Chapter 2007: Ascension |
RUMBLE!!!
The very world shook as the chimera unleashed an attack of horrifying magnitude. An attack that encompassed the sum totality of the microcosm that enveloped everything.
An attack of certain death.
It was the end.
"No." His eyes flared with endless defiance and determination as he surged forward.
And in that moment, an infinite void expanded from within the depths of his mind.
Time slowed down.
It slowed down to a crawl.
It froze.
It was as though heaven and earth held their breath as they beheld the miracle that unfolded before them.
As though Gaia herself had been waiting for what was to become.
Rui closed his eyes as his mind expanded.
It expanded.
It expanded far beyond its limits.
His consciousness elevated to a higher state of being as his awareness ascended to otherworldly suchness.
His thought exploded as his cognition surged, enveloping everything.
Everyone.
The sum totality of his logos rose.
It soared.
It soared to unprecedented heights as his nascent Martial Mind expanded in all of its ineffable glory. The microcosm of his conscious mind expanded into a world unto itself as the very culmination of his being ascended.
It ascended to a higher Realm of power.
"Ah…" A whisper escaped him as he opened his eyes, beholding the very world before him.
It was unrecognizable.
It was as though he had beheld it for the very first time in his entire life.
He saw more than just materia.
He saw the ebbies of energy and power.
He saw the flow of entropy.
He saw the symphony of the four fundamental forces of the universe.
He barely caught a glimpse of the very flow of the universe that trickled through all of reality.
Before him, the horrifying visage of the chimera remained nigh-frozen in time, shackled in its place by Rui's ascended perception of time.
A titanic attack surged towards Rui.
Towards everything.
An attack that threatened to wipe out all life within the Mellow Manifold.
His bones were broken.
His flesh was torn.
His muscles were ravaged.
His body was dying.
Yet, a single remark escaped him.
"Your paltry power…" He whispered as his eyes flared with power. "…is of no consequence."
WHOOSH
With a single wave of his hand, he erased the chimera's attack.
With a single wave of his hand, an ocean of power that his Heart generated erased the power of the chimera.
With a single wave of his hand, every ounce of energy and every iota of power that each cell in his body could generate seamlessly converged onto the chimera's devastating power.
With a single wave of his hand, an ocean of power, once wasted, smoothly surged to snuff out the devastating attack of the chimera.
Such was the power of a Martial Master.
WHOOSH
For the very first time in its life, the chimera experienced fear.
All four minds of the creature experienced terror in the depths of their bones.
"—Breathing Crucifix." Rui whispered as he wholly imprisoned its breathing entirely. With the power of the Martial Mind, the technique had reached astronomically unfathomable levels of power.
Try as it might, the chimera couldn't breathe.
It was not permitted to.
Yet, he wasn't done.
"Niflheim."
WHOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSHHHH!!!!!
It was no longer a domain.
It was a realm unto itself.
In just a moment, all water in the domain froze. A catastrophic blizzard with the power to wipe out all life erupted across the entire manifold. Heaven itself began condensing as the entire domain began raining liquid nitrogen.
The water within the chimera's body and brains had long frozen.
It had already died.
The last thing the creature had seen was an endless void.
An endless darkness emerged from the depths of Rui's very being, consuming it and everything beyond it.
Nothing was spared.
His Martial Embodiment, a flowing void, gushed from within the root of his mind and rushed far beyond it.
It consumed the entire manifold in the eyes of the few surviving creatures that beheld it.
It consumed their mind.
It consumed their mind with sheer information.
Too much information.
"RRRAAAAARWWWRGRHRH!!!"
"RRRRGGHRGRHRGRHR!!!"
"SCREEEEEECH!!!"
Countless creatures screamed in agony as their minds were overwhelmed with an endless surge of information. A Martial Embodiment was the visual manifestation created by the subconscious mind upon processing the non-verbal information conveyed to it by the Martial Mind.
The more information a Martial Mind had, the more information it conveyed.
Within the Martial World, it had been theorized that it was possible for a Martial Mind to be so overwhelmingly large and powerful that the sheer amount of information that it conveyed could overwhelm the brain, causing brain death due to an overwhelming information overload. A hypothesis that had never been confirmed, for no Martial Artist in history had developed a Martial Mind powerful enough to cross the threshold of information tolerance.
Until now.
"RRRRAAAAAAWWWRRRRR!!!"
Countless lifeforms screamed in agony as an information overload on par with the inheritance of the Elder Tree. Their minds could not withstand the tsunami of information that flooded them from within the depths of his extraordinary Martial Mind.
Yet, that wasn't all.
Rui's Martial Embodiment was so powerful that it encompassed more than just himself.
It encompassed all of reality.
At that moment, the very fabric of reality altered within the depths of their mind. A world absolutely antithetical to each of them formed within the depths of their mind. Their bodies burned, froze, exploded, and imploded while his Martial Embodiment simultaneously eroded their consciousness bit by bit with an avalanche of information crashed into their little minds.
And then, they almost died spontaneously.
Unbeknownst to him, in the process of killing the chimera, he killed almost all life along with it with the sheer weight of his Martial Mind.
Only two beings survived.
Kane, who was unconscious, and the Divine Doctor, the only living being in the entire Mellow Manifold who possessed a mind powerful to effortlessly withstand Rui's Martial Embodiment.
He gazed at Rui with boundless fascination as a revelation dawned on him.
"You…" He whispered. "You have undergone the soul transference ritual."
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