CHAPTER 2377:  EXPLOSIVE START

They had heard tales of what they were about to experience.

The Convergence was the sole Martial Master to have died in the previous battle. The rest had managed to make it out alive thanks to the Sage-level assault team stalling the Martial Sages, allowing them to escape without being hunted alive en route.

Thus, word of the monster that was Prince Rui had already spread around amongst Masters in the alliance.

They had even been briefed about it before this particular operation commenced.

On top of that, many of the Masters among their ranks were the same as the previous team that had gathered once more due to their prior experience with the special mind-empowering Metabody that the prince had displayed.

And yet, nothing could have prepared them to withstand its brunt once more. The infinite void intensified greatly as the burdens on their minds shot up at a proportional rate. The sheer amount of information that Rui's Martial Mind projected straight into their subconscious caused them to freeze where they stood.

"What is this…?" Master Brigsby's eyes widened as he felt a tremendous burden weigh down on his mind. "Just… Just how powerful is his mind?!"

He gritted his teeth as he saw that an overwhelming majority of his Master-level assault force was almost entirely or partially paralyzed by the weight of Rui's Martial Mind. There weren't too many who were still in a fighting condition.

However, that didn't mean that the battle was lost.

The Master's eyes flooded with rage. "It's only just beginning. Those of you who can move unhindered, I have but one command…"

His fists clenched as his teeth gritted. "Kill him. Kill him today and now before he becomes an even greater menace to all of us in the future."

They didn't need to be told a third time. WHOOSH In an instant, fifteen Martial Masters converged on Rui, ready to kill him at the very first opportunity they got. Any other Master would have undoubtedly felt deeply pressured at the sight of so many Masters lunging for their death.

Not Rui.

A chilling smile cracked at the edge of his mouth as the dark blood in his pupils stirred. He had already created predictive models on them with the Angel of Laplace.

He was ready.

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!

Rui somersaulted as a flurry of attacks converged upon him. Yet, his opponents were far too determined to kill him to let him go that easily.

POW POW POW!

A speed-oriented Master blasted Rui with countless short and swift blows of immense speed and agility. Each blow was blindingly fast, soaring forward at supreme speeds so high that Rui might as well have been a statue.

The speedster activated her Martial Mind, altering the form of her hand from a fist to a chop, finger strikes, and knuckle strikes one after another. Each form was optimized to do maximal damage to the targeted region of the Martial Body.

After all, neither the human body nor the Martial Body was uniform. Thus, on a purely theoretical level, simply striking with a fist and nothing but a fist was inefficient and suboptimal.

And that was why Master Lana created a Martial Mind that allowed her to adaptively evolve her striking form to her opponent's body. Each blow she delivered produced the maximal possible amount of impact with the power she possessed.

It allowed her to obtain the offensive prowess of an offensive Master without having to sacrifice any of her speed. The deadly combination of the two allowed her to take down an overwhelming majority of Masters in a rather short amount of time. Unfortunately for her, Rui was not an overwhelming majority of Masters.

The tiniest of shifts at the absolute perfect timing and placement.

That was all it took.

That was all it took for Rui to disperse each and every blow she threw at him. He shifted his body along with each strike, the same way that a baseball player would shift their hands along with a ball when catching it, converting it to kinetic energy that he would then disperse to the land.

Not in vain, of course.

"Muspelheim." A faint whisper escaped him. The Tree of Life showed him that, on average, the Martial Bodies of the Masters that he was facing were more vulnerable to heat than they were to the cold. Of course, that didn't take into account their Martial Art, but it was the best that he could do with the information he had. And considering that Martial Bodies were designed to be compatible with their Martial Art, it was a decent rule of thumb to do as his system of thought told him.

And thus, the mighty Muspelheim roared as it descended upon heaven and earth. The realm of fire melted rock into lava and the air into plasma and lightning, making it inhospitable to almost all lifeforms in the world.

Yet, Martial Masters had already ascended into a higher state of life, able to access the full potential of their brain and obtain nigh absolute mechanical efficiency. They quickly adapted to the new environment with their own solutions, manipulating heaven and earth themselves to reduce the integrity of the domain.

They weren't content with just that, however.

WHOOSH WHOOSH This text is © NôvelDrama/.Org.

Two Martial Masters appeared behind him, swinging tremendously powerful blows at him even as he blocked Master Lana's attacks one after another. WHOOSH!

They crashed into an empty image.

A feint.

"Temporal Disharmony."

The two offensive grade-twenty-nine Masters froze where they stood while time sped up to a blinding blur in their visions. Their brains almost underwent a seizure with how much information flooded them.

Rui surged in as fast he could, hoping to knock them out where they stood.

But alas, the other Martial Masters in the battle were not simply scarecrows. They fired powerful long-range attacks, one after another, that intercepted Rui before he could land his attacks, forcing him to leap away, lest his weakened constitution be struck with attacks.

The battle of Masters had started off explosively and was only poised to get more and more intense.

-