The Martial Unity

And yet, the very fabric of reality begged to differ.

RUMBLE!!!!!

Space and time themselves began to warp, creating a field of chaos across the entirety of the surface of the world around them.

"Rgh…" Kane gritted his teeth as his corporeal consciousness struggled to generate the kind of space-time geometry needed to move at superluminal speed. Planet Amadeus III and Kane began a little tug of war battle over space, struggling to wrest it under their control as Kane pushed himself to tame the chaotic space-time fluctuations.

The sheer power that he exerted was so great that minute tears began to appear in the fabric of reality itself.

CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK

Space and time itself began to tear apart at the seams as the collective force exerted on it simply exceeded the integrity of reality itself.

CRACK CRACK CRACK

"Kane…" Arastia murmured to him in concern as she spotted cracks emerging in reality itself. Pathwalkers at the pinnacle of power had long learned that reality was more fragile than they would have ever thought.

It was possible to create singularities and tears in reality if one was too careless with their maximum power.

Pinnacle pathwalkers generally fought to avoid these outcomes. Though it was clear that Kane was too invested in the task to care.

Kane pushed with one more thrust, trying to wring space and time to his control, only to be blasted with a gravitational recoil.

BOOOM!!!

Kane flew back, shielding Ria from the impact, skidding across the ground as he panted with an exhausted expression. Ria collapsed on the ground next to him, unconscious, knocked out by the gravitational whiplash.

"Ria!" Arastia rushed to her side, pressing her hand against her head.

A moment passed before she heaved a sigh. "She's fine. Just knocked out."

RUMBLE

The light of the world around began quivering and dancing as if it were an extremely hot day. As if the world were submerged in dancing water that warped and stretched the image of heaven and earth around them.

"This world is not letting me leave." Kane's expression grew grim. "More than anything, the fact that it has the power to keep a Martial Corporeal like me trapped…"

It meant that they were dealing with a force that was much more powerful than they realized.

"It's the virus."

Arastia's tone was one of certainty as his gaze fell to the soil of the land beneath their feet with a grim expression.

"For some reason, it doesn't want us to leave even though we have hostile intentions towards it. This… this is an anomaly."

This wasn't her first infected world rodeo. She had been to other planets, and they typically did everything in their power to exorcise or kill hostile alien entities, if not crush them. It would never stop them from leaving voluntarily. Especially if they were powerful. The virus should have known that someone as strong as Kane was an absolute menace to keep on the planet and increase the chances that it would perish.

Yet, it prevented him from leaving.

No, not Kane.

All three of them shifted their eyes towards the unconscious Ria with a grim severity.

The infected world wanted to keep Ria within it.

The virus wanted Ria.

The very thought of it made true, raw fear emerge in the pits of their gut. They understood enough about the virus to understand how it worked. The virus could absorb information. Not only could it absorb information, but it could also then essentially recreate material phenomena through the pluripotent exotic matter, using the existential information of what it absorbed as a blueprint for the wave function of the exotic matter to recreate it.

If it got its hands on Ria, then…

"There's no telling how strong it would become."

It was one of the reasons that the laminar integuments had been this insistent on destroying Gaia unless they had absolute certainty that the civilization could keep its planet safe and ensure that the virus never got its hands on paths and pathwalkers, something known only to the most powerful figures of human civilization.

If it got its hands on the most talented quintessential Martial Artist in human history, then that would be a crisis of perhaps universal proportions.

Most likely, the virus had managed to glean just how special Ria was, having observed her in battle. If the homoarachnoids, which appeared to have some kind of relationship with the virus, had noticed how special she was, then there was no doubt that the virus itself was aware.

That meant that it would do any and everything that it needed to.

Even if it meant an all-out war.

RUMBLE!!!

The ground beneath them began shaking even more as their senses tingled. Their nerves told them about what was coming. Their instincts warned them of danger.

RUMBLE!!!!!

The ground itself began erupting at the horizon as countless distinctly familiar creatures emerged from the bedrock.

They began to emerge from the soil itself.

Arastia's blood-red eyes widened at the sheer number of homoarachnoids that emerged from the depths of the planet, which exceeded her wildest expectations.

They were as vast as an ocean.

Millions of them began emerging in droves.

Their turquoise fur brought color to the gray world around them. They wore sophisticated attire woven from a web of different kinds, indicating a vast diversity in the culture of the homoarachnoid civilization. They arranged themselves into legions led by ascendant homoarachnoids that led their warriors towards the front lines.

This was what Planet Amadeus III was hiding from the rest of them.

A civilization that consorted with a cosmological alien virus.

A civilization that was more advanced than they could have ever imagined.

BZZZT BZZZT BZZZT

Arastia's emergency commpad began buzzing urgently. She simply accepted the call, never once taking her eyes off the drawing army.

"Madam President! The homoaarchnoids, they are—"

"I know."

Her steely voice cut through the urged voice of Schoel.

"Prepare the Tide of Samsara immediately."

BZZZT

She cut the call without any other message as she took placed herself between Ria and one-third of the emerging army.

"We must protect her."

She uttered what the other two had already known, placing themselves between Ria and the other two sides of the army. They formed an equilateral triangle at the center of which was the unconscious Ria lying on the ground.

"I can feel these creatures wriggling underground," Kane remarked. "Trying to get to Ria directly."