The Martial Unity

Ieyasu had warned him.

Even his clone had warned him.

Both of them had warned him, and he didn’t fully consider the gravity of what their words meant.

Perhaps it was because it was too horrifying.

But both of them had told him.

“It is everywhere.”

Why did he ignore the full meaning of their words?

BADUMP! BADUMP!

BADUMP!

BADUMP!

BADUMP!

His heart began racing, pounding against his ribcage like a detonating explosive. His breathing began growing labored as he began sweating through the gaps in his invintium layer.

He grew paralyzed with Fear.

It was an existential terror.

The kind that only came when one realized that everything was a threat.

Their enemy was everywhere.

In the past, he had only been able to experience this fear during Gigabrain. But for the first time in his life, he could experience the Fear itself. Not out of an elevated state of mind like when he was in Gigabrain, where his Martial Path seemed to possess him.

But out of true comprehension, just like the Divine Doctor.

That, combined with his elevated senses, his many enlightenments into the nature of reality, and his power, he could truly experience the Fear unfettered.

It left him almost completely paralyzed.

It left his soul crippled.

He had grown confident in his power in the past few years, and not undeservedly so. He was truly one of the strongest people in the world. And while he had not tested his power against the Suneater or the seemingly non-existent Ecclestia, he didn’t think that anybody would be able to easily put up a fight against him, if at all.

Now, he realized just how arrogant he was to think he could resolve all of this by himself. Had it been him in the past, he may very well have drowned in the Fear, unable to so much as even move a finger; not even his drive for Project Water would have been able to draw him out from such an existentially overwhelming fear.

Yet, he gritted his teeth, biting his lip as it began bleeding.

SPLAT!

He pierced his own skin, drawing blood as he used pain to distract himself from the Fear. His ethereal eyes began to brim with a stronger drive amidst the horrifying terror of what he was fighting against.

One and only one thing gave him courage despite the despair of the disparity between him and his enemy.

It was his daughter.

It was Ria.

This didn’t just involve him.

It involved the future of his daughter.

Was he going to allow this alien entity to steal her future?

Was he going to allow it to steal her life?

To steal the limitless potential she had?

To steal the joy and happiness she experienced?

“Never.”

RUMBLE!!!!!

He activated his Realms of power with a furious vengeance as his ethereal eyes blazed with power and determination.

He hadn’t ceased feeling fear.

It clawed at his heart each and every moment he lived.

And yet, he gained enough courage to fight despite it.

Enough willpower to act against his deepest instincts of fear.

Yet, the act of mobilizing his tremendous power caused the world around him to begin shaking.

RUMBLE!!!!!

It was as if the mantle and crust themselves roared at him with aggression. He had been so consumed by the core and the continents of Earth engraved upon it that he had been utterly blinded to the environment around him. The cavity that was the point of maximum fear was beautiful and horrifying all at once. Its walls were laden with extraordinarily potent esoteric matter, some of which he possessed in his arsenal, some that he didn’t even recognize.

He was surrounded by walls of exotic lights of otherworldly luster. It was a density of potent exotic matter unlike anything he had ever beheld in his entire life.

They warped the very fabric of reality so much so that the geometry of space and time was unfathomable. It was no wonder that the Fear task force was unable to get even the slightest of glimpses of what in the world was actually happening.

It was a world unto itself.

He couldn’t fathom its purpose.

At least, not yet.

RUMBLE!!!!!

The world began shaking violently as Rui braced himself, activating the Eye of Prophecy and feeding it to his Autocorpus. If Autocorpus had a shortcoming, it was that the technique only began after a stimulus was activated. If the Eye of Prophecy had a weakness, it was that Rui’s neurological process delayed his reactions.

When combined, he could react instantly to the future itself.

So much so that nothing could ever catch him off guard.

Not even a stream of particles accelerated at 99.999% the speed of light converging on him from all lateral directions.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!

His body reacted to this very fact. It diverted all of the exotic pluripotent matter in his body towards creating invintium, which barely managed to cover his body in time to defend him from the devastating onslaught of charged, accelerated hadrons colliding with him.

“Rghhh!!!” Rui gritted his teeth, snarling in pain as he found himself subjected to the most intense impacts he had ever experienced in his entire life.

It was almost force personified. The charged hadrons that were blasted into his body were so intense and so fast that not even the Outer Divergence technique he copied from his clone’s Gigabrain could possibly stand a chance against such an overwhelming impact.

His Eye of Prophecy foresaw yet another onslaught of accelerated hadrons about to collide into him just a nanosecond before it happened, barely giving any time even to Autocorpus to react with a passive defensive technique.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!

The devastating impact melted off all of his invintium, returning it to its primordial seed form. He barely managed to restore his invintium armor on, activating his Anthean half, his Gene Realm, literally holding on to the invintium atoms with each cell, integrating it into his cell walls for a more stable defense.

And yet, the impact from the accelerating hadrons only struck him harder.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!

RUMBLE!!!!!