The Martial Unity

The moment they emerged from the forest, it was as though easy mode had been turned off. The scale of multicellular life increased significantly. No longer were they facing simple hundred-cell creatures that could easily be dismantled with a single ordinary strike. Instead, they found themselves with creatures that were not only much larger, but also much more powerful pound for pound.

”ROOOAAARRR!!!” A giant monster that resembled a hybrid between a big cat and a reptile roared at them with a ferocious anger. Its body was composed of thousands of macrobe cells, which resembled red scales that checkered its entire four-limbed body. It opened its mouth, spewing an onslaught of destructive power that threatened to wipe them out where they were.

FWOOSH!!!

Siliscia waved her hands, causing a defensive wall of branches to protect them from the impact. She manipulated the native nature to do the work for her, growing more and more accustomed to using them.

Yet, the blue flames of the monster simply eviscerated her shield, burning right through it with little resistance.

”I’ll handle it.” Ria rushed forth, activating a breathing technique to gently redirect the flames just enough to completely avoid them. Her movements became delicate and precise, cupping the side of the flames as if guiding their path away from her. The intense heat seemed to simply ignore them in an inexplicable manner under her influence.

”It’s much stronger than any of the creatures we have run into,” Siliscia realized. ”Too strong even for its size.”

The flames that the creature had unleashed went on to incinerate a large swathe of the forest that they had just emerged from, setting it ablaze. The sheer amount of power it unleashed was enough to level a town flat, a scale of power that exceeded what would have been possible even with the increased number of cells in its body.

”Its strength doesn’t come from just the increased cell count,” Ria realized, even as she redirected the flames delicately. ”Its strength also comes from the esoteric matter in its body.”

The macrobe lifeforms were so fascinating and exotic in and of themselves that Ria had almost forgotten that the manifold was almost certainly bound to have many lifeforms that had esoteric matter in their physiology, the way that the Panama Manifold did.

More than that, she noticed that despite having ten times as many cells as the more elementary macrobe lifeforms that they had run into, the creature wasn’t ten times as large as them.

”The macrobe cells are also smaller in this creature than in other creatures,” she realized, studying the diminished cells with a curious expression. ”Why is that?”

The macrobe lifeforms in the forest were as large as those outside the manifold, so why were they smaller in this particular lifeform?

”Regardless, it’s not a problem for us.” Runark’s eyes sharpened as he charged forth, building momentum for a single heavy blow. ”Then let’s just kill it and move on.”

BOOOM!!!

He blasted his fist into the creature with accrued momentum. The single attack inflicted a heavy blow upon the monster, causing its body to crumple with force. Even though he wasn’t using his Martial Mind, just his Martial Heart was enough to shatter every cell in the monster’s body, causing it to collapse on the spot, completely lifeless.

Ria walked forward, kneeling before the creature with a severe expression. ”This… this might be bad.”

Runark frowned. ”Why is that?”

”I was hoping that whatever threats we would face would be too massive to really harm because of how many cells it would have, that it wouldn’t be able to notice us or do much about us,” she replied. ”Our goal is not to kill all these creatures but to reach the Manifold Tree and take shelter in it. And it’s very difficult for ultra-massive creatures to stop smaller lifeforms like ourselves, but…”

She picked up one of its shattered cells.

It was the size of a basketball, much smaller than the one-meter-wide macrobes that they had seen in the forest and outside the manifold.

”If the creatures from here on out have smaller and smaller cells, then they will be able to continue growing more and more powerful without having to deal with extreme sizes,” she realized. ”They would be much more of a threat to us than I would have liked.”

Until then, she had expected that reaching the manifold tree and taking shelter would be relatively easy. Creatures with too few cells would be too little a threat. Creatures that had a lot of cells would be too big to be a threat.

But now that there was the possibility of very powerful, along with reasonable sizes as a combination, Ria knew that the difficulty of their operation had just risen by a significant margin.

”Let’s go,” Ria urged them. ”We don’t have time. We’ll continue sprinting towards the center. Avoid as many monsters as we possibly can. Use potions to rejuvenate just because we enter the most dangerous parts. Try to be as stealthy as we possibly can.”

Avoiding danger was a much more desirable option and, for the most part, they succeeded. They ran through many terrains, avoiding most of the danger, even though the danger attacked them relentlessly, almost doggedly so.

Creatures attacked them as their lives depended on it, only to be utterly annihilated by the team. Not only was the team individually very powerful with five rank-four pathwalkers, with one whose combat prowess was rank-five, but they also had impeccable teamwork that allowed them to maximize their collective power efficiently, allowing them to continue moving with as few speed bumps as they could possibly manage.

As they got closer and closer to the center of the manifold, Ria’s fears were all but confirmed.

BOOOM!!!

A powerful attack felled a giant avian creature, causing it to collapse on the ground before them. Ria cautiously walked over to the corpse, kneeling before it.

The cells in its body were the size of a baseball, much smaller than even the diminished cells in some of the prior creatures that they had met. And, their esoteric content was much greater than that of the creatures they had run into before.

Her expression was quite serious.

”This doesn’t bode well.”