The Martial Unity

"And in our first fight, we have the current defending champion; Lord Graham's representative fighter Apprentice Fernan Melver versus Lady Farnu's representative fighter Apprentice Jivia" The head butler took over as he announced the first fight.

Rui watched as the two fighters entered the arena, stopping at a distance from each other.

"Take your stances." The arbiter instructed.

Apprentice Jivia took a generic defensive stance. While Fernan Melver simply stood. What Rui found strange was that he was cloaked quite heavily. That was a black cloak that covered his entire body, with only his neck and head exposed.

Rui felt a primal sense of danger with Primordial Instinct, as if he was looking at somebody that wasn't entirely human.

Then, Fernan shed the cloak.

What Rui saw shocked him to his core.

No Martial Art had ever shaken him as much he was beholding at that very moment.

A pair of wings unfolded from Fernan's back!

There were an extra set of arms above his normal arms!

Rui's eyes widened in shock.

He blinked, hard, wondering if he had overused potions recently.

('I need to be careful, I can't believe I'm seeing hallucinations.')

When he opened his eyes, the wings and the extra arms were still there!

He turned towards Nartha. "Did you put something in that tea you gave me earlier?"

One of her companions burst out laughing. "It seems you're unfamiliar with symbiotic Martial Art despite being a Martial Artist. Understandable, they are so rare and there are so few Martial Artists with such techniques."

"Symbiotic Martial Art?" he turned towards Fernan, extremely confused. "What the fuck is that?"

"Martial Art techniques that involve the implantation and cooperation with a living symbiote for combat for extra utility. The extra arms and wings come from implanted larva of certain special species of symbiotes that integrate into the host's body and growing larger until they turn into those." She gestured at Fernan's extra limbs and wings.

Rui's eyes widened as his jaw dropped with shock. "How do you know that?" Doubting her information.

"He's my fighter, silly." Lady Farnu chuckled. "I know everything about him. Symbiotic Martial Art techniques involve putting symbiotes with special utility that the human body cannot ordinarily possess." She turned towards him. "I was very excited when Nartha here told me you were returning. We have a bet on which one of our fighters will win."

"No pressure, of course." Nartha smiled at him with a smile that didn't reach her eyes.

Rui didn't care. He was too stunned by the revelation of symbiotic Martial Art.

How did it work? How was something like this even possible in the first place???

Symbiotes didn't have super special powers!

('No, wait.') He corrected himself. ('That's true only for Earth's symbiotes. Gaia is a whole different beast. If fauna and flora can be fantastically absurd, then is it impossible that to apply to symbiotic life-forms?')

Given the wonders he had already witnessed in this world, it did not seem impossible for symbiotes to be capable of incredible things.

Giving its host extra utility in combat would theoretically viable.

In fact, Rui was reminded of several creatures from Earth that in reality weren't too different in principle from what the symbiotic Martial Art he was witnessing. Cymothoa exigua was an underwater tongue-eating louse from Earth that consumed the tongue of its host and latched itself onto the blood vessels and the muscles of the newly severed tongue, and then became the new tongue of the fish!

This creature aided in the digestion of the food of the fish in exchange for sustaining itself on the host fish's blood.

What Rui was witnessing was essentially an infinitely more complex and fantastical version of the same principle.

('But still...') Rui gaped. ('This is absurd!')

It also seemed absurdly overpowered. Rui couldn't believe that Fernan possessed an extra pair of arms and a pair of wings!

How was a normal human supposed to defeat something like that?

('There have to be drawbacks.') Rui said, almost trying to convince himself. ('There is no way it's that easy.')

He could ready think of several.

Symbiotes were organisms that existed in a mutually beneficial relationship with host bodies. If the symbiotes gave the host such wondrous abilities, then surely, they benefitted from being bonded to their host. The first thing Rui thought of instantly was the huge nutritional and energy needs that the additional biological systems that the symbiote brought about. Maintaining their body must be extremely difficult and demanding.

Furthermore, there was the matter of getting used to new limbs. Rui couldn't even begin to imagine how difficult it was to build brand new muscle memory for brand new limbs, it must have abysmally torturous and intensive.

And then what about the wings? At the very least, Fernan had some familiarity with arms, but no human had any experience of using wings. How difficult must it have been to not only learn to use the wings, but also achieve such high mastery of them that they could become a Martial Art? How difficult must it have been for Fernan to go through the Martial Foundation Stage essentially all over again to achieve high proficiency with them by Martial Art standards?

And after all that, he still probably needed to master Apprentice-level techniques with them.

After considering all these disadvantages, Rui reconsidered his evaluation of the allure of symbiotic Martial Art techniques.

A surge of respect and admiration for Fernan grew within Rui.

The only emotion that surpassed that was his excitement and desire to fight Fernan. He wondered how the VOID algorithm would fare against the man. He would eventually find out, of course. He had no intention of leaving the place until he fought Fernan, no matter what happened. Thankfully, it seemed like a done deal based on lady Farnu's words.

Rui intended to observe Fernan as carefully as he could. Collecting as much data as he could on the man to begin creating the predictive model for him. Rui strongly suspected that he would need to improvise the adaptive evolution model, since it would certainly be quite inaccurate against someone like Fernan, without a doubt.