The Martial Unity

It wasn't often that Rui ran into something capable of pressuring to this degree.

It wasn't often that Rui ran into something that transcended the Squire Realm.

Yet, the fear it generated had not exceeded his bewilderment and confusion. The sheer dreadful avalanche of pressure that washed over him had not deprived him of his rational thoughts.

The first thought that flashed through his mind was the fact that creatures that transcended the Squire Realm as far as threat level went were not supposed to be able to enter the dungeon without triggering its defense mechanisms. How on Earth was something like whatever it was that was emanating such a terrifying degree of pressure not being attacked by the dungeon?

This utterly contradicted everything he understood about dungeonified vegetation. Dungeons were essentially mutated patches of vegetation that had monsterified after absorbing large amounts of potent esoteric ore from mines far below the surface with their roots. They produced all kinds of fruit and other organic masses that drew in beasts that consumed them, monsterifying those animals and further animals ahead in the food chain into monsters. The vegetation massively evolved and grew to produce large structures with tunnels and large cracks producing spaces generally known as floors.

The defensive mechanism in place was a violent outbreak against anything it sensed to be a threat to it.

So why wasn't it activating now?

There were several possibilities, but Rui put them aside for now.

He wasn't in a position to engage in a long contemplative thought, not with whatever it was that was producing this pressure.

His nerves, his instincts, every cell in his body insisted that he turn back and run away.

But he knew he needed to at least get a glimpse of what he was dealing with here.

Just a glimpse.

He had evaluated the risk rather rapidly and had unfortunately come to the conclusion that the risk of just gaining bare basic information on the creature was worth it.

enough to even begin conceiving of

the absolute minimum. Sensing him was far harder now given that his presence was no more than an ordinary

even Martial Seniors could. The reason for this was that he bypassed the sensory impediments of the dungeon,

the devastating aura to be low enough for it to be worth undertaking the risk to

STEP

the gentlest of steps

Slowly.

Carefully.

STEP

STEP

STEP

clear, what he saw shocked his senses once he began grasping more of

worth of

to believe

couldn't help but be bewildered that the Shionel Dungeon contained a floor worth of esoteric ore deposits. Who couldn't have possibly imagined a mountain worth of

('How can such

he got further and further that he realized what the answer was. His senses detected that the bedrock of the floor was quite different from all other floors so far. It didn't contain any of

widened. ('I've hit the actual mine that the dungeon absorbed its

It made sense.

spent more than

rather easily. The fact that most paths eventually led to dead-ends was the greatest reason that nobody made it very far, among other

way to the bottom of the dungeon, he

that he