The Martial Unity

Not only did they journey to the northern side of the Beast Domain, but they were also moving radially closer to the center of the Beast Domain. They could clearly notice the growing difficulty of traveling through the Beast Domain.

The environment grew increasingly hostile to life. Their travel speed slowed down while they also began taking a larger number of breaks. Furthermore, the very act of taking a break became challenging because the number of regions and places where the two of them could take a break reduced substantially.

Everything became harder and harder.

Even food became more of a problem as even the crazy amount of food pills that Rui had prepared was being depleted.

They began hunting more as a result, relying on their environment for food while going back to the food pills only when the environment had nothing edible to offer. They increasingly began facing adversities that Martial Artists were generally not accustomed to facing.

The art of surviving became more important than the art of martial affairs. Their inexperience became increasingly painful as the two of them traveled slower and slower than they had hoped, often time regressing back because of poor navigational choices.

It wasn’t just enough to have a mental map of the Beast Domain, although that certainly did help. The two never got lost in the Beast Domain and were never stranded without having any idea where they were.

This was estimated to be the fundamental cause of fifty percent of missing adventurers in the Beast Domain. The Beast Domain robbed one of a sense of direction. The extended stay without prepared resources caused strandedness and eventually led to death due to other causes, such as environmental or ecological factors.

Rui managed to avoid this entirely due to a form of directional-vector tracking on the map of the Beast Domain that he stored mentally. Thanks to this, they always remained largely on track, even if Rui’s lack of experience with the Beast Domain led him to make the wrong choices every once in a while.

Yet, that wasn’t the only reason that the two young men managed to avoid death.

“Stop!” Rui pulled at Kane’s shoulder, preventing him from taking another step.

Ahead of them was an open ocean filled with mist. Its waters were pitch black, entirely opaque to anything that wanted to sense it.

It was eerie.

That alone was hardly anything special.

Rui and Kane had passed through regions of fiery fires so hellish that one would think it was straight out of Dante’s Inferno.

Yet, this one was special.

Rui knew they ought not to set foot in the water.

“What’s the matter?” Kane frowned. “I thought you said the Adventurer’s Guild’s data said this region was largely barren?”

Rui didn’t respond with words. Instead, he activated his Martial Heart, launching three Mighty Roar Flash Blasts one after another.

BOOM BOOM BOOM!

Three hills of water momentarily erupted into the air under the immense destructive power of a Martial Senior.

Nothing out of the ordinary to Kane.

Yet, it was what followed that shook him.

RUMBLE!

The entire region began shaking violently. The sea quivered before it began violently spiraling and converging at a distant point.

Kane’s eyes widened as an enormous whirlpool large enough to swallow a mountain appeared on the horizon. At the bottom, a hole as wide as a town appeared.

At its edges and inside it were countless razor-sharp teeth of all sizes.

Any and every sea creature that entered the hole ran into them, being shredded on the way in.

“What the hell is that?!” Kane shrieked with horror.

“That’s a charybdis,” Rui spoke gravely. “The Sea of Darkness is filled with them.”

“Oh, hell no!” Kane exclaimed, backing away from the sea. “How the hell could the Adventurer’s Guild say that it was a safe zone?”

“Because charybdises are almost impossible to detect. They are extremely good at hiding. They only begin feeding when they sense a magnitude of disturbance within their weight class,” Rui said, heaving a deep sigh. “The Adventurer’s Guild relied on adventurer reports for its intel, and any adventurer that ever learned of the charybdis is probably dead. Hence, it was never reported, and the Adventurer’s Guild basically marked it off as a safe zone based on those that never saw it when passing through the region.”

“That’s crazy…” Kane perked. “Wait a minute, how did you know it was there?”

He glanced at Rui inquisitively.

“Prophecy.”

Rui didn’t need to elaborate. This wasn’t the first time that it had happened, either.

“Man…” Kane turned back to the enormous charybdis in the distance swallowing up an entire section of the sea. “What would we do without your grandmother? We’d be dead without her. Turned into food for a sea monster.”

Rui couldn’t deny those words.

Charybdises manipulated water to increase its friction with other substances, making it almost impossible to escape when one was submerged within it and dragged and absorbed toward the creature’s mouth.

While Rui was an extremely powerful Martial Artist, most of his power was born from the timing and placement of movements that perfectly adaptively evolved to counter his opponent. However, timing and placement weren’t really relevant. Sometimes, in such extreme situations, physical power was the only path forward.

In such a circumstance, the Gatekeeper was probably the only one who could be unafraid.

“No wonder adventurers die left and right,” Kane snorted. “It’s actually crazy that they go in despite such unreliable intel. When I went to the Beast Domain, I only went to the fringes. Going any deeper is insane.”

“…I had initially been a little irked that my grandmother showed me futures where I die instead of stuff about the Divine Doctor, but…” Rui’s tone was relieved. “Now, I’m grateful that she did.”

He would have died before he even reached the Valley of Prisms if not for his grandmother knowing what was best for him and showing him exactly how to avoid the worst.

–