The Martial Unity

What followed was a scarring battle that ravaged the section of the Beast Domain that he was in.

BOOM BOOM BOOM!

Rui spiraled around in the air as his mind furiously processed tons of information. His eyes never once left the creature's wings.

Every shift, twitch, contraction, and expansion.

All of it.

He watched all of it, extrapolating the future from the predictive model that only grew more refined with each passing second. Yet, that wasn't the only thing that kept his mind busy.

He rapidly gathered SOUL data on the angel, which, like all creatures in the Mellow Dungeon, was in a trace. He was grateful for the lack of necessity for the Soul Void technique in this particular circumstance. It would have been far more of a pain if he needed to get close to put such a powerful creature in a trance.

RUMBLE!

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!

Rui pirouetted across the Mellow Dungeon as he struggled to evade the generated tornados one after another. They were slower than the angel's individual bullrushes, yet they were enormous and covered a huge amount of area, making them much more difficult to evade.

That was why he kept Nemean Blossom active.

The powerful Metabody technique helped him weather the tremendous tornados generated by the angel. Each of them possessed the power to reduce a mountain to rubble. Thankfully, with the combined power of Nemean Blossom, Adamant Reforging, and Flux Earther, he could largely dispel the impacts of the powerful tornados with little effort.

On top of that, the greatest issue with widescale attacks was that they drastically reduced potency. This meant that while attacks struck Rui with greater frequency due to his inability to evade all of them, the amount of power actually attacking him was only a fraction of the total power.

Thus, while he was displeased with the sheer scale of the attacks, he was perfectly fine with the force they inflicted on him.

Unfortunately, this was not a sustainable venture.

This level of output was standard business for the angel. Rui could tell because there were absolutely no hints of strain or exertion across the entirety of its body. It could maintain this over longer periods of time.

Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the Metabody System.

BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!

Three enormous, powerful tornados clashed with Rui even as he tried to escape them, leaving a series of light cuts across the entirety of his body.

His expression grew grave.

The fact that it was able to hurt him through the Nemean Blossom was troubling. His eyes grew grim as he accelerated the SOUL System processing as much as he could. A flood of data coursed through the depths of his Mind Palace, quickly layering on to the nascent SOUL model that he was forming on the angel.

WHOOSH!

His eyes widened as he plummeted midair; the air from beneath his feet had been abruptly yanked by a powerful suction, causing him to have no footing for evasion. Five tornados converged on him.

BOOOOOM!!!

"Rgh!" He grimaced as wounds emerged across the entire body at a dangerous rate.

The sheer damage that he had incurred had been so high that the Nemean Blossom technique had been emptied in an instant, deprived of all durability that it could offer him.

The angel rushed to exploit the opportunity, exerting its maximum power to crush him on the spot.

BOOOOOM!!!

A thundering explosion rang across the Mellow Manifold.

The eyes across the body of the angel closed as it deemed the job complete.

Unfortunately, it was wrong.

SPLAT!

Its body shook as it felt a sharp, excruciating pain emerging from its back.

"Having so many eyes must suck," Rui's chilling murmur emerged from him as his arm dug deeper into the angel's body. "So many targets. So many vulnerabilities."

Its wings expanded as they unleashed an omnidirectional blast wa—

"Phantom Pain."

VMMMMMMM!!!

The power in the creature's muscles died as an ocean of pain flooded its nervous system and its brain, incapacitating as it quivered, convulsing with unfathomable agony.

SPLAT!

Rui disemboweled a large eyeball from its back, tossing it away.

Rage and pain flashed in its remaining eyes as it unleashed a multitude of tornados at Rui, seeking to crush him once and for all.

WHOOSH!

Its eyes widened as the tornados crashed into an empty image, completely having missed it from the very get-go.

Rui appeared before it, deactivating Greater Phantomind Void.

"I can see your soul."

It was the last thing that it heard before the world went dark.

SPLAT!

Rui's hammered right through the eyeball on its abdomen, reaching for the brain at the center of its body.

The body of the angel went limp as it died on the spot.

He scoffed coldly. "With such glaring weaknesses, it would be an insult to consider you a true quasi-Master-level threat."

Still, he didn't like how close the battle had been. If the SOUL System had not kicked in at the last moment, allowing him to precisely evade the incoming attacks at the right moment and place.

"Huff…" He heaved a soft sigh of relief as he dropped the body, letting it plummet. "At least I collected all the data on it. This way, if the Master-level creature is an angel, I'll be able to better account for it in our strategy to get out of here."

His eyes returned to the fallen angel's corpse.

While it was far inferior to Master Gurren and certainly astronomically inferior to the Elder Tree, he could understand why angels were considered to be masters of the heavens. They had an extraordinary affinity for heaven, allowing them to be masterfully adept at heaven-bending.

"If that fourth pair of wings was fully mature…" Rui narrowed his eyes gravely. "I'd probably be dead right now."

It would have most likely become a Master-level beast, capable of exerting a truly tremendous amount of power when all four wings worked together. He definitely would have died within ten seconds of the battle.

-