The Martial Unity

"Listen, I'm not trying to dampen your excitement, but you didn't forget why we came to the Garden of Salvation in the first place, right?"

Rui paused. "Right..."

In truth, he had almost gotten carried away in his excitement.

However, the reason that they had entered the Garden of Salvation was to find the Divine Doctor, who had embarked on a voyage to find it. Rui heaved a sigh, glancing at all the animals that peacefully lived in the Garden of Salvation. "Alright, let's get started. I can do what I need to while observing the Garden of Salvation."

His goal was to study how the Garden of Salvation manipulated its environments to suit the many living beings that resided in this world. In addition, he also wanted to understand what environments suited what animals.

The reason he cared for the latter was because understanding what was perfectly suited for a species was the same as understanding what was perfectly suited against a species as well.

After all, if Rui learned that a given species required, and had evolved specifically for, an environment with great pressure and heat to remain healthy, then he could logically infer that the best environment to counter said species would be one with low pressure and low heat.

Thus, by doing that for all species in the Garden of Salvation, he could learn everything that he needed to know how to counter them based on the information that he learned from the Garden of Salvation on each of them.

The best part was that he could do all of this by simply observing each creature and its corresponding environment while he scanned their memories for the Divine Doctor.

"Come on, let's get started," Rui remarked, flying down to the many living beings hosted in the Garden of Salvation. "We'll start scanning them one by one, and when we've found intelligence on the Divine Doctor, we'll try to get out of here."

Kane peered at him suspiciously. "Really?"

"...Well, we'll see."

"I knew it." Kane snorted.

"Give me a break." Rui grinned as the two of them arrived at their first candidates.

A group of germanian boars glanced up at Rui, who arrived before them.

BADUMP!

Rui didn't even bother waiting, activating both Soul Void to put them into a trance.

POP

"Huh?" His eyebrows furrowed. "Did my domain just...?"

"What happened?" Kane raised an eyebrow. "Get on with it; we don't have all day."

Rui frowned, activating Soul Void again.

POP

His eyes widened with shock as his domain broke once more. "Something is interfering with my domain!"

"What?" Kane stared at Rui, confused. "Who?"

Rui tried it one last time, just for good measure. Using all his power to preserve its integrity.

POP

It was to no avail.

"It must be the Garden of Salvation..." Rui muttered. "But why won't it allow me to use my domain?"

RUMBLE...

The two froze as they felt a hint of peril.

An aura of unfathomable power washed over them. One that exceeded anything that Rui had ever felt before.

A single whisper echoed within the depths of their minds.

Your attempt at infringing on the refugees of the Garden of Salvation shall not be permitted.

Rui and Kane both leaped away.

"Who's there?!" Kane drew his daggers, glancing around them.

Several moments passed as nothing happened.

"…Was that the Garden of Salvation itself? It is literally alive?" Kane asked, incredulously.

It made perfect sense. The Garden of Salvation certainly seemed alive with how it constantly adaptively evolved to its guests.

Yet, Rui knew that it was not responsible for what just happened.

"No." His tone was grave.

"No?"

"That wasn't the Garden of Salvation…" Rui grew grim as he turned backward, glancing at the Elder Tree in the distance.

"It was you, wasn't it?"

Kane followed his gaze, frowning. "Huh? No way."

Your successful detection of the origin of my hypnotic communication is impressive for a mere Martial Senior.

The two of them grew stunned as a second whisper echoed in their minds. Rui stared at the Elder Tree, speechless. His eyes remained fixed on it, as he pushed his senses and mind to detect its communication.

He was unable to.

It was as though the Elder Tree was magically planting its messages into his mind directly.

Then again, I suppose it is to be expected from an alien from Earth with a supernatural mind.

His eyes widened with shock as his body shook physically. He stared at the Elder Tree in utter horror as a multitude of revelations clicked in his mind.

"You…" Rui whispered. "You are the Garden of Salvation, aren't you?"

Correct.

He stared at the enormous Elder Tree in the distance in astonishment.

I am the creator and administrator of the Garden of Salvation.

"Woah…" Kane stared at it in awe.

Rui gazed at it knowingly.

"It knew where I was from." Rui's tone was severe. "That's not something that it would know unless…"

Unless it peered into his mind.

He hadn't mentioned the name of his old world to Kane yet, so it couldn't have relied on his conversation with Kane to learn that detail. The possibilities of the origin of its information were numerous, yet the only plausible explanation out of all of them was relying on the information stored in his mind.

That further begged the question of whether it was a coincidence that his memories had been scanned previously to construct an environment that matched his 'home.'

Rui's eyes sharpened.

The probability that it was a coincidence was quite low.

The probability that the Elder Tree had some special relationship with the Garden of Salvation was thus higher.

That, along with the fact that every single account of Garden of Salvation across centuries mentioned the Elder Tree at the center as well as the fact that he had strong evidence of an intelligence overseeing the entire area, and he had enough evidence to postulate that the Elder Tree was somehow causally connected to the existence of the Garden of Salvation.

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