The Martial Unity

Ria pushed through in the face of death as she rushed forward with a fully powered Death’s Sympathy attack. The faceless human, in turn, launched a powerful piercing jab aimed straight at her heart. An attack with so much power that if she didn’t abandon her own attack and focus on defense or evasion, she wouldn’t be able to deal with it.

Yet she pushed through even as time slowed down in her eyes.

She knew that if she wanted to save her friends, she would have to take down the faceless human as soon as she possibly could. She was betting on her ability to take down the faceless human before it could take her down.

That was the gambit that she had undertaken in order to save her friends in time.

WHOOSH

Her fist charged forth while the faceless human’s palm surged forward. The two attacks simultaneously charged towards the other, each aiming to end their target in one fell swoop.

SPLAT!!!

Her amber eyes widened as the creature’s palm pierced her chest, penetrating deeper and deeper towards her heart. Her own Death’s Sympathy attack, on the other hand, had yet to reach her opponent.

The faceless human had been just a beat quicker than her.

And that was enough.

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!!!

She felt piercing pain in her chest as the creature’s palm jab pressed right her rib cage, piercing through the flesh, before striking her heart. Her fist, armed with the Death’s Sympathy technique, faltered at the final moment upon the damage and pain she suffered.

BANG

It struck the faceless human’s skull powerlessly as her body went limp. Her muscles weakened, convulsing futilely as she gasped for air, struggling to breathe. Blood spewed from her heart, filling her chest, gushing out from her grave wound in an overwhelming manner. Her Realms of power flickered before eventually switching off. The damage to her heart and the loss of blood meant that she found it increasingly difficult to maintain her output of power, since pushing her body to the limit under those conditions would simply exacerbate her condition.

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT

The faceless human cruelly pushed its hand deeper and deeper into her chest, causing her to scream in pain as she struggled to endure the overwhelming agony. Unlike Martial Artists in the previous generations, she hadn’t built a powerful pain tolerance from the Body Evolution process. The overwhelming agony of the breakthrough to the Squire Realm was what had tempered Martial Artists into being able to maintain their output even if they faced grave dangers.

New-gen Martial Artists lacked that experience, and even if the safety of it meant that the number of successful Martial Squires was much higher, it also meant that they were much more brittle.

Ria may have been a Martial Master and a particularly powerful one at that, but she was only eighteen years old.

”AAARRRGHHH!” she screamed in pain as the faceless human’s hand dug deeper and deeper into her body, piercing her heart and more, before slowly emerging on the other side of her body, piercing its way out through her back.

Her face grew pale as blood drained from her otherwise flushed skin, making her look ill. Her breathing was unsteady and erratic, and her torn heart had stopped pumping blood, immediately causing her vision to blur at the very final moment.

She turned towards the faceless human with hazy eyes. Because it was faceless, one couldn’t discern what it was thinking from its face, but she could sense it with her mind sense and the cells in her body.

As far as it was concerned, it was simply discharging its duty.

Its duty to protect the manifold tree.

SPLAT

It extracted its arm from her chest, causing even more blood to gush from the wound in her chest as she simply collapsed, falling to the ground.

She had taken a gambit in order to save her friends, risking her own life for a hastened victory.

The gambit had failed.

THUD

She struck the ground heavily as her vision blurred, her consciousness slowly dimming. Time seemed to slow down as it was said to do when one approached death. Her brain activity spiked in contrast as the neurons in her brain fired aggressively. Her thoughts and emotions were scattered and messy, but more than anything, she felt a deep, bitter sense of regret.

’This is my fault.’

She knew that her team was nowhere near as strong as her, but she had still taken them to dangerous operations. She had still taken them to a manifold in an infected world knowing that there would be grave danger. She had been warned by plenty of people about how dangerous the operations would be, yet she had still taken them.

It was her fault that Sternon and Siliscia were dead.

It was her fault that Misha and Runark were dying.

It was her fault that she was dying.

’I… am too weak.’

Bitter, self-loathing regret was all she felt as she died.

’I wish… I was stronger.’

The culmination of her regrets crystallized in the form of a burning desire for power. Even as she was on the verge of death, her drive for power only grew stronger. It was as if it took death for her to understand just how important power was. The death of her friends and herself, all because she wasn’t strong enough to protect them, to save them, spurred on a greater desperation for power that was unlikely anything she had ever experienced.

And yet, drive alone couldn’t sustain her fading life, nor could it defy her impending death.

Soon, her body simply lay still, blood gently trickling out of her wounds as it spilled into her damaged exo-Martial suit, before eventually pouring onto the ground beneath her. Her amber eyes lost their light while her body remained motionless, leaving only the final embers of life within her.

Bitter regret consumed her crumbling mind as her mental activity began to become incoherent. Thoughts lost their structure, while emotions muddled into a maelstrom. At death, brain activity underwent changes that it would never undergo under any other circumstance. The death of the body and the impending death of the brain caused the neurological and psychological structures that cordoned off different parts of the mind to break down.

She lost awareness, plummeting towards death as a final thought flashed through her mind.

Ordinarily, that should have been the end.

She should have died then and there.

And yet, it was at that moment that her neural inlay suddenly experienced a spike in activity.

The neurons of the implanted organ suddenly began brimming with activity as electrical impulses began flashing between them.

Within the software of the neural inlay, a very specific program spontaneously activated.

One that Ria had long forgotten about.

[Initiating DEATH.exe]