The Martial Unity

They charged at each other, throwing an onslaught of attacks against each other. The embodiment of the Noosphere unleashed an onslaught of blows, her attacks comprising simple and fundamental martial arts, each aiming to decapitate and inflict grave damage upon her target.

Her fists flew forth in a blazingly swift combo aimed at his torso.

SPLASH SPLASH SPLASH!

Impact after impact, the blows seemed to splash his very existence upon each impact, allowing him to negate the impact with a hyper-elastic collision, refusing to allow her to take the initiative of the battle. He launched a powerful haymaker to her head, only for her to block with a smooth, principled side guard.

BANG!!!

His attacks connected, allowing him to actually feel the impact for the very first time, only to find himself face to face with her fist.

WHOOSH

His body flowed, allowing him to smoothly evade the devastating impact before launching a swift kick to the chin.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

The powerful impact rocked her head.

But only for a moment.

Her boundless gaze returned towards him in the blink of an eye as she charged forth, unleashing an onslaught of attacks at his torso, aiming for his vitals.

And yet, it was within his predictions.

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!

He smoothly bobbed and weaved, evading her simple, but devastatingly heavy and blindingly swift attacks. The predictive model he had of her was composed of the archetypal patterns of human civilization, allowing him to be quite certain about her limitations and her decisions.

Despite possessing many, many trillions of people within her existence, it appeared that she couldn’t freely draw upon their power at random. If she had to draw from them, she would need to draw from all of them, making her some sort of ontological amalgamation and intersection of each and every human existence of the past.

As powerful as she seemed, her existence came with deep limitations. He suspected, most likely, that this was a constraint of intervening into reality through the power the Noosphere seemed to have over the information dimension.

It wasn’t just enough to have a large number of minds at your disposal. Gaia had that, and as far as he was aware, none of them had ever collectively altered the fabric of reality before.

Most likely, the conditions under which a large sphere of minds and thought could affect the fabric of reality were much, much harsher than just ‘thinking of the same thing at once.’

On top of that, the degree to which it could intervene in reality was limited. He could tell that her capacity to intervene in reality was not comparable to a Martial Transcendent. When he thought about the feats that he himself had witnessed the Martial Transcendents accomplish, her intervention into reality was much more diminished and primitive.

She could alter the reality in front of her to match her perceptions for discrete events, but compared to the continuous and thematic overhaul of all of reality within their sphere of influence, this embodiment of the Noosphere did not compare.

She was not as strong as a Transcendent.

That gave him even greater confidence that he could defeat her. WHOOSH

He smoothly evaded a swift, heavy fist thrust at his head with a light sidestep, spinning past it as he surged forth, unleashing an onslaught of blows at her head.

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!

His blow prioritized speed over power, wanting to get in as many strikes to her head as he possibly could, while keeping True Water as active as he could. She defended herself with a guard, falling into a defensive drawl as Rui precisely pressured her to cripple her offense.

Because her patterns were archetypal, he knew exactly how to keep her from being able to fight back with just the timing and placement of his attacks. Each blow he aimed relied on defensive patterns that forced her to be passive. It was a principled reaction to protect oneself when one’s vitals were attacked, while Rui relied on True Water to defend against her attacks by truly becoming water at the moment of her attack.

He altered the trajectories of his attack, weaving through her defenses as he blasted her head with impact after impact.

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!

He just needed to inflict as much damage as he could to cause the primordial seed sustaining her existence to return to its normal state. Nothing else mattered to him in that moment. BANG!!!

Hist fist rocked the side of her head, exploiting the holes in her defense to inflict a great blow. Her body shifted under the weight of the heavy attack, only to find a powerful roundhouse kick slamming into her guard from the other side.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

The attack broke her guard, leaving her entirely open to an incoming onslaught of blows.

An opportunity that Rui was not kind enough to let slip.

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!

His blows struck true and hard, peppering her entire body with an onslaught of impacts that blasted her vitals. His motions are deeply efficient on a mechanical and tactical level, allowing him to continuously displace her defense and inflict damage on him.

He could predict her, he could use True Water to negate the invincibility that her control over reality gave her, and he could seer into her mind, or minds, his superiority, reducing the chances that she would be able to bounce back with her perception.

All of this to gain an advantage, for despite his extrication from the situation that he was in, his physicality was weakened by the fact that he had redirected almost every ounce of his power towards True Water. It took him everything just to even out the source of invincibility, leaving him with just a shred of her power remaining, making life extremely difficult for him.

And yet, he intended to win.

Even with just the remaining power in his fists, he would strike and strike and keep striking as he continuously bombarded her with blow after blow, even if he knew that his fists were too weak to kill her.

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!!!

All in await of one moment.

One moment where he could win the battle.

RUMBLE!!!!!