The Martial Unity

Chapter 3454: A Trail of Chaos

The darkness of the forests of Kiriket seemed to come alive as Rui and Amare traveled deeper and deeper within the continent. An uncomfortable chill hung in the air, along with the whistles of cricket, the rustling of leaves, and the swaying of trees in the breeze that swept over the forest they were in. A constant sense of danger and peril hung in the air, one that made even Rui and Amare cautious, strong as they were. Despite their powerful senses, there wasn’t even the slightest shadow of a doubt that the forest was not welcoming of any life form that sought to survive.

What they found eerie was that there were no border patrol outposts manned by therianthrope officials. Not knowing where such natural and basic surveillance infrastructure was was rather unnerving, since the uncertainty increased the probability that they could be detected, triggering a wave of beasts so enormous that it would make the Beast Incursion look tame.

Rui’s pitch-black eyes sharpened as his senses swept tens, hundreds, and even thousands of kilometers, searching for beasts and mosnters. The sheer amount of fauna spread across the entire forest was dizzyingly high, so much so that even Rui found it challenging to parse and process all of them. He merely limited himself to processing the their sensory prowess and their threat-level.

The former was more important than the latter, as far as he was concerned. After all, sensory prowess had absolutely no correlation with how ’powerful’ a species was. It was entirely possible for a creature top be pathetically weak and fragile, but possess the power to detect Rui’s presence despite his stealth.

Indeed, some of the most insignificant insects, such as flies, in the world possessed a sense of smell so powerful that they could accurately detect mates from more than a thousand kilometers away.

Rui’s eyes widened as he shifted his attention to the insects in the forest that he had dismissed as irrelevant. ’Could it be...? They don’t need a surveillance outpost due to the fact that all the insects in this forest, perhaps even all the creatures in this forest are natural border patrol that can be entrusted to singlehandedly man their territory?’

If that were the case, it would explain why there was no formal border patrol force of sorts. Just like with the elves, their environment was enough to singlehandedly take on that task.

’Damn... this is going to be rough. We need to reach the Gajanan Clan soon, spending too much time in this place could lead to getting caught.’

He turned to Amare with a nod.

It was time to pick up the pace.

WHOOSH

The two of them set off, jogging at a medium-high pace as they traveled deeper into the continent. The Gajanan Clan’s territory was deep within the forest of the continent, within the core of the land. As one of the most powerful clans of the Pasupati Clan of Kiriket, they occupied some of the most important and central territories.

Rui and Amare had already discussed their plan to infiltrate Kiriket and travel through it undetected. They couldn’t offord to make any stops along the way, for reaching friendly territory was the prime goal. Food and other needs were not important enough. They would just have to sustain themselves with whatever technique they had.

Rui made us the Blood of Solaris and Nature Breathing, while Amare reduced her energy consumption through hyper-efficient utility of energy. Rui’s attention was divided between the environment and his stealth technique.

He had used the Forge of Creation to create a stealth technique that would allow him to remain hidden even within the depths of Kiriket. It hadn’t been easy, for his prophecy told him that any and all energy signatures would be instantly detected, making it impossible for him to avoid detection using misdirection alone.

Energy was also one thing, but another one was matter.

He couldn’t allow even a molecule from his body to leave him, lest it serve as a trace of evidence and even worse, a trail that led others to him. Naturally, the hardest part about this condition was that he was supposed to breathe, which involved exhaling, which would very much leave a trace of his existence in the environment.

Without a solution this, there was no chance of success.

Thus, he had a mini-domain technique that covered his entire body, preventing molecules from escaping his body, including exhalation. He condensed the molecules he exhaled, storing them in his body in a highly dense manner. He passed on the technique to Amare as well, using Soul Retcon.

This allowed them to prevent anything from escaping their body.

There no energy.

No matter.

No causal events left behind.

And yet, what not even Rui couldn’t have accounted for were things beyond causality.

Entropy.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics stated the amount of entropy in the universe always increased. Since it was a law of physics itself, it was not something that any technique could possibly circumvent. All causality created entropy necessarily, and this included Rui and Amare’s presence on the continent.

They left a trail of entropy.

This, by itself, was not particularly damning.

What was damning was the fact that the trail of entropy seemed to come out of nowhere from the perspective of everything else, since Rui’s stealth hid all other energy signatures.

Thus, it seemed as though entropy was coming out of nowhere; something would violate the law of causality. Normally, this would be a negligible flaw. Measuring entropy was extremely difficult. It was not an event; it was the information on the distribution of heat. A measure of how much chaos there was in the distribution of heat.

Had Rui been anywhere else, this would not have been an issue whatsoever.

Unfortunately for him, however, Kiriket was different from the other continents in the world.

Unbeknownst to Rui, among the sea insects within the forests of the continent of Kiriket was a special fly.

One that looked no different from any other fly.

But one that had as a result of both artificial engineering and evolution by natural selection

ZZZ...

The little fly had a million different lenses comprising its eyes that were able to see the trail of entropy that Rui has left behind.