The Martial Unity

“You still have some planning to do,” Rui told Kane. “As I told you, Lundenfire requires contact or extremely close proximity with itself in order to generate charge. This means simply integrating them into your body isn’t enough, you need to brush the two portions of Lundenfire in your body in order to charge your body with lightning.”

“In the middle of combat?” Kane frowned.

“It’s not going to last as long as the charge you got from the lightning bolts of Thundering Valley,” Rui nodded. “You’re going to have to charge and recharge in the middle of combat.”

“Hmm…” Kane considered his words. “Then it’ll be best to make the charging as easy and accessible as possible.”

“That’s right,” Rui nodded. “The charging will require gesture with you brushing the two portions of Lundenfire in your body together, so make sure to choose a rubbing motion or action that’s easy to do in combat.”

“Well,” Kane glanced at his arms. “Then I’ll go for my arms. My legs are far too important to be preoccupied with such matters. I need them unimpeded at all times.”

As an evasive maneuver, his legs were extremely important to his evasive maneuvering capabilities. He could not constantly detract from that by constantly having to perform some gesture that will allow them to perform more than what they could already do so far.

“I plan to do that for one of my techniques as well,” Rui nodded. “What we can do is figure out which parts of our arms to graft the Lundenfire marble into based on the rubbing gesture.”

Rui and Kane spent some time figuring out what they wanted the gesture to be. It didn’t have that many restrictions, for starters. It only required both arms to make contact with each other.

Thus, they could find the simplest and easiest gesture to make in the middle of combat, and then simply graft the Lundenfire Marble into those parts of the arms that would make contact with each other.

Thus, performing the rubbing gesture would bring the Lundenfire Marble in contact with each other, producing a charge and current that would travel to the entire body. Now, all they needed to do was get Lundenfire tattoos on their arms in the places that they had already decided ahead of time.

It was a good way of disguising the esoteric substance as art.

“Why are your tattoos thinner?” Kane frowned.

“It will generate less charge,” Rui replied. “I can’t handle lightning with the ease that you seem to be able to. That’s why I’m using less Lundenfire Marble. I also can’t get the boost to my reflexes the way you do because my body does not conduct electricity like yours does.”

“What?”

“Basically, I can’t do what you do, so I have to make the best use of what I can,” Rui replied.

The two of them quickly made up their minds about where they wanted to graft the Ludenfire Marble in the skin of their arm. The result was strange tattoos across their arm in different elementary designs since neither of them were capable of art to any meaningful degree.

By the end of it, they had ended up with marks on their arms that highlighted the areas where they would inject the Lundenfire Marble, before recording it.

After that, it was just a matter of the procedure, for Kane at least.

“Wait, you’re not getting the injection done right away?” Kane frowned.

“Yes,” Rui confirmed. “I want to build up my tolerance for electricity with conditioning, otherwise there’s no point.”

For example, if he generated enough power to stun and paralyze his opponent, he needed to be able to resist it in the first place himself. Otherwise, he would get paralyzed the second he charged his body up.

He was envious of Kane, who was able to harness lightning without any side effects.

Soon enough, Kane’s arranged procedure began with the trained professionals of the Crexeet Institute.

Rui had chosen to overlook the entire procedure, as he did not trust anybody in that place. This was not the Martial Union that he could at least trust not to be malicious or incompetent.

The integration procedure looked exactly like what Rui expected it to. The machine looked like a giant tattoo device.

It systematically dug into the flesh of Kane’s arms, spreading the Lundenfire Marble into his outer flesh.

The procedure was surprisingly quick.

Within an hour, all of the Lundenfire Marble had been grafted into his skin. Furthermore, he didn’t even need any caution time thanks to his healing factor healing the tissue that had been damaged, integrating the esoteric substance into his flesh.

Within some time, he was as good as new.

“You’re sure I can try it out now right?” Kane asked with an excited expression.

“Go ahead,” Rui told him.

Kane nodded, before bringing his arms together and letting the tattoos on both arms touch.

BZZT!

His expression lit up as he felt a nostalgic sensation. His long lost technique had finally come back.

“Hahaha!” He laughed. “This is great! It’s not nearly as strong as the lightning bolts from the Thundering Valley, but it’s still pretty good!”

“FUUUU…!” He exhaled hard, activating his Godspeed technique partially, before immediately testing out his new technique like an excited child.

WHOOSH!

Rui’s eyes widened as Kane manifested a large portion of the formidability that he had displayed in the Thundering Valley. Rui would not be able to handle him without Forestep, that was true without a doubt.

“Let’s spend the rest of the day sparring!” Kane grinned.

Rui chuckled but shook his head. “I still have a lot of preparations to do for my training, so I can’t keep you company, unfortunately. Still, you don’t need me if you want a fight.”

Kane’s head tilted quizzically.

“Have you forgotten?” Rui smirked. “You’re participating in a war against actual enemies. Go fight them and prove yourself on the battlefield.”

“You know, that’s actually a brilliant idea,”