The Martial Unity

“…We don’t stand a chance against that thing.”

Fae’s voice was grave.

Her eyes were severe.

She spoke the unspoken.

She spoke what all of them know to be the irrefutable truth.

And yet, not even the grave truth could hamper Sir Armstrong’s spirit.

“Today, all of you must choose,” the Gatekeeper’s powerful voice reached them all. “You must choose how you wish to die.”

His eyes flared with determination.

“Do you wish to die running away or do you wish to die fighting?”

RUMBLE!!!!!

It didn’t matter what choice they made, for the outcome was undoubtedly the same.

Before the unfathomable depths of power that the strange entity that emerged from the aircraft displayed, they stood virtually no chance at all.

And yet, it was the final choice that each of them had on what had turned out to be a suicide mission.

They might as well die making the choice to fight rather than to run away.

BADUMP!!!

Almost a hundred Martial Hearts and Minds blazed with power within the depths of their being as they unfurled their collective power. Their Martial Embodiments consumed their very being and the very canvas of heaven and earth, painting a vivid picture of countless Martial Art and the crystallization of lifetimes of effort.

The mechanical glowing eyes of the humanoid entity scanned the world as it took the moment to study the countless Martial Embodiments that emerged from within the depths of the countless Martial Artists around them, almost as if it was curious.

The Martial Masters’ eyes brimmed with a myriad of emotions.

Fear.

Despair.

Uncertainty.

Reluctance.

And acceptance.

None of them wanted to die.

Certainly not at the hands of an inhuman entity of unfathomable power beyond the likes of anything that they had ever felt in their entire lives. An inhuman entity that came from god knew where.

The air boiled with raw peril.

The atmosphere grew electric with anticipation.

For a moment, there was silence in the world.

For a moment, nothing moved.

And then, all hell broke loose.

“ATTACK!” the Gatekeeper roared.

“ATTACK!!!” The Martial Masters took his lead as they surged forth.

RUMBLE!!!

Countless attacks converged upon the strange humanoid entity that simply gazed at them impassively even as the Martial Masters charged with all their might, led by the MECHA Masters of the Esocline Federation.

And then, the entity smiled.

A chilling smile.

It was filled with pure malice.

A smile that warped its face with creases and crumples.

Even its mechanical and cybernetic eyes somehow seemed able to convey an unfathomable depth of malevolence.

The Martial Masters froze as they felt terror in the depths of their hearts.

A terror so intense that it buckled their body against their will.

An involuntary response that none of them could even begin to fight back against.

WHOOSH

In the blink of an eye, the humanoid entity spontaneously emerged before the MECHAs seemingly understand exactly what they were.

CRACK

With a single grasp, it tore the MECHA in half, leaving the MECHA Martial Master frozen midair where his MECHA should have been.

Shivers crawled across his spine as an eerie smile of malice emerged on the entity’s face.

CLASP

In the blink of an eye, the entity clasped him within its hands even as the MECHA Martial Master struggled, screaming with terror.

The Martial Masters watched what happened with helpless horror.

The entity opened its mouth, revealing a cyborg internal anatomy of flesh and machine before—

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!!!

A flood of blood exploded from his body as the creature consumed the upper half in a single bite with its sharp, carnivorous teeth.

What chilled the Martial Masters was not a grisly sight of the ripped human body.

What sent terror running across their body was not the horrifying sight of the MECHA Master’s blood running down the lips and the chin of the giant humanoid entity. It was the fact that the cybernetic eyes of the humanoid entity conveyed ecstatic pleasure as it carefully feasted on the body of the Martial Master, bit by bit.

The humanoid entity finished its little snack before shifting its attention towards the rest of them.

Its cybernetic eyes dilated the way that a human’s would.

Eerie terror sent chills down their bodies as they understood that they were next.

RUMBLE!!!!!

The humanoid entity opened its mouth as the very fabric of space and time began bending tremendously, causing a tremendously intense gravitational well to draw them in with unfathomable force.

It sought to consume them in one fell swoop.

WHOOSH!!!

“Ahhhhh!”

“HELP!”

“Rgh…!”

The Martial Masters struggled.

They struggled with all their might as they used every ounce of power they had within the depths of their body. And yet, before the might of a Sage-level entity more powerful than almost any other they had ever beheld in their entire life, they were all but helpless.

“AAhhh—”

“NO! STOP! NO—”

“HELP! HEL—”

The Martial Masters screamed in raw terror even as they were slowly consumed one by one.

The humanoid entity seemed to delight in the symphony of terror to accompany its meals.

It watched the Martial Masters struggle frantically even as it consumed them one by one, its cybernetic eyes fixed on their very existence even as it consumed them.

Their screams filled the night.

It spread for kilometers as they howled with all their Martial power.

It was not a battle.

It was a butchery.

And yet, only one Martial Master among all of them felt unfathomable fury.

The Gatekeeper was normally an extraordinarily calm and composed man.

He hadn’t lost his temper a single time since becoming a Martial Artist.

He was profoundly in control of his emotions and exceedingly composed in even the most extreme of circumstances.

He didn’t feel a thing during the wars that Kandria waged during its Age of Conquest before the Emperor of Harmony.

He didn’t feel a thing even when the Master Realm was discovered and the Reign of the Master Realm had begun, rendering him obsolete.

He didn’t feel any resentment or anger, even when the world left him far behind in the Senior Realm, as the Master and Sage Realms defined the world.

And yet, for the first time in five hundred years, he felt anger.

Within the depths of his eyes, pure fury blazed as a single whisper escaped him.

“You dare…” he growled. “You dare to consume this body that I have spent half a millennium cultivating?”

His body quaked with power even as a horrifying wrath boiled within it.

His murderous glare fixed itself on the humanoid mechanical monster.

“I think not.”

–