The Martial Unity

Rui’s expression was filled with horror as he saw countless humanoid blobs take on the shape of dead Martial Sages.

Many of whom he recognized.

The Hugging Hegemon, the Whispering Widower, the Tempestuous Fortress, and many more. They were identical to what he remembered of them.

Entirely unchanged until the moment of their death.

“You’ve grown, my grandson.”

He felt a surge of emotion when he saw Matriarch Nephi.

She was as he remembered her. Her expression was stern and grumpy, while her eyes were sharp and distrustful. A life of her family on the run for those who hunted their ilk alive for prophecy had left a scar on her. When he gazed into the depths of her eyes, he sensed the essence of her soul.

It was as if he were staring at his grandmother herself in the flesh.

“…Impossible.” His voice shook. “You are dead. All of you are dead!”

How in the world did the alien virus get its hands on the information about their existence? How in the world could it reconstruct them so accurately that even his extraordinary senses could not distinguish any differences?

The Demon of Asmodeous stirred at those words as his dark eyes glinted with a deathly tint.

“Death…” He whispered. “I thought so too. But only now do I realize… that true death does not occur at the realm of materia. No… true death…”

His pitch-black eyes flared with bloodlust. “…occurs at the realm of information.”

His tone grew inhumanly murderous.

An alien bloodlust that didn’t belong to the Gaian Tree of Life.

“That is the kind of death that w̵͔͎̼͚̠͈̰͚̭͆͊̏̎͒̍̒͝ȩ̴̛̭̞͔̱͚ will give you.”

His voice distorted when he uttered the word we.

It is distorted in reality itself.

As if the entity he referred to was such a complicated existence that a singular syllable couldn’t represent its existence.

“Prepare for Death.” The Martial Sages of the past charged forth towards Rui with a ferocious bloodlust.

Even his grandmother.

Her face was contorted with an unfathomable and alien malice.

And yet, the damage it did to his emotions exceeded the damage it was capable of doing to his body.

“I’m not as weak as I was when all of you knew me.”

His ethereal eyes flared with emotion.

RUMBLE!!!!!

The Martial Sages froze as they felt the surge of power emanating from the depths of his body. WHOOSH

In the blink of an eye, he emerged behind them.

For a moment, nothing happened.

And then.

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!!!

A vast majority of them grew consumed with the poison of Yin and Yang, exploding into blobs of primordial seed.

Only a few managed to survive it.

“You have grown unfathomably strong.” Matriarch Nephi remarked with a hint of satisfaction. “As expected of Lord Virodhabhasa. And…”

A smile emerged on her face.

“As expected of my grandson.”

His expression crumpled at those words.

“…I’m sorry, Grandma.”

His tone was one of guilt and sorrow. He still blamed his own shortcomings for the battles that led to her death, and now the sequence of events. “Nonsense,” she snorted. “My death is my fault and my fault alone. You don’t get to take credit for it.”

Her eyes sharpened. “Focus on the future, not the past. That is the purpose of prophecy.”

SPLAT!

She returned to a blob of primordial seed, leaving him moved where he stood.

“This…” The Demon of Asmodeous widened his eyes with awe. “This poison. You have mastered my gu poison. You have elevated it to a new dimension of death.”

His body began growing black and white as the combined power of the gu and white blood cells overwhelmed even his immense poison resistance.

“You have mastered Death, Rui Quarrier.”

SPLAT

He, too, returned to a splatter of primordial seed that returned to the lake.

“…”

For a moment, nothing happened.

The air grew silent.

The atmosphere grew profoundly still.

Rui remained still.

A single chilling whisper escaped him.

“How dare you?”

RUMBLE!!!!!

His eyes flared with rage and emotion as his expression crumpled with a murderous bloodlust.

“How dare you defile the memories of the dead?”

He gritted his teeth.

“How dare you insult the memory of my grandmother?”

RUMBLE!!!!!

“Of my allies and friends?”

RUMBLE!!!!!

His ethereal eyes flared with venomous hatred.

“I will destroy you.”

RUMBLE!!!!!

“I will exterminate your existence in this universe.”

RUMBLE!!!!!

As if in response to his anger and hatred, and to the unfathomable power he radiated, the entirety of the chamber of creation rumbled as the primordial lake shifted once more.

Rui gritted his teeth as more humanoid figures began emerging from it.

An extraordinary amount of peril began radiating from each of the figures as they began taking shape.

RUMBLE!!!!!

A large amount of primordial seed began converging into a singular figure.

A dragon.

A dragon with corrosive red scales that radiated boundless gamma radiation that eroded the very fabric of the world around it, corrupting it with its presence.

Rui’s expression crumpled with reckoning as he recognized it.

“The Dragon Emperor.”

The dragon came to life once more, opening its reptilian eyes as a chilling smile of horrifying malice emerged on its face.

“We meet again, Dawnbringer.”

The alien virus had resurrected a top-ten powerhouse.

And not just one.

Another blob turned into an ethereal figure so transparent that it was almost invisible, as if it existed in a dimension of its own.

“I must say…”

The smooth, ethereal voice of Anthea hung in the air. “…I did not expect you to harness my power to this extent.”

The former Supreme Commander of the Evolutionary Army.

His existence was even more ephemeral than Rui’s, as if he existed in an even higher plane of existence.

That wasn’t all.

Rui’s expression crumpled with reckoning even more as the third entity was formed.

A quantum computer.

[Computing battle and circumstantial analysis. Probability of your death: 97.7%. ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ]

Three of the top ten powerhouses that he had fought, defeated, and killed in the past had been fully restored to their absolute peaks. It was a realm of resurrection that was astronomically above anything that even Rui was capable of, anything that he could even fathom.

It was a realm of resurrection that lay with the gods.

It showed him just how unfathomably beyond him the alien virus was. RUMBLE!!!!!

The world shook as all three powerhouses attacked him with a boundless, alien bloodlust.