The Martial Unity

“You’re no different from the wench from before,” Anthea glowered at Rui, glaring into the unfathomable darkness of his pitch-black eyes. “Relying on the power of your exotic treasures to just barely survive me. But how long is that healing fruit going to last, I wonder?”

Rui’s eyebrows knitted with confusion.

It appeared that Rui’s primordial core healing was so powerful that Anthea had mistaken it for the Transcendent healing fruit.

It was an amusing and flattering misconception, and one that Rui didn’t intend to correct.

His fists surged forth with great speed and power as he foresaw the evolutionary’s future, directing his blows to attack him where he would be rather than where he was.

“That will not work on me anymore.”

WHOOSH!

Rui’s eyes widened as his attack missed.

His fist blasted empty air.

Not because his opponent feinted.

But because his aim was wrong.

“You rely too much on the power of order, just like the other man before you.”

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!!

A devastating blow outside of Rui’s fathoming crashed into his body, shattering his ribs on the spot.

“Rgh…!” Rui grimaced with a stunned expression.

He gazed deeply at Anthea, attempting to scry his future with the Prophecy of the Void.

And yet, he saw nothing.

“My body of chaos is beyond your fathoming.” Anthea’s ethereal voice was intense as his fists rained down on Rui with great power and speed.

BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!!!!!

A stunningly intense flurry of attacks exceeding Rui’s prediction and prophecy ravaged his body.

One moment, he was able to predict not just his opponent’s next moves, but also all the moves thereafter and parse countless possible futures, guiding the uncertain future in the direction that he wanted it to go.

The very next moment, he was cut off from the future.

Anthea deployed the power of quantum entanglement to create an astronomical web of uncertainty and possibility, reducing the amount of order there was in his body, and radically increasing the amount of entropy correspondingly.

The worst part was that the entropy kept rising.

The chaos grew more intense with each passing second.

Almost as if the Second Law of Thermodynamics itself was sneering at Rui.

The amount of entropy in a closed system only increased with time.

That was the principle that Anthea had weaponized to increase the amount of chaos in his body to deprive Rui of his predictive model and his prophecy, as well as the SOUL System, since he could no longer read his opponent’s subconscious non-verbal language.

Chaos was the source of Anthea’s adaptive evolution against Rui.

It was the same power that Ieyasu had once used to also bypass his Martial Mind and defeat Rui.

It left him deprived of all the insight and foresight that had become the foundation of his power in combat.

Before, he was all-seeing.

He could see the past and the future.

He could see the body and the soul.

He could read the very order in one’s movements.

And now, he was blind.

Anthea’s eyes grew sharp as he unleashed a tremendous beat-down of astronomical proportions, unfurling the very depths of all the power he could draw.

RUMBLE!!!!!

The world shook as Anthea’s cells shined with power, fusing hydrogen atoms to create helium in rapid succession, allowing him to generate a tremendous flux of materia prima through cold fusion. The power flowed from his cells throughout his body, propelling his fist forward with great momentum.

BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!!!!!

Rui balled up, gritting his teeth as a devastating tsunami of attacks ravaged his body. Anthea drew out every ounce of power that he could summon within him in that moment as his fists and legs flew forward at such tremendous speeds that the very fabric of space and time warped under their weight.

The sheer speeds they surged forth at were so great his fists grew heavier the closer they approached the speed of light, gaining more and more mass, making his attacks that much more devastating for what was about to come.

CRACK CRACK CRACK!

Rui’s bones began breaking under each attack, collapsing under the sheer weight of Anthea’s devastating blows. In terms of raw output, Anthea managed to surpass even Amare at her strongest, adaptively evolving his body to crush Rui with raw, physical superiority.

His arms began deforming under all the damage that Anthea had placed upon him.

His skin grew bruised black while countless wounds emerged across his entire body.

Not even his primordial core, which had largely been partially exhausted with recreating an armor of invintium and recreating all the lost blood, missing flesh, and heart a little while prior, could easily keep up with all the damage.

Only Nemean Blossom barely kept him in the battle.

And yet, even it had limits.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!!

A thundering blow ravaged his ribcage, breaking him down.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!!

His arms fell, battered beyond recognition by a tremendous blow as Anthea’s palm morphed into a razor-sharp blade that thrust forth towards Rui’s heart.

WHOOSH

Anthea’s eyes widened as he slipped, missing Rui’s heart.

Gritting his teeth, he surged forth with perfect accuracy and tremendous speed.

WHOOSH

His expression grew stunned as he slipped again, missing Rui’s heart once more.

He snarled with murderous intensity, threatening to kill Rui where he stood.

And yet, it was almost as if Gaia herself was shifting to sabotage his attack.

Rui’s intense eyes remained fixed on Anthea.

He remained exactly where he stood without moving so much as an inch.

And yet.

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!

RUMBLE…

The world shifted inches.

Millimeters.

That was all it took to deviate the trajectory of the incoming attacks.

The evolutionaries gaped at their supreme commander, somehow missing a stationary target point black while the Martial Sages were lost.

“Hey, wait a minute…” The Terrampager’s eyes widened with recognition. “That’s the thing he did against me! He’s shifting land itself ever so slightly with the Scriptures of Terra to sabota—”

BANG!

“Shut up!” Amare smacked him in the head, lest he spill the secret to their enemy.

His insights, however, were correct. With the Scriptures of Terra, he could almost instantaneously shift land with perfect precision and accuracy with maximum efficiency. It took surgically perfect timing and placement.

The slightest of mistakes would have killed him on the spot.

And yet, Rui prevailed.

He prevailed against each and every single attack.

“Die.” Anthea surged forth with blinding speed and power.

A maestrom of killing blows surged towards Rui, threatening to end him where he was.

And yet, the gentlest of steps was all it took.

Rui bent the very world to his will to evade each and every attack that Anthea threw at him.

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!!!