The Martial Unity

They would die.

That much was clear.

A single gesture had led to the destruction of an entire planet.

Such was the power of a Martial Transcendent.

RUMBLE!!!!!

Even as her people began dying, the Divine Mother appeared entirely unfazed. Her six eyes, maternal and deep as they were, were devoid of care and empathy for her own kin.

Even though they were their own offspring.

Divine Mothers were tasked with reproduction. While other females could reproduce, Divine Mothers accounted for an overwhelming majority of the reproduction of the homoarachnoid species.

Yet, those massive numbers meant that the mother-offspring relationship that many species, mammalian or otherwise, had was simply not present. As far as she was concerned, these creatures were destined to die.

They were born to die.

The outpost world was a world that would eventually explode, flinging virus seeds across the cosmos. Her rage existed solely for the undue destruction of the outpost world, not for the undue destruction of the disposable population.

She could sense Kane, Arastia, Sayfeel, and the other pathwalkers escaping into outer space, each equipped with exo-combat suits that allowed them to simply jump into space. Since all the pathwalkers were Martial Masters or above, they didn’t need space pods or other infrastructure to leave.

But she didn’t care about the insects.

She cared about the human with the universe in her eyes.

Urgency burned in her to rush to kill Kane off and acquire Ria as the ultimate prize.

And yet, she stayed her hand.

A world of water stood between the Divine Mother and Ria.

Rui hadn’t so much as moved since destroying the domain and the planet with it. Despite the volatile seismic activity. Despite the destruction that drowned the world around him. Despite the impending explosion, all but inevitable from the disintegrating bonds of Silk City.

Despite everything, he remained stationary.

He remained calm.

He remained silent.

His unfathomable, ethereal eyes never once moved away from the Divine Mother.

The Divine Mother knew that if she wanted to get her hands on Ria, she would have to defeat the Emperor of Water first. It didn’t truly matter how fast or far Kane ran away.

The web of causality that had woven between them would always remain.

She would always be able to find him, no matter where he went.

He was not the problem.

”You are the problem.”

RUMBLE!!!!!

The world shook as she took the initiative.

She launched the first attack of the battle.

With the gentlest of gestures, she unleashed a powerful web attack at him from her stinger. It coursed through the fabric of space and time faster than the speed of light itself, composed of tachyons that could outspeed light, while the adhesive power of the webbing threatened to bind him where he stood.

Her Webverse empowered the attack further.

Everything was a web.

Everything was part of the web.

Everything was connected.

Including the attack she launched and its target.

The attack didn’t even need to travel.

It was already connected to Rui.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

The sheer power with which it struck was astronomical. The webs didn’t just strike with raw power and momentum, of which it had plenty thanks to the Transcendent-grade esoteric matter within it and the Divine Mother’s body, but it also struck with the power to dismantle the webs within anything it touched.

Including the webs of matter.

Cells were bound together in a web of tissue.

Molecules and compounds were bound together within the web of a cell.

Atoms were bound together within the web of organic chemistry.

Electrons were bound together within the web of an atom.

And even the nucleus of the atom was merely a web of the Strong Nuclear Force.

When she attacked, she didn’t merely attack the material.

She dismantled the webs that comprised the being of her target with the power of her Webverse.

And yet, a single remark escaped Rui.

”I am Water.”

As a Transcendent, Aqua Existentia was no longer just a technique in name. It was a technique that pushed him to the very brink of becoming a true manifestation of water. His Martialverse elevated the technique beyond the laws of physics, making it a literal truth about him.

So what if her attack sought to destroy the webs within him?

He was Water.

Literally, metaphysically, and figuratively.

There were no webs within him to dismantle.

SPLASH!

The Divine Mother’s six eyes widened as her attack simply splashed past him like he was a floating puddle of water.

The attack struck one of the sections of the rapidly fragmenting former planet.

It completely dismantled an entire chunk of the planet.

Reducing it to quark-gluonic plasma.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!

If Rui’s actions had sealed the fate of the outpost world, then the Divine Mother accelerated the fate of the planet. The sheer explosion of plasma that erupted from the ravaged fragment of the planet, now turned into pure plasma, was on such a titanically astronomical scale that it would have eviscerated each and every single pathwalker had they not already left the planet.

And even then, millions of kilometers away in space, the tendrils of the explosion rapidly accelerated towards them.

”We need to get away from the planet now!” Arastia screamed the command to Commander Helsia the moment all the pathwalkers hastily boarded the Blood Arc. ”Get us out of the star system!”

”Madam President, the fabric of reality itself is unstable! The space-time volatility index is simply too high to activate the negatron warp drive!”

Arastia gritted her teeth. ”Then get us as far away from those two gods as possible!”

While the mortals and lesser beings scrambled for safety, the battle between the Transcendents continued.

RUMBLE!!!!!

It was only just beginning.

The world around Rui shifted as he breathed deeply, exhaling with tremendous force. The breath that he exhaled was turned into pure force exerted on the ravaging environment around him, altering its traits.

A domain.

Within his body, he activated his pluripotent core, generating a special kind of Transcendent-grade esoteric matter.

Hyperfluidic non-baryonic plasma.

A special kind of esoteric matter that severed the electromagnetic bonds between atoms and molecules.

It was a kind of matter that severed the webs of chemistry.

With his Martialverse, he imposed Water upon all of reality, liberating all of reality from all the webs that tethered it.

It was a domain antithetical to the concept of webs.

A single remark escaped Rui as he struck her with the second attack of the battle.

”Anti-Arachnia.”

RUMBLE!!!!!!!