The Martial Unity

Even as Rui was consumed with an unfathomable amount of force and heat, he finally managed to glean deeper insights into how Divine Mothers fought. Time slowed down to an unfathomable crawl. Even a point-blank attack that was boiling the quarks in his body was reduced to a slow-motion phenomenon.

It was a euphoric eureka moment that contrasted with the sheer amount of danger that he was in.

’Divine Mothers primarily fight by manipulating the four fundamental forces of the universe.’

It was the only commonality between all three Divine Mothers that he had seen fight. Most commonly, they manipulated the electromagnetic force and the gravitational force. But Divine Mother —oo-oo— even used the Strong Nuclear Force against him.

Since forces were webs, they were innately very compatible to be manipulated by the Webverse.

’Thematic compatibility…’ Rui’s ethereal eyes widened as a realization dawned on him. ’Yes… this was a puzzle piece I was missing. Thematic compatibility. That’s why these Divine Mothers are so strong with their Webverses even though I’m a stronger warrior.’

It was hard to describe to somebody who wasn’t a Transcendent just how much of an unknown Transcendent combat was to Rui.

In his entire life, he had only had two Transcendent fights.

The second one had yet to finish.

The absence of this crucial experience, the experience of fighting against peers, had prevented him from learning the basics. The bread and butter.

In his fight with Divine Mother o-o-o-o, Rui had learned to ’do more with less.’ It was a very useful principle that taught him that the Martialverse was fundamentally different from the other Realms.

Prior to that, he had been subconsciously thinking of the Martialverse as a domain, and that was a mistake. The Martialverse was closer to a scalpel. That first battle had taught him important insights into how to properly use his Martialverse more efficiently.

This second battle, however, taught him that he was only just scratching the surface.

Rui used his Martialverse indiscriminately, uncaring of what the target was.

The Divine Mothers, on the other hand, used their Webverses like carefully chosen paintbrushes for a specific color, for specific strokes, for a given canvas. Some brushes were extremely fit for some kinds of strokes, and not others.

One would not use a fine brush for broad strokes and color filling.

One would not use a thick brush for fine detail.

The Transcendent Realm could be used to tinker with all kinds of aspects of reality, but it was not equally good at everything. The Divine Mothers clearly had some kind of implicit shared wisdom that the Webverse was more effective at being applied to manipulate phenomena that were closer to a web than others that weren’t.

It could be thought of as distance.

Indeed, one could say, and even believe, that everything was Water or a Web, but that didn’t mean everything was equally water or a web.

Liquid water was more Water than anything else was Water. Using his Martialverse to alter the nature of water was easier than anything else. All this time, Rui had been applying his Martialverse to basically everything, forcing it to significantly diverge from its objective nature to how he saw it in his phenomenological uniformity.

That wasn’t the only insight he had derived.

’The Transcendent Realm is not infinitely flexible or diverse in how it can alter reality.’

As in, if Rui applied the Martialverse to a rock, the outcomes would be different than if Divine Mother —oo-oo— applied her webverse to a rock.

He would not be able to replicate the effects that her webverse would have on the rock. Nor would she be able to replicate the effects of his Martialverse on the rock. He hadn’t realized just how important this distinction was until he had two battles with a completely different kind of Transcendent.

So far, he had directly experienced only three kinds of Transcendent beings, and had only managed to battle one: the Divine Mothers. He hadn’t even had the opportunity to fight another Martial Transcendent since he was the only Martial Transcendent, for now.

But just two battles had opened up so many insights into how the Transcendent Realm worked in combat with another peer.

Do more with less. Focus on what one’s Verse is compatible with. Although a Verse could affect everything, different verses had different effects.

These precious insights that he had been blind to prior only confirmed what he had already strongly suspected.

’I am a novice, and I still have so much to learn about the Transcendent Realm.’

Perhaps someone else would have grown dismayed at that realization, but not Rui. On his face emerged a youthful smile of eagerness and curiosity. It was the same kind of smile he had had when he first saw Martial Art for the first time after being reincarnated.

A whole universe for him to explore.

It was waiting.

It beckoned him.

How could he resist?

When he opened his eyes, he returned to the predicament that he was in. Drowning at the epicenter of the most overwhelming explosion he had ever been hit with from the day he was born. Not even being at the center of a star compared to the astronomical amount of power that Divine Mother —oo-oo— unleashed upon him.

Of course, being crushed at the epicenter of the star as it was being turned into a black hole while it was undergoing a supernova would have been number one, if not for the fact that he had managed to dodge that entire attack from o-o-o-o thanks to a last-minute discrete Martialverse-teleportation.

This time, the attack had already hit.

It was inevitable.

Etherea Corpa wouldn’t work, for any attempt at manipulating the Higgs field amidst the sheer amount of excitations it underwent. No amount of invintium from primordial matter would help against an attack of this magnitude, nor would any other esoteric substance in his arsenal.

There was no escaping it.

The unfettered destruction consumed him alive.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!

RUMBLE!!!!!