The Martial Unity

The Armor of Flowing Wisdom was unlike anything Rui had ever seen before. All the prior armors that Dwight had fabricated for him were entirely physical and material, with the sole purpose of being as durable as they possibly could to withstand Transcendent combat. It took ten failures for the elder dwarf to realize that this fundamental approach was what was mistaken.

No physical material that humans had ever developed could possibly withstand the power of a verse.

In order to build an armor for a Transcendent, it would have to be a Transcendent armor.

Rui’s ethereal eyes sharpened as he activated his Martialverse.

Suddenly, the world around them grew… watery. Almost as if reality itself was an image dancing on the fluctuating surface of a lake, waiting to be dispelled with a single disruption. Yet, Rui didn’t focus on amending reality around him, no.

He directed his Waterverse towards the armor.

He wanted to see what would happen if he subjected it to his power.

To his surprise, the moment his water touched the armor, it slowed down, just a little.

”What…?” Rui’s ethereal eyes widened with shock. ”That’s impossible.”

Yet, as he spread his consciousness across the armor, he found himself slowing down, as if he had hit a mild speedbreaker that mildly limited how quickly he could alter reality. The armor itself shifted, growing more aligned with his phenomenological uniformity, becoming more and more one with Water.

Just the fact that it could slightly impede him made him grow stunned; it made him grow engrossed in the armor, trying to understand exactly how it worked. A good analogy to the sensation of trying to apply his Martialverse to the armor was like trying to run through a wall made up of balloons. Such a wall would not be able to stop a full-grown man from running through it, but the balloons would still be able to slow him down a little, even if they burst in the process of him barreling through them.

That’s what applying his Martialverse to the armor felt like. Not that he was being stopped, not even close. But he was being stalled in his rearrangement of reality.

Only then did he finally understand what was happening.

”It’s the information density and the uncollapsed wave functions that are slowing me down,” he mumbled with a stunned tone. ”They’re a little more annoying to manipulate with my Martialverse.”

In order for his Martialverse to alter reality, it would necessarily need to collapse it. However, every particle in the Armor of Flowing Wisdom had an uncollapsed wave function. Quadrillions, if not more, such particles had wave functions that were entirely uncollapsed, and he needed to manually collapse each and every single one of them before he could alter them with his Martialverse.

And a particle in superposition essentially had every single possible reality manifested in some sort of quasi reality, where the particle was essentially smudged across all possible states. Observation required Rui to process all those states, which multiplied the information that he needed to process by thousands, massively increasing the burden of information.

This was the speed bump that slowed him down a little; even for a consciousness made up of light, it would take at least a femtosecond to process all of that.

Essentially, the armor taxed his Martialverse with probabilities and information.

Elder Sage Dwight grinned with ecstasy, thoroughly pleased at the Martial Transcendent’s reaction. ”Hehehe! When you told me about the information dimension, phenomenological uniformity, and the Transcendent Realm in general, I postulated that there were likely mechanics that governed the mechanics of Transcendent power. I hypothesized that information was likely the burden that the Martialverse bore. Which led me to believe that an armor of information might be more effective against Transcendent power than an armor of invintium.”

Rui withdrew his power from the armor, watching it with great curiosity. ”…You are a genius. You are probably the first patwalker to ever create something that could pose even the mildest of impediments to a Martial Transcendent.”

Rui meant every word he said. Dwarves were the most intelligent of the eight human races, but this still vastly exceeded what Rui had imagined. He truly couldn’t believe that a normal dwarf had managed to engineer information itself to create a product that was useful to a Martial Transcendent.

And useful it was.

Although it didn’t sound like much, any technological impediment to Transcendent power was priceless, as far as Rui was concerned. He was certain that not even the laminar integuments had technology that could impede Martial Transcendants.

Battles between Transcendents could get extremely close. If an enemy ever targeted a blind spot with their verse, then the armor could slow them down just enough for Rui’s reflexes to defend in time with his Verse.

Of course, based on his experience fighting the Divine Mothers, they relied on their verse to empower physical attacks at him, rather than directly using their verses to attack him, but it was always an option they had and had attempted when they thought they could get away with it. With this armor, however, he could be much less worried about the Transcendent opponents using their verses to directly attack his information.

Furthermore, as he withdrew his Martialverse from the armor, he noticed that it returned to its prior state. Meaning that it wasn’t a one-time use either. The armor had an inner lining of a Transcendent-grade esoteric that interacted with the particles in such a manner that it restored them to their prior state of quantum superposition.

”I am honored to hear that, Your Majesty,” the elder dwarf beamed with pride. ”I had to develop several new technologies just to conceive of this armor. Now then, staring at it from a distance. Why don’t you don it?”

Rui nodded with a serious expression.

”Let’s do it.”

He eagerly accepted the dwarf’s offer, quickly preparing the armor for wearing. Because of the armor’s complicated nature, even wearing it proved to be a more elaborate process. But soon enough, he got it on.