The Martial Unity

Their gazes converged on him even as he reached uncharted territories of raw conscious cognition. He had earned their intrigue.

A privilege of the highest order.

They peered at him from across the depths of human civilization.

No force could halt their gaze.

Not even the four-dimensional space-time manifold could impede their awareness.

It might as well have been transparent.

Yet, among the thirteen that glanced in his direction, one held deeper interest than the rest.

In the frosty depths of the cold Imperial Palace of the Britannian Empire sat a man.

An emperor.

A being of unfathomable power.

Not even the universe, in all its infinite glory, could contain the entire weight of his being.

He gazed at Rui with a knowing look before closing his eyes.

A single whisper escaped him.

"Soon."

His voice reverberated beyond the shackles of three dimensions, stretching into the past and the future.

It reverberated beyond the realm of materia.

Beyond the shackles of causality.

Blissfully ignorant of his earned attention, Rui completed the convergence of his Martial Mind with the Mind Metabody.

His brain had become a violent vortex of information, allowing him to gain an extraordinary level of cognition unparalleled by anything he had ever achieved. His eyes opened as his pupils glowed blood red with power.

"This…" A faint murmur escaped him as he glanced at his fist. "This is beyond my wildest expectations."

The overlap of his Martial Mind with his Mind Metabody was extraordinarily synergetic, allowing him to think at a speed he didn't even know was possible.

Time slowed down to a crawl as nothing could seem to keep up with his capacity for thought. Even his own movements were too slow for his liking, yet unlike with the tachypsychia of the Neo Godspeed, it wasn't his perception of the world that slowed down, but merely his cognition soaring to a point where he could think an extraordinary amount before anything around him could even begin to happen.

With this, he was certain that not even a chaotic battlefield could overwhelm his mind; he would be able to process everything that happened on a battlefield or against opponents who had an immense amount of information to process.

With this, he could support many more systems of thought than normal. There were going to be opponents who weren't information-intensive but were still extremely difficult to defeat. In such cases, it was best to have a way to accelerate his thought-driven Adaptive Evolution. Now that he was in this state, he experienced an intense flood of ideas that far surpassed what he would normally be capable of otherwise. He grew even more excited about the prospects of gaining the full Mind Metabody after conditioning his blood-brain barrier. He couldn't even imagine how strong he would be when he managed to get his hands on the complete technique. He would reach an even greater degree of thought capacity.

"I must find a way to get my hands on a fruit of the Tree of Healings."

He had no idea how it would even be possible. It was an extremely ambitious goal.

There was no doubt that the legacy treasure of the Sekigahara Confederate was extremely well-protected. It was entirely impossible for someone of his power to be able to wring one by force.

"Do I really have to trade one of my breakthroughs?" He narrowed his eyes. "It would just make our job harder in this war."

Even if the Sekigahara Confederate managed to put aside their hatred for him and recognize the benefits of trading with him, giving them more Martial Masters was not doing himself or the Kandrian Empire any favors. These same Martial Artists would be used against them in the war.

"On top of that, considering that these fruits can drastically improve Sages as well, albeit temporarily, their value far exceeds that of a single Martial Master."

There was a good chance that he would be needed to provide many breakthroughs for a single fruit.

"Tsk, forget it. I'll have to wait until the Kandrian Empire has won the war and grown strong enough to dominate the Sekigahara Confederate."

This was his original resolution, though, admittedly, he had grown even more impatient than before. He looked forward to testing out the many things he was undoubtedly capable of now that he had come to gain the lesser version of the Mind Metabody. It could become a truly integral tool of his Martial Art.

"But…" He winced. "It's extremely stamina-intensive."

Rui could almost feel his energy reserves draining by the second. The fusion of his Martial Mind with his Mind Metabody was so great that it yielded great results in exchange for consuming great energy. After all, the brain was the most energy-intensive organ in the body, accounting for twenty percent of the total energy expenditure while only accounting for two percent of the body's mass. That ratio only increased enormously when he utilized the Mind Metabody. As powerful as the technique was, it had deep energy requirements that far exceeded any of his other Metabodies, including Neo Godspeed.

In other words, this was not something that he could abuse with no care in the world. He ought to limit its execution to circumstances where he truly needed it and where it was most suited to be used. It had no place in attrition battles, and it certainly had little place in battles where he was confident of his victory without it. It only belonged in more extreme circumstances. It belonged in circumstances where the stamina drain was merely a small price to pay. "In order to gain a better understanding of when, where, and how I must use this technique, I must put it to the test."

What better way than to test it in the original circumstance that he had designed the Mind Metabody in? "Time to round up all the Masters in the manifold and have them test the limits of this newfound power."

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