The Martial Unity

He grew increasingly anxious the closer they approached the desert. Kane, on the other hand, while alert, was oblivious. He continued to jog towards the desert at high speeds.

Rui's senses and alertness heightened as they drew closer to the desert. His senses spread across the entire area, looking for any and all monsters and beasts that might be trying to ambush them.

Yet, strangely, he couldn't spot a single lifeform.

That was strange.

The Beast Domain was filled with all kinds of lifeforms at all scales; he had seen plenty of strange insects and little critters native and unique to the Beast Domain. Yet there was not a single soul in the vicinity. He could not spot even a single insect.

That only strengthened his gut feeling.

Yet it was only after Kane took the first step into the desert that it finally clicked.

The way the sand moved.

The way each of its grains shifted.

The strange, inorganic, and unnatural feel to it.

Shivers crawled up his spine.

Time slowed down as a memory flashed in his mind.

A memory from the prophetic visions his grandmother had shown him. One of the many visions of death that she had shown him was him in a desert, being swallowed up by sand that was so powerful he could not resist it.

RUMBLE!

"KANE!" Rui bellowed, instantly activating his Martial Heart and Neo Godspeed.

"Hm?" Kane frowned, turning to Rui.

Behind him, a tsunami of sand as large as a mountain had already erupted, converging on him in a matter of no more than a dozen microseconds. Kane's Martial Heart had already instinctively burst into power thanks to his passive Primordial Instinct, but his conscious mind had yet to catch up.

WHOOSH!

Rui surged forward at extraordinary speeds, reduced to no more than the haziest of blurs as Gale Force Breathing and Outer Convergence propelled him forward faster and faster.

BOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!

Rui gritted his teeth as he barely managed to pull at Kane, avoiding the initial crash. Thankfully, Kane, too, activated his Fulminata Godspeed, utterly bewildered by what had just happened. In just a moment, they crossed kilometers at top speed.

The sheer devastation of the desert's attack shook the very lands of the region to their core as an abyss larger than a mountain emerged from the titanic weight of the crash. Rui and Kane had evaded death by just meters.

They watched in horror as the sand slowly retreated back to the desert without causing any more of a ruckus.

"What the fuck was that?!" Kane barked, startled.

"That desert is alive," Rui's expression grew grave. "It consumes organic life that steps onto it like you did as sustenance. It has extremely high power and probably cannot be overcome with just the power of the Senior Realm."

Aside from a freak like the Gatekeeper, of course.

Kane turned to Rui, utterly astonished. "How in the world did you know that? I thought this was supposed to be an unknown region? Also, how in the world did you react faster than me?! I thought reflexes were the only advantage that I had over you."

"You do," Rui affirmed. "I didn't react, I preacted. I recognized the desert from my grandmother's prophecy. In that prophecy, I actually ended up dying here because it swallowed me up whole."

Kane froze when he heard that.

"The Eye of Prophecy must have allowed my grandmother to foresee that I would come here and showed me the outcome of entering this dangerous region," Rui's voice grew severe. "This entire region is a predator. That's why I couldn't sense a single lifeform when I came here. All of them must have either been devoured or escaped and never returned anywhere near this region."

Rui heaved a sigh, catching his breath. "…If I hadn't sought the Silas Clan, the two of us might have been dead right now."

Rui thanked his stars and his grandmother. He definitely needed to do right by her when he returned from the Beast Domain one day. Also, it showed him the power of prophecy. The power of prophecy had instantly grown more alluring and attractive to him today. He regretted that he hadn't learned about the Silas Clan and sought them out a lot sooner.

Had he mastered the Eye of Prophecy technique, he would probably have been able to whiz through the Beast Domain much easier and quicker than they currently did. They also wouldn't have had as many close calls and shaves as they had up until now.

"…I can see why so many adventurers die in the Beast Domain," Kane warily regarded the enormous abyss that had been inflicted on the land before them. "This is insane. Almost no Martial Artist of the Lower Realms can survive this if they didn't know about it. Which no one does."

"…Let's circle around this region," Rui got up, having caught his breath as he brushed off the dust from his clothes.

"No complaints there." Kane snorted.

The incident served as a chilling reminder that the two of them could die at any moment, anywhere in the Beast Domain, with just a wrong step. This included times that they were in Apprentice-level or Squire-level zones.

They grew even warier and more alert as they kept a ten-

kilometer distance from the desert just to be safe as they circled across the region. Neither of them voiced a single complaint about the extra time taken by the detour. Eventually, however, they finally managed to arrive at the other end, putting the desert behind them for good.

"Finally…" Rui gazed down from atop a mountain.

Before him was an enormous valley that extended well into the distance. Yet the visage of the valley was distorted and broken. Almost as if it was made up of glass and someone had shattered it, extracting a piece or two. It was as though people had mixed up the pieces of two different puzzles to create broken images formed together into one.

"Valley of Prisms," Rui narrowed his eyes. "Fitting name."

-