The Martial Unity

Her powerful gaze met the two shining red suns in the depths of Rui’s eyes as she took her stance with a grave expression.

She didn’t know what was happening with him at the moment, but she knew that he was not in his right mind.

She also knew that she couldn’t kill him.

The consequences for them would be so apocalyptic that it would make the Beast Incursion seem tame.

This was one thing that all the clan leaders had had hammered into them.

As the weakest of them all, she would need to hold back the least out of all of them, which was why she had been chosen for the task of incapacitating the Dawnbringer without killing or crippling him.

And yet, when she experienced the extraordinary power of the man before her, she realized that this task was most likely not as easy as she had initially thought it would be. The sheer power of his mind beggared the imagination. It was beyond anything she had even fathomed was possible.

And yet, she did not intend to fail.

BADUMP!

Her Martial Heart and Mind blazed into power.

Her Martial Soul was always there.

The very root of her existence seemed to morph as her Martial Embodiment bloomed in all its ephemeral glory.

She became a blizzard.

One so cold that it made even Niflheim seem like a warm summer day.

WHOOSH

In the blink of an eye, she leaped at Rui at blinding speeds.

Time slowed down to a crawl in Rui’s eyes as he applied a reverse Temporal Disharmony on himself, speeding up his perception of time to astronomically high degrees. His normal hypnosis was already extraordinary and now it was astronomically enhanced by the Gigabrain technique.

His perception of time accelerated by orders of magnitude.

A rush of euphoria flooded the sum totality of his extraordinary mind as he found himself

being able to not only perceive but also to react to the attack of a Martial Sage.

And yet, she was so astronomically faster than him that he was barely able to move centimeters in the time that she was able to move meters.

A titanic speed gap.

One that could never be compensated for by the likes of Phantom Step.

He needed something better.

And just like that, he created a new technique.

Moments before her attack struck him, he created a new technique. “Soul Blinding.”

WHOOSH

Her eyes widened as her attack crashed into an empty image.

And yet, it wasn’t a feint.

Somehow, he had evaded her attack by centimeters.

Somehow, a Master had evaded the attack of a Martial Sage by centimeters.

She gritted her teeth with a hint of humiliation and shock as she leaped back into action, exerting a greater portion of the titanic power that lay dormant within the depths of a Martial Sage.

RUMBLE!!!

The world shook.

It shook as she unleashed an even greater blow towards his jaw.

And yet, the attack didn’t so much as touch him.

WHOOSH

It crashed into yet another empty image, missing his jaw by mere centimeters.

“Enough of this charade,” she growled with a hint of rage as she drew a spark of materia prima from within her body.

And then she moved.

This time, space and time itself quaked as her body surged forward at truly astronomical speeds. Her fist once more surged towards his jaw with tremendous momentum.

And yet.

Despite her effort.

WHOOSH

She missed him by mere centimeters once more.

Once more, he managed to move out of the way of the attack.

She didn’t understand.

She didn’t understand what was happening.

And yet, she didn’t have time to.

Her impatience and haste continued elevating to even greater heights.

The longer this went on, the greater the humiliation she faced.

She could not tolerate his resistance any longer.

Her mind honed into extraordinary focus as she concentrated on one and only one thing.

One and only one person.

The Dawnbringer.

She was to take him down at any cost.

No matter what.

And it was precisely this impatience that fueled her own weakness.

RUMBLE!!!!!

She launched herself with such a devastatingly furious velocity that heaven and earth

mourned with agony.

She launched herself with such a ruinous momentum that the very fabric of space and time

quaked.

WHOOSH

She arrived before him, unleashing an onslaught of blows, each surgically aimed at knocking

him out.

And yet.

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!!!

And yet, he evaded each and every single one of them.

He evaded them even as her menacing determination and impatience continued rising with

each passing moment.

He evaded them even as her effort and exertion continued rising.

Not only had he managed to form a preliminary model on her when the Sages had arrived with

the Angel of Laplace before the barrier was formed, impeding the technique, but he knew

exactly what she was thinking.

He knew she couldn’t kill him.

He knew she was extremely impatient and hasty.

He knew she was desperately trying to knock him out as soon as possible.

He knew that there were very few targets on his body that she could aim for in order to knock

him out safely.

He understood that, within these circumstances, her psychology was highly predictable in addition to the statistical foresight of the VOID algorithm.

This allowed him to know the future itself.

And yet, that was only half the answer to evading her.

The other half was an optical illusion known as the Induced Motion Illusion Effect. It was an

optical illusion where a moving object appeared to be static as a result of the cognitive effects of color contrasts, object shapes, and object positioning. The mind was evolutionarily evolved to extrapolate and this manifested in a myriad of illusionary effects that even the subject was

entirely helpless to.

Ordinarily, it was impossible to trick a Martial Sage with such a paltry illusion. An optical illusion was limited to vision, after all.

Sages almost universally possessed a myriad array of extraordinarily powerful and exotic senses that allowed them to behold the very fabric of the universe and reality as it objectively

was.

And overcoming all of them was precisely the genius of the Soul Blinding technique.