The Martial Unity

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!

He leaped away, pirouetting through the air as he narrowly evaded the attacks that came forth with his sheer speed. The branches, roots, and leaves followed through as they stirred and shifted, anticipating his movements ahead of time and proactively hunting him alive.

“It’s the trees themselves,” Rui realized. “The flora network itself is the one that is predicting my every move. They must have used all my existing data to train on, to create a pattern recognition predictive model, and then autonomously and with little intervention, use that data against me. It’s a form of artificial intelligence!”

He wasn’t even sure if he could call it artificial, given that it was organic living beings forming a neural network by themselves.

He knew that the Genoran Flora Network was its own form of superintelligence, but he hadn’t realized that it could be used this way. They trained the intelligence of the flora that he was facing on all the data that he had collected, allowing them to predict and even adaptively evolve against him!

That wasn’t all.

He realized, given that a predictive model was just data, that all future flora he faced in the Genoran Continent would be able to access this data and use it against him, thanks to the Greater Genoran Flora Network.

Thus, the Genoran Continent continued growing stronger and stronger against him with each passing second. Any progress made by any of them became the progress of all of them. This was likely true for any and all enemies that dared to set foot on the Genoran Continent.

It would be as if Rui could magically share all his predictive models with all Martial Artists in the blink of an eye and have all of them use it perfectly like he did.

BOOOOOM BOOOOOM BOOOOOM BOOOOOM BOOOOOM!!!!!

Hundreds of Master-level attacks converged on him simultaneously, threatening to crush him right then and there as the flora network effortlessly predicted his every movement and perfectly timed themselves to negate his actions and movements.

It was a level of power that most Martial Masters would have trouble with.

And yet, amidst all the pressure that was mounted on him, A smile emerged on his face.

His pitch-black eyes lit up with excitement.

“You guys are strong.”

His voice seemed to cut through all the explosions.

“But when it comes to data, I’m second to no one.”

In the blink of an eye, he went all out with all his systems of thought as well as with the Eye of Prophecy, rapidly forming a predictive model on all the flora that attacked him.

If he was dealing with the actions of an organic intelligence that could pass on its data to other parts of the forest, then it was likely that the same predictive model that he formed on them would also be effective against other networks in other parts of the forest.

Secondly, he could sense that the power of the extent of the network was directly proportional to the dark elves that manipulated nature. His mind sense allowed him to understand that the flora network was only as large as their minds could handle. They had achieved much greater progress with the Hymn of Mind and Soul than any of the other dark elves he had fought, allowing them to commandeer and handle a greater bandwidth of data processing between them and nature.

It also helped him realize that these dark elves had such a great bandwidth of data that they wouldn’t get harmed even by his full-force embodiment. Perhaps he had underestimated all the dark elf warriors on the continent, but it was nonetheless better to err on the side of caution than to be responsible for a genocide.

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!

The dark elves widened their eyes as Rui began smoothly evading the myriad of branches, roots, and leaves that converged on him, threatening to attack him then and there. The timing and placement of his movements began growing ever more precise and accurate as the depth of his foresight grew deeper and deeper.

With each passing attack, he could peer deeper and deeper into the future.

His mind surpassed the three dimensions as it extended into the fourth dimension.

He fought not with the present, but with the future itself.

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!

He bobbed and weaved, maneuvering about with furious footwork as he dealt with each and every attack that came his way with perfect timing and placement.

“Impossible!” one dark elf exclaimed. “How can he possibly deal with all the attacks coming his way. We can predict his every move with our predictive model!”

“He’s drawing closer and closer to us.”

“We need to increase the processing power that we can commandeer from the greater network!”

“Summon more sisters to stop this male brute!”

It took a single message through the flora network as more and more dark elves came to join the effort to stop Rui by enhancing their collective power and their collective processing power.

And yet, Rui’s eyes lit up with euphoria as he grew more and more absorbed and engrossed in the battle.

His emotions began to boil as he grew ever more excited and delighted by the resistance that the dark elves put on him even as thousands of Master-level attacks converged on him, threatening to overwhelm him in the blink of an eye.

The surge in processing power was so great that the flora network of the dark elves began slowing down the gap between it and Rui’s Martial Mind, growing more and more intense with the sheer amount of data that was processing through it.

The organic neural network spanned thousands of kilometers at that point, all dedicated to the sole task of predicting Rui Quarrier.

It was nothing short of a supercomputer at that point.

And yet, not even that was enough to fully overcome the combined power of Prophecy of the Void and the SOUL System as the predictive battle came to a grinding stalemate.