The Martial Unity

While Rui thrashed the Sea Sovereign, the other observers to the battle were stunned by how one-sided the battle proved to be. Even Divine Mother ooo—o-, who had the most complete understanding of just how powerful he truly was, was stunned by how easily he dismantled another Administrator.

’Is he stronger than I realized? Was he holding back all of these battles?’ she couldn’t help but wonder. If that was the case, then it meant that she had to re-evaluate his combat prowess yet again. But having borne witness to his battle with three Divine Mothers and seeing how pressured he was, she felt like she hadn’t miscalculated his power.

Then why did he feel so much stronger than before?

She couldn’t have imagined that it was because he had grown stronger since his previous fight. Something that would have sounded ludicrous to the Divine Mother. But that was because she subconsciously hadn’t registered the implications of what it meant for him to have only broken through thirteen years ago.

He had only had three fights against fellow Transcendents. Each fight provided extremely valuable insights and experience with wielding the Martialverse in battle against a fellow Transcendent.

Most Administrators went through this phase rather early on thanks to them inheriting the know-hows of Verses from their senior peers as well as with their own time having been exposed to their own Verses and the information dimension. Rui, on the other hand, hadn’t spent as much time with the Verse.

This meant that he was in the early phase of growth as an Administrator. It was like climbing a mountain that grew steeper the higher one climbed. He was still at the base of the mountain, allowing his growth as an Administrator to be much more rapid than they would have imagined.

His combat prowess was on par with much more experienced Administrators, but that was not because his Martialverse was well-developed or he had mastered it to a great extent, but rather because his other Realms were extremely powerful by themselves and the Martialverse amplified the remaining Realms to a great degree.

Without Verses, he would be able to crush every single Divine Mother in battle rather effortlessly. They mistook his power without the Verse to belong to the power of his Verse, causing them to overestimate his maturity.

This was the crucial blunder that caused Divine Mother ooo—o- to underestimate his rate of growth. He didn’t grow like a man who had already matured into an adult, but rather he grew at the speed that infants grew, making noticeable progress over relatively short periods of time.

”Just. How. Powerful. Is. He. Without. His. Verse?” she couldn’t help but grow astonished.

Of course, she had familiarized herself with the concept of Paths and pathwalkers, but she didn’t fully comprehend how strong Rui was even before he broke through to the Transcendent Realm.

She knew that he was a Martial Sage and later a Transcendent Candidate and Corporeal, but she merely compared him to existing Martial Sages, Transcendent Candidates, and Corporeals, thinking he was in the same tier as them.

That was a profound mistake that an alien would not understand.

Only someone who had lived through human civilization during the height of his reign as the Dawnbringer would understand how much superior he was to everybody else around him. It was impossible for an alien to understand these nuances.

And it culminated in profoundly underestimating how much stronger he had gotten with each battle.

His current self could defeat his old self before his battle with three Divine Mothers. That self, in turn, could defeat his even older self when he fought two Divine Mothers in the Strehegeld Star System. Who, in turn, could defeat his old self who fought against o-o-o-o.

As she watched Sovereign Ar’amado get a thrashing of a lifetime, she knew that she would have to re-evaluate her opinion of this extraordinary Administrator once more.

She wasn’t the only one who was stunned by the outcome of this battle.

The dessandrites who had been happy, expecting that they would be able to gather information on just how this alien Administrator avoided the price of the Realm, were stunned into silence as they beheld the overwhelming dominance he displayed.

”This…” Lord Sheshank couldn’t help but mumble ultrasonically as he watched slowed-down clips and reports detailing the battle. ”How can an Administrator of a primitive species bully an Aquadite Sovereign this easily? Were they lying to us about being a small civilization?”

The gap between Administrators of greater and lesser civilizations was substantial. Even though the strength of the Verse didn’t necessarily change, everything that the Verses were built on top of was superior. Even considering the great power the Emperor of Water had displayed with his ambush, they still thought that an aquadite with an Oceanverse should have been able to pose a good fight against this alien Administrator.

Yet, they were clearly wrong.

Not only was the Sovereign of the Sea clearly inferior to the Emperor of Water, but he was so much inferior that it didn’t seem like he could even exhaust the alien Administrator. Yet, as stunned as the dessandrites were by this combat power, they were not as horrified as the aquadites, who grew utterly flabbergasted at the one-sided dominance in the battle.

”What?!” the S’rrigin shot to his feet with a horrified expression. ”What is this?! How is this possible? Is Ar’amado holding back?!”

”That doesn’t seem likely, Your Excellency,” one of his advisors gulped with fear. ”He looks like he’s giving it his all; our models on his personality and behavioral traits are also highly certain that he is giving it his all. But… it appears that the alien Administrator is too much for him.”

None of them could believe their eyes. Sovereigns of the Sea were their greatest and most exalted warriors, and they were being beaten black and blue by an alien Administrator. They gritted their teeth, watching with humiliation as the flow of the battle rankled their pride and trampled on their prestige.