Arastia had always known that Ria was extraordinary, of course. Even when she grew up, she would often play spar with the young girl, surprised at how strong she was despite her young age. Even though she hadn’t had the opportunity to train with her very often after the advent of blood supremacy from the Blood Cult, she had still followed Ria’s progress from a distant.

Only now did she realize that she had underestimated just how strong Ria was. The young Martial Master was more extraordinary than she had ever given her credit.

Even as Ria charged towards Arastia, the latter saw her Martial Embodiment bloom in all its might, filling the entire room within her mind.

She saw the universe itself within Ria.

She didn’t understand what it meant.

Nobody did.

More importantly, she had to face Ria charging at her with a blinding speed, moving faster than the very speed of lightning.

WHOOSH 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

She arrived before Arastia in the blink of an eye, thrusting a palm jab straight at Arastia’s face. And yet, Arastia simply battles away the palm jab with her wrist, a surge of blood allowing her to smoothly redirect the attack away. Before another surge of blood converged upon Ria from behind, threatening to crush in its grip.

And yet, Ria’s Mind surged as she activated her system of thought.

Time slowed down to a very crawl in her amber eyes.

"Omnivoyance."

One of the greatest things she had inherited from her father was his capacity for conscious thought. One of the greatest things she had inherited from her mother was her ability to draw Martial Art from everything she did.

Ria had learned to combine the strengths that she had inherited from her mother and father to create a system of thought that allowed her to identify the flow of causality in the world around her, and to understand with her Martial Art how to interfere with that causality.

Every event had a cause, and every cause had an effect. All she needed to do was simply push a single domino that would lead to a chain reaction to the future that she desired.

That was no longer simply predicting the future.

It was to control it.

FWOOSH

With a smooth somersault at precisely the right moment, she managed to squeeze through a gap in Arastia’s blood attacks, contorting her lean, flexible body at just the right angle to emerge unscathed.

Her amber eyes glinted with intensity as she turned towards Arastia, using a breathing technique to launch a maelstrom of sound bullets at Arastia.

THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!

Arastia was unfazed by the attack, simply guiding her blood to intercept the powerful attacks.

Only for the sound to completely phase through the blood. Ria had identified the resonant frequencies of the blood, permeating her attacks past them.

BOOM BOOM BOOM!

Several impacts blasted Arastia’s torso, stunning her into a moment of surprise. That was the moment that Ria had aimed for, shooting forward towards Arastia through the waves of blood that hung in the training room.

BANG!!!

Her fist landed cleanly on Arastia’s jaw as she activated a technique that her father had invented many years ago.

"Death’s Sympathy."

She permeated vibrations through the hemosapien’s skull, threatening to kill her aunt in the blink of an eye.

And yet, Arastia didn’t collapse. She turned her head, still pushed by Ria’s fist, towards her niece with an incredulous expression. "Did you really just try to kill me—"

BOOOOM!!!

Before she could even finish her sentence, a second attack struck her jaw, rocking her head with the power of a small volcanic eruption.

"Only because I knew it wouldn’t work," Ria muttered, even as she unleashed a fearsome onslaught of attacks.

Not of raw force.

She knew that those attacks wouldn’t work against her aunt and her hemosapien physiology.

Instead, she aimed for the nerves.

And more specifically, the nerves connected the blood vessels in her body.

POW POW POW POW POW

Each time her fingers made contact with a nerve ending on Arastia’s body, she channeled in a powerful surge of electricity down her nerves, short-circuiting her nervous system.

BZZZT

Arastia’s eyebrow rose as she felt a churning electrical sensation charging through her nerves, affecting the flow of blood through her body, slowing down her Blood Blaze.

Her body grew limp as her power began fading.

Just as Ria had hoped.

She thrust forth, launching a finishing blow at Arastia’s jaw, threatening to knock her out on the spot just like that.

"You have truly grown strong."

Arastia’s voice hung in the air even as Ria’s fist charged towards her head.

RUMBLE!!!

Ria’s eyes widened explosion of blood emerged from Arastia’s body.

Both real and illusory.

When Arastia opened her eyes, two blood-red suns shone within their depths.

"Blood Mind."

It was also colloquially known as Gigabrain by its very original user, a technique that allowed hemosapiens to unlock the untapped potential of their mind with their own system of thought.

RUMBLE!!!

The world shook as Arastia unlocked a fraction of true power as the most powerful hemosapien in the world. She unleashed the equivalent of the Martial Mind in the Blood Path.

The combat room, otherwise a perfect white, had been dyed red in her blood. The floor was filled with blood that expanded ever more, consuming the entire area around them.

Blood absorbed matter from the air, converting into the chemical compounds needed to produce more blood, expanding its volume with each passing moment, giving her more and more combat power.

"You have proven your might, Ria." Arastia smiled at her niece, her blood-red eyes glowing like the red dwarf stars of the Arima III star system. "Now then, let us end this."

With a single gesture of her hand, she directed all of her blood towards Ria from all directions.

No room for escape.

An attack she was doomed to fail to withstand.

And yet, causality begged to differ.

Ria mustered every ounce of power within her body, coordinating her body at the cellular level to compress all of her power at one point to generate extraordinary amounts of pressure at a single point within her body.

Pressure so great that it broke the atom.

And unleashed the power within.

A single spark of materia prima.

BOOOOOOOM!!!