The Martial Unity

Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have had a hard time defending against his attacks. The Divine Mother was, ultimately, still an Administrator. And her body was armed with cutting-edge Arakaian esoteric biotechnology. She could handle attacks from a Martial Transcendent under normal circumstances.

Except these weren’t normal circumstances.

Her body was in a critical state. The wound she had endured from the absurdly powerful attack that Rui had ambushed her with held her back. The sheer diameter of the circular hole in her abdomen was so large that it almost separated her upper body from that of her lower body.

It was the kind of wound that meant instant death for even the most resilient and tenacious life forms.

The only reason she and her sister managed to avoid that fate was thanks to their webverses.

They used their webverses to maintain the web of connection across severed tissue, even if that was physically impossible. Blood flowed through their body despite the massive wound, as did information through their nervous system, and so on and so forth.

They were using their webverses to keep themselves alive despite the wound.

They were using their webverses to heal the wound, and would have easily succeeded if not for Rui attacking them with the sole purpose of sabotaging their recovery.

BOOOM!!!

Divine Mother —oo-oo— gritted her teeth as Rui’s fist ravaged the wound once more, destroying her healing progress before launching a powerful death blow at her neck, hoping to decapitate her in the blink of an eye.

If not for the timely intervention of Divine Mother -o-, —oo-oo— would have died then and there.

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!!!

A net of webs converging on Rui forced him to defend against them, using his Martialverse to return them to liquid as he smoothly redirected them, before turning his attention back to Divine Mother -o-.

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!

”Rghh!” the Divine Mother gritted her teeth as she faced the same devastating attacks that Rui launched at her. ”You. Imbecile! How. Dare. You. Ambush. Us! How. Dare. You. Try. To. Kill. Us?!”

Rui smiled even as he unleashed a catastrophic offensive upon the wounded Divine Mother. ”What’s the matter, little spider? Are you scared?”

Her six eyes flared with rage at those words. Thanks to the research she had done into the memories of the humans she had captured, she knew what a spider was.

It was a taunt.

And unfortunately for her, it worked.

”You. Will. Pay. For. That, Emperor of Water!” She snarled, pushing herself to the limit as she attacked him.

”Fool! He’s. Trying. To. Make. You. Lose. Your. Temper!” Divine Mother —oo-oo— cursed her sister. ”Don’t. Give. Him. What. He. Wants!”

”Yes, that’s right, you should listen to your sister, baby Arachne,” Rui sneered at the Divine Mother provocatively. ”Run away like the spider you are!”

The six eyes of the hot-headed Divine Mother grew bloodshot with rage as she charged at him, her pincers banging against each other furiously.

CLICK CLICK CLICK!

”I. WILL. KILL. YOU!”

”The only thing a spider can kill is an insect,” Rui sneered even more. ”Come on, is that the best you can do, little spider?”

Rui knew from the intelligence that he had gathered from o-o-o-o’s mind that -o- was a hot-headed Divine Mother of the War Faction. She had pride and aggression, and she could very easily go off the rails when she lost her temper. He had borrowed a page from the Harbinger’s book and had made sure to continuously provoke her.

All so that she could avoid thinking rationally.

Because if she did think rationally, she would have realized that it was a trap. The fact that he had ambushed them alone should have told her that he was prepared for this battle. In her calmer moments, she might have remembered that for this ambush to have occurred, he would have needed to know in advance that they were in the Strehegeld Star System.

She would have inferred that he had some way of monitoring them and had likely prepared for this battle. If she had been calmer, she would have realized that the goal was to eliminate two Divine Mothers.

In order to prevent that, the two Divine Mothers should have done everything in their power to be as defensively solid in their coordination to heal their wounds as fast as they could so that they could take on the Emperor of Water when they were at their strongest.

But alas, -o- was not a rational actor.

Thus, she fell for the trap, instead lashing out at Rui with everything she had in a fit of rage.

WHOOSH

Divine Mother -o-’s eyes widened as her web stinger struck an empty image of Rui.

A feint.

Blinded by her rage, she had fallen for one of his most elementary techniques.

It was the blunder that cost her her life.

SPLAT

In one smooth lateral swing, Rui decapitated her, causing her head to separate from her body.

The cosmos began spinning as Divine Mother -o-’s head began rotating in space, slowly turning around.

The last thing she saw as the web of her consciousness faded was a smiling Rui. Rui’s ethereal eyes never left the Divine Mother’s body and head, making sure with all of his senses that she was actually dead.

”You… you are the Emperor of Water.”

Rui turned around to find Divine Mother —oo-oo— glaring at him with a murderous expression.

The wound on her torso had fully healed in the crucial moments that Rui had killed -o-. He slowly turned around to face the Divine Mother as the Transcendents stared at each other, sizing each other up.

Divine Mother —oo-oo— gritted her teeth as she stared at the battered and severed corpse of her younger sister. Even though she didn’t get along well with -o-, it didn’t change the fact that she was a Divine Mother. She was extremely important to Arakai Web Civilization.

Rui smiled at her in an infuriating manner, making her want to kill him with every ounce of her power.