The Martial Unity

Elder Sage Dwight stepped back from Rui. The dwarf’s face slackened with shock, his eyes widening. His jaw dropped as he saw his armor fitting atop the Martial Transcendent.

It was unlike anything he had ever seen.

He had created countless armors in his long life. Countless armors for as many pathwalkers. And yet, to this date, none of them had ever shaken him the way watching the Emperor of Water wear the Armor of Flowing Wisdom did.

In his eyes, the Emperor of Water was nothing short of a god in human flesh, and yet the Armor of Flowing Wisdom wasn’t any inferior either. It didn’t look out of place despite being worn by a Martial Transcendent.

The armor itself resembled a layer of shattered reality, flowing about like a fluid. It looked like it didn’t belong in the material plane. As if it had been crafted from a material that belonged to a higher dimension, and that wasn’t far from the truth.

Rui activated his Martialverse, forcing the world to be on the cusp of turning into water. Yet, the armor seemed to resonate with his Martialverse, thanks to its already fluidic nature. Particles in quantum superposition were like water droplets; their wave functions were like currents of probability, swirling around in a whirlpool of information and probability.

He had never seen an armor that was more in harmony with its user, not even when he created a biotechnological armor made up of leaves for an elf. Precisely, the armor embodied the harmony that he had sought for so long. To think that he would find harmony in the marriage of the Water of a Martial Transcendent and an armor forged from information and probability. It wasn’t the kind of thing that sounded like they would be in harmony when one thought about it.

And yet, they were.

Rui’s Martialverse flowed into the armor, and the armor’s flowing wisdom flowed back. There was an equilibrium that was the essence of the harmony between armor and Martial Artist.

It was only then that the truth dawned on him.

’Harmony… is an equilibrium,’ he realized. ’An equilibrium of causality.’

For countless centuries, he and the dwarves sought to achieve harmony in their works. Harmony was the true source of power of dwarven craftsmanship. Dwarven products had an ecosystem of quantum harmony, allowing impacts, power, and energy to be distributed across the entirety of their products in a way that seemed to defy reality.

The more harmony, the more powerful a dwarven craftsman was.

They pursued harmony their entire lives, for centuries.

Dwight had pursued harmony for a thousand years.

And yet, only when he observed the harmony between armor and Martial Artist did he truly understand what harmony was.

Harmony was an equilibrium.

But wait, the dwarf couldn’t help but realize with a shocked expression. Equilibria were not unique to the Martial Transcendent and his newly donned armor. Equilibriums were everywhere. Between heaven and earth, between celestial bodies in their motions across the cosmos. Everything moved towards an equilibrium, and everything that didn’t move was already in an equilibrium.

The entire universe itself shifted towards an equilibrium between the forces of gravity and dark energy. Its destruction would be a state of absolute equilibrium

The harmony that the dwarves chased after their entire lives was everywhere. They simply needed to harness it in their works, and then, they would be able to bring about absolute harmony in everything they touched.

In a state of profound serendipity, the elder dwarf struck the most profound insight of his entire life.

”Everything there is seeks everything there ever will be, for that is everything there ever was in harmony.”

After adhering to the tradition of uttering a nonsensical philosophy, the dwarf achieved Enlightenment of Transcendence.

RUMBLE

Rui’s ethereal eyes shifted towards the elder dwarf from his armor in surprise as he felt a very familiar phenomenon occur. He felt the dwarf’s mind and soul rise to the information dimension. He felt the phenomenology of the dwarf shift from being separated, disparate, and incoherent to becoming uniform.

It became uniform in harmony.

The dwarf’s Creationverse spread across the information dimension bringing about the reality around him in harmony with itself, as he saw it. He felt an almost omnipotent power to change the world around him. To be able to craft it with harmony into a products of his wildest imagination. He felt like he produce artifacts that were nothing short of gods in and of themselves that vastly outstripped anything he could do before.

”Thank you.”

The dwarf’s voice broke free from the shackles of reality, spreading through the very fabric of space and time, into future, present, and past.

”Thank you, Emperor Rui.”

The dwarf regarded him with eyes of profound wisdom and power. ”You have helped me achieve great power. I will not forget this debt.”

Rui smiled at him. ”I didn’t do anything, Elder Sage Dwight. All of this was of your own doing. You created this armor, and you achieved Enlightenment of Transcendence. Congratulations on your breakthrough.”

Rui heaved a deep breath of relief. Human civilization had gotten another Transcendent. With this, their odds of survival and prosperity had risen by leaps and bounds. After all, the number of Transcendents in human civilization had increased by fifty percent. And they had gotten a new kind of Transcendent, which would expand the capabilities of their civilization significantly.

He could already foresee their superweapons, planetary fortresses, and the rest of their most important technological assets increasing by astronomical degrees. What he was most curious about was just how the newborn Transcendent would apply his verse in the process of crafting new products. If not for the impending war, he would have loved to spend more time experimenting with the dwarf on how his power worked, perhaps even learn more about Transcendence himself.

But with the fate of human civilization at stake, he would need to get the dwarf to work immediately.

He sensed the dwarf on the verge of altering reality with his Creationverse. ”Wait! Stop right there!”

The elder dwarf frowned with a hint of irritation.

”I know you’re extremely eager to try your new power out, but I’m afraid you’re going to hold for just a moment, because if you use it, then you will disappear. Hang on, let me make some preparations.”