The Martial Unity

Senior R'An'Alnen rose from the giant crater spanning hundreds of meters in diameter with a hateful expression on her bruised face.

She glared at him.

Senior Ceeran smiled helplessly as waves of pressure washed over him in vain.

Her expression crumpled into one of venomous hatred, rage, and plenty of shock.

The two had completely lost any interest in the Martial Squires that were still scrambling away. The matriarch of the K'ulnen Tribe stayed her hand briefly to ensure that she did not inadvertently hurt her own Martial Squires. She no longer cared about Rui who had already put a good distance between himself and them.

After all, as impressive as Rui was, he was but an infant in her eyes. The adult that had stepped in to protect him was a far worthier and more meaningful target of her ire and hatred.

"Rank three outsider Martial Artist, you have returned," She spat those words with venomous contempt, from many kilometers. Not even Rui would have heard her despite his remarkable senses, yet Senior Ceeran shrugged mildly at her words.

"Have work here," He replied in the Vilun dialect.

Four months ago, when Martial Commissioner Derun had requested him to return to Vilun Island to aid Rui in a mission that he was previously assigned, he took the liberty to begin learning the language. Of course, his Vilun was broken and he couldn't understand complex sentences yet and he definitely couldn't read or write its script. But he had reached a point where he was able to understand her words and reciprocate basic replies.

"You outsiders… You dare infringe on our domain. You dare to challenge us. You dare to kill our warriors!" She snarled. "You will pay for your transgressions!"

The atmosphere grew taut.

The two of them narrowed their eyes as their expressions grew more severe.

A maelstrom of pressure radiated from their powerful frames wrung the air between them. It was as though their very presence weighed down on the world.

Chaos began to consume the island.

Humans, animals, and even the flora.

Nothing was the same.

The Martial tribes sensed the brewing pressure that was churning the atmosphere.

Children cried as their mothers comforted them while fathers guarded them. The many animals and beasts of the island ran amuck as their instincts warned them of the terrifying conflict that was to come.

Only the Martial Squires across the island retained their composure, and only the Martial Seniors were unfazed.

"Enough…" Senior matriarch R'An'Alnen spoke softly. "It is time for you to die."

The air grew tumultuous as their expressions grew more severe.

What followed beggared the minds of those who witnessed it.

Their eyes began glowing.

Thin glowing red lines began trickling across their entire body.

An increasingly devastating sense of power and peril radiated from their bodies. Their muscles brimmed with power as their skin grew taut with restraint.

It was as though they were volcanoes, on the cusp of erupting in a mighty explosion of power.

For a moment, it seemed as though nothing happened.

Yet in the very next, all hell broke loose.

"RARGH!" She snarled with an inhumanly intense expression.

The atmosphere behind her ignited into a small inferno!

The sheer force with which she launched herself forward generated a sonic boom the size of a small town as the pressure was enough to ignite the flammable constituents of the air!

The sheer friction generated by the velocity of her launch ignited all her clothes on fire.

Yet she flashed forward at a blindingly high speed unperturbed.

Her eyes were fixed on Senior Ceeran, and nothing could stop her.

Senior Ceeran inhaled deeply, and powerfully, causing a vacuum so large that animals in the surrounding area had trouble breathing for several seconds! He extended one arm in front of him, spreading his fingers far apart.

His other arm went behind him with his palm facing forward.

When he exhaled, he did not exhale an ordinary transparent gaseous breath like normal humans did all the time.

No.

What he exhaled was opaque, heavy, and powerful.

His lungs had compressed a gigantic volume of air into a temporarily solid state with sheer pressure!

His highly dense breath dispersed at a speed far surpassing that of sound. Yet his finger began moving rapidly as though he were manipulating a puppet, he began inhaling and exhaling in patterns. The combination of movements created wind currents and areas of higher and lower-pressure air.

The result?

A culmination of highly dense and powerful wind gusts formed as the many winds and currents superimposed over each other, congregating into a single attack.

The attack was so dense that not even light could pass through. It flashed across the sky, heading straight toward his ignited opponent.

Matriarch R'An'Alnen's glare grew more severe, yet unfazed. She kicked downward, and a burst of flames lashed downward as the recoil of the sheer force and energy allowed her to avoid Senior Ceeran's attack at the last second thanks to an extremely high acceleration that the gesture had generated by recoil.

She burst forward, leaving the attack behind her. Yet her sense of danger spiked when she saw a grin erupting on her opponent's red line-ladened face. Her eyes widened as she sensed his earlier attack changing trajectories!

It turned a whole one-hundred and eighty degrees as it quickly caught up with her

"Tsk," She tutted as she kicked the air again, releasing a blast of flames as she somersaulted out of the returning attack that sought to strike her in the back.

The attack rushed towards Senior Ceeran, seemingly about to strike him, yet he was unperturbed. He brought a balled fist before him, suddenly opening his hand and spreading his fingers as he inhaled and exhaled in a pattern.

Matriarch R'An'Alnen's eyes widened as the attack split up into dozens of smaller attacks that each turned curved around before flying in her direction. Some chased after her directly while others pirouetted to intercept her from other directions from various angles!