The Martial Unity

As much as he would have liked to mimic the naraceen's ability to avoid the mental suppression of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak of bioelectrical phenomena, by completely lacking those phenomena in their bodies, it was not viable.

There were limits to Martial Art, he couldn't alter the fundamental mechanisms upon which the foundations of the human mind were built on. He would have to settle for resisting the mental suppression of the forest with his own powerful mind.

And yet, the path forward was long. The Great Forest of Hypnonarak was gigantic, easily as large as countries, and not the small kind either. Ordinarily, this would not be an issue for Rui.

Rui could zip through countries at extremely high speeds. The issue was that because his senses were hampered, he was quite hesitant to travel at high speeds.

The faster one traveled, the better one's senses needed to be. This was a basic rule of all travel and locomotion. The reason for this was that the faster one traveled, the longer it took to avoid crashing into objects. Furthermore, the easier it was to fall prey to predator ambushes due to all the attention that he would attract traveling at high speeds.

In order to avoid both of those outcomes, one needed extremely sharp and wide senses that would allow one to detect any and all hurdles and threats to it.

In addition to that, traveling at high speeds with hampered senses substantially increased the probability that he would miss the Hypnomaster even if he passed the Martial Master's abode. This was because the amount of time things spent in his field of senses was much less than before.

STEP

Rui frowned as stopped, glancing around, confused and disoriented.

'Have I lost my sense of direction and time?' Rui frowned. His innate sense of direction was completely spiraling out of control, he could be walking back to the human domain for all he knew and he would not be able to tell the difference.

If not for the fact that he was storing his path forward on a map inside the Mind Palace, he would be completely lost. His sense of time had been completely shattered, he felt like he had been walking for at least a few days when the time ticking in his Mind Palace revealed that it had only been an hour.

'No wonder many people never come return after heading into the depths of the forest.' Rui mused, before suddenly stiffening as his eyes caught something in the distance.

His eyebrows furrowed as what seemed like a bunch of light floated towards him, looking to envelop him. Rui avoided them, taking to the air as he studied them.

'Hypnospirits.' Rui narrowed his eyes. 'They cause hallucinations involving one's memories.'

His eyes turned forward as he spotted an unconscious figure, lying on the ground, surrounded by the hypnospirits. Her body was already entrenched on the ground, covered by roots even as she appeared to be in deep sleep.

What was disturbing was that the surrounding flora had already begun absorbing her despite the fact that the Martial Apprentice was still alive. He didn't bother trying to save her. 

Not only could he not afford to focus on helping other people, but he didn't want to get anywhere near the hypnospirits. Although he was quite confident in his ability to break out of hallucinations, he did not want to even reach a stage where he was afflicted by them, having to waste precious mental energy to break out.

The forest tried to consume his mind and body in so many ways that he was keenly aware that he was in a delicate situation.

The probability that he would find the Hypnomaster on his first try was quite unlikely. That meant that his exploration of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak was most likely going to take some time.

He needed to make sure he was able to come back safely and soundly after maximizing the amount of area that he covered. That involved making sure his mental stamina did not entirely run out by the time he set back home, which would be quite disastrous. 

'I ought to save my Martial Heart for emergencies then.' Rui mused. If he ever was low on mental energy, then it probably was best to activate the Martial Heart to supply a boost to the mind, and then quickly make his way back.

It was a little frustrating how the forest made light of the formidable power of Martial Artists. but unfortunately, most Martial Artists did not have the ability to defend their mind the same way that they could defend their bodies.

With the exception of mind-oriented Martial Artists. Rui was still better than nearly everybody who tried to enter the Great Forest of Hypnonarak. The Mind Palace technique that he originally purchased was only a grade-five technique when he first purchased it. But after countless upgrades and improvements over more than a decade, it had reached a level that astronomically dwarfed its original iteration.

It allowed Rui to resist the effects of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak much better than he would have been able to had he not had it. The same could be said for the Mindmirror Symbiote that had increasingly integrated with his brain over the many years.

With those two advantages in mind, he surged forward heading deeper and deeper into the flora of the great forest. As he did, the density of and thickness of flora of continued increasing.

Furthermore, the size of the flora also continued growing larger. Trees and plants, their branches, leaves, and trunks also continued growing larger, reaching extraordinary sizes and heights. This made his job much more difficult because the vast branches of the various trees intermingled at various levels forming platforms for various fauna lifeforms to occupy. 

He couldn't be sure that the Hypnomaster would necessarily be at ground level, that meant that he needed to expand his search to the third dimension. The sheer volume that he would need to search had grown significantly.

'No wonder so few people have managed to find him.'