"No one could have held off against a creature that could defeat junior Martial Sages as a Martial Master."

His tone grew more profound.

"No one except for your father."

Being compared to her father was a strange feeling. On the one hand, it felt normal. She was his daughter. On the other hand, she understood more about how extraordinary he was. Any comparison to the greatest Martial Artist of all time was a compliment of the highest order.

"Please stand behind me, Your Highness," he spoke with a stricter tone. "This one is very dangerous."

The six eyes of the black-furred homoarachnoid sharpened with a hint of impatience.

CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK

"Time. Is. Up. You. Will. Now. Die."

She lunged at him, unleashing a spew of space-time webbing towards him, trying to merely bind him and nab Ria while he was preoccupied with her webs. She knew that trying to kill the powerful being, especially with all the critical injuries that she endured against Arastia, was a fool’s errand.

And yet, what ensued next exceeded the fathoming of both Ria and —oo—oo. The powerful Martial Sage’s very existence shifted.

It shifted into something else entirely.

It became a shadow.

He became a shadow.

WHOOSH

A shadow was not vulnerable to physical force. He zoomed through the webbing, almost like he was not made up of any actual substance in his material body, emerging before the homoarachnoid in the blink of an eye.

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!

If not for the space-time binding, the dwarven-crafted dagger in his hand would have surely severed her entire body into pieces, causing the creature to fall apart with the slightest exertion of force.

—oo—oo, in that moment, realized that she could die in her current state against an opponent of this much power. Her stinger sprayed her body with even more webbing, trying to seal off all the parts of the web that Arastia had ruthlessly and overwhelmingly vaporized, protecting her body from the chinks that could be exploited.

And yet, her opponent merely melted into the shadows of the world around her. The environment of Planet Amadeus III was a grayscale world. The land beneath their feet was varying shades of gray, as was the sky, as if it were a world that sucked the life out of colors.

And yet, this environment merely seemed to fuel the Martial Sage. The homoarachnoid watched with a gaping mouth as the Martial Sage became the shadows that blended in with the grayscale world around them, becoming completely imperceptible.

WHOOSH

He simply melted into the shadows.

As if he were one with them.

It was a phenomenon that wildly exceeded anything she had ever seen.

CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK!

"What. Is. This. Sorcery!" The homoarachnoid yelped with stunned clicks as she covered herself in protective webbing. "How. Can. A. Creature. Become. Shadows!"

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!

His dagger struck her webbed armor.

In vain, of course.

The space-time esoteric subsance that the webbing carried with them enough power to temporarily withstand Arastia’s immense destructive power. As powerful as Sage Sayfeel was, he simply didn’t compare to her in terms of the attack power.

He specialized in guerillar warfare.

He could ambush anybody anywhere.

He could ambus them in front of their own eyes.

He could ambush them in the middle of a flat plain with nowhere to hide.

He didn’t rely on the shadows of object to hide in.

"I am the shadow."

WHOOSH

Both Ria and —oo—oo gaped at the Martial Sage as he seemed to literally melt out of reality and into a puddle of darkness in their eyes in a manner that was entirely fantastical outside of any conceivable Martial principle.

While —oo—oo frantically tried to detect the powerful Martial Sage and where his existence was while questioning her entire world view, Ria had a better understanding of what was going on.

"This is his Martial Embodiment..." she muttered with a stunned tone. "But... why is it so real? I can’t discern it from reality!"

Martial Embodiments were very powerful hallucinations that formed in the minds of those who bore witness to them. In the minds of humans, they were realistic, but to other Martial Artists, they were able to separate it from reality. It was at most like a transparent filter around a person, nothing that couldn’t be ignored and fought despite.

And yet, when she looked at the Martial Embodiment of the powerful Martial Sage, she wasn’t even able to discern even the slightest clue until after the Martial Embodiment shifted from a specific —oo—ooion, returning that environment back to normal in her eyes.

"How? How is this possible?"

She prided herself on her senses. She prided herself on her ability to discern causality. And understantding the cause and effect of the events that happened around her.

And yet, not even she could peer into just what was happening with the powerful shadow as it washed around the entire battlefield.

Unbeknownst to her, it was what separated Transcendent candidates from Martial Sages.

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT

A flurry of hazy slashes struck the black-furred homoarachnoid as she struggled to locate her opponent, drowned in a series of flashes of darkness that spread around her, threatening to swallow her whole. If not for her passive defenses, she wouldn’t have been able to keep up with the powerful Transcendent Candidate.

Sage Sayfeel hadn’t been idle in the past thirteen years in the Era of Expansion. The man had internalized the framework of phenomenological uniformity that the Emperor of Water had passed on to all pathwalkers. He had internalized, searching for the concept and the element of his Martial Art, of his Martial Path and his identity that most consumed his phenomenology.

And he had found it.

"Shadows."

His entire life, he had been a shadow. Before the Emperor of Harmony had identified his talent back when he was a mere prince among many others in what was now an ancient era. And even after he became a Martial Artist, he had served as the hidden weapon of the Emperor of Harmony, contributing to his rise to Emperor of even his victory against the former enemies of the Kandrian Empire.