The Martial Unity

Because the difficulty of surviving, sustaining, and progressing in the Beast Domain only grew higher the deeper they went, their journey stalled significantly. Of course, while it got harder, it naturally made them stronger.

Rui forgot what protection felt like during this time.

He forgot what safety felt like during this perilous voyage through the Beast Domain.

The fourteen months he had spent under constant protection from Martial Masters might as well as have happened ages ago. While he previously felt like he was stalling and growing rusty due to the lack of danger that served as a crucible to forge Martial Artists, now, he felt like he was perhaps in too much danger.

It shook any rust he thought he had accumulated off him.

Now, he had very naturally learned to grow an eye at the back of his head. A state of subconscious alertness in every inch of his environment was absolutely necessary and naturally came.

That was how omnipresent the perils of the Beast Domain were.

In the Human Domain, Rui had a lot of confidence in his sensory prowess. If his senses didn't detect any threats, then he could have a high certainty that there weren't any threats. While Martial Artists of higher Realms with decent stealth could still hide from him, such a circumstance was extremely unlikely.

The Beast Domain was different.

Camouflage, stealth, deception... these had all been dialed to eleven in the Beast Domain. Rui had lost count of the number of times that his senses failed to detect threats until the very last moment, almost getting him and Kane killed.

It forged him to be a stronger Martial Artist in more than one way.

THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!

Rui fired off a powerful tier-five Transverse Resonance attack, blasting five griffons in the face.

"RAAAWWWWWWWRRR!" The powerful beasts roared in pain, failing to avoid them as the Pathfinder technique refused to let them escape.

They swiftly surged, encircling Rui, converging on him.

Yet, he didn't so much as budge. Instead, his muscles enlarged, and his body swelled with enormous power.

BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!

He felled them each with a single strike, killing them on the spot with enormous raw power. He didn't often get to test his peak power with Hypertrophic Surge, the boost from the Roaring Dragon Blood potion, along with his offense.

He had cto the realization that he didn't have powerful offensive techniques that resonated well with the VOID algorithm and the SOUL System. Thus, it made sense to use Hypertrophic Surge if he was fighting a balanced battle.

Once he completed the predictive and SOUL models, his defense and evasion were extremely amped up. The scould not be said for offense. Thus, he strove to use Hypertrophic Surge to compensate for this shortcoming.

He had noticed this before, even with the predictive model, but it had becextremely exacerbated with the introduction of the SOUL System.

"RAAAWWWWWWWRRR!" A griffon surged towards Rui, trying to catch him off-guard, yet he didn't need to intervene.

SPLAT SPLAT!

"RAAAWWWWWWWRRR!" The creature screamed in pain as Kane's dagger dug deeper and deeper into its eyes, going even further.

The brain.

The creature fell from the sky lifelessly as Kane smirked. "Thanks. I wouldn't have been able to kill a high-grade creature all by myself."

"Good job, let's get back into hiding."

Rui was not pleased with his victory.

He would rather have avoided the fight altogether, but the griffons managed to sniff them out despite Void Step and Phantomind Void. Thus, Rui had shifted his misdirection stealth to Kane, misdirecting attention away from him rather than himself.

This essentially made Kane extraordinarily undetectable, allowing him to partake in battles that he ordinarily wouldn't be able to. Regardless, the moment they finished the unavoidable battle, they immediately went into hiding, nervously glancing at the center of the region they were in.

An enormous mountain that extended many kilometers into the sky stood towered over the entire region.

It was not, in fact, a mountain.

It was an elder golem.

A Master-level creature.

Just looking at it sent shivers down their spine.

It slumbered, unperturbed by its surroundings.

A single attack from the creature could lay waste to a region spanning more than a hundred kilometers in diameter.

Rui had been quite nervous about awakening it by their battle, but thankfully, Martial Seniors were too weak to bother it, it appeared.

"That's a Master-level creature?" Kane asked for the umpteenth time. "You're tellingthe Kandrian Empire has a hundred fifty of those?!"

"We are considered a powerhouse for a reason." Rui grew grave. "If it wakes up, just the act of waking up may wipe out all life in the vicinity."

He felt powerless in the face of such a being. Despite the fact that they were many kilometers away from it, it radiated passive amounts of pressure that rattled him to his very bones.

He realized how much control and discipline Martial Masters had over their aura. They didn't let it flood an entire nation and traumatize all the citizens unless they did it on purpose. They didn't let their power leak unless on purpose. On top of that, they didn't possess much more raw power than Rui did, generally. However, their minds and cognition had risen to such a level that they could do with the Martial Heart as Martial Apprentices did with normal human power.

Compared to them, Martial Seniors like Rui were cavemen using rifles as a club.

The very thought evoked deep dissatisfaction within the depths of Rui's heart. A deep yearning for that power boiled within the depths of his heart.

"Hey." Kane's voice snapped him back to reality.

"Hm?"

"We just crossed the final region of the North-West region of the Beast Domain," Kane remarked. "We're here."

Rui turned to overlook the view that spread far past the eye could see.

"The northern region of the Beast Domain," Rui remarked, narrowing his eyes.