The Martial Unity

His feet were vibrating ever so slightly, but powerfully. He was using earth-bending to keep the creatures from reaching Ria from underground. It meant that they constantly needed to keep their feet on the ground at all times. Even a single moment of flight from all three could lead to Ria’s capture.

CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK!!!!!

A nauseating cacophony of clicks emerged from the homoarachnoids as they swarmed, drawing closer and closer. Their six eyes were… maddened.

Their expressions were almost delirious.

As if they weren’t in the right state of mind.

As if they were being controlled.

Their eyes never once shifted away from Ria.

They charged.

An ocean of homoarachnoids charged on one and only one target. Millions of stingers shot towards Ria, unleashing a tide that could only be described as a tide of webs. A tsunami, a literal tsunami of webbing, erupted from the hundreds of millions of homoarachnoids, threatening to drown the triangle of defense in a mountain of web.

It should have been an overwhelming victory.

It should have been an overwhelming defeat for those who stood between them and their target.

And yet, it wasn’t.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!

The three pathwalkers exploded into battle with ferocious power as they rushed forth with fierce determination. Arastia flung her hands out as a storm of blood emerged seemingly from thin air.

”Abyssal Blood Storm.”

First, it was mist.

Then, it was raining.

Then, it became a river of blood spiralling around her as she charged forth towards the incoming wave of webs.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

The blood churned against the tsunami of webbing, eroding at it, blood cell by blood cell. Arastia gritted her teeth as the blood-red dwarf stars in her shone with blinding brightness.

Individually, she could effortlessly crush each and every single homoarachnoid.

And yet, when they pooled their power together, they could mount an attack so powerful that even she couldn’t afford to hold back.

Ordinarily, she could dodge such a vast and slow attack.

But not this time. Ria was unconscious and wounded.

That meant that Arastia would have to become nothing short of an unyielding pillar of defense. This was despite the fact that she was exhausted in her battles against the black-furred homoarachnoid and against the Blood Cult traitors.

Yet, for Ria, there was nothing Arastia wouldn’t do.

”Blood Plasma.”

She burned lifespan to compensate for her lack of stamina as cracks of blood emerged across her body in a perilous manner. Her blood went from being a powerful biotechnological superfluid to its own form of energy, plasmic energy.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

The hurricane of blood that erupted around her ravaged the tsunami of webbing, keeping it at bay.

It eroded past the attacks, churning at the army of the homoarachnoids that charged forth like maddened monsters.

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!!!

Every homoarachnoid that was touched by the expanding hurricane of blood plasma was churned into a paste.

She churned them into organic compounds, which served as fuel for creating new blood cells, causing the blood hurricane to grow vastly larger. The Blood Empress held her sector well and strong, refusing to allow any of them to get closer.

Sage Sayfeel didn’t adopt as violent a stance as the Blood Empress. He wasn’t as strong as her, and thus the triangle of the army he fended off was smaller.

And yet, the Sovereign of Shadows drowned the entire battlefield of darkness. Entire legions of homoarachnoids froze as they found themselves drowned in shadows, completely incapacitated.

FLICK

FLICK

FLICK

FLICK

FLICK

He nicked them with his dagger, spreading the shadow gu poison that laced his blade into them, requiring only to inflict them with a single wound in order to kill them instantly. It allowed him to minimize the effort of killing, focusing more on quantity rather than intensity.

”Death is a Shadow.”

The enlightenment brought him one step closer to Transcendence. Indeed, he had become a shadow of death that spread across the battlefield steadily, serving as a powerful buffer that protected Ria by ensuring that not a single attack or homoarachnoid could reach Ria.

Kane, on the other hand, kept it simple.

”Just kill them fast.” He shrugged.

And that was exactly what he did. Even without the superluminal warp drive, he could still move at astronomical velocities, approaching the very threshold of the speed of light that, without space-time manipulation, was the cosmic threshold that no entity could surpass.

He became a flash of death.

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!!!

His corporeal consciousness allowed him to mobilize the negatron matter in ways that, rather than trying to seize full control of the space-time fluctuations that the virus generated to keep him grounded, merely stabilized space and time enough for regular warping to function, allowing him to accelerate through the battlefield at blinding speeds.

Unlike Arastia and even Sayfeel, he didn’t have widespread attacks.

He had to intercept billions of attacks every second.

Fight tens of battles, many of which were against entities that were as strong as Martial Sages.

It was a realm of simultaneity that should have been impossible for any one person fighting with just his daggers.

And yet, Kane did it.

He was reduced to a green flash.

A green fuzz that spread across the battlefield, as if he were a walking wave function.

The sheer speed at which they rushed through the ranks of the battle, trying to assassinate each and every single homoarachnoid beggared the imagination.

Such was the power of a Martial Corporeal.

It was a Realm that bridged the Sage Realm to the Transcendent Realm.

It was a realm that bridged materia with information.

It was the new frontier of Martial Art below Transcendence.

It was the answer.

The answer to ’how can Martial Artists remain relevant against the Blood Path and the generation of miracles?’

A new realm of power, pioneered by the Emperor of Water, and systematized by those who followed after. The Corporeal Realm was the solution that Martial Artists accepted, becoming stronger than outdated and diluted Martial Sages, while still pursuing the almost mythical Transcendent Realm.

RUMBLE!!!!!

The world shook violently as a turquoise ocean of homorarachnoids waged war against the triangle of protection around Ria.