The Martial Unity

In —ooo—’s vision, the world around her completely changed.

She was surrounded by a darkness that was unlike anything she had ever seen. Even though there was no light, she could faintly detect that the darkness around her had contours. A familiar appendage hung down in front of her, causing her to have a sense of delight.

”My. Tail! So. This. Is. Where. It. Was.”

Is what she wanted to say, but couldn’t make a sound with her pincers. She studied the world around her with a deep sense of apprehension and confusion. She didn’t understand what was happening.

But the contours of the darkness in front of her were familiar. She could sense a figure that was glitching in a particularly memorable manner.

”You!” Her six eyes widened with shock.

She could distinctly feel that the ’weight’ of his presence was shifting rapidly back and forth, like an object shifting back and forth between transparent and opaque. Only then did she have some understanding of what was happening.

”He’s. Shifting. Back. And. Forth. This. Place. And. The. Real. World!” she gasped, once again, not making any sound.

She gazed around as she grew more familiar with this strange environment. It wasn’t just him that she recognized. She could see contours of the ruins of Planet Nest VII that had been destroyed when the Emperor ambushed o-ooooo. She could see the contours of the two blue giant stars at the center of the star system.

It was as though this place was some kind of layer of darkness that everything extended into. Sort of like if someone placed a black cloth on top of objects, causing the cloth to deform in the shape of those objects.

She appeared to be thrust between different layers of reality.

It was beyond her comprehension.

BZZZT BZZZT BZZZT

The flickering figure of the Emperor of Water moved towards her, causing her to recoil in alarm. Yet, he seemed to tunnel through reality, his fist flying through space itself, creating an unavoidable blow.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

She could feel the devastating impact in both segments of her body. This time, in the primary dimensions of reality, her body had disappeared entirely.

WHOOSH

Some distance away, both o—o and —ooo— grew utterly horrified that the entire existence of their sister had completely disappeared!

First, it was her web stinger.

Then it was her arm.

Then her head.

And now, the Divine Mother as a whole was banished from reality.

WHOOSH

Rui’s existence stabilized as he finally stopped glitching, his ethereal eyes still glowing with power.

He turned towards the two Divine Mothers with an expression of gratitude. ”You have helped discover a new Realm of power.”

A sprinkle of mischief entered his voice and eyes.

”As a token of my gratitude, I will repay that favor by letting you experience that power yourselves.”

He shot towards o—o with a grin on his face, causing the Divine Mother to run away from him as fast as he chased. She had absolutely not even the slightest fathoming of what was happening, but seeing her headless sister’s body struggle without a head before disappearing had been traumatizing. She didn’t want any part of that.

”No! Stay. Away! Don’t. Come. Here!”

”Hehe, don’t you want to see your sister? Come, I’ll take you there!”

She gritted her teeth, volleying web artillery at him with her web stinger one after another even as she ran away. The good news was that with —ooo— gone, o-ooooo only had to amplify the Verse of one Divine Mother, allowing both of them to last longer.

Yet, every attack she launched at him disappeared upon contact. Even though the web was extremely sticky and amplified with her Webverse, it simply disappeared from reality as if it was paying the price for Transcendence.

Furthermore, Rui’s motions were strange.

He was rushing towards her, running on the fabric of space itself. But each step he took seemed to… cover seven times as much distance as it would normally, causing him to move even faster than light despite the fact that he wasn’t using a warp drive!

This was utterly shocking to both Divine Mothers. Superluminal speeds weren’t a big deal, but they required negatron matter to warp space and time to allow that to happen or to use a Verse to violate the laws of physics.

Rui was doing neither.

In the first place, the interdiction field prevented warp drives from working.

And they could see that he wasn’t using Martialverse to move faster than light.

He just… ran faster than light.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

A devastating blow to the abdomen caused Divine Mother o—o to vomit blood. His strike was multiple times heavier than what it should have been. But the most horrifying part was that when she looked at her midsection… it was completely gone!

”What?!” She stared at the empty region of space between her upper body and lower body.

Despite there being an empty region of space, she could feel her midsection. Her brain still received signals from the nerves in the disappeared flesh even though it was missing. And yet, she couldn’t even sense it in the information dimension.

Before she could even utter another word of surprise, Rui caught her head in the blink of an eye before activating his magic trick. He used the Martialverse to allow matter and energy to flow between the three primary dimensions and the remaining eighteen higher dimensions.

This was a very crude application of his Martialverse, but it was the best he could do. The truth was that he didn’t know very much about String Theory or higher dimensions. So any solution he created would be like a caveman beating a door open with a club, rather than an infiltrator picking the lock to the door.

This was the best part of the Verse. He could rewrite reality as long as the rewriting was consistent with his phenomenological uniformity.

And it worked.

WHOOSH

O—o disappeared in the blink of an eye.

BZZZT BZZZT BZZZT

His body started uncontrollably flickering again as he glanced at his glitching hands with an expression of dissatisfaction. ”I’ll need to figure this out when I get home.”