The Martial Unity

"Ugh…" Rui groaned, opening his eyes slowly.

A white ceiling immediately greeted his blurred vision. Other sensations began returning to his body by the second.

Pain.

"Ugh…" He grimaced as he felt it.

It felt as though every cell on his body was on fire. His muscles ached, his bones screamed, and his flesh was burning.

('Note… Never ever do that again.') He sighed.

He had not expected that the backlash would be so overwhelming, he did expect to be crippled momentarily, but a preliminary scan of his body with his senses revealed that his condition was far more dire than he had expected.

He had actually nearly died.

He had already told Kane to carry a high-grade potion with him and to be ready to administer it to Rui at any moment. After all, this was not something that he could afford to play around. Kane had acquired the best healing potion that the sect had to offer, under the authority of the three Martial Seniors.

However, it appeared that not even that potion was enough to overcome the sheer severity of the condition that he had inflicted upon himself.

In exchange, however, he got to wield power that could only be stopped by a full-fledged Martial Senior wielding the power of the Martial Heart. Nothing else could stop him for that half minute.

He was so strong that he could easily fight multiple Martial Seniors without their Martial Heart and even dominate them for that timespan.

He could imagine what the three Martial Seniors that he fought off thought about him. There was no doubt that they thought he was a Martial Senior, and a particularly powerful one at that, on par as a threat with the other three.

('…That was the plan, after all.')

The reason Rui had opted to exploit the element of surprise to kill Senior Ferin and then use the Mind Mask as a way to masquerade as a Martial Senior was to convince them that the Floating Sect had a fourth Martial Senior.

Furthermore, he had stressed the ODA System to the absolute limit to nail Senior Ferin's eyeball with the most powerful tier-five Transverse Resonance attack he could launch.

Not even a Martial Senior could block such an attack with their eyeball.

He had hidden the sonic fluctuations of the activation of the Transverse Resonance technique behind the sonic fluctuations of Senior Xanarn's technique. That was also one reason that literally not a single one of them had seen it coming.

All of it required Rui to time the attack just perfectly to disguise the activation of his technique from afar under the influence of Void Step.

Yet, he had managed to nail it.

The result?

The instantaneous death of a Martial Senior in a dominating fashion that nobody could ever fathom a Martial Squire was capable of made them not even consider that he was a Martial Squire.

It did not even enter their minds as a possibility.

He grinned, he had already estimated a series of potential outcomes based on this. He didn't have enough data to predict the exact result, but none of the possibilities were bad for the Floating Sect.

"Guardians Falken," He heard a nurse addressing him as she approached. "You're awake, that's highly optimistic. How do you feel?"

"Was my condition that bad?" Rui raised an eyebrow.

She smiled. "The possibility of an indefinite coma was on the table. You have been asleep for three days. However, now that you have woken up, there are no more risks. Your recovery will take a bit of time, but you will be fine."

"Sheesh," Rui muttered.

He couldn't help but feel nostalgic all the way back to his days in the Martial Academy. He had been hospitalized a lot before he obtained his Martial Body.

"Please do not push yourself," She insisted. "You need rest, more than anything."

Rui could only imagine how bad his condition was for the nurse to say that.

Using two Metabody techniques at once was now something that he reserved as a forbidden technique.

That made him chuckle.

To think that he would actually have a 'forbidden technique', like this was some kind of action fantasy web.

He shook his head, putting aside such silly thoughts.

"What… happened?" Rui asked her.

If three days had passed, then there was no doubt that a lot had happened. He wanted to know everything immediately.

"I have notified the Senior guardians of your awakening," She replied. "They will brief of you of everything that has come to pass."

Rui raised an eyebrow, nodding. He felt that there was something ominous about that, but shook off the feeling.

Soon enough, Senior Sarak walked into the room with a melancholic smile on his face. "I'm glad you're okay. We were truly afraid that the worst would come to pass."

"I'm tougher than I look," Rui jokingly said as he shrugged.

"Oh, believe me, young man, I know," He said with a serious tone. "I may be a Martial Senior, but I would rather make an enemy of a Martial Master than you."

That was high praise.

"I'm sure you're curious to know what has happened," He sighed.

Rui furrowed his eyebrows.

That was not the attitude of someone who had gotten everything he hoped to achieve.

"What happened?" Rui asked with more severity this time.

The air grew tense as Senior Sarak met Rui's strong stare with melancholic eyes.

"What happened?" Rui repeated himself.

Senior Sarak exhaled deeply. "Xanarn has fallen into an indefinite coma. The doctors have informed me that it is unlikely she will ever wake up."

Rui's eyes widened at the revelation. His fingers quivered as he tried to compose himself. It would not do him any favors to get worked up in his condition.

"What happened?" Rui asked for a third time

"Her actual injuries were not as bad as yours…" He elaborated. "But it's the poison. It has entered her brain and is crippling its ability to stay conscious. She is in a highly delicate state where she could suffer brain death. I'm told it is unlikely that she will wake up."

"I thought the Floating Sect had excellent medical facilities due to how self-dependent it was," Rui gritted his teeth.

"We do… We actually have among the best." He sighed. "But it's not enough. A solution does not exist within the sect, we need to one from the outside."