The Martial Unity

It wasn't often that Rui ran into something capable of pressuring to this degree.

It wasn't often that Rui ran into something that transcended the Squire Realm.

Yet, the fear it generated had not exceeded his bewilderment and confusion. The sheer dreadful avalanche of pressure that washed over him had not deprived him of his rational thoughts.

The first thought that flashed through his mind was the fact that creatures that transcended the Squire Realm as far as threat level went were not supposed to be able to enter the dungeon without triggering its defense mechanisms. How on Earth was something like whatever it was that was emanating such a terrifying degree of pressure not being attacked by the dungeon?

This utterly contradicted everything he understood about dungeonified vegetation. Dungeons were essentially mutated patches of vegetation that had monsterified after absorbing large amounts of potent esoteric ore from mines far below the surface with their roots. They produced all kinds of fruit and other organic masses that drew in beasts that consumed them, monsterifying those animals and further animals ahead in the food chain into monsters. The vegetation massively evolved and grew to produce large structures with tunnels and large cracks producing spaces generally known as floors.

The defensive mechanism in place was a violent outbreak against anything it sensed to be a threat to it.

So why wasn't it activating now?

There were several possibilities, but Rui put them aside for now.

He wasn't in a position to engage in a long contemplative thought, not with whatever it was that was producing this pressure.

His nerves, his instincts, every cell in his body insisted that he turn back and run away.

But he knew he needed to at least get a glimpse of what he was dealing with here.

Just a glimpse.

He had evaluated the risk rather rapidly and had unfortunately come to the conclusion that the risk of just gaining bare basic information on the creature was worth it.

Not even he was brave enough to even begin conceiving of the idea of challenging this creature.

He put on a Mind Mask that reduced his presence to the absolute minimum. Sensing him was far harder now given that his presence was no more than an ordinary human at the moment. On top of that, the Shionel Dungeon's hampering of senses was extremely overbearing over such great distances.

Inside the Shionel Dungeon, he bet he could sense more than even Martial Seniors could. The reason for this was that he bypassed the sensory impediments of the dungeon, while Martial Seniors would still need to overcome them.

Thus, he evaluated the probability of being detected by the creature producing the devastating aura to be low enough for it to be worth undertaking the risk to gain some more information about what it was.

STEP

He took the gentlest of steps forward.

Slowly.

Carefully.

STEP

STEP

STEP

With each step that he took, the view of the dungeon became increasingly clear, what he saw shocked his senses once he began grasping more of what was within.

A mountain worth of esoteric ore deposits.

"What…" Rui couldn't even begin to believe his eyes. ('That's insane!')

He couldn't help but be bewildered that the Shionel Dungeon contained a floor worth of esoteric ore deposits. Who couldn't have possibly imagined a mountain worth of esoteric ore deposits existed within the dungeon?

('This is inconceivable,') Rui murmured. ('How can such a huge mine be inside the dungeon?')

It wasn't until he got further and further that he realized what the answer was. His senses detected that the bedrock of the floor was quite different from all other floors so far. It didn't contain any of the roots embedded across all of it, holding it together like the rest of the entirety of the dungeon. It was almost as if…

('As if this isn't part of the dungeon,') Rui's eyes widened. ('I've hit the actual mine that the dungeon absorbed its esoteric ore deposits from?!')

It made sense.

Rui had spent more than half a day traveling downwards.

Normally, this wasn't enough to get to the bottom of the dungeon, otherwise, everybody would have reached the bottom of the dungeon rather easily. The fact that most paths eventually led to dead-ends was the greatest reason that nobody made it very far, among other things.

However, thanks to the water elucidating the way to the bottom of the dungeon, he had reached the very esoteric ore mine that had given birth to the Shionel Dungeon!

('No wonder there's such a huge amount of esoteric ore deposits in this place!') Rui could already sense that he truly was examining the very crust of the tectonic plate and not the floor of the dungeon.

What appeared to be a floor was the extracted and absorbed part of the mine that had been assimilated, purified, and then deposited across the entirety of the Shionel Dungeon, though mostly on floors.

That was when something changed.

The weight of the air grew even heavier than it already was!

Suddenly, something entered his senses

"Is that…" Rui frowned as he began steadily heading down towards the mine to get a better grasp.

He got a better look at it, widening his eyes as he realized what it was.

"It's a root," He murmured. "A moving root!"

The root moved in from somewhere outside of his sensory field, lingering over a large mass of esoteric ore substances.

What followed was too fast for Rui's Riemannian Echo to keep up.

The root and the boulder disappeared, leaving nothing behind but a giant shockwave and a trail of dust.

"What?!" Rui's eyes widened.

He walked down over at a faster pace, throwing away caution to the wind momentarily as he got closer and closer to sense more of what was happening.

His senses came across more tentacle-like roots, lashing out radially as they grabbed esoteric ore deposits at extremely high speeds, pulling them back towards the center. Rui rushed forward until he eventually froze as his Riemannian Echo finally reached the needed range to sense what was at the center of the floor.