The Martial Unity

Before Rui could even respond to her words, she crossed the distance between them, causing him to jolt in reaction. Before he could even close the distance between them, her webstinger flashed forth.

SPLAT

His ethereal eyes widened as the Divine Mother’s stinger pierced his abdomen.

”Your. Blood. Shall. Become. The. Web. That. Will. Imprison. Your. Body.”

Those ominous words were followed by an injection of a special kind of web fluid. Fluid whose laws had been altered to be able to create extremely tough adhesive bonds between all organic tissue instantaneously and spontaneously.

Within nanoseconds, half his blood had already clotted into a solid mass.

An attack that would cause nigh-instantaneous deaths within a matter of moments. The Divine Mother had judged that those few moments would be enough to extract the information she needed from his brain before he died.

And yet, she had underestimated her opponent if she thought that alone would be enough.

”My blood shall flow like Water.”

Blood was a liquid. It was ontologically closer to Water than it was to the concept of Webs. This meant that his Verse was more compatible with it than his opponents’, allowing him to overcome her resistance and apply his phenomenology to his blood.

WHOOSH

Just moments after his blood coagulated, he restored it to its original state, allowing it to flow once more, barely avoiding death. Although his physiology was truly resilient and tenacious. There were some things that couldn’t be completely replaced by Realms. Blood was one of those things.

And yet, his expression remained grim.

This was the first time she had used her Verse offensively, and it was scarily lethal. If not for the compatibility advantage, she would have killed him then and there.

And yet, she was only getting started.

”Web. Of. Space-time.”

All of reality was a web, not least of which was the web that undergirded material reality. The fabric of space and time that Rui’s body occupied suddenly became adhesive.

SPLAT

Rui’s eyes widened as he felt his body freeze; the very fabric of space barricaded all motion, pinning every atom and subatomic particle within his body in place. At the same time, Rui felt the flow of time rapidly slow down, tending towards a complete halt.

Chills crawled across his skin as he realized that she was trying to freeze time to imprison him.

Just as he had with Divine Mother o-o-o-o.

The sheer urgency it bred in him caused him to exert every ounce of his Martialverse to prevent her from succeeding.

Time was Water.

It flowed from past to future, and it flowed through all of them at different speeds.

”The river of time shall not be halted.”

He leveraged his Martialverse in a way that he had never done so before, using it to speed time up.

Yet, he could barely resist her.

Around him, the flow of time slowed down, causing him to act in slow motion relative to everything else. His ethereal eyes widened as the world around him was sped up, like he had hit the 2x button on a video player.

This time, he didn’t have much of an ontological affinity advantage. The outcome was much more one-sided than her blood coagulation attack.

”Your. Verse. Is. Weaker.”

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

A devastatingly powerful blow of intense force ravaged his abdomen. The laws of her body had been altered not only to be defensively invincible, but also to make each attack feel like it had the power of a Verse behind it.

Specifically, she had altered the coefficient of restitude, which determined whether the collision would bounce or shatter.

She had chosen shatter.

CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK!

A single blow sent fractures and cracks across the bones of his proud Martial Body. Cells exploded from the dispersed impact while his tissue crumpled. His flesh was wrung painfully by permeating force while his muscle fibers snapped as taut wires pushed to their limit.

He coughed blood, hemorrhaging intensely from just the impact of a single attack.

And she was not kind enough to stop after hitting him once.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

Blow after blow, her attacks rapidly brought his physical body closer to death. It took him every ounce of his Martialverse trying just to prevent time from freezing. The esoteric matter within her body not only increased her power, but could do so to astronomical extents with perfectly tailored laws that were compatible with the material composition and distribution of her body.

Even as her attacks ravaged his body, he couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of admiration for the deep purpose behind the engineering that he sensed in her body. The other Divine Mothers... they simply accepted cutting-edge esoteric biotechnology upgrades without giving too much thought to how it resonated with their battle style or the potential laws they could upgrade.

In comparison, the Divine Mother’s body was similar to his.

It was a temple. A temple they were the architect of. Rui could tell because he too had put a truly immense amount of thought and intentionality into every inch of his body and the way that it was, whether it was the esoteric matter present within it, the primordial core, Anthean physiology, his Corporeal Realm. The tug of war between a cataclysmic cancer and a poison of unparalleled destruction. And even his altered laws.

His Martial Body was an intricate, yet carefully calibrated sculpture.

He refused to concede superiority.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to. Her attempts at freezing him in time had required her to take away her efforts at sealing the Calabi-Yau Manifold.

In other words, his hyperdimensional maneuvering was entirely at play. Even as her nigh-indestructible web stinger shot towards him with great speed and power, seeking to kill him then and there, he crossed the boundary between dimensions.

WHOOSH

His body grew transparent as her attack smoothly passed through him, allowing him to evade her attack by phasing to another dimension. That one moment of relief was enough for Weaving Blood to heal all the damage she had inflicted on him. Her expression simply sharpened as she shifted her position such that he was directly in between her and Gaia.

”Phase. Through. This.”

She unleashed an extraordinarily powerful webshot in his direction.

And in the direction of Gaia at the same time.

RUMBLE!!!!!