique all those years ago when he had resurrected Amare, but he had grown astronomically stronger since then as a Martial Sage. He could easily perform it without Gigabrain.

He quickly began, bringing up an existential model of his body from the past as he quickly began adjusting his body on a molecular level, shifting around the biochemistry, making his clone’s body closer and closer to his own body from the past.

Visible changes began to occur on his clone’s body as calluses formed while his flesh grew thicker and tougher. His bones grew denser while his muscles grew stronger. He even altered the brain to be more identical to what it used to be to make sure that there was absolutely no chance of any kind of rejection, so that he was no longer able to activate the Martial Heart or the Martial Mind.

Their personality and temperament needed to be identical. His brain structure needed to be identical.

The process took quite some time.

Hours passed in the blink of an eye while he continued bringing his clone closer and closer to what he used to be. All the while, he could sense his clone inheriting his memories, becoming more and more ‘Rui Quarrier’ with each passing second.

It was a painstaking process from which Rui couldn’t afford to take even a single glance away. He remained single-mindedly focused on bringing his clone to truly become him in every single process.

He also needed to make sure that the clone had all the esoteric content in his body that he had had from before he integrated the Anthean half into his physiology.