The Martial Unity

TAP

She touched his forehead, pressing her finger into it.

”One that I can dismantle any moment I want.”

”ARRGHGHHHHH!!!” Kane roared with pain as the Divine Mother manipulated the web of his consciousness, restoring the barrier between mind and soul. He fought back with every ounce of power he could muster, leveraging his corporeal consciousness to resist the regression of his Martial Soul.

”RGHHHH!!!” He gritted his teeth as his eyes grew bloodshot with effort, his expression crumpled with strain and effort. The contrast between the two beings couldn’t be any clearer. While Kane dedicated the sum totality of his being into defending himself, the Divine Mother exerted the faintest of pressure, as if holding back to watch a little insect struggle under the growing weight of her finger.

Yet, the corporeal consciousness resisted the change to his body through the web of quantum entanglement that allowed him to communicate and leverage the power of his body consciousness.

Such was the power of the Corporeal Realm.

It went beyond the merely materialistic power of the Sage Realm.

It allowed something of a defense of information.

The faintest hint of interest emerged in the Divine Mother’s eyes at the technique.

”I have never seen anyone leverage the power of the Meta Web in such a manner. You human beings are truly special. This phenomenon of ’paths’…”

Her six eyes lit up.

”It is a power worth plundering.”

The implication of those words was terrifying to each of the three powerful pathwalkers around her. They knew that paths were the power that allowed their civilization to be as strong as it was. It was the only reason that the laminar integuments hadn’t utterly annihilated them in a space war of destruction.

The thought of it falling into alien hands was disturbing in the depths of their souls.

”Perhaps I shall allow your Martial Soul to remain intact, after all…”

Her tone grew eerily chilling.

”I don’t want to risk losing research material.”

Chills crawled across his body at those words.

And yet, he was all but helpless before a being of boundless power.

The horror of what they beheld finally broke Arastia and Sayfeel out of their frozen reverie. Arastia gritted her teeth as her blood-red eyes shone with blinding brightness, unleashing an onslaught of blood towards the Divine Mother.

”Blood plasma.”

The blood charged towards the homoarachnoid entity, threatening to crush where she stood. And yet, the Divine Mother didn’t so much as even acknowledge the hemosapien.

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!

Arastia’s eyes widened as her blood simply spilled to the ground instead of being the devastating attack that she had intended.

”Your blood...” the Divine Mother whispered. ”...is filled with webs.”

The edge of her six eyes briefly met Arastia’s horrified face.

”So fragile.”

In that moment, Arastia felt like she had been returned to her ten-year-old self, when she first learned about her ability to manipulate blood. Her elder brother had helped her discover her true power beyond her merely superhuman physique.

She recalled struggling to control her blood as a toddler.

Now, she experienced that same helplessness twenty years later.

Those memories were strands of information.

Strands of information that the Divine Mother could use to bind the most powerful hemosapien.

To render her powerless.

The Divine Mother was not merely a being of great power.

She was the singularity of connections.

She was the center of the web of information.

The web of information that described all of reality.

It was the power of the gods.

Power beyond anything Arastia could hope to resist.

WHOOSH

Sage Sayfeel rushed forth.

But not towards the Divine Mother.

But towards Ria.

Seeing the Divine Mother effortlessly dispatch of a Martial Corporeal and the Blood Goddess made him realize that he simply didn’t stand a chance against the creature in frontal battle.

’I need to get Ria away from here as soon as I possibly can.’

That was his first thought.

His second thought, however, was something else entirely.

’No, I will not.’

He paused where he stood as all alarm and panic in his body language and expression disappeared. His dark eyes calmed down, becoming eerily different.

Ria gazed at him with palpable alarm as she sensed something truly terrifying.

He had changed.

She had known him most of her life. She had grown accustomed to his mannerisms, his speech, his conduct.

That was why she could tell.

She could tell that the person before her was not the man that she had known her entire life. He was someone else entirely. The Divine Mother’s six eyes slowly shifted back to Ria in an eerie manner, sensing the profound horror and confusion within the young adolescent’s mind.

”I changed the webs.”

It was almost cruel that she offered an explanation, gesturing to her head with a finger. ”…in there.”

Ria’s eyes widened.

Everything was a web.

Even the mind.

Especially the mind.

And since the Divine Mother could alter the very fabric of any and all webs within her reach, she could alter and control any and all minds within her reach.

A city.

An entire planet.

An entire star system.

The reach of a god was far and wide.

It was absolute.

Ria directed a shivering gaze around her.

The homoarachnoids were frozen, standing in perfect silence.

Sage Sayfeel stood by the creature as a mere spectator, gazing at Ria with hollow, vacant eyes.

Arastia remained frozen.

Yet, Ria sensed she was watching.

She sensed she was watching in despair.

In the distance, all the pathwalkers in the Blood Camp.

All the humans within the Strehegeld Star System.

Each and every single person was caught within the webs of the Divine Mother.

This was what absolute power meant.

This was the meaning of divine authority.

This was the power of a Transcendent.

She found herself gazing into the extraordinary depths of the homoarachnoid’s eyes as the god of a monster reached for Ria’s head.

The life that Ria had ahead of her.

The family that awaited her.

The friends she had made.

She would lose everything.

It was over.

The final thought that passed through Ria’s mind was one of regret.

Profound regret for ever having left her family.

’I’m sorry… papa.’

A thought that would never reach him.

Or so she thought.

RUMBLE