The Martial Unity

Obsidian wyverns.

The apex predators of the Forest of Fear.

They possessed minds that were nigh devoid of fear. So much so that despite the fear of the Forest of Fear afflicting them every moment of their lives, they were still fearless. They were the most fearless in the entirety of the forest that they stood at the pinnacle of.

They had nothing to fear.

There was nothing that could invoke fear.

Or so they thought.

Everything changed when he arrived.

He reeked of fear.

He might as well as have been drenched in it.

As fear-sensitive creatures, they could smell him from a country away.

It was almost offensive.

How dare such a fearful creature enter the Forest of Fear?

Instantly, the entirety of the nest of the Forest of Fear erupted into flight, soaring in the direction of the newcomer oozing more fear than they had ever smelled.

He was human at first glance.

Physically, at least.

Yet, when they gazed into his eyes, a single realization dawned on them.

This one was less human than even they were. The fear that they smelled was not his.

No.

It was theirs.

FSSSSSSSSS!

Countless canisters of gas exploded from underground, spreading across the entire region. In just a moment, the obsidian wyverns were intoxicated, entering a trance-like state. The Divine Doctor's smile never once wavered.

It was one of clinical curiosity.

Once they entered a trance-like state, he never let them exit it. First, he trained them in a Pavlovian manner similar to how he trained the catoblepas. Their trance state made them more receptive to accepting the new influence, allowing the Divine Doctor to, very quickly, turn them into his loyal lap dogs.

'Wait, is that why he worked on refining his trance drug, in addition to his fear-hallucinogen, in the Valley of Prisms?' Rui realized. 'He knew he would need it against the obsidian lesser dragons. That was why he was so dissatisfied with it, even though it worked perfectly against the catoblepas. He knew that that alone was not enough.'

In order to survive deeper in the Beast Domain, he would need a strong deterrence. In order to get one that was effective enough to deter the powerful biosphere of the Beast Domain from eating him alive, he would need something particularly potent.

Perhaps the esoteric fear-induction phenomena of the Forest of Fear had been his goal from the very start. Perhaps he only ever stopped at the Valley of Prisms as a checkpoint to prepare for taking over the fear of the Forest of Fear.

If that was the case, then all his actions up until now would make sense.

"So all of this, everything up until now, was just a preparation to go deeper into the Beast Domain?" Rui whispered, shocked.

The comprehensiveness of the Divine Doctor's plans to survive the depths of the Beast Domain stunned Rui. He had thought of himself as prepared with all the things that he had brought along for basically any and all plausibilities. Yet, in comparison to the Divine Doctor, who had caused mass disruptions in the Valley of Prisms in preparation for his search of the fear of the Forest of Fear, which in turn helped in his pursuit of finally actually going deeper into the Beast Domain, Rui was evidently underprepared.

It was at that moment that Rui realized he had underestimated the man. He had accomplished more in the Beast Domain than Rui would have had Rui not been a Martial Artist.

His attention returned to the memories that he was scanning, reading everything that the obsidian wyvern conveyed to him semi-consciously.

The obsidian wyvern, unlike the catoblepas, was able to retain a much stronger awareness of everything that had happened while it had been under the influence of the trance drug, much to Rui's delight.

For once, he had gotten access to memories that weren't broken. The biggest frustration when dealing with the catoblepas was the fact that an overwhelming majority of their memories were fragmented.

This made finding coherent information about the Divine Doctor extremely difficult. If the catoblepas had forgotten the memory of the time that he had commented about how his fear-hallucinogen was inadequate, Rui would have never inferred that his destination was the Forest of Fear.

He had been this close to never finding the Divine Doctor.

Now, however, there was no such concern with the obsidian wyvern whose memories he was scanning. Memories that, while traumatic, never escaped its mind.

"Go forth." The Divine Doctor's smile remained unchanged. "Bring me all the fear in this forest. "

The lesser dragons gently took off so as not to hurt their new master, setting out to uproot the entire forest.

And they did.

They painstakingly brought every ounce of fear there was to be found within the Forest of Fear.

Tree after tree.

Plant after plant.

They brought him every ounce of flora.

What Rui wondered, however, was how the hell the man planned to process all these raw ingredients into a powerful fear-hallucinogen. This sort of endeavor required massive infrastructure, usually a factory. What he was trying to do wasn't a small-scale experiment that he himself could manage; it was industrial-grade mass production.

However, the Divine Doctor proved to be extremely resourceful.

The man had the dragons dig up an entire hole to toss all the uprooted vegetation in before having the dragons set ablaze to the entire pit. An enormous inferno blazed for days as the dragons continued stoking the fire, ensuring it never went out.

After the process ended, the Divine Doctor had them collect all the ash before subjecting it to several chemical treatments. An enormous tower of ash was quickly reduced to a pile of strange yellow liquid, and the Divine Doctor carefully collected all of it before whipping out several more instruments to play around with the collected substance.

Until he got what he came for.

FSSSSSS!

"ROOOOOOAAAAAAAAAR!" The obsidian wyverns moved away from him as they experienced heart-wrenching fear upon inhaling the gas that he had just diffused into the air.

The Divine Doctor's smile never once budged, yet the glee in his eyes deepened.

"Yielded potency is satisfactory," he remarked. "With the power of fear, the Garden of Salvation is within my reach."

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