The Martial Unity

Rui charged forth, finding himself face-to-face with several tendril whips. WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH

He smoothly redirected them, absorbing their power to redirect it against the laminar integument.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

His fist teleported on the laminar integument with an even heavier impact, but this time, he used the Yin-Yang Spear to permeate the impact as deeply as he could.

WHOOM…

To his surprise, even a permeated blow was smoothly absorbed, as if it made no difference, and was thrown right back at him with a tendril whip aimed at his neck.

It threatened to decapitate him.

THWOOM!

The impact caused his neck to seemingly dislocate, but the impact was smoothly absorbed and channeled to Rui’s fist, which had already surged through a portal and upon the laminar integument’s body.

This time, he aimed for the nexus from which all the tendril emerged.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

It was to no avail.

It simply supplied the laminar integument with even more power, allowing the creature to unleash even more tendril blows. This time, however, the laminar integument switched things up, having recognized that ordinary blows weren’t enough to harm Rui.

It tapped into local quantum fields to generate the force-carrying particles of the weak nuclear force: two types of W bosons and the Z boson. These particles, in particle physics were responsible for nuclear decay, turning neutrons into protons.

If applied correctly, they could be used to cause nuclear decay in any given target, changing the elemental composition in its body. It caused the six most common elements in his body, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus, to form unstable, radioactive isotopes of elements above them.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

CRACK CRACK CRACK

Rui’s eyes widened as the edge of his finger tips grew brittle upon contact, cracking bit by bit, as the attack completely bypassed his ability to withstand it by transmuting the parts of his flesh that it came close to into a brittle, radioactive ash.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

CRACK CRACK CRACK

It was an attack that was quite unlike anything Rui had ever faced in his entire life. The means of damage was no longer the force of the impact but rather the nuclear changes that the laminar integument triggered within his body.

It was no longer something that he could afford to keep withstanding if he wanted to maintain the chemical and nuclear integrity of his attack, prompting him to immediately back off, maintaining some distance from the laminar integument as its phased attacks continued converging upon him.

WHOOSH He pushed himself even further, evading a transmuting radio-decay attack, only for several more to converge on him from either side, phasing through reality itself.

It was within the prediction of his Light of Soul, allowing him to barely evade the incoming attacks with a spiraling twirl that allowed him to fit in between the gap between the two attacks horizontally.

And yet, the laminar integument was relentless, unleashing an onslaught of attacks one after another upon him, threatening to reduce him to a pile of transmuted radioactive ash one after another.

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!

Rui kept maintaining his distance between them as he continued evading each and every single attack, relying on the combined fusion of the Prophecy of the Void and the Light of Soul to foresee each and every single attack.

The rapid succession meant that there wasn’t enough of a timeframe for him to bother even teleporting. The phased attacks came so fast that the time it took was too long for him to activate negatron matter, to then create a wormhole, to teleport his entire body, as opposed to just his fists.

Each step he took backward, propelling himself through the very fabric of space and time, the laminar integument pushed more and more forward, sensing that it was drawing closer and closer to victory.

It charged forth aggressively, unleashing each and every single transmuting radioactive decay whip at him.

A glint of eagerness flickered in Rui’s eyes.

It was the moment he had been waiting for.

Instead of retreating backwards, he charged straight into the transmuting, radio-decay tendril whips, much to the surprise of the laminar integument, or whatever alien emotion it had that was closest to it.

What was even more surprising to it was that the tendril whips passed right through his body.

WHOOSH

As if his body had no substance.

As if he were a specter.

A ghost.

“Etherea Corpa.” Rui’s eyes flared with ferocity as he launched a blindingly fast attack at the laminar integument.

This time, however, instead of relying on blunt force, he altered the anatomy of his hand to resemble a blade. His finger bones sharpened as his palm straightened, thrusting into a fearsome jab that pierced the laminar integument’s body.

SPLAT!

His hand dug into its body, piercing layer upon layer of its body.

Just as he had expected it would.

The laminar integument was able to absorb blunt force, but it was much, much harder to absorb sharp, piercing attacks, for they ruptured the surfaces, disrupting the layers of the laminar integument’s body.

The alien lifeform shuddered as his hand dug deeper.

He was digging deeper and deeper into its actual brain.

Its body was part of its brain.

Each layer contained chromatographic records of its life. And those memories were accessed when light passed through them, allowing laminar integuments to recall the past.

He had just dug his hand into who knew how many years’ worth of memories.

If not for the fact that all of his Tide of Samsara poison was still stuck in the mantle of Gaia, this battle would have ended right then and there.

And yet, it didn’t.

The laminar integument didn’t try to expel his hand impaling its body.

It instead drew it closer.

His eyes widened as he sensed the danger.

But it was too late.

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!

It created a tremendous osmotic pressure on his own body that caused heat to flood away from his hand at an alarming rate, causing his body to chill and become colder in the blink of an eye.

In an instant, it triggered endothermic phase change, causing rapid cryogenic freezing of his biological tissue.

“Rgh!” Rui grimaced as he activated his Gene Realm, changing his genes to activate exothermic energy generation, allowing his cells to barely preserve their integrity when he pulled his hand out.

The two entities moved away from each other as they nursed their wounds.