The Martial Unity

1820 Outcome

Rui felt his consciousness dimming.

"Winner! Rui Quarrier Kandria!"

A sense of relief spread within him when he heard those words.

He won.

But at what cost?

His body had been throughout the entire battle. He had been forced to use a forbidden technique. He had even had his arms ripped out.

Still, the thought of victory brought him great elation even as his consciousness faded.

After all, he had defeated the great Gatekeeper. Someone who was regarded to be the strongest Martial Senior in all of Kandria. Hell, he could not imagine the Gatekeeper losing to any Martial Senior even though he had barely extracted victory from him.

Rui had truly used everything that he had to offer against the elder Martial Senior. Even by the very end, he had used Phantomind Void synergetically with Phantom Step to bypass his guard and land his Sympathetic Death Lance on the man.

He had known from the very moment he laid eyes on the Gatekeeper that he would be unable to harm him using conventional methods. He had resigned to having to kill him using his greatest assassination technique in order to extract victory.

That was why he continued striking the man's head throughout the entire battle, even if the action appeared to be in vain. It was not about damage; it was about finding the right resonant frequency.

And despite that, the man did the impossible; he got up after being struck by the Sympathetic Death Lance, not once, but twice. It was a feat that Rui still didn't understand.

Rui would probably never admit this out loud, but the moment that he realized that not even the Sympathetic Death Lance could take this man down was one of the most horrifying moments that Rui had ever experienced in the entirety of both lives.

Thankfully, the second one seemed to do the trick, but it still shook him.

power

ever came across a particularly old Martial Artist, he definitely needed to steer clear, for there was no telling just how much power they had cultivated in all that time. He could completely understand why the Martial Masters in his immediate inner ring had told him

He didn't blame them.

fact that he managed to overcome all that accumulation was a testament to the potency of his Martial Art as

wanted to ask the Gatekeeper if

didn't know if he

was still alive,

seemed to have slowed down in his perspective as a multitude of thoughts

'Am I dying?'

spell of time, accelerating the darkness that overtook his

faded. A comforting,

Time passed.

memories of noises, voices, scents, and odors had cumulated during

different sensations during this

of pain initially, but

opened, he could instinctively sense

himself

greeted him when

"I'm alive."

sigh of relief escaped

had been so genuinely dire that he could not help but worry that death was a very realistic possibility. Having his arms ripped out after using his forbidden metabody technique was a good recipe for death.

Path for almost twenty years only to

had an entire life ahead

An extremely long life.

feeling a surge of

to distinguish any differences in the sensations of his arms. It was as if they had never

Union did to him while

he sat up in