The Martial Unity

The reason he was particularly fixated on reducing the combat speed gap between him and his opponent was that he did not have faith in his passive defensive capabilities. If the speed gap between them was high, then that meant he would not be able to evade attacks, which naturally meant he would be forced to endure the attacks with his body.

Given that the attacks were naturally fast enough to bypass his ordinary reaction time, he did not possess the ability to defend against them with active defensive techniques. Active defensive techniques like Inner Divergence and Flux Earther require being able to intercept attacks to some degree, which he could not do if he couldn’t react to the attacks due to them being too fast for him.

This meant that if he could not react to the attack then he could only rely on passive defensive techniques such as his Adamant Reforging where his body was conditioned to be tougher generally against all forms of damage.

However, Rui knew for a fact that a single Squire-level technique was not going to save his life against the power that the Root had exhibited. Which meant that he could not tank the attack unless one of his techniques was a passive defensive technique.

“Mmmm…” Rui’s expression turned uneasy at the thought of that.

Frankly, he wasn’t able to come up with much of any idea at all for a passive defensive technique. Unfortunately, the field of passive defensive techniques was a highly narrow field in so far as the principles and mechanics of the techniques went.

All of the techniques revolved around conditioning. Conditioning was the one and only principle that mattered as far as this particular field went.

Rui had accrued rich scientific background across his long life, but he wasn’t sure whether he was able to come up with a brand new paradigm for passive defensive techniques at the moment. It was not easy, and certainly much more demanding as far as creativity went.

He would rather focus on techniques that he was more comfortable creating.

(‘A technique to mitigate the speed gap it is,’) Rui decided. (‘That will be the first technique project.’)

Now that he had made up his mind about the first project, he felt more clarity and confidence.

(‘I also need a way to damage it,’) Rui mused.

For this, he wasn’t even entirely sure if he even needed a new technique. He had existing means to hurt the Root, perhaps even critically, although definitely needed to verify his concerns.

The problem was that he wasn’t even sure he could handle more than one project at the moment. Not only did he need to spend time clearing the dungeon as the Voider, but he also needed to keep his regular activities in the dungeon up as Rui.

Those two took time, leaving him not much room for any other technique development project.

Still, he hadn’t formed too many concrete plans as far as how to deal with the Root, the technique to mitigate the Root’s speed was the most basic condition, regardless of what tactic or strategy he chose to employ, he would needed to be able to handle that speed. He couldn’t conceive of a way to win without it.

Thus the technique he was developing was merely him fulfilling one of the requirements to not dying, let alone it being the key to actually winning.

That put into perspective how difficult the task that he had undertaken was.

(‘I can put the strategizing asides after I have gained more information, for now, the information I have is good enough to justify focusing on this development project,’) Rui closed his eyes as he began considering the potential principles and concepts that could help him mitigate large speed gaps.

He was able to come up with numerous ideas, but he was far from able to identify which ones were the best, or even viable.

(‘One additional condition for this technique is that it needs to be able to effectively boost my reaction speed and movements speed,’) Rui mused.

The reason for this was that he would not be able to hang with the sheer speed that the Roots had demonstrated without both. If his movement speed was too lacking, then he would not be able to actually move out of the way of an attack even if he could react to it as it came. If his reaction speed was too lacking, then even if he was fast enough to move out of its attacks, he would not begin those movements in time because he would not be able to react in time.

Thus he needed something that effectively boosted both.

The problem was that reaction speed and combat speed both operated through different mechanics. Reaction speed was a product of the timeframes needed for the cognitive process involved with reactions.

The senses perceived a stimulus, sending a message through the nervous system to the brain. The brain then received and processed the information, before coming to a decision and then relaying the decision to the body through the nervous system, causing the body to move.

Movement speed was simply a product born from the force the body generated relative to its body mass. The greater the ratio, the greater the movement speed.

How was he able to create a single technique that boosted both these kinds of speeds? It was almost impossible considering how differently they function.

(‘Frankly, reaction speed isn’t as much of an issue as movement speed,’) Rui sighed.

He had always been able to surpass his reaction speed thanks to the predictive systems of the VOID algorithm. By knowing how his opponents were going to move ahead of time, he could effectively bypass the need to react after the attack began, since he was already making preparations for it before it began.

(‘The problem is that it cannot bridge gigantic speed gaps,’) Rui sighed. (‘At the very least, I am too weak to do that. Even if I construct a powerful predictive model for the Root based on observing all its patterns, it doesn’t matter if I cannot move out of the way in time.’)