The Martial Unity

This was one Rui's first serious spar after his training session ended. He was quite satisfied with his performance, though he still yearned to be stronger. The most recent techniques he had mastered

The mastery of Inner Divergence had bolstered his defense to the point that Kane couldn't even hurt him unless he went all out with his offense instead of his usual stinging jabs. Outer Convergence had increased his power to the point that fighting Rui head-on was a losing battle, Rui would always hurt and damage Kane faster than Kane could do take down Rui.

Seismic Mapping had gotten rid of his blind spots, he was able to track Kane's movements, maneuvering and position even when Kane escaped his peripheral vision quite accurately.

These three techniques successfully bolstered his foundation making him a solid Martial Apprentice even without the aid of the VOID algorithm.

Still, despite all that Kane was able to keep up with Rui despite all this. His speed, agility and maneuvering were always ridiculously high but after he learnt to maintain his top speed constantly, he had truly become incredibly difficult to deal with.

Furthermore, the tactic he had used to beat Kane this time was not a tactic that could be abused. If they fought a second time, Kane would not fall for the same trick, all he had to do was avoid a belligerent attack when Rui entered a closed defensive stance, and the battle would just end up being a stalemate.

In truth, Rui did possess a way to win even without the tactic he used.

The fourth technique he had learnt; Blink. His trump card.

There were several moments in the fight where Blink would have allowed Rui to get a hold of Kane, which would probably have ended with Rui as the victor most of the time since Rui was the better grappler between them.

However, Rui had decided to not use the technique ultimately. The capability of the technique was at its highest when his opponents weren't aware of it. Using it in the open in the Apprentice sparring facility was unwise, the facility wasn't exclusively being used by the two of them, after all. There were many Martial Artists in the facility that had kept an eye on their spar.

Maybe it didn't make much of a difference at all. After all, Blink wasn't overtly flashy. Perhaps not a single one of them would notice.

Still, Rui didn't want to take the risk. So he decided to opt out of using the technique at all.

The spar had given him idea what he could do to further improve his versatility. All this time he had primarily focused on primarily the fundamental aspects of combat; Offense, defense, maneuvering stamina, striking, grappling etc. Now that he had truly bolstered all of these areas with twelve Apprentice-level techniques, he could focus on expanding the versatility of his Martial Art beyond these basic fields.

On Earth, there wasn't much more to MMA combat sports beyond striking, grappling, defensive guarding as well as evasive and offensive maneuvering.

But this wasn't the same for Martial Art in the world of Gaia.

There were many more exotic systems of techniques and esoteric techniques based on principles and mechanisms that would be no more than pure fiction back on Earth.

Now that Rui had truly cemented the foundation of his Martial Art to be rock hard and solid, he could focus on expanding his Martial Art to these more exciting fields. The idea was extremely alluring by itself, but there were strong concrete reasons for doing so.

The biggest reason was the refinement process of the VOID algorithm, which was designed for the limited martial arts off Earth and not the near magical Martial Art of Gaia.

This would not be possible without incorporating an effective counter-deductive system, which could not be done with intimate understanding of these techniques, and without mastery of these techniques and fields.

Of course, he had already taken the first step in this regard. When he purchased and mastered Seismic Mapping and Blink; a sensory and stealth technique, he had already taken a step in widening the versatility of his Martial Art in fields outside of the fundamental fields of combat.

He intended to continue that trend. Of course, doing this wouldn't be easy. The further away he got from the fundamental fields of combat, the more useless his MMA and combat sports research background was. He might end up taking longer to master these techniques due to this. Furthermore, a lot of these techniques were not cheap, he recalled how expensive many of the techniques in the stealth and sensory sections were. Purchasing them would take an immense amount of time and successfully completed missions.

Since the tournament was a bit over half a year away, he had already decided to grind like crazy with the missions and undergo one last time before undergoing a final training session just before the Kandrian Martial Festival rolled up.

"Huff." Rui got up. "You wanna go another round?"

"Sure, but are you sure?" Kane asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Did you forget what was there today?" Kane asked. "The Squire combat exhibition."

Rui's eyes lit up in elation as he recalled. He'd been so engrossed in the four techniques he had been training until just recently, as well as the matter of the Martial Festival he had totally forgotten about the event scheduled today.

A Martial Squire combat session between the Squire instructors of the Martial Academy. Rui had seen Martial Squires use their Martial Art before, heck he'd even fought Squire Kyrie before, but this was different.

Unlike when she fought them, she wasn't going to be holding back most of her power. He would finally get to witness the true power of a Martial Squire with his own two eyes!

Of course, the Squires wouldn't be going all-out, but just seeing them spar seriously was enticing enough of an event to Rui, who dreamed of obtaining that otherworldly power.