The Martial Unity

Pain was all he could feel, and his sense of surroundings began disappearing, however, that wasn't all.

He didn't know how much time had passed within the apotheosis chamber. Any number of seconds, minutes hours, or even days could have passed. There was no source of light within the apotheosis chamber, after all. There was nothing that moved that could indicate the passage of time.

He had earlier relied on his own heartbeat, but now he was consumed in too much pain for him to be able to focus on his sense of hearing.

Suddenly, a change occurred.

His pain localized to his skin and flesh, the portions of his body that it was spread across had reduced, but the intensity of the pain had risen.

"AAAARRRRRGHGHRGRHRGR!!" Rui screeched in pain as his brain and mind reeled at the sheer intensity of the influx of pain that was hitting him. The pain this procedure was inflicting on him was hitting the limits of the possible amount of pain that could be felt from a single organ.

He soon realized he had underestimated the sheer amount of agony this procedure would be subjected to.

Of course, this might have sounded stupid in hindsight. He already knew full well how the evolution process worked. It should have been obvious to him that he would feel this kind of pain. But it was difficult to understand beforehand just how much pain the process would inflict on him. It was one thing to understand theoretically that he would feel excruciating pain he had never felt before, it was another thing to be able to actually understand how much the pain was and how it would feel.

He felt like his nervous system was burning. Each of his nerves was firing an enormous amount of pain signals all the way to his brain. He felt as though they were being overburdened by the sheer amount of nervous signals that were firing back and forth.

An unknown amount of time passed, and eventually, the pain began shifting inwards.

Amidst all the pain, Rui still managed to comprehend what was happening. He knew that the evolution process did not happen to all cells all at once. Instead, the evolution process focused on one system of cells and organs within the body at a time.

From what Rui was able to piece together despite all the pain, they were definitely focusing the evolution process on his skin and outer flesh, and now they were focusing on inner organs.

"AAAARRRGHR!" He screamed in pain, as his muscles stiffened, experiencing a wave of agony. Every single muscle group felt like they were on fire. Rui struggled continuously, yet the apotheosis chamber withstood every ounce of his power without so much as budging. It was a chamber meant to contain Squire candidates after all.

His muscles burned endlessly. Rui could almost feel muscle fibers in each muscle dying as the surviving muscle fibers began reproducing and new muscle fibers took the places of the old ones.

Despite all the pain, he felt a surge of power, unlike anything he had ever felt before. His muscles were brimming with energy beyond his limits!

With every second, his muscles left human limits as they slowly and steadily ascended to the Squire Realm, step by step.

Despite the agony, he was submerged in. He could instinctively feel him stepping away from ordinary humanity as he, for the very first time, ascended to a higher level.

The pain was horrific, yet he could also feel it filtering out the weaker and sub-optimal flesh of his body. Anything that remained was among the best of the best, and it only get better and better thanks to the radiation he was being subjected to that caused mild mutations in every new generation of cells, some good and some bad.

The bad ones perished quickly while the good ones survived and reproduced.

Rui could almost feel this process happening as the waves of pain he was suffering indicated the timing of the filtration processes that were being subjected to his muscle groups that filtered out genetically superior cells. He knew that each time he felt a wave of pain, his muscle groups had grown a bit stronger.

After a long time, the pain shifted away from his muscles as they moved to his bones.

"AAAAAARRRGRGRRGRH!" He screamed in pain, as sharp and piercing pains afflicted every ounce of his bone. Although the actual calcium of the bones was not living, the many nerves that dug around in the bone made it feel like the bone itself could experience pain.

He felt as though his bones were melting away. He could feel clear alterations to their mass, abrupt reductions, and increments in their structure.

He could feel them growing denser and heavier with every wave of pain. Bones were comprised of soft bone which was quite porous and hard bone which was completely solid, his bones were gaining more of the latter.

The evolution of bones was a bit more complicated than that of cells. The cells that produced bone were undergoing evolution, however, that wasn't enough. The existing bones were formed by normal skeletal stem cells, they were too weak. Thus, the procedure involved breaking down the old bone and replacing it with bone formed from the evolved skeletal stem cells. The bone formed by the evolved skeletal stem cells was much denser and harder, allowing it to withstand a tremendous amount of stress. Without this, the power exerted by the evolved muscle groups would be too much for the bones and they would break down under the stress of his own evolved power.

With the evolved bones, he would be able to all out, as far as exertion went, without having to worry about his skeletal structure crumbling under the burden of his power.

Time passed. Just as he was finally getting used to the pain in his bones, it shifted once more, causing immense agony in another part of his body.