The Martial Unity

“Rgghh…!” The Martial Masters of the Sekigahara Confederate pushed themselves to the very limit with boundless desperation to hold back and kill the Sage-level beasts and monsters. They knew they stood no chance.

And yet, they couldn’t let go. Each of them had been born and brought up in the Sekigahara Confederate their entire lives, and had been instilled with pride and love for their nation. They weren’t willing to abandon it, even if it meant their own death.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!

Chills crawled across their skin as a laser beam of unfathomable intensity whistled just over them, striking the countless beasts and monsters of the Sekigahara Confederate with a devastating impact.

“ROOOAAARRR!!!”

“KRRRIIIEEEKKK!!!’

“RAAAWWWRRR!!!”

The beasts and monsters roared in pain as the tremendous impact dug deeper and deeper into their scales, feathers, and fur, burrowing into their skin. VMMM…!

The Martial Masters felt shivers crawling down their spine as they turned around to behold the pitch-black mirror frame of the Abyssal Mirror MECHA, humming in the air as its heat thrusters gently guided the MECHA before them.

They gazed at the machine as if it were from another world. It was unlike anything they had ever seen in their entire lives.

The sheer intricacy and detail of the MECHA frame were heads and shoulders above the elementary and simplistic designs of the base MECHAs. Ieyasu had had the Esoterist go all out with the complexity and intricacy of the design to maximize power, an offer that the Esoterist had welcomed warmly.

He had needed to hold back the complexity of the MECHAs due to the fact that the technology was new and still in its infancy, relatively speaking. Not enough time had passed for MECHA pilot standards to reach the highest quality of standards that the Esoterist had to offer.

More importantly, there were hard limits to the complexity of manufacturing. Most nations didn’t have the ability to manufacture highly detailed components and highly precise fabrication.

It was not an exaggeration to say that the Abyssal Mirror was the most complex and intricate MECHA on the entire continent at the very moment.

It lent Ieyasu a dimension of power that almost no other Martial Master had ever reached in their entire lives.

“I will weaken them enough to leave them entirely vulnerable,” the mechanically distorted voice of Ieyasu emerged from within the MECHA. “I will entrust all of you to finish them off.”

Their eyes widened with relieved shock.

They truly hadn’t anticipated that they would be saved in the eleventh hour.

They directed a nod of deep gratitude towards him.

“Thank you.”

Immediately, they got to work with an intense ferocity as Ieyasu unleashed blasts of light over and over.

One moment, they were on the verge of being wiped out.

The very next? They were the hunters.

They hunted down the beasts and monsters that had dared to spill Sekigaharan blood. That had dared to ravage Sekigaharan land.

They vented all their frustrations, grief, and anger at the beasts and monsters, ruthlessly and brutally slaughtering them painfully and harshly.

It was a truly cathartic experience.

And yet, aside from averting a future of destruction and death, it couldn’t change anything else.

It couldn’t change the past.

It couldn’t bring back all the people who had died.

It couldn’t undo all the damage done to the Sekigahara Confederate.

Half of the nation was now completely destroyed.

Not a single person could even think about all the lives that had been lost.

BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!!!

The Martial Masters unleashed a maelstrom of devastating attacks against the wounded and weakened beasts and monsters, leveraging the Hellbringer model that Rui had imparted to them to inflict as much damage on them as possible.

It wasn’t long before the tides had completely turned, allowing the Martial Masters of the Sekigahara Confederate to completely exterminate them.

By the time they were done, they couldn’t help but collapse to their knees, completely shattered.

A maelstrom of emotions consumed their entire mind, unwilling to let them have even a moment of reprieve from the guilt and self-loathing that tormented them regarding the death and destruction of half of the nation.

The lands were incinerated, completely smoldered, and in ashes with a maelstrom of fires still yet to be doused. There were still countless innocent Sekigaharans were who injured and incapacitated.

They would die without the help of the Martial Masters of the Sekigahara Confederate.

Thus, as painful as it was for them, they swallowed their grief and immediately scattered across the nation after directing one last glance of gratitude.

“Thank you.”

They had resented the Chosen One for betraying them.

But now, they couldn’t help but be grateful that he had protected the Sekigahara Confederate from complete and absolute destruction.

Ieyasu himself simply regarded them with impassive stoicism.

He wasn’t moved by their gratitude.

Nor by the plight of the people of the Sekigahara Confederate.

He had simply been instructed by the Emperor of Harmony to engage in this operation.

That was all. These people had done nothing for him. In fact, it was the opposite.

He wouldn’t have bothered saving them outside of strategic considerations of the future of human civilization. Another thing that he hadn’t particularly cared about before, but now had to do due to the fact that he wielded a MECHA that needed the fabric of human civilization to thrive, for it to be sustained.

It had forced him to start thinking about complex matters, things that he had never cared for before. All for the sake of his greed for power.

It had helped him learn more about himself, bringing him closer and closer to the gates of the Sage Realm, bringing him closer and closer to the Enlightenment of Self. He was a mirror that reflected his circumstances. It wasn’t that he was inconsiderate by nature; it was that he didn’t need to be considerate to maintain his power in the past.

Now, however, that was different.

And that reflected in the changes that had happened within him. –