The Martial Unity

2001 Charging Attack

Rui had never felt more alive.

He had never felt more alive than he did at the very moment the chimera's attack struck him.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSHHHH!!!!!

It was the first attack of the battle.

An attack he foresaw.

A future he foresaw.

He had never applied the SOUL System to the chimera.

Yet, he didn't need to.

At that moment, he was not fighting the chimera.

No.

He was fighting an angel. He was fighting a species for which he had already created a SOUL model and predictive model.

He foresaw the attack a whole second before it arrived.

Not a lot of time for a human, no, but it may as well have been an eternity for a Martial Senior.

An eternity of preparation.

Preparation to survive the most horrifying attack he had ever been struck with.

Before the attack emerged, he had adjusted his entire position, carefully sculpting it to within a micrometer of accuracy to the most optimal position. Nemean Blossom bloomed in all its glory and might, cladding him in powerful armor.

When the attack arrived, his timing was nearly flawless. He gracefully intercepted the sum totality of wind attack allowing the astronomical power to flow through his body, before dispersing into the lands beneath his feet.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!

The sheer devastation that the horrifying power of the chimera gouged an abyss dozens of kilometers deep and wide as an unfathomable amount of water and land were displaced in a heartbeat.

RUMBLE!!!

An astronomical amount of seismic radiation spread from across the point of contact ravaging the entire manifold. An entire chunk of the biosphere of the Mellow Manifold perished under the devastation from a single attack.

Rui's Flux Earther dispersion had been almost flawless. He had almost perfectly dispersed every ounce of the horrifying power of the chimera, achieving a whopping ninety-nine percent efficiency and success rate.

Yet, the chimera was so devastatingly powerful that even a single percentage of its astronomical power exceeded Nemean Blossom.

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT

Countless small wounds opened up across the entirety of his body as a cost.

This was the cost of even a minute amount of failure.

Yet, he was alive.

He was more than alive.

He felt more alive than he had ever felt in the entirety of his life.

At the bottom of the abyss, he stood grinning as he took his signature stance.

"What's the matter? Is that the best you can do?"

For a moment, the chimera simply beheld him.

In its countless years in the dungeon, it had never once come across an organism that could even survive its power.

Yet, Rui did more than survive.

He resisted.

And he came back for more.

The Chimera answered his question with a simple flap of all of its wings.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSHHHH!!!!!

Rui's expression grew grave as three tornados formed at once, surging toward him even faster than the previous one did!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!

Three gigantic collisions ensued, shattering the world with even greater devastation than it had before. Pure destruction emerged from them, spreading across the entirety of the dungeon.

Yet, amidst all the chaos and destruction that ensued, a chilling whisper emerged from Rui.

"Muspelheim."

RUMBLE!!!

Armed with the power that he absorbed from the creature, Rui executed the most powerful technique he had ever created in his entire life. The convection from his hyper-

heated breath, Heavenly Convergence heated the domain through pressure-heating.

Most importantly, the power of the tornados that he absorbed was used for acoustic conduction, heating up the entire domain to an unimaginable degree.

The air crackled with plasma as the high temperatures ionized the gases in the atmosphere. The land grew molten before turning into an ocean of white-hot lava. In an instant, the world had truly become Muspelheim itself.

The chimera shuddered uncomfortably as an intense sphere of heat around Rui enveloped it. It flapped its wings with tremendous power, seeking to bury Rui in countless tornados.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSHHHH!!!!!

A tornado larger than anything Rui had ever seen before was spawned. Its sheer size was so great, that it stretched across the entire manifold planetoid. A second flap of the wings caused it to surge towards Rui at astronomical speeds.

A tornado so powerful that it undoubtedly would have erased Rui had it touched him.

Yet—

WHOOSH

The tornado dispelled before it could reach Rui, never so much as touching him.

Confusion overcame the chimera.

It didn't understand.

It didn't that tornados, which were comprised of wind currents born from pressure and temperature gradients, could not exist in Muspelheim. The sheer temperature of Muspelheim erased the atmospheric conditions needed to give birth to these wind currents.

Rui had chosen Muspelheim for this very reason, to negate the angel's heaven-bending. High temperatures resulted in extremely excited gas molecules in the atmosphere. These were extremely difficult to control. The increased difficulty resulted in increased difficulty for heaven-bending.

Muspelheim was a domain that was antithetical to angels.

Yet, before Rui could even brag, the chimera accepted his challenge. The dragon and phoenix heads stirred before opening their mouths.

Rui froze in horror as an enormous inferno greater than anything erupted from within the two mouths.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSHHHH!!!!!

The inferno spread far and wide in an instant. In just a moment, it produced heat that dwarfed the Muspelheim domain, bathing half the manifold in a fire wave, unlike anything the dungeon had ever suffered.

Yet—

"Niflheim!"

A freezing-cold domain of ice and frost emerged from Rui, desperately trying to protect its user from the heat of the chimera. But alas, this time, Rui paid the price in full.

"Rrrrrghjhhh!!!" He gritted his teeth as his entire body burned. He quickly shifted from Nemean Blossom to Weaving Blood. If not for the fact that the power of the inferno was spread across an entire area, Rui would have undoubtedly died then and there.

Yet, the chimera was not done.

It surged forward towards Rui at blinding speeds, threatening to end him once and for all!