The Martial Unity

It would be suicidal, of course, but it was morbidly alluring. After all, the worst part of an orbital deployment was that this sensation always came to an end.

WHOOSH

She opened her eyes as she found herself staring at her fellow party members. She found herself staring at her fellow teammates as she felt the gravity of the planet pulling on her. Her body felt heavier and heavier as her hair began to flutter. They had entered the exosphere of Planet Amadeus III.

This was where the true tribulations would begin.

FWOOOSH!

Even as her hair began to flutter, even as her body began to grow more heavy, even as the air began to resist her entry into the sphere of influence of the planet, she felt her nerves tingle.

Not of simple nervousness.

But of danger.

She sensed danger reaching for them.

She felt the flow of the universe reaching for her.

She felt the flow of causality reaching for them. She could feel something shooting towards them, threatening to harm them. She could faintly sense the danger of allowing causality to unfold as it would have without her intervention.

BADUMP!

In the blink of an eye, her Martial Heart blazed with power as bright streaks of light erupted across her body, and a surge of power coursed through her veins and every cell in her body.

She inhaled deeply within the exomartial suit, using an air current to launch powerful air blasts straight down towards the planet.

But the planet itself was not the target.

The blindingly fast web fluid that coursed the atmosphere was.

BANG BANG BANG!

Her attacks deflected the web fluid, causing them to lose momentum and free-fall through the sky, all of which happened in the blink of an eye before her teammates could even react. They turned towards her with widened eyes.

“How did you do that?!” Sternon exclaimed with amazement. “You managed to see them coming in advance and deflect them that quickly!”

“There’s more incoming!” Misha warned them as her cybernetic eyes focused on a slew of incoming web fluid attacks launched by the native homoarachnoid creatures. “They’re trying to strike us down before we reach the surface of the planet! The tensile strength of their fluid is off the charts! If you get touched by it, you can forget about trying to get free from it!”

Her voice was muffled by fluttering noise from the air resistance, but each of them had superhuman hearing, allowing them to communicate in free fall extremely well. They quickly positioned themselves to deal with the incoming attacks of web fluid from the indigenous homoarachnoids.

“Here it comes!” Runark gritted his teeth, inhaling deeply.

THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!

They launched an onslaught of air blasts at the projectiles, causing the web fluid to splatter and harden into a string upon contact, deflecting it out of the way. Ria and Runark used regular Martial breathing techniques, while Sternon manipulated his DNA to strengthen his lungs to even greater degrees, manipulating them into cannons to produce wind blasts. Misha created constructs with her blood, hemotechnological fluidic current generators, creating a sustained field of air pressure to gradually deflect attacks rather than just target specific projectiles, since it required less aim, making it more reliable even if it required more energy.

Siliscia, on the other hand, adopted a different strategy. She was the only one who allowed the web to hit her instead of deflecting it. She simply shed the layer of organic tissue that the web stuck onto at a molecular level, thus effectively negating the attack seamlessly and effortlessly.

While the five of them managed to effectively negate the incoming attacks, the same could not be said for the other pathwalkers.

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!

They watched from their peripheral senses as mistakes allowed the web fluid to grasp onto several pathwalkers in other groups free-falling along with them, leaving them at the mercy of the homoarachnoids.

“Help!” One Martial Master screamed as he was drowned in a barrage of webfluid from many different homoarachnoids that pulled on him collectively. The fact that he was in the air also made it hard for him to leverage anything to resist their pull, causing him to be at their mercy.

It sent chills across their skin as they realized the sheer gravity of the situation.

These creatures were extremely dangerous.

They hadn’t even directly interacted with them, and the native alien species was already mounting an attack and even taking the initiative.

FWOOSH!

The air resistance grew more and more intense as they developed intense halos of heat, glowing upon entry into the planet. “This isn’t going to be easy!” Ria’s amber eyes grew fiercely intense as they entered the stratosphere of Planet Amadeus III. “Let’s stick together tightly for the landing! Stick to protocol!”

The pathwalkers who had managed to get their bearings soon enough and defend against that the volley of incoming web fluid attacks drew closer and closer to each other. The protocol for orbital deployments and preliminary ground invasion operations was to stick together to always ensure that at least one direction around them was of human presence, rather than alien. The bane of a ground invasion was to end up in fragmented groups surrounded by hostile alien presences.

Soon enough, they reached land.

BOOOOOOOM!!!

They gritted their teeth, preparing for a heavy landing that would create a massive crater where they landed. They felt a flash of pain in their legs as the sheer force of the impact stressed their body, but it was nothing that pathwalkers couldn’t handle.

RUMBLE!!!

The gray land and bedrock of Amadeus III shook violently as a crater the size of a small city emerged around the thousands and thousands of pathwalkers that had collectively crashed into the planet. RUMBLE

Violent tremors spread across the land upon the collision, along with a distinctly familiar sound of splattering blood and crushing organic bodies.

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!

A rain of a blue organic substance, along with bits of blue organic flesh, splattered across the cratered region.