Chapter 4641: The Only Person Who Could Stop Him

This realization was utterly astounding to him. It was to his greatest regret that he had to put a pin in this line of thought and focus on the deleted future that Amare was rehashing. If he could be fascinated by every little thing, he would never reach the end.

"Your Martial Embodiment was overwhelmingly powerful, and... the experiences it subjected me to helped me achieve the final enlightenment I needed to become a Transcendent," she continued with a serious voice.

Despite having achieved Transcendence, she didn’t seem particularly happy.

It was understandable because of what happened next.

"You attacked Mother Maeria and Gaia," she spoke with a grim voice. "...and you killed them."

Her memories showed a rather horrifying visage of Rui descending upon Genora, his eyes shining with the blinding brightness of two red suns, scorching the very surface of the planet. He could feel her emotions of horror as Rui effortlessly overwhelmed Mother Maeria in her own domain of power, where she was nigh invincible.

Gaia tried leveraging the power of the negatron core to parry him away, but it was all in vain. Such a primitive attack, regardless of power, was doomed to fail before him in the state of mind that he was.

Yet, when Rui observed his Gigabrain-self, he noticed things that even Amare hadn’t noticed. He could detect just the faintest glint of regret and grief within his own mind even as the planet of Gaia exploded. His rational mind, conquered by the trance of adaptive evolution that he was drowning in, understood the utter tragedy and calamity that he had become.

"I... escaped before you could get me," she admitted with a tinge of self-loathing in her eyes. "When I felt your power. I knew that I could not stop you, at least, not by myself. It was impossible for me with the power that I possessed then, even with the power of two Verses and time travel, to defeat you with the power you possessed then."

That must have been an extraordinarily excruciating decision, but she had made the right one. If she had chosen to fight Rui as he was in her memories, she would have died in the blink of an eye. Rui did love her, but his love for her was still within the ambition of Project Water. She would not be able to break him out of his trance.

He could tell that she suffered from that decision even now. How difficult it must have been for Amare and Esil especially, to abandon Gaia when Gaia needed them most?

He pulled her into a deep embrace. "You did well. Look—"

He gestured to Vargard City outside the window. A vibrant city whose lights only grew brighter in the growing darkness of dusk. The city hadn’t lost its vigor despite the terrifying assault from the Divine Mothers.

"You saved all of them," he told her. "You saved Gaia. If you hadn’t chosen to time-travel at that moment instead of fighting me, this entire world would be destroyed."

Those words made her feel better. She could feel the lives she had saved with her powerful senses. There was a lot of anxiety and fear in the air from the recent attack on the solar system, but at the very least, it meant that they were at least alive to experience those emotions.

But she shook her head at Rui’s words.

"I didn’t choose to time-travel at that moment," she corrected his words. "I told you. I ran away. I escaped. Shortly before I escaped, Gaia shared with me the secret to Transcendent impunity... even though I was about to abandon her, she still looked out for me. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to stop you, so I looked for the one person who would have been able to."

Her expression softened as her amber eyes regained the warmth and light that they used to have. A gentle, affectionate smile emerged on her face.

He immediately understood who she was talking about.

"Ria..." he realized. "Wait, you went and got our daughter to stop me?! Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?!"

Chills crawled across his skin at the very thought of hurting his own daughter. Ria was the single most precious thing in his entire life. His baby angel. The one thing that he had created that was even more valuable to him than Project Water. He grew horrified at the thought of killing his precious baby girl, and he didn’t even have the courage to continue listening to the story. If it turned out that he killed Ria too, then...

"I had faith."

Amare’s voice cut through his spiraling emotions. She turned towards him with a deep gaze. "I had faith that... you would never hurt Ria. Not even in a trance. Ria is the one and only person in your entire life that you have truly put above Project Water and your Martial Art. I’ve seen that myself. I had faith that you would never hurt her, no matter what."

"...What happened then?"

"Finding Ria was extremely difficult," Amare spoke in a severe voice. "I only managed to find her by painstakingly grasping at the crumbs that she had left behind, ruthlessly hypnotizing everybody that I had to. Eventually, I managed to track her ship down after she returned from some infected world excursion."

Her expression softened. "...Our baby has grown up more than I could ever imagine."

Rui studied Ria in Amare’s memories of her when she finally found her. With a single glance, he could tell how much she had grown. He had purposely kept his distance from his daughter. He knew that she didn’t like it when he fawned over her all the time. If he had gotten what he wanted, then he would have liked to spend as much time with her as possible, hugging and kissing his precious angel on her head, but she had outgrown that kind of affection.

Still, he was proud of how brave Ria was. When Amare told her about what was happening, Ria immediately steeled her amber eyes and volunteered to go stop her father by any and all means necessary, no matter the cost.

"And she did it," Amare continued with a tone of love and pride. "She faced you head-on without even the slightest shred of fear, unlike me. And she managed to stop you."