The Martial Unity

2898  Inferno

The chilling land of ash erupted violently, swallowing them whole as several fiery serpents, enveloped in flames, emerged from within the ashes, quaking the very fabric of space and time with their violent momentum.

And yet, they never reached.

"Rargh!" the Devil snarled as he unleashed his Destruction upon the converging serpents, releasing a tremendous destructive attack.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!

The sheer ferocity of his attacks was so astronomically overwhelming that it single-handedly destroyed all converging attacks. The other Martial Sages followed suit as their Realms of power blazed to life, unleashing an extraordinary flood of Martial Embodiments that consumed all of heaven and earth.

RUMBLE!!!

The serpents slithered around cautiously, their eyes intelligent. Their scales were enveloped in tremendous explosions as the mountain-sized creatures beheld the Martial Sages, shifting the very root of their existence into something else.

The field of ashes shook violently as titanic serpents as large as mountain ranges revolved around an extraordinary singularity of power that were the Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire, waiting for the right moment to strike.

"…Inferno Serpents." Rui's eyes lit up with understanding as he beheld the gargantuan snakes.

With the Tree of Life, the creatures were all but transparent to him. "You know what these things are?" Kane asked as he eyed the slithering serpents with a grim expression.

Rui nodded seriously. "They're a species with scales that can generate tremendous explosions. This ash…"

Rui glanced at the soft, crumbling ash beneath his feet.

"…This was caused by them burning literally everything."

They stood upon the remains of the biosphere of this particular region. A mound of ash so large, it could form a continent on its own. This was despite the fact that the ashes left behind after burning organic matter were just a fraction of the original object's mass.

RUMBLE!!!

The world shook under the weight of not just the massive creatures shifting their gargantuan bodies as they sized up their new prey but also under the tremendous explosions that each scale unleashed, able to level an entire city.

They had trillions of such scales across extraordinarily massive bodies.

Rui couldn't even imagine just how much damage these serpents would be causing across all of humanity if they were allowed to enter the Human Domain.

Only here, in the Central Highlands of the Beast Domain, could they deal with these creatures while ensuring that those of human civilization would be safe from their endless carnage.

His eyes sharpened.

"We must cull them here."

He took a stance.

"Now."

BADUMP!

His Realms of power blazed to life as an endless flood of Water emerged from the depths of his very existence. One moment, the world was consumed by dozens of extraordinary Martial Embodiments overlapping with each other to paint a wonderful tapestry.

The very next moment, Water consumed everything around them. It surged forth with a voracious hunger, eroding away at all those who beheld it. The Martial Sages stiffened under the sheer weight of his Martial Embodiment, upon the discovery of his Martial Soul, the sheer flux of information had grown so tremendous, that not even Martial Sages could easily bear the weight of his Martial Mind. The inferno serpents were even less pleased with being doused in Water.

RUMBLE!!!

A myriad of flames and explosions erupted from the depths of their pitch-black scales, unleashing an extraordinary swirl of the cracklingly hot inferno that threatened to reduce them to dust.

And yet, it never reached them.

"Niflheim."

The world chilled with a tremendous surge of cold as Rui summoned the realm of cold and frost. A flood of materia prima emerged from him as he channeled the extraordinary power into fueling the various thermodynamic cooling mechanisms that the technique deployed. It fueled an aggressive cold, unlike anything he had ever unleashed in his entire life.

First, the land froze.

The ashes beneath their feet turned to solid stone while the atmosphere may as well have stopped moving, appearing to be frozen in time itself as Rui dispelled every iota of heat across the entire battlefield.

RUMBLE!!!!!

The tremendous infernos capable of wiping out half of all life, de-intensified with each passing moment, growing colder and colder.

They never completely dispelled.

And yet, they didn't need to.

"Hah!" the Devil's grin was gruesome. Murderous.

"This is nothing."

The endless destruction within his body surged forth as he unleashed a devastating wave of destruction against the inferno serpents.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!!

"SSSSS!!!"

The flaming serpents writhed in agony as Damian successfully ravaged them with his destruction while the flames that they unleashed were dulled by the sheer potency of Rui's Niflheim.

"Go," Rui told the others with a confident tone. "I will negate their flames with my technique. You guys take them out one by one."

That was all that they needed. Not a single person distrusted Rui's ability to keep the extraordinary heat of the inferno serpents at bay.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!!

One by one, the Martial Sages surged forth with a murderous bloodlust, dispatching all their power against the many dozens of inferno serpents lurking in their nest of ashes. Kane turned into a shade of lightning, surging through the battlefield with blinding speeds as his Realm of Lightning fed into his Fulminata, enhancing his reflexes to extraordinarily high degrees.

He used his Martial Soul to alter his body to heighten his body's electrical conductivity to the levels of superconductivity while using materia prima to enhance the domain that passed lightning through his body to enhance his nervous system.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!!

"Rgh!" he gritted his teeth as the widespread flames enveloped his entire body, singeing his skin, charring his green hair. "Damn, I'm not compatible with this battle."

In general, he didn't have much luck against beasts and monsters. As an evasive maneuver who relied on agility, speed, and stealth, he couldn't avoid flames that were everywhere, nor did stealth help him avoid what inferno serpents threw at him. On top of that, the flaming serpents were too big for him to harm with his puny daggers. If not for Rui's Niflheim, he would not have been able to handle the sheer heat that the quasi-Tanscendent beasts were unleashing.

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