The Martial Unity

“The poison is known as Reaper’s Dew.” Squire Herea told him. “It’s black in its natural state, though your skin turns green when you condition your body to handle it.”

“Interesting…” Rui narrowed his eyes. “And I can get that poison and that technique in the Floating Sect, right?”

“Certainly,” She nodded. “I trained it further when I came here thanks to the abundant growth resources.”

She turned towards Rui with a raised eyebrow. “Why are you interested in the technique, though? You aren’t a poison-oriented Martial Artist, and you negated that poison like it was nothing so I don’t expect you to care for it.”

“I’m an all-rounder,” Rui replied blandly. “I dip my toe in all fields, in theory, and principle anyway.”

“You’re no all-rounder,” She furrowed her eyebrow at his words. “No all-rounder would have been able to handle my poison as well as you did. I don’t how your healing countered Reaper’s Dew so well, but that is not something an all-rounder can do. Furthermore, you were stronger and faster than me, but not to the degree an all-rounder of the same grade would have been. Your spec configuration would have been.”

Rui smiled at her words. He had no intention of spreading around what his Martial Path actually was, not only would it perhaps give people an opportunity to counter him.

(‘Maybe that’s a good thing,’) Rui mused.

Perhaps if he spread the word about his Martial Art and made a bunch of the guardians work hard to find a solution should Rui ever challenge them, then he would find Martial Artists who spotted shortcomings or flaws in his Martial Art and worked hard to try and exploit them.

In doing so, he just very well might come across another avenue of improvement, one that he missed because he was unable to see the forest for the trees due to how closely involved he was.

In that case, he might be able to indirectly speed up the rate of growth of his Martial Art and gain strength in ways that he would never have been able to do so.

That was one positive. It was actually quite exciting for Rui.

(‘All my life, I’ve adapted to others to take them down, perhaps now it ought to be the other way around for once,’) Rui mused.

The guardians above him will at least consider the matter and how they would go about handling his Martial Art.

The guardians below him will probably consider the matter for if they ever challenged him for his chamber.

Maybe he could have the entire Martial sect hyped to take down his exotic Martial Art.

On the other hand, he was afraid of Chairman Deacon somehow getting word of someone with Rui’s Martial Art appearing out of nowhere and then sending someone to investigate the matter

Of course, this was particularly unlikely, especially given the circumstances that they were in.

The Floating Sect was essentially in complete lockdown martial law. There was basically zero flux of information between the Floating Sect and the outside world at the moment.

The probability that word would spread after the war was over was truly minuscule. There was essentially no way that Chairman Deacon could gain information on what was going on within the island.

That was why Rui seriously considered disclosing his Martial Path.

“My Martial Path is adaptive evolution,” Rui casually revealed.

She frowned, turning towards him. “What?”

“Adaptive evolution is essentially the process of evolving and growing stronger by adapting to one’s opponent,” Rui simply replied. “So I am an all-rounder but not a static one. I change to adapt to my opponent.”

Her eyes widened.

This was a Martial Art, unlike anything she had ever seen. But it also made sense when she recalled the ease with which he overcame her Martial Art.

Yet what she hadn’t realized was that Rui hadn’t even used the entirety of his Martial Art, he just used Weaving Blood alone.

(‘Would I have been able to beat her without the full scope of the pattern recognition, before I created Weaving Blood?’) Rui pondered.

That was difficult to answer. But even if he could, he would not have done it as well as he did with Weaving Blood.

In essence, Weaving Blood almost allowed him to adapt to her as well as the pattern recognition system did.

That was an incredible discovery.

It meant that had he used the pattern recognition system and Weaving Blood simultaneously, he very well may have been able to adapt twice as much as he could have with just the pattern recognition system alone.

That was quite the breakthrough, it meant that he was right when he wondered whether Project Metabody had the potential to rival the pattern recognition system in terms of adaptive evolution. It was actually on par with it if all the other body adaptations were as perfectly suited to their opponent as Weaving Blood was against Squire Herea.

Furthermore, this was before Rui came up with the idea of improving his adapted Martial body of Weaving Blood with an element of poison.

(‘I wonder how the Martial Heart will interact with my Martial body,’)

He knew that the Martial Heart empowered the body in a way that was best suited for the Martial Path because the body’s spec configuration was already attuned to the Martial Art from the get-go, any empowerment to that would ultimately also be compatible with that.

However, how would it affect him now that he had the ability to change that spec configuration to a certain extent? Once he completed Project Metabody, how would the Martial Heart empower it?

Would it empower it in the manner of his original spec configuration, or his adapted one?

Rui preferred the latter, but it was possible that the former would occur.

(‘I should consult Senior Xanarn about it sometime,’) He mused.

He put the matter aside for the time being and focused on the issue at hand.