The Martial Unity

Before he left, he took a few things with him. A nutrient potion.

A stamina potion.

And more importantly…

He pulled a fruit out of his backpack.

It was white.

Transparent.

Ethereal in its physicality.

A fruit from the Tree of Healings of the Sekigahara Confederate.

He had carried one for good measure on his entire journey, having reserved it for the one and only one moment he would truly and absolutely need it.

He had abstained from using it in even the most dire situations. Not when he fought the Terrampager.

Not even when he fought against Sage Sekiei despite having plenty of opportunity to consume it before the fight began. And yet, this time, in the face of a battle to the death with some of the most fierce warriors in the Gu, he didn’t hold back.

He immediately consumed it. While he would be able to make the most use of it if he waited for the very last moment to use it, he didn’t even dare to try and time it correctly. The second he went deeper into the depths of the Gu into the Sage-level ring, he would be exposed to a tremendous amount of danger.

Unlike his Martial Heart and Martial Mind, the Gigabrain did not have an emergency activation function.

In other words, it was possible that he would end up being squashed like a bug before he even activated Gigabrain.

That was why he consumed the fruit immediately.

He needed some passive protection.

He closed his eyes as he felt the power of the fruit coursing through his entire body. It made him feel immortal and extraordinary, brimming with energy.

FWIP

He tightened the belt on his Martial attire, gazing at Amare one last time before leaving.

The Gu’s environment remained the same as always.

Pitch black heaven and earth.

The smell of death, blood, and rot.

And yet, the air was more perilous than it had ever been before. The atmosphere tingled electrically.

Rui’s expression was steeled with determination and focus.

His eyes flared with drive as he surged deeper and deeper.

Deeper into the hellhole abyss that was the Gu.

What he saw only heightened his wariness.

He saw the beasts and monsters that had entered the Gu along with him and Amare.

The sky dragons that towered in the heavens proudly.

The phoenixes that sought to set the entirety of the Gu ablaze and light up the hellhole of darkness within it. The monster hornets.

The flock of rocs.

The griffons.

The plumed serpents.

All manner of beasts and monsters that had converged upon the Gu with a primal frenzy to destroy the place.

All of them were dead.

Their corpses strewn about like garbage.

They joined the landscape of death that formed the bedrock of the Gu.

Rui’s expression hardened with fierce determination.

He had no intention of joining them.

He had no intention of following their path.

He had no intention of sharing their destiny.

WHOOSH

He surged deeper and deeper into the Gu.

The darkness grew thicker and thicker.

Even for his extraordinary senses, it had grown almost impenetrable.

He could hardly see what was before him.

RUMBLE…

Chills crawled across his skin as he felt fluctuations of power of extraordinary magnitude.

They emerged deeper and deeper.

They emerged from deep within the depths of the Gu.

The depths that Rui was surging straight into.

RUMBLE

The tremors of heaven and earth intensified as he got deeper and deeper.

It sent shivers down his spine.

And yet, he gritted his teeth as his eyes flared with determination.

He didn’t stop.

He kept going.

WHOOSH

His eyes widened as the darkness before his eyes cleared.

It cleared as he emerged from it.

And yet, what he saw before him shook him where he stood.

Sages.

Twenty-one of them. They were spread across a battlefield as wide a a country.

A battlefield that was practically made up of corpses.

That wasn’t all. He saw countless Sage-level monsters and beasts among them.

The very strongest of the strongest.

The very pinnacle of the Beast Incursion.

They had survived.

They had survived all the way to the very core of the Gu.

A battlefield filled with beings so powerful that they could be considered apocalypses in their own right. A battlefield with natural calamities in human form.

Forces that could wipe away much of human civilization if they truly desired.

This was the battlefield he had entered.

A Gu ritual that was on the very cusp of commencing.

This was the warzone he had chosen to partake in.

And not a single participant, human or otherwise, failed to miss his presence.

Their heavy gazes converged upon him with the weight of the very sky bearing down on him.

They judged.

They judged with their disdainful eyes.

And then dismissed him.

He could almost hear their thoughts.

Weak.

In that moment, any caution he might have harbored was thrown out of the window as his eyes flared with a defiant determination. “You will pay for that.”

His body brimmed with power.

The endless depths in his pitch-black eyes boiled with a ferocious bloodlust.

His fists clenched as his expression crumpled with severe intensity.

“You will pay for underestimating me.”

RUMBLE!!!!!!

The world shook violently as the Gu Ritual commenced.

An endless amount of power erupted from the beings of extraordinary power that had gathered for a battle of untold magnitude.

And then, everything froze.

…

Everybody froze.

One moment, each and every single entity on the battlefield was overflowing with a primal bloodlust and bone-chilling flare of power.

The very next?

They were frozen.

All of them were frozen.

Frozen in fear.

Rui stood paralyzed as he experienced a blood-curdling level of terror in the very depths of his heart.

A single whisper echoed across the silent world.

“Allow me to partake.”

His voice sent chills across the skin.

It sent shivers across the soul.

It was as though Death itself had whispered in their ears.

WHOOSH

He appeared at the very epicenter of the battlefield with ephemeral grace as his deathly presence bore down upon the very world with its endless horror.

His eyes were black.

His long, flowing hair was black.

Pitch black.

As though it suffocated all life in the world.

Out of everything and everyone across heaven and earth, his deathly eyes fixed on Rui.

He raised a single finger before everybody around him.

A mundane gesture.

And yet, it inspired primordial fear in all those who beheld him.

SLIT

With a single motion, he cut his finger with his nail as a drop of his blood leaked out.

Black blood.

Black poison.

The most powerful poison in the entire world.

“The last time a drop of my blood was spilled… a billion died.”

His voice was the incarnation of death.

“The last time a drop of my blood was spilled… it gave birth to the Gu.”

His very existence embodied Death.

“The last time a drop of my blood was spilled… nobody survived.”

His gaze slowly shifted around.

Inspiring the terror of death in all those he beheld.

“I wonder if this time will be any different.”

DRIP

The black drop spilled from his finger, hitting the world.

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