The Martial Unity

Squire Casen wound her arm back all the way behind her, before swinging with a tremendous amount of power, her fist generated shockwaves every inch as it coursed through the atmosphere.

POW!

It collided against Rui’s hand, yet his hand rapidly drew back along with the strike, increasing resistance against her fist the closer it got to Rui, pushing him away from the strike harmlessly.

WHOOSH

Rui was consequently launched a great distance away, out of a normal field of vision.

THUD!

He landed with a significant impact on the ground, maintaining his balance, before grinning excitedly.

“That’s my best one yet! That’s got to be like more than seventy percent conversion efficiency, surely.” Rui guesstimated.

This was the first time he had managed to harmlessly convert such a high proportion of an incoming attack into pure kinetic energy of his body. Kinetic energy was the energy of motion, to possess kinetic energy meant that one was in motion. That was why when Rui elastically converted his opponent’s attack’s power into kinetic energy through spring mechanics, his body would inevitably be sent flying through the power of the strike.

The fact that he was launched a great distance away meant that he managed to absorb most of the power of the strike of his opponent. He was quite satisfied that he had made so much progress. Of course, he was most familiar with applying this principle to a straight right punch, which is why he was further accomplished with dealing with that attack more than any other striking attack.

This was the progress that he had made in three months. He was well beyond halfway through the first phase of two phases of Project Bounce. Considering that this was a Project that he was developing entirely from the ground up that was completely natural, it was incredible to have gotten this far in just three months.

He had been worried that the progress would stall, but now he was reasonably certain that phase one of Project Bounce would be over within a month or two. In totality, that would mean half of Project Bounce would end in five months tops. Although this may seem like a long time for half of a project in a vacuum, considering the sheer number of matters he was juggling, it was even more impressive with that in context.

“This is especially the case considering I’m far more than halfway done with mastering the Tempestuous Feel and Sonic Bullet techniques,” Rui muttered.

He had gone all out with dedicating himself to those two techniques, especially since they were truly contributing to his expenses. Between the monthly expenses of the training resources of the Martial Union, the cost of hiring an Apprentice trainer for Max and Mana when he wasn’t training them himself, the cost of hiring Squire Casen to help him with the development of Project Bounce, the expenses of Squire-grade rejuvenation potions and the financial aid he gave to the Orphanage, Rui’s income was considerably taxed.

If not for the fact that Martial Colonel Geringan had truly given him an extravagant remuneration for his services, he highly doubted that he would be able to sustain his expenses.

“Well, that is the furthest you’ve been launched.” Squire Casen commented as she sky-walked to him.

She had been quite stumped three months ago at Rui’s bizarre training but had gotten over it since then. She had no idea why he was putting himself through something like that, but she generally understood that Rui was trying to get launched as far away by her strikes as possible.

Rui, of course, had never disclosed the details of Project Bounce, he treated it like unpatented research that was dangerous to disclose before it was published under his name or patented in his name, as was the norm in the community of research and development back on Earth.

“Yeah, it’s great!” Rui nodded.

He continued the rest of the training session with heightened vigor, and it yielded heightened results, even if barely.

“My average is up by five percent compared to yesterday.” He was quite pleased, a five percent jump in a single day was an incredible jump. He just needed to take some time to process his gains and made sure he retained that progress.

“Well, that brings us to an end to this session.” Squire Casen noted as she looked at her pocket watch.

“Shame.” He sighed. “Well, see you next time.”

He bade her goodbye, before taking off after consuming a rejuvenation potion, feeling physically and mentally invigorated.

However, the direction he had taken off wasn’t the Orphanage or even the Martial Union. He immediately headed off to the Jenken residence. It was just about time for his training sessions with Crea.

In the past three months, the growth that she had made was truly impressive, earning Colonel Geringan’s respect and approval. She had very subtle yet core shortcomings that maybe only the most extreme and thorough data analysis from Martial Art researchers would have revealed.

Or, Rui.

With the predictive model that Rui had created and refined, he was able to identify core patterns in her style that were problematic. Not all patterns were bad, of course. The patterns in one’s movements were a product of the experiences and fundamental nature of a person, in a way. Changing them would require suppressing the very identity of the person in question. Someone who was naturally aggressive would have aggressive attack patterns, while this could be forcibly changed with extremely oppressive training, it would no longer be a reflection of one’s true self, and thus would be sub-optimal in performance. What Rui did was aid in optimizing her patterns to get rid of ineffective inefficiencies and help them truly reflect her core self.

In the past three months, he had exposed her patterns to herself, by mimicking them in front of her and also countering themselves before her. The combination of those two had not only allowed Crea to get rid of shortcomings in her patterns that she was able and willing to optimize, but they also gave her an increasingly deeper amount of self-awareness about her fighting style.

Self-awareness that one could not normally obtain prior to the discovery of the Martial Path.