1342: Matrix Duel

Matrix Duel

Ryu could only try to control his temper. He might be arrogant, but he wasn't a fool. Although Mae's father was annoying, he was right about one matter. Ryu was only so brazen because he had Mae by his side.2

The feeling of censoring himself made him feel uncomfortable all over. If it was just himself, he wouldn't care to speak out what was on his mind. He was the same man who dared to look a True Sky God of Sacrum in the eye and ogle her body openly. He didn't have such a reservation within him. But because Mae was here…

If Sarriel was here, she would definitely be having a grand time laughing at him. Wasn't he doing now precisely what he had looked down on her so much for?

Ryu closed his eyes for a moment.

He only did this to try and adjust himself, but this action made the Patriarch frown. Since when did people he was speaking to not answer his questions immediately? Just the patience to wait to answer was something that very few could have before him.

Ryu slowly opened his mind and his state seemed calmer.

"I will help your son secure his Birth Right and in exchange you will carve out a proper place for the Dream Asura Race on the Fifth Plane. I'm sure that once your son has secured such a thing, neither you nor he would care much about them, right?"

The gaze of the Patriarch sharpened.

"What is this bumbling fool here for?"

"Please calm down, Master Morhorn, my husband is still speaking with the guest," the Mistress of the Lizard Demons spoke softly.

Morhorn snorted when he heard this, dissatisfied. There were plenty of masters here and present, but none of them dared to guarantee anything, and even their compensation should they succeed was extremely limited. Something like carving out large plots of land on the plane was a ridiculous asking price.

"Do you understand what you're asking for?" The Patriarch said calmly after a moment. "This price of yours is steep, and your qualifications seem to be lacking as well."

"Even if I was a mortal, I would still be the best Ruin Master you had ever seen," Ryu said lightly. "The profession of Ruin Master is the only one where cultivation is irrelevant."

Morhorn couldn't seem to stand it again even though he had just been reprimanded. He found Ryu's statement to be so ridiculous that he laughed uproariously.

"Esteemed Patriarch, I advise you kick this brat out immediately. I have never heard of something so ridiculous in my life. Who doesn't know that one's mind is sharper the higher your cultivation is? How can you even step foot into certain Ruins without a certain level of power of your own? How can the mind of a mortal sustain the activation and calculation speed of a Matrix? Everything that's come out of his mouth is absolute rubbish!"

Morhorn was agitated. He had truly never heard anything so ridiculous in his life. This time, the Mistress didn't reprimand him, because these were words everyone wanted to say. However, Ryu's response was just as plain as always.

"If you need to rely on your combat prowess to be a Ruin Master, you aren't a very good one."

"BOY!" Morhorn's aura boomed, a rush of wind flooding the region, but Ryu only calmly took out a spherical Matrix.

Morhorn froze.

This Matrix… Such a good Matrix simply didn't exist in the Nether World. Even the Ninth Plane wouldn't have it.

Ryu flicked his finger and the Matrix suddenly burst apart. Before Morhorn could feel his greed turn to heartache, he realized that the Matrix hadn't shattered. Rather, its individual parts and gears had all separated, revealing a core inside. It looked as though they were standing in the middle of a twinkling blue nebula.

"A Matrix is designed to pull energy from the outside world. It then uses the energy it pulls in to form the raw data of its calculations. It's completely self-sustaining, it doesn't rely on the outside input of its user. The users only job is to interpret the data."

Morhorn's face turned red from all his fluctuating emotions, but he still replied.

"So what? If your mind isn't expansive enough, how would you sort through all of that data?"

"Are you a fool?"

"What did you say to me?!"

Ryu turned over coldly. "I asked if you were a fool. The data the Matrix pulls in comes from all angles. Only a fool would try to sort through it all. If the Matrix was all you needed, what would be your role as a Ruin Master? A normal layman would just take one with them on their adventures.

"It's your job to decide what data is necessary for your calculations and which ones aren't. The better a Ruin Master, the more you can narrow your data down. The best can whittle it down to the point that even a mortal could safely assimilate it all.

"So aren't you too useless if you can't even do this?"

Morhorn grit his teeth. "Pure sophistry! Theoretically what you say is true, but in practice no one can narrow down the data range to that level. Even if you have a singular target, even if its simple, the amount of data that would come from it is astronomical. Even a small rock would have endless streams of information about its size, its weight, the irregular angles that made up its outer shape, its chemical structure on the inside, the perforations that may or may not run through its body, what bacteria and living organisms might grow on it or had grown on it, even information about just one of these things would overwhelm a mortal, and you expect me to believe that you can just narrow it down enough as you please?"

Ryu looked away from Morhorn, feeling bored by the conversation. It was clearly on a level that this fool couldn't understand. Even if he sounded smart, it was the equivalent of a fluff piece, extra, irrelevant words in an essay that could have been half as long.

"It's quite simple to prove this," Ryu closed in hand, the pieces of his Matrix flying back together. "We'll do a Matrix Duel."

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