The Martial Unity

The grew chiller and chiller as the Rui relied on acoustic cooling to lower the temperatures of the domain further and further, fueled by his enemy’s attacks.

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!

Master Stephen turned into a powerful berserking beast that unleashed destruction with each swing.

Yet, despite the countless attacks that he threw at Rui, not a single one of them had yet to touch him.

A monotonous dance had unfolded between them.

One where the Convergence struggled to land even a single powerful blow on his opponent while Rui did everything in his power to incapacitate him with the cold. However, something had to give.

And something did.

Master Stephen’s body began shivering as the cold crossed a preliminary threshold of tolerance. His body staggered unsteadily as he grew colder and colder. The liquified drops of atmospheric gases that had settled in his body caused his skin and flesh to burn with frost.

“DAMN YOU…!” he cursed. Rui wasn’t doing too much better himself.

“Cough…” He spat a bout of blood from within his lungs. The two took a moment of reprieve as they recuperated from the exertion that they had been subjecting themselves to over the course of the battle.

Rui was hardly in a better condition.

His body was battered by the destruction that his opponent had unleashed upon him. The man truly seemed to have endless energy reserves in the depths of his Body. It was no wonder that he had managed to become a peak-grade Master. It was hard to imagine how he could even be defeated in conventional battles. He had the power to simply overpower everything with raw might. Rui wasn’t sure how the man wasn’t a Sage yet with the power that he had accrued. It most likely meant that his mind had a deep issue that prevented him from gaining an understanding of who he truly was. “Enough…” Master Stephen’s panting voice quivered with exhaustion. “I’ve had enough.”

Rui frowned even as he gasped for air.

He wasn’t sure what came over the man.

But he wasn’t complaining.

He desperately needed a few moments to stop his wounds from bleeding.

“Huff…” the opponent Master exhaled a long, deep breath as his rage disappeared.

Strangely enough, it wasn’t as though the man’s control over himself had managed to pacify his extreme emotions.

It was pure and sheer exhaustion that brought him back from the brink of madness.

For the first time in centuries, Master Stephen felt hollow.

He had vented every ounce of emotional energy that he had bottled up deep within him for years. Emotions born from his desire for prestige and renown. Emotions that had festered deep within like a toxic swamp that swallowed him up, blinding him.

Now, all of it was gone.

Throughout the course of the battle, he exorcized all of the toxic rage, frustration, shame, jealousy, and bloodlust from within his mind, resembling nothing short of a demon of destruction.

It was cathartic.

Therapeutic.

Those emotions, and the desires at the root of those emotions… they were gone.

They were all gone.

His eyes were empty.

His expression was blank as his eyebrows unfurled from their indignant knot for the first time in a century.

His very face changed as his expression relaxed from the exhaustion that swept his entire body and mind.

He looked like a different person.

For the first time in a century, Master Stephen was able to think.

He was able to see.

And what he saw was a profusely bleeding young man before him.

His enemy.

“My… enemy?” A whisper escaped him.

He beheld Rui for what felt like the first time.

He saw Rui for who he was.

Not through the shades and filters of dark emotions.

But as the young Master was as a being.

Where he once saw an impertinent brat who stole everything he had worked for his entire life, he saw a star that shined brighter than any other he had ever seen.

It certainly shined far brighter than his own. Despite essentially being adolescent as far as Masters went, Rui was able to fight equally against one of the strongest Masters in all of human civilization. Despite being astronomically weaker in his physical power, he was able to squeeze water out of rock and wove together a battle where he could not only equal the Convergence but fight to win.

In that moment, a single emotion consumed the Convergence to the very depths of his being.

Pure, raw admiration.

“Magnificent…” A whisper escaped him as he beheld the bloody darkness in Rui’s eyes.

Why did he want to kill him again?

Because the boy was stealing his prestige and renown?

“No…” A whisper escaped him as he gazed deep into the depths of dark blood in Rui’s pupils. He could sense the ferocity of Rui’s Martial Drive. Its inevitability.

He could sense the grandeur of his ambition.

It made him feel small.

“Why…” A tired whisper escaped him. “Why do I care about prestige and renown again?”

Understanding dawned on him as he truly looked at himself with clear eyes and a clear mind for the first time in his life.

He introspected himself unimpeded by the many emotions that swamped in the depths of his mind, poisoning his thoughts and obscuring clarity.

It was a simple question.

Why did he care about prestige and renown?

Why were they so important to him?

Why?

“Ah…” The softest and most tender of whispers escaped him. “…I see.”

A serene smile lit up on his face as his eyes shined with peace and harmony.

“They never truly mattered in the first place.”

Enlightenment.

RUMBLE

Rui’s eyes widened with shock as he felt a profound singularity of power erupting from deep within the Convergence’s being. A power that far exceeded the limits of the Master Realm.

The power of a higher Realm.

He beheld the Convergence with an unholy fusion of horror and wonder. His Martial Mind witnessed the ephemeral divide between Mind and Soul erode away as the inner and outer halves of self converged upon each other.

They become a single whole.

A celestial union of harmony and peace.

RUMBLE!!!

Heaven and earth mourned as Gaia welcomed the birth of a new Martial Sage.

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