The Martial Unity

She heaved a sigh, shaking her head. ”Very well, do what you must. But I intend to stay involved. I wish to see the power of a Transcendent Craftsman myself. I’m sure the others will want to see it as well.”

”I have no intention of hiding my power,” Dwight calmly replied, turning back to the catalyzer machine. ”It would be good for all of us, including me, if we can get more Transcendents. I’ll gladly show you all of my power when I upgrade this machine.”

”How do you plan on upgrading it? That too without developing a new design altogether?” she asked with deep curiosity. ”Although I haven’t upgraded this machine since inventing it, it is still only a decade old. The upgrades I would apply would not be extremely significant. Not enough time has passed for that.”

”I am aware,” Dwight replied. ”The upgrades that I intend to apply will purely to leverage my Creationverse to improve the harmony of the structure in a variety of ways. I can also replace the materials of some of the components with superior or greater amounts. I can also straightforwardly improve the frame of this machine with a suitable invintium alloy once I have calculated a good replacement that will not require changing the internal design.”

Even though he was merely upgrading parts of it with his power, he still needed to be mindful of the blueprint of the machine. Dwarven machines were deeply interconnected. A change in one part of the machine would affect every other component. Dwarves pursued harmony even at the design level.

Thankfully, Dwight’s ability to impart harmony had become so great that he could make isolated changes without getting rid of harmony. And he was confident he could complete the task within the day.

”Alright, I will begin right now; tell everybody who wants to observe to come quickly.”

Steth frowned. ”What? You haven’t even created a draft blueprint for the upgrades. You haven’t prepared your quantum fabricator!”

Even Elder Sages like herself needed to form blueprints that detailed what they were changing. A good craftsman ran simulations on the predicted outcome and ensured that whatever changes they made were suitable. Materials needed to be prepared in advance; prototypes needed to be created to gather more data; these things couldn’t just be done on the fly.

Dwight simply smiled, stroking his long, white beard. ”You’ll understand when I show you. Now, tell the others to come quickly, or they will miss the first application of my power in service of the Bournyvrne Empire.”

Steth’s eyes grew intense as she grew more and more impatient to understand what kind of power the old dwarf had gained. She sent out a message to the rest of her peers, each of whom was an elder sage, informing them of what was happening. Although each of these august figures was deeply busy with their own projects, especially since two new infected worlds had been discovered in human civilization as well as the looming war, they still chose to put aside their work and be present for Dwight’s first operation.

Nearly eighty-four dwarves teleported to the storage wing of Dwight’s expansive forge, many of whom frowned at the realization that none of the many preparations needed to conduct an upgrade had been made.

”Dwi-Your Transcendence, why have you called us when you have not even prepared a workstation for this upgrade?” Elder Sage Forsynth, a male dwarf with a short, well-groomed beard, glared at the older craftsman. ”I was just about to commence a design session to develop a new World Bridge Gate now that we have gained more negatron matter.”

”I was working on a longsword commission for the Sage Vermillion of the Britannian Empire,” Elder Sage Dwarka, a woman who looked as old as Dwight, spoke with an equally indignant. ”You may have become an extremely impressive Transcendent, but making us wait while you make these preparations is disrespectful!”

”Calm down, my friends,” Elder Sage Serva, a dwarf with a composed demeanor, spoke with a relaxing voice, before turning towards Dwight. ”I’m sure Dwight would not have called us if it wasn’t truly worth it. Let us hear what he has to say.”

Dwight simply smiled at his former peers.

”I have nothing to say,” he calmly spoke to his friends and colleagues. ”But I do have a lot to show.”

He turned his back to them, facing the photonic phase induction catalyzer machine, before activating his power.

Dwarves didn’t possess ranks of power. They possessed Masteries. To them, the various potentials of the body, mind, and soul weren’t to be broken into the way Martial Artists did, but rather they were to be harnessed with an equal amount of disciplined expression. That was fundamentally what the dwarves did. They tapped into potentials through mastery and applied them through disciplined expression.

There was nothing to activate, normally, for their power was always active. While the Martial Hearts, Minds, and Souls of Martial Artists were temporal powers, dwarves utilized those potentials much more uniformly.

The difference came in the fact that dwarves did not make use of the Heart. Or rather, they didn’t possess the Heart. In humans and in Martial Artists, the heart represented the physical power possessed by the body that was subconsciously locked away in order to protect the body from its own power. It could only be harnessed in times of great distress.

The dwarves lacked this power. Their muscles were weaker than their bones, and their smaller size meant that it was impossible for them to truly hurt themselves; thus, their power was never restricted.

Instead, they replaced it with a different kind of bodily potential that no other race possessed.

The Nervous Realm.

Human nervous systems, when dissected, were a bunch of long strings that branched out into more long strings, but they could be counted reasonably.

The dwarven nervous system was as complex as the brain.

It was a web of nerves that ran across their body, creating an almost separate consciousness. Mastering this power was what constituted the equivalent of both the Squire and Senior Realm; it was the bodily power that craftsmen needed to master before they moved on to the mind and the soul.