The Martial Unity

The Inner Divergence training regime was less elaborate than the Outer Convergence training session, but it was even more difficult.

Rui found it quite hard to fundamentally change how he deals with incoming attacks; this training required him to get rid of some of his muscle memory and built new muscle memory.

Furthermore, every time he failed, he would effectively be taking an attack head-on without any defense whatsoever. Since Squire Fare did not allow him to use Acute Edge or Elastic Shift during the training regime.

By the time a few hours passed and his first training session with Inner Divergence ended, Rui had completely lose count of the number of healing potions he had consumed in that one session alone.

('Thank fucking god the Academy doesn't charge the students for every potion we consume, otherwise I would be bankrupted to hell and back. Even becoming a Martial Master would not free me of the sheer amount of debt!')

This, of course, was an extreme exaggeration and Rui knew it. He didn't know any details, but he was sure that Martial Masters could earn such ridiculous money that even the amount Rui fretted over was too insignificant to even register in their awareness.

Rui sighed as he exited the defense training facility, scratching his head.

('Two down, two more to go.') He mused.

He headed over to the sensory training facility, a facility he had never visited before, since this ws the first time he was taking an Apprentice-level sensory technique.

He was quite curious and he wasn't sure what to expect. Once he entered the facility, he took a small tour of it before immediately jumping into training.

The facility was quite different from the others, it was larger and had many sub-sections and division within it. As he walked around, he would see training rooms with a single Apprentice within. Occasionally they were blind-folded, yet completely unperturbed the lack of vision. Other times they would have other sense restricted.

Rui figured these were part and parcel for improving sensory capabilities. After all, the best way to test whether a particular sensory technique was functioning well and as intended was to restrict the other senses and test one's capabilities despite that handicap.

The training for Seismic Mapping did include that to an extent. Though Seismic Mapping was meant to detect and sense things that couldn't be detected and sensed by normal senses in the first place.

"Squire Instructor Maxime." Rui greeted with a respectable bow for the third out of an estimated four times. "My name is Rui Quarrier, I'm a Martial Apprentice, here to learn the Seismic Mapping technique."

The man glanced at Rui for a second, then at the scroll in his hands, before nodding quietly.

"Come." he said quietly.

He directed Rui to a particular facility. "Do you know to do?"

"...Yes."

Seems the instructor wasn't particularly interactive. He didn't even bother explaining the technique or the training regime to Rui.

Not that Rui particularly needed them.

Seismic Mapping was a technique that trained the user's body to be able to interpret seismic vibrations and map a general topography and map of objects in contact with the ground.

The human brain frequently received a huge influx of information. However, it disposes of most of the information it receives without processing it rigorously. A lot of the time it mainly focused on what the eyes saw and not what the other senses perceived. This was true even for Martial Apprentices like himself.

After all this was a cognitive bias that was deeply ingrained in humans. Not even martial Apprentices could break apart the shackles of human flaws.

But training could.

That what the Seismic Mapping training regime aimed to accomplish. By restricting different senses in different ways in different circumstances, it aimed to force the brain to dig up the deeply buried information about vibrations that it mildly perceived, but had long subconsciously ignored because of focusing on vision.

Of course, only Martial Apprentices had the mental faculties to do that, which is why the technique was Apprentice-level; only Apprentices could master it.

There was only one stage of training. That stage focused on having the mind pay more attention to subconsciously dismissed micro-vibrations and then by sheer experience learn to slowly decipher those techniques.

There was no other way to learn it, Rui supposed. Only by trial and error and learning to correlate micro-vibrations with phenomena and understand what they meant, would he be able to master this technique.

This was easily the most difficult technique Rui had ever tried learning. At the very least with the other techniques, the training was relatively straightforward and as long as he persevered, he would be able to make visible progress.

But this was the first technique he had come across where he got the feeling that no matter how much time he poured into training it, he may very well just never make any progress, let alone fully mastering it.

It was incredibly challenging, especially when his knowledge and experience with combat sports did not help him whatsoever this time. There was simply no equivalent of this kind of training back on Earth, after all.

Blinded, initially he couldn't sense anything. He was just smacked around by dolls.

The worst part was the uncertainty.

Atleast when he was training Inner Divergence, he could see when he was going to get hit with perfect clarity.

Here, he couldn't even know that. He had a paranoia of being struck in the testicles more than anything else, so that also drained away from being purely focused on what he ought to have been focused on.

For a few hours, he did nothing but get struck in the darkness.

Never had he been more grateful and enthusiastic leaving a training session before. Never had he felt as depressed leaving a training session before.

('This is going to take genuine perseverance.') He sighed. Once he got back to his room he needed to figure what the heck he was going to about this technique.