The Martial Unity

[… The only, yet the biggest flaw of the augmentation method; Brain death. The brain was the by far the single most fragile organ of the body. What other organs could survive; even the heart and the lungs, it could not even come close to surviving. Even this near-perfect solution when subjected to subjects caused brain death. The combination of mass brain-cell death and radiation was simply too lethal.

If the brain was left unenhanced while the rest of the body was evolved via this method, then the brain would die of extreme seizures anyway due to being stressed with metabolic processes that it was not evolved to withstand. It was not possible to evolve the rest of the body but not the brain.

No solution worked; it was absolutely not a viable form of human augmentation. This is why it's a dead-end for ordinary humans.

Ordinary humans, being the keyword. The goal of Project Apotheosis was to discover the breakthrough process to the Squire Realm.

The research team did not give up on their final candidate. The final possibility was that even if human brains could not survive the process, it was possible that the superhumanly augmented brains of Martial Apprentices could.

This was put to the test with test subject SQ001. He was a hostile foreign Martial Apprentice caught infiltrating the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana.

The result was a failure. However, this result was illuminating. The test subject's brain came far closer to the threshold of survival.

This gave the research team hope that the Flux Mutation method was the key to the Squire Realm. Each time they refined the process heavily before bringing in another test subject; SQ002.

Because of the extreme scarcity of Martial Apprentice test subjects, each experiment was conducted after a large amount of refining. Months went by between each test subject.

However, all of them were failures. Six Martial Apprentices died. But the research team was still optimistic. They reached closer and closer each time, fueled by the data of their failures.

Then, they succeeded.

'officially' sent as a guard but in actuality was a test subject. She was subjected to the latest

She survived.

enough to withstand the procedure without dying or losing her consciousness due

broken through to the Squire Realm;

the secret to the Squire

features you described of her entire body matched that of the ones recorded in research logs. I do believe that you fought and defeated Squire test subject SQ007 in your

conducted in the research facility. The elaborate report contains all the nitty gritty details that I

to come over and ask any questions you

~Julian.]

…

…..

dropped the document as he stared

looking at walls, physically. But really, he was looking at

mind was still in a state of shock as he struggled to even process what he

wonder. "To think literal Darwinian Evolution would

beyond bewildered. Yet so many things made sense to him. It all fell into place. Like pieces of a puzzle. The many pieces he had picked up over a long period, one by one, falling into

allowed to attempt the breakthrough." Rui's eyes widened. "Normal Martial Apprentices would

to achieve a substantial degree of individuality. This was one

Rui finally understood why.