The Martial Unity

Chapter 3730: A Fate Worse Than Death

’The fear only grew stronger the stronger I grew... as if I could sense more of it than I ever had been able to. I was almost too afraid to pursue Transcendence. I cannot imagine how intense the fear must be. And now...’

A sense of deep relief emerged in his mind. ’...I will be free from my fear.’

”I’m afraid not.”

Chills crawled across Ieyasu’s dead skin. ’What...?’

”I was going to kill you, but I changed my mind,” Rui remarked with a chilling tone ”I will... cut off your head and... preserve your brain alive.”

Pure horror and terror emerged from the depths of Ieyasu’s sole fully intact organ: his brain. ’No... NO! KILL ME! KILL ME QUICK!’

Rui smiled apologetically. ”Sorry, but your brain and mind are too precious. Your mirror neurons and your brain wave sensitivity are priceless miracles that I hope to decode and harness. Your ability to sense the Fear also makes you a useful tool, since only Jormungandr can sense it actively aside from you. Besides...”

Rui’s ethereal eyes sharpened.

”Your crimes are too severe to let you off with a quick death. You will live, in one form or another, and atone for your sins.”

Rui halted the Poison of Yin and Yang just as it reached his brain, pulling it back into his body, before injecting new evosapien stem cells into the base of his skull with specific genetic programming as well as plenty of exotic pluripotent matter.

”I’m going to borrow a page from your book, Zentra.”

It was not as elegant as the work of the man known as the Surgeon, but it was functional.

The stem cells absorbed nutrients from his dead body to rapidly multiply, forming a legion of cells at the base of the skull as it took control of the circulatory system that led up to his head, draining out the dead blood, before replacing it with new, oxygenated, and nutrient-rich blood.

Ordinary brains would have long died, but the brain of a Martial Sage was extremely resilient, whether it liked it or not. It quickly absorbed the oxygen and nutrients from the blood that Rui’s evosapien stem cells supplied it, ensuring that it survived.

The mass of stem cells quickly morphed into a makeshift organ that served the role of both the heart and the lungs. The exotic pluripotent matter that Rui supplied ensured that there would never be a lack of whatever nutrients the brain needed.

”You will live,” Rui told Ieyasu, who had been reduced to a living brain. ”You will live until I permit your death.”

SPLAT

He chopped off the head, pulling it through the wormhole, holding it in his hands with a satisfied smile.

Sentinel Prime gazed at the severed head with a severe expression.

It was pitch-black, matching the color of the hair with which Rui unceremoniously gripped it while studying it with interest in his ethereal eyes.

Brain activity had returned to normal levels.

But because he had access to no sensory data or anything of the kind, Tokugawa Ieyasu could only dwell in his own mind.

He began dreaming.

He began flashing back to prominent memories across his entire life.

He began wishing for death.

He even tried killing himself with his Martial Soul, which he still possessed thanks to intact brain and Enlightenment of Self. But Rui overrode his control with even more injections with his evolutionary stem cells.

”Too bad, thoughts can’t kill,” Rui muttered. ”Even if you kill yourself, I will just resurrect your brain. So there’s no point in even trying. Just accept your fate and dream and nightmare away.”

WHOOSH

Rui opened a wormhole, tossing both the MECHA and the skull into it to a location that Sentinel Prime wasn’t able to identify, before closing it.

”That was satisfying,” Rui heaved a deep breath, before directing a gaze at both Sentinel Prime and Suneater. ”Now then...”

Sentinel Prime stiffened.

With Ieyasu gone, their prospects of victory were next to zero.

Sentinel Prime had not been sitting around on his bum while Rui fought Ieyasu. He had attacked with everything he had, understanding the urgency of the situation. He had unleashed hundreds of tons worth of antimatter at Rui in the form of plasma, blunt force blows, lasers, gamma radiation, and all manner of offensive weapons technologies.

Nothing worked.

In the past, the limited capacity for change of his body had always been the reason he could perfectly adaptively evolve to negate any attack.

But with half of his body being capable of changing into anything he wanted, literally, there was no attack that Rui could not negate. He constructed perfect antithetical counters to each and every weapon technology that Sentinel Prime could hit him with.

He reduced the leader of the sentinels to an irrelevant background prop.

It was true that NOVA could not commandeer the bodies of others as well as they could, but it was also true that she more than compensated for this shortcoming with her own processing power and the processing power of large databanks in Greater Tekvoria.

And yet, it had proven to be insufficient.

This was despite the fact that Suneater unleashed an unfathomable amount of power with each attack.

None of them had even been able to force Rui to even take them seriously.

In that moment, they both understood a simple truth.

Rui Quarrier was perhaps the strongest pathwalker in the world, second only to Ecclestia, who was still regarded as invincible.

”You lot...” A chilling tone accompanied Rui’s ethereal voice.

His pitch-black eyes sharpened with bloodlust.

”It’s your turn.”

WHOOSH

He teleported before Sentinel Prime, dedicating his full attention to the powerful leader of the Sentinels.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!

Sentinel Prime gritted his teeth as he withstood the heavy blow from Rui. The sheer force of the attack stunned even the leader of Sentinels, who was much, much larger than Rui.

Despite his small diminutive body and energy source, Rui compensated for his shortcomings by leveraging genetic adaptive evolution to maximize the force at impact with each and every single blow he threw.

”This battle is only getting started.”

RUMBLE!!!!!