The Martial Unity

The three Divine Mothers shifted their postures when they resigned at the extravagant goal of catching him alive. Divine Mother o-ooooo heaved a tired, frustrated breath as she stepped away from the Armor of Flowing Wisdom with a profoundly wary gaze at the halo of energy around the Emperor of Water.

It was impossible to manipulate the man’s mind. In that case, it was better to shift gears. If her mind manipulation couldn’t be used for offensive power, then she would use it for other purposes.

In truth, she was not an offensive combatant at all. The reason she had attacked Rui anyway was that she felt profoundly violated by him skimming through her mind web. A mental violation of this kind was much, much worse than even physical violations, as far as the Divine Mother was concerned. She had wanted to take revenge, but his armor was enough to at least impede her very well. She simply had not expected that three Divine Mothers would not be enough.

But now that they had seen just how powerful his nominal strength was, she would not mess around.

She decided to use her power the way she normally did.

The three sisters seemed coordinated as they moved. O-ooooo voluntarily floated away, allowing the two other Mothers to come forward, positioning themselves between Divine Mother O-ooooo and the Emperor of Water.

Rui sharpened his eyes at the sight. ’They know each other well. They have a good understanding of how to participate in a fight with each other.’

Then, Divine Mother o-ooooo’s Webverse shifted.

Rui’s eyes sharpened as he felt an acute sense of danger for the first time since the battle began. Primordial Instinct was a well-honed technique that he had used for more than a century at this point. It could smell danger from a light-year away.

And right now, it was screaming to him that he was in a lot of danger.

Divine Mother o-ooooo spread her consciousness through the information dimension with her phenomenological uniformity, allowing it to flow over the integrated information of her two sisters.

Rui looked surprised at that. Doing that was no different from surrendering all sovereignty and control over one’s own mind, both conscious and subconscious. Their entire mind webs were at the mercy of their sister. He wasn’t sure he trusted anybody with such a degree of control over him, yet the two sisters didn’t seem to have any compunctions about allowing their sister to ruffle through their minds.

o-ooooo heaved a deep breath once she saturated their mind webs with her Webverse, before her pincers clicked just twice.

CLICK CLICK

”Verse. Amplication.”

His eyes widened with shock as the minds of the two Divine Mothers suddenly spiked with activity, reaching extraordinary heights. More than that, however, he could feel that even their Webverses spiked with an astronomical amount of power.

His expression lit up with equal parts of alarm and wonder.

Alarm because his sense of danger was screaming.

Wonder because he understood what the Divine Mother had done.

’She didn’t just amplify the volume of their consciousness,’ he realized. ’She amplified it without disrupting their phenomenological uniformity!’

It was as qualitative an improvement as when he shifted his brain away from bio-eletrical computing to bio-photonic computing. Her Webverse was specialized in minds. Most models of minds were innately webs, which were very much within her domain. She found a way to provide such a massive qualitative boost in processing power to her peers, albeit temporary, by increasing their integrated information while preserving the phenomenological uniformity.

’And she’s supposed to be low-level?!’ Alarm flashed through his mind.

RUMBLE!!!!!

The information dimension shook as two massive Webverses, vastly superior to his own upon being amplified, weighed upon all of reality. Even though he had used his own Martialverse highly efficiently within his own body, he could feel that even this concentrated focus of his Verse was not enough to prevent their Webverses from infringing upon his body.

RUMBLE!!!!!

His expression grew grave, his facial muscles taut with effort. It took him every ounce of concentration just trying to prevent them from completely seizing control of the information of his body.

And even then, his success was only partial. If not for the Armor of Flowing Wisdom, they would definitely have been able to paralyze him, either partially or wholly. As it was, the armor also struggled to withstand its power. It was no longer able to serve as a wall, thereby being reduced to a screen that could at most weaken their power a little before it entered its liege’s mind.

As impressive an artifact as it was, it was not strong enough to withstand two amplified Divine Mothers.

”Rgh…!” He gritted his teeth as he felt the web of fascial connective tissue that was spread across his body start to weaken. He also felt the web of cells that comprised his existence weaken, threatening to simply separate from each other, causing him to disintegrate.

At the same time, they infringed on his brain more successfully than o-ooooo did, giving him great alarm. He wasn’t able to prevent them from accessing some of his memories. All he could do was choose which memories to protect.

The first thing he chose to protect was all information about Ria. In fact, he used Soul Retcon to seal all memories of Ria deep within his mind. In fact, he went even further and simply erased them. He could not risk the Divine Mothers learning of Ria from his memories, since he had known she was the Key for the past thirteen years. As much as deleting his memories of her was excruciating, he knew he had a backup.

His corporeal consciousness had experienced every moment he had experienced with his daughter, since he had developed the technique while Amare was pregnant. It had identical memories as he did. He could use those memories as a backup after the battle was over.

He also protected memories regarding the secret to overcoming the price of the Transcendent Realm. All strategic information about human civilization was also safely sealed away.

However, Divine Mothers o—o and —ooo— did not try to access information. They were not specialized in mental manipulation the way o-ooooo was. Instead, they accessed his mind for one and only one reason.

To weaken it.