The Martial Unity

WHOOSH!

One moment, the Dragon Emperor was within his abode, listening to a report from his subordinate about the movements of the Harmonist Faction and the Gajanan Clan.

The very next moment, he found himself crushed under an extraordinary amount of weight and pressure. An extraordinary amount of pressure from the weight of the ocean crushing down on him.

BOOOOOOOOM!!!!!

The dragon snarled with pain as the continuous pressure crushed on him from all sides, threatening to squeeze him into nothing short of a pretzel. He found himself drowned in not just the water of the ocean but also the tremendous darkness that was around him. The sheer pressure of the ocean at these depths was beyond fathomable.

The Great Void Ocean was the ocean that covered roughly half of the true world. It was on the other side of the seven continents of the true world that occupied only the other half.

It was an ocean that was devoid of life or marine habitat for reasons that were not entirely well understood, even by the advanced marine biologists of the true world.

No life migrated here.

No life emerged here.

There was simply an emptiness in its sterile waters.

Silence outside of the roars of water that the dragon’s thrashing produced. The bright apocalyptic red light that the scales of the dragon unleashed was perhaps the only source of light within the deepest depths of the ocean.

The saline water got into the dragon’s mouth and nose as the creature gasped, having inhaled some of the water, not just because he was caught off-guard, but also because of the unfathomable pressure that pushed water into his lungs.

The depths of the Great Void Ocean were unfathomably deep.

Their deepest points were well over a thousand kilometers beneath sea level.

The pressure that pressed down on everything was so high that nothing short of the most powerful class of pathwalkers could even survive at those depths.

Lord Shenlong and Rui were among those people. Lord Shenlong’s natural durability and powerful invintium scales and armor helped him deal with the unfathomably intense weight threatening to crush him to the very brink, exacerbated by the extraordinary gravitational pull that the Dragon Emperor exerted on the world around him, making him subject to even greater forces of compression. He expelled all the water from his lungs, getting rid of the buoyant forces in his body.

THUD

He hit rock bottom as his reptilian feet hit a hard, rocky bottom that was as dark as the darkness of the ocean. Rock bottom of what was likely the deepest part of the entire world.

The experience was jarring.

The only sounds he could hear were the roars of the ocean ringing in his ears. The only sensations he could feel were the pain in his joints that had begun developing with the astronomical pressure.

The darkness in the atmosphere was driven away only by the red light his scales emitted.

And by the red light that came from the eyes of his opponent.

Lord Shenlong turned to find two glowing red eyes in the darkness of the ocean as Rui gazed at him with the eyes of Megamind.

A profoundly intense peril hung in the air, the silence of the dark ocean as the two of them gazed at each other with visceral bloodlust. Lord Shenlong’s yellow, reptilian eyes flared with hunger and greed as they bore upon Rui’s form.

The growing tension in the air was ameliorated by the virtually endless darkness that hung in the air. Their presences were unfathomably heavy, even heavier than the weight of the ocean that bore down on them.

“You brought me here because you knew that I was most weakened by an underwater environment, did you not?”

Lord Shenlong’s voice was frighteningly calm and composed.

For a belligerent dragon known for his wrath, his composure was chilling.

And yet, Rui’s glowing red eyes bore deep in his, unfazed by the Dragon Emperor.

“And yet…” An eerie smile emerged on Lord Shenlong’s face. “The fact that you haven’t attacked me yet is proof that you, too, are adapting to this new environment. You are no creature of the ocean, Dawnbringer.”

His voice was muffled by water.

And yet the ocean couldn’t hide his roar of a voice.

It rumbled through the world.

The ocean quivered in fear and anticipation of what was to come as the sides acclimatized to their new environment in silence.

The environment was so extreme that a single misstep could lead to serious injury to them, which could give the other an advantage in the battle that could seal the outcome.

Lord Shenlong weathered the pressure that he was facing with raw durability alone. His body had grown smaller due to the compression of the ocean on his tissue, but not even the slightest ounce of pain could be sensed on his face.

He understood just how incredibly risky the current circumstances he was in were.

He could die.

And yet, he remained unfazed.

In fact, his blood boiled unlike it had in the past century.

For the first time in a long time, he felt danger.

He felt uncertainty.

It was the most thrilling excitement that he had enjoyed in the past year.

In that moment, he felt gratitude for the Dawnbringer.

Gratitude… and an irresistible desire to kill and consume him alive.

“You are mine, Rui Quarrier.”

It didn’t matter to him that he was underwater.

It didn’t matter to him that he was being compressed by an unfathomable amount of pressure and power.

He saw his goal.

And that was enough.

RUMBLE!!!!!

The world shook as the Dragon Emperor flapped his wings, pushing not just on the water but also on the very fabric of space and time. The cells in his body roared with power as the mitochondrial cold fusion reactors within each of them generated an unfathomable flood of power.

Despite the extraordinary drag that the water generated, the Dragon Emperor arrived before Rui in the blink of an eye, unleashing an extraordinarily powerful attack that swept the ocean along with it.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!!