The Martial Unity

"Excuse me." Rui addressed one of the support staff members of the library.

"Yes? How may I help you?" She replied.

"I'm looking for the Mind Switch technique; a mental training technique," Rui told her. "I was hoping I could request for it to be procured."

"Of course." She nodded. "Please wait here a moment."

She took off as Rui took a seat on one of the benches in the library. Rui waited patiently as he scrutinized the library.

('It has more techniques than the Apprentice library of the Martial Academy did.') He noted as he looked at the endless shelves of techniques across the entire library. The reason for this wasn't too difficult to think about. The Martial Academy had lower quality Martial Apprentices than the real world, thus it wasn't hard to see that the Apprentice library was also a little smaller in so far as the sheer number of techniques it offered.

Rui suspected that the Martial Art techniques of the higher grades were a little scarcer in the Apprentice library of the Martial Academy than they were in the Apprentice library of the Martial Union.

Just as he pondered on the matter, his thoughts were interrupted.

"Apprentice Quarrier, here is the Mind Switch technique you requested for." A support staff member told him, handing him a scroll.

"Thank you." Rui got up, nodding as he accepted the scroll.

He immediately walked over to the registrar of the library and quickly purchased the technique.

"The costs of the training facilities and guidance needed to master the techniques are charged separately," Rui murmured, recalling that fact.

In the Martial Academy, the training and growth resources were all part of the fees paid to the Martial Academy, however, the Martial Union operated with an upfront charge for the usage of such facilities at an hourly rate.

The technique was more expensive than it was in the Martial Academy, which didn't surprise him. The Martial Academy had managed the price of the techniques to ensure that the prices of techniques were just in the price range such that the students of the Martial Academy would have to work hard in order to earn the Martial credits needed to purchase the technique, but still not too expensive that each student would need to waste too much time completing missions just to earn the Martial credits needed to purchase a single technique.

However, the Martial Union didn't coddle its Martial Artists the way the martial Academy coddled its students, thus the Martial Art techniques of the Martial Union had been priced purely according to their actual value and the resources invested by the Martial Union into acquiring those techniques be it the large research and development project budgets that went into developing the techniques or the cost of purchasing the original techniques developed by the Martial Artists of the Martial Union.

Still, Rui unhesitatingly bought the technique and the required training hours for an initial introduction to the technique.

He sat down at one of the benches as he opened the scroll and began reading the detailed breakdown of the technique as well as the training methodology needed to obtain basic mastery of the technique. He carefully read the more detailed explanation in regards to the actual functioning of the technique, looking for any information that would confirm that his goal and hope for the technique were possible, but he didn't receive any concrete confirmation of the technique.

Because of the seemingly lacking understanding of the field of neurology of the world of Gaea, the technique breakdown did not get too very far in so far as the technical explanation of the functioning of the technique. Rui was unable to derive anything that could confirm or deny that the Mind Switch technique was something that could trigger the autophagy process.

He sighed. ('At least, thanks to my high affinity to mental techniques as well as the low difficulty grade of the technique, I won't be wasting too much time trying to master this technique.')

Even if it was a failure, he wouldn't have wasted too much time trying to master the technique due to this very reason. This was part of the reason he had gone out of his way to train in the Mind Switch technique. There wasn't much to be lost beyond some time. If this were a grade-eight technique, Rui would not have been as enthusiastic and energetic about mastering the technique, for the most part.

It would have been a much harder decision if the decision would have bled away months of hard work and time. But with the sheer ease with which the technique could be mastered as well as his own affinity for it, he had weighed the potential benefits against the investment of time and energy and eventually gave in to his desire to obtain even greater power at a slightly slower pace.

He moved on to the training regime of the Martial Art technique.

"Interesting..." Rui murmured as he read through it in detail.

The training session was not beyond his expectations.

"As expected, it's brute force association therapy." Rui nodded.

The training involved a constant and simultaneous execution of the trigger position or movement with the activation of whatever neurological phenomenon was to be triggered by the triggering stance or movement.

The mind would begin developing a strong association between the two, eventually triggering one with the other, allowing the Martial Apprentice a certain degree of control over the involuntary phenomena that continuously occurred in the subconscious part of the mind and the brain.

The desired neurological phenomenon that was the target of being triggered would be artificially induced in response to the trigger, convincing and hammering into the mind that there was a causal relationship between them.

This was the same principle by which several disorders such as addiction were handled, by associating negative experiences with things they were addicted to using association therapy. Of course, what Rui was about to undergo was far worse than anything any psychiatrist on Earth could conjure up.