The Martial Unity

POW POW POW!

Fake Rui launched a barrage of swift jabs at Rui. The latter merely blocked them with a guard. With his current unnecessarily high defensive prowess, he needed much less effort in order to defend against other attacks effectively. This made defense more convenient, however, Rui still hated every moment of it.

He hated his lack of flexibility, both physically and tactically. He had no leeway to evade, he needed to defend every strike even though they weren't always the optimal move had he still had his all-rounder body.

He began relying increasingly more on his passive defense and natural defense rather than active defense. In his actual body, his raw durability wasn't high enough to rely more on it than more active defensive techniques like Inner Divergence. But in this body, its innate toughness meant that he had to worry less about getting hurt.

He had already begun gathering and processing fake Rui's data as the construction of the predictive model was already underway. It helped that he was quite familiar with his own move set, which hastened the construction of the predictive model.

POW!

BAM!

Rui gritted his teeth as he withstood an attack from fake Rui in exchange for launching his own. They both mutually bypassed the other's defense, yet the outcomes were different. Rui's strike was heavier because his hallucinated body was much more suited towards offense than fake Rui, while his body was more suited towards withstanding fake Rui's attack.

Although fake Rui was much faster, more mobile, and more agile than real Rui, it didn't seem to make too much of a difference. This was because Rui's timing and placement were more effective and efficient than fake Rui's. This was the difference that the VOID algorithm caused. Even a large speed and mobility gap caused by a difference in frames were still smaller than the advantage that the VOID algorithm granted Rui.

('Low kick, 92%.') His mind flashed as he planted his legs firmly and stabilized his balance. Ordinarily, he would have met low attacks with attacks that evaded them while also hitting his opponent, like flying knee kicks.

However, he wasn't as nimble as his actual self that would have been able to smoothly execute that attack. Instead, he relied on his power and defense in order to anchor himself strongly to the spot.

POW!

Fake Rui's kick stopped in its tracks, unable to so much as budge against Rui's body.

WHOOSH

Rui tried landing a strike on fake Rui, however, the latter was too swift for his slow self.

Rui found the experience more illuminating than he had expected it to be. The VOID algorithm was designed for an all-rounder body. A lot of the solutions provided by the adaptive evolution model were solutions that could only rely on the well-rounded nature of an all-rounder. This was the biggest incompatibility between his Martial Art and his body at this point in time.

Rui had to improvise. Because of his intimate understanding of the adaptive evolution model, he was able to understand which counters could be performed by his current Martial body and which ones couldn't Every time the optimal counter to fake Rui's predicted move involved a lot of movement, speed, and agility, he simply replaced it with something that achieved as close to the effect as the original counter.

Normally, this was not something the VOID algorithm could handle, but with Rui's extreme understanding of the algorithm as the actual creator of the VOID algorithm, he knew exactly what wasn't the best counter-move for his current Martial body.

However, actually applying this knowledge in combat showed him the limits of the compatibility of any Martial body that wasn't an all-rounder. The VOID algorithm assumed competence in all basic fields of combat on Earth, at least.

BAM!

Rui managed to land a devastating uppercut on fake Rui despite the speed gap between them. Exploiting a mistake as well as perfect counters from the VOID algorithm allowed him to ensure that he was able to land a blow with great power on fake Rui.

THUD

Fake Rui collapsed to his knees, before falling down entirely, losing consciousness due to blunt-force brain trauma.

('Tsk.') Rui was displeased despite his victory. ('I would not have lost against me if I had been the fighting against myself with my actual body.')

The point of the procedure was to test the compatibility of different body types with that of the Martial Art of the user in comparison to the actual body of the user. However, if the fake version of himself was not even using the VOID algorithm, which was the core of his Martial Art, then the effectiveness of the procedure was at least halved.

He sighed, shaking his head. He had already long known that he would not be going for a heavyweight kind of body frame, so it didn't really matter.

All of a sudden, the world dissolved and he opened his eyes.

"How do you feel?" Doctor Herin asked as he flashed light on his eyes.

"Alright." Rui stretched a bit as he got up. "It was a strange experience, however, I confidently say that the heavyweight body type is certainly not suited for me."

"That is expected." Squire Luna nodded. "However, there are Martial Apprentices who have said something similar but ultimately found themselves to be wrong when they actually experienced the Martial body in the hallucinated hypnosis. The reason these are mandatory is that it is not uncommon for Martial Apprentices to have wrong conceptualizations on the compatibility of certain body types and their Martial Art."

"I understand." Rui sighed. He couldn't wait to reach the all-rounder part, he was pretty sure he would stick with an all-rounder body type, the question was the details of the physical parameters of his body. He wasn't sure if he would place absolutely equal weight on all physical parameters or perhaps lean a little more in the favor of certain kinds of Martial Art. He couldn't wait to find out.