The Martial Unity

”Ugh, so gross,” Ria couldn’t help but mutter under her breath.

She hated getting rid of her highly detailed, if range-limited senses. She would have never created the technique if she could get away with it, but the teachings of her father and the philosophy of his Martial Art had rubbed on her over the years.

’Be Water, my daughter,’ he would tell her. ’Always be prepared to adapt to the circumstances you find yourself in.’

In this situation, this was the best way to adaptively evolve, as far as she was capable of it.

WHOOSH…

Her perception of the world around her shifted radically as her resolution of the world around her grew pixelated in her eyes, while the boundary of her senses expanded forth violently, like the universe being born from a singularity with the Big Bang.

Suddenly, she could perceive a massive swathe of territory.

Her senses stretched thousands and thousands of kilometers in each direction, allowing her to cover so much distance that an entire section of the territory of the manifold had fallen within her sensory prowess.

But the euphoria in the range also came with the jarring disdain for how unclear it was. If before, she could distinguish the shape of a molecule and its atoms aligned themselves precisely, now she felt like she was half blind.

She could see stand over a mountain and see about a vast distance, but someone who was visually impaired would only see a blurry image of the scenery. They would certainly be able to distinguish the sky from the ground. They would be able to make out greenery from land, and note the shape of mountains. They would even be able to distinguish clouds from the blue sky they covered.

”There’s something out there…” Siliscia spoke with an uncertain tone. ”Something powerful.”

Her words were vague, of course, but it was a start.

”This place is dangerous, the trees tell me,” she continued, immersed in her harmonization with nature. ”No matter what direction we go, as long as we travel in any direction, we will inevitably run into greater and greater danger.”

Technically, this was mathematically true because the edges of the manifold were all connected at one point. So even if one ran away from danger, one would eventually get closer to it.

”If we are to get to the manifold tree in a short amount of time, then we will need to know exactly what direction it is in,” Misha remarked. ”It doesn’t have to extremely precise at the very start, but it will have to be more precise and accurate the closer we get to our target.”

Ria opened her eyes, before turning to her left and pointing.

”That way, I think.”

”I agree, nature warns of danger to our west,” Siliscia concurred, heaving a deep breath as she ended her harmonization with nature. ”We should travel in that direction, assuming of course that this manifold worked similarly to the Mellow Manifold and the Panama Manifold.”

Human civilization had only run into two manifolds, and both of them used increasing levels of danger to protect the manifold tree. The location of the manifold tree was the most dangerous spot in the entire manifold, they were quite confident of that. Dungeons got more and more dangerous when one got closer and closer towards their end, towards the treasure that they were trying to protect.

That was the model with which they profiling manifolds.

Seek danger.

Seek uncertainty.

Seek darkness.

”My senses were obscured more in that direction than in any other direction,” Ria replied, replacing the oxygen cell of her exo-Martial suit with another as it came close to ending. ”That must mean that there is a greater concentration of esoteric matter in that direction than any other.”

They could feel the esoteric matter in the ground around them, and they could feel how it altered the flow of information around them. Because esoteric matter interacted with the four fundamental forces in different ways, they impeded the flow of information that would otherwise ebb smoothly through ordinary baryonic matter.

”West it is, then,” Sternon nodded with a serious expression. ”Let’s get going. We don’t have time.”

This time, they didn’t jog or maintain a manageable pace.

They ran.

It was precisely for when they were in the manifold that they had brought all the rejuvenation potions, both mental and physical. They wanted to minimize the amount of time they spent resting within the manifold to ensure that every second was spent productively.

As they ran through the forest of the primitive multi-cellular trees, they quickly encountered their first non-vegetative multi-cellular organisms.

BZZZT BZZZT BZZZT

”Watch out,” Ria warned.

”What the heck are those?!” Runark frowned as he spotted a whole fleet of multi-cellular organisms. ”Are those… insects?!”

The similarities were hard to miss. They were clusters of up to a hundred cells that came together in a head, thorax, and abdomen, along with six appendangers that stuck out from it.

They even had wings, which was strange because the macrobes could float individually, why couldn’t they float collectively?

There were many questions, but not enough time for answers.

The five pathwalkers rushed forward unperturbed, immediately leaping into action.

BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG!!!

Runark was the first to land attacks. He shot forth with a blurring speed, his jabs reduced to blindingly fast hazes. Much to his surprise, the creatures exploded upon contact with his fist.

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!!!

”Ew,” his expression crumpled with disgust. ”If I knew they were this weak, I would have held back.”

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!

The other four utterly annihilated the insects, crushing them with singular attacks. Ria’s ordinary strikes struck them so devastatingly well that they were utterly vaporized.

”They have resistance to fire, but not to blunt force,” Ria remarked. ”Based on how well the macrobes outside the manifold handled my Muspelheim domain, let’s stick to purely physical attacks from this point forth. This is as easy as it will get. From this point forth, we will rush into greater and greater resistance.”