"…Eh?" Prince Randal's eyes widened as a deep gash appeared on his body, leaking blood.
"AARRRGRHRH!" Princess Raemina screeched, undignified, in pain as she held her wound.
"Rgh!" Princess Raemina gritted her teeth as her eyes watered, spilling out in tears.
Princess Rafia had not moved an inch. Her expression had been frozen in shock, unchanged ever since Rui Quarrier appeared out of nowhere.
Words could not describe what the Martial Masters felt at that scene.
They had one job.
One job.
"Your Highnesses!" The Martial Masters roared with horror as they returned to their marks, gritting their teeth as they pulled out healing potions.
They had been caught horrifically off-guard. It could be argued that no Martial Master in the history of Martial Art was as caught off-guard as they did.
After all, Martial Seniors did not randomly turn into Martial Masters.
Martial Seniors did not randomly instantaneously transform into legendary assassins within the Master Realm.
Martial Seniors did not possess the ability to move faster than they could even see!
"I'm going to be real straight with you, fellas," her voice was mischievous. "I most certainly cannot defeat sixteen Martial Masters simultaneously. Not that strong, unfortunately."
Her horrifying bloodlust intensified.
RUMBLE
It shook heaven and earth.
Even Rui felt chills crawling up his skin as he stared at her.
She radiated bloodlust like the Sun radiated light.
Just how much bloodlust could one person possibly emit?!
"…I cannot defeat sixteen Martial Masters, but I can assassinate people who are protected by sixteen Martial Masters. It's lower than my actual record," She continued as her smirk deepened.
"…Go ahead and kill Rui Quarrier if you want," smug apathy radiated from Master Reina's voice. "In exchange, I will kill the four royals. Tit for tat. Eye for an eye. You scratch my back; I scratch yours. Deal?"
The Voidreaper chuckled as a deeper horrifying blood-curdling bloodlust emerged from him. Her grin widened even more as she activated the full might of her Martial Mind.
Her Martial Embodiment bloomed in all its clandestine glory. The Martial Masters gritted their eyes as they covered the eyes of their marks with an opaque wind barrier, lest their minds be eroded by the sheer weight of her Martial Embodiment.
Lesser beings were not qualified to witness the true splendor of a Martial Master.
Rui's eyes widened as the world around them disappeared.
The room.
The chairs.
It was darkness.
It was silent.
It was…
'A shadow,' Rui felt chills crawling up his spine. 'Her shadow!'
He recognized the silhouette of the shadow that encompassed the world around them.
Everybody was within her shadow.
Everybody was at her mercy.
"Your lone might cannot overcome ours!" The Martial Masters roared.
Sixteen Martial Embodiments bloomed across the room.
A spiked shield, a transparent barrier, a flaming torch, a netted armor.
The sixteen Martial Masters prepared themselves to take her down while simultaneously protecting the royals from any further harm.
They physically guarded the royals.
They also mentally protected the royals by ensuring that Master Reina's Martial Embodiment never once reached their eyes by creating an opaque air barrier that restricted light.
This time, they were not going to be caught off-guard.
It was just one Martial Master.
Except it wasn't.
WHOOSH!
Master Gurren appeared out of nowhere, his Martial Mind already active.
His domain Martial Embodiment flared, shocking the sixteen Martial Masters once more.
His eyes narrowed as his arms reached out, bending heaven.
The air barrier protecting the royals from the Martial Embodiments was dispelled by his expert mastery.
For just a few microseconds, the royals witnessed eighteen Martial Embodiments.
WHOOSH!
Sixteen Martial Masters physically barricaded the light as they gritted their teeth.
"Hehehe…" Rui chuckled, even as he inwardly struggled to resist the pressure of eighteen Martial Masters. "That was close. The human brain only has a visual perception framerate of sixty FPS, so I doubt that they saw anything. Still…"
Rui's grin widened. "Imagine if they did."
It was precisely at that moment that the sixteen Martial Masters made a profound realization.
These circumstances are untenable.
If the royals hadn't been here, this would have been game over.
One dangerous high-grade Martial Master and a mid-grade Martial Master could not defeat sixteen mid-grade Martial Masters in a fair fight.
It was not possible.
Patently in the domain of impossibility.
All eighteen Martial Masters knew this.
However, as they had just realized, this was not a fair fight.
"It's not a fight at all."
Rui's tone was calm and composed.
His smile was confident.
"You certainly can kill all three of us…" He affirmed the unspoken truth. "Only if you are willing to let the royals die, either physically or mentally."
He didn't clarify.
He didn't need to.
The equation was laid out.
Just like how Rui could kill a target protected by sixteen Martial Seniors through Greater Phantomind Void and other powerful tools he had developed, Master Reina, too, had the potential to kill the four royals protected by sixteen Martial Masters.
Could either of them defeat sixteen Martial Artists of their respective Realms?
No.
But defeating in combat and assassinating targets protected by were two entirely different things.
The sixteen Martial Masters had truly felt this truth in their bones.
Master Reina was the physical threat. Through her absurd stealth and misdirection, blinding speed, an extraordinary assassinating lethality, she could inflict lethal wounds on them, wiggling through the defenses of the Martial Masters.
Master Gurren, on the other hand, threatened the royals mentally. Through his deeply mastered expert control over heaven, he could strip away any barrier that protected the royals from the Martial Embodiments. The moment the Martial Masters directed their energy to kill Reina and Rui, he would strip all barriers protecting their vision.
It would damage them mentally.
And the ones who would be doing the damage would be the sixteen Martial Masters themselves, through their Martial Embodiments.
This was a soul-revolting outcome for them!
They gritted their teeth as they surrounded the royals in an air-tight circle, glaring murderously at the three on the other side of the room.
"So what's it going to be, Your Masteries?" Rui casually asked as he took a seat at the table. "Our heads at the cost of the royals...or a sensible retreat to let them live another day?"
