The Martial Unity

The notion of Transcendent technology terrified Amare. Martial Transcendents could be regarded as absolutes in her eyes, the fact that there could be technology that could replicate their prowess was a dreadful scenario.

“In fact,” Rui continued. “It might be that certain other paths like the Technology Path of the tekvores can only reach Transcendence if their technology is Transcendent. So maybe it is inevitable.”

“Please don’t say that,” she heaved a sigh. “It doesn’t do much for my already dwindling sense of security.”

“Then we just have to break through to Transcendence.” Rui shrugged.

“And cease to exist?” Amare furrowed her eyebrows.

“I’m sure the same condition applies to anything that alters the information dimension to change reality,” Rui remarked. “Besides, like I said, we can get our hands on our own Transcendence Technology. Our MECHAs could become Transcendence even if wielded by a Martial Sage.”

That was even more unpleasant to hear, but she could see excitement glimmering in Rui’s eyes. He loved the idea of having such powerful foes to clash against despite the fact that Project Water’s goal was to adaptively evolve against any force. It seemed to contradict his desire to be have competition stimulate his growth and Martial Art.

“This is why you announced that broken Enlightenment of Self AI in the flora network recently, didn’t you?” Amare directed a pointed gaze at him, leaning forward on the table across him. “You want to create a flood of Martial Sages that pushes your power to the limit trying to enforce law and order upon them.”

Rui smiled with a mischief. “Well, that’s one of the motivations, but yes. That’s why I made that service available to all Martial Masters.”

It had sent shockwaves through the Martial World when the flora network in the Beast Domain had been complete with an available Enlightenment of Self bestower. Rui had immediately announced it to all the Martial Masters in the continent, five months ago, causing a maelstrom of chaos to occur within the Martial society shortly after the announcement was complete. Soon after, Martial Masters began running for the Beast Domain, in search of one of the organic neural interface centers that had been prepared just for them, and had immediately submerged themselves in the artificial intelligence.

Of course, a wave of breakthroughs had yet to occur, since it took more than a mere five months for the artificial intelligence to compute a Large Soul Model that allowed a Martial Master to gain Enlightenment of Self, but Rui prepared for a day when there were thousands of Martial Sages, and he knew that it wasn’t very far.

“I hate it,” she muttered as their food arrived, being served to them by a waiter. “I hate the very idea of enlightenment of self being bestowed upon a Martial Master by an artificial intelligence.”

“It will make our civilization stronger,” Rui offered, taking a bite of the meat before him. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t change how I feel,” she huffed with knitted eyebrows. “Do you know what I went through in order to break through to the Sage Realm? It was nothing short of torment and torture. It was the most difficult and painful period of my life.”

“I know.”

“You went through it too,” she insisted. “How many years did you torment yourself about who you were until you broke through?”

“Many,” Rui admitted.

“Doesn’t it frustrate you that there’s such an easy solution now?”

“Well, I created the solution, remember?” He raised an eyebrow with a light shrug. “I created the system of thought and I broke through because of it. Now I’m just giving an artificial intelligence created from it to everybody. It’s not fair that they have it so easy, but life is not fair.”

His smile grew excited. “I’m more interested in the outcome.”

With thousands of Martial Sages emerging from Martial Masters after a certain time period like butterflies emerging from their cocoons, Rui’s job would grow much harder. Subjugating the Martial World would demand more Martial power for him to achieve within a reasonable amount of time.

Even for Rui, keeping thousands of Martial Sages in check was not going to be easy. It made him feel a burning desire for more power even though he was already the strongest in the Panama Continent by a good margin. This, along with the arriving birth of his unborn daughter gave tremendous motivations to grow stronger.

He would make many enemies among many of the new Martial Sages as he tried to impose upon them a brutal regime of law and order when when the time arrived. There was no doubt that there would be many Martial Sages drunk on their newfound power who would harbor delusions of what they could get away with and what they could fight off. There would also be many new Martial Sages who would harbor the idea that they could defy Rui if they banded together in groups of hundreds.

Good, that was what he needed to stoke the fires of drive within him to push him even farther. It wasn’t entirely a selfish motivation either. With an explosion in the number of Martial Sages, there would be chaos within the continent until someone enforced law and order.

It was better for human civilization and it was better for himself. A win-win as far he was concerned. ‘Autocorpus will be especially useful for this task, for it will allow me to react without needing to think or decide. When dealing with countless threats across the entire continent, I will need that kind of decisiveness to fully subjugate everybody who dares to wreak havoc upon human civilization.’ Once his date with Amare in Metropolita ended, he immediately returned to the royal palace to finish his emperor duties as soon as possible, so that he could return to training his new project in the manifold. Soon enough, dusk arrived and Rui teleported away in the blink of an eye, all but eager to see Project Autocorpus to the very end.