The Martial Unity

Rui, however, didn’t mind the war all that much. Whenever he wasn’t fighting deployed, he simply trained.

Now that he had obtained three spec configurations for healing, stamina, and speed, he was looking forward to expanding that offense and defense as well.

These two were arguably the hardest of them all.

The reason for this was because both offense and defense were too broad. Offense included collision-based techniques like strikes, throws, and projectiles. That could further be divided into two exclusive categories blunt force and piercing. It also included other forms of inflicting damage such as heat, friction, mental techniques, sustained pressure-based techniques like holds and locks, blunt force brain trauma, etc.

It also included a wide variety of ranges from super-close-quarters forms of offense with grappling and wrestling offensive maneuvers to close-quarters striking, to long-range attacks. It included damage based on external elements such as poison, symbiotes, or weapons. There were also different media of damage such as one’s own body, as well as the atmosphere.

There were many layers, and dimensions of depth to offense as a broad category or concept.

It was far from a monolithic concept, and far more of a loose label that simply referred to any and everything that could be done in combat to hurt one’s opponent’

It was simply far too broad of a concept for him to develop a single Martial Body that universally catered to all of the forms of offense that existed at the moment. It was impossible because the Martial Body needed to cater to forms of damage that were either mutually exclusive or even principally opposed to each other, like heat and cold.

That was why forming a Martial Body that was principally catering to the offense as a whole was impossible.

(‘I’ll need to narrow it down to my offense,’)

Although he did plan to eventually encompass all fields, for now, he needed to cater only to the main forms of offense that he relied on.

Striking.

Long-range air-based attacks.

Grappling offense.

If he needed to amplify these by altering his body in some way, then he needed to either find three different mechanisms to amplify each of them separately or one mechanism that amplified all of them.

(‘There are advantages to both,’) Rui decided.

If he picked three different mechanisms for all three forms of offense, then he would probably end up being able to adapt better to all of them.

On the other hand, it increased the difficulty by at least a factor of three. Furthermore, it was highly suspect whether it would be possible to use in one Martial Body.

(‘Separate Martial Bodies for sub-categories of offense is something I should save for future iterations.’) Rui decided.

For the first iteration of Project Metabody, he had decided that it was best to stick with being simple and straightforward, rather than trying to overcomplicate things

(‘One mechanism to amplify my offense in general…’) Rui narrowed his eyes.

He needed to identify a way in which he could amplify all offense. It wasn’t so straightforward, as they relied on different ways to inflict damage.

(‘The only thing that they have in common is inflicting damage with a great power output…’) He noted.

That didn’t make it easier. If anything, it made it harder. It was true that those means of offense relied on the power output of his body, but it also meant that if he wanted to empower all of those forms of offense, he needed to increase his power output.

Void Forestep appeared as if it increased his power output, but the decrease in mass was perfectly balanced out by the increase in speed, so it amplified speed for the most part, as opposed to power.

As for how he was to increase power? He had no idea at the moment.

He had gotten a bit lucky with Weaving Blood in that he didn’t need to do much research for means and ways to find a way to empower his healing. It worked out with the knowledge that he had and techniques that he could easily access.

But he had the inkling that this was going to be much harder.

For one, he didn’t really know how he was supposed to massively improve the power of his Martial Body. He knew it couldn’t be an ordinary supplementary method because that didn’t alter his spec configuration, it just gave minor upgrades to his power.

However, he wasn’t interested in obtaining that at the moment.

What he wanted was a way to alter the spec configuration of his Martial Body, a simple power supplementary technique like Fire Breathing was not going to do that. Just like how Wind Breathing could not become the speed Martial Body, only Void Forestep could.

If he wanted a Martial Body that was focused on power, he probably needed a technique, or multiple techniques like in the case of Weaving Blood, that improved power by increasing his body mass.

Martial Bodies with greater power output usually had an immense amount of muscle mass. It was that mass that gave rise to their great power. If there was a way to improve his power without increasing mass, he didn’t mind using it, but the point of Project Metabody was to sacrifice physical parameters that he didn’t need like speed and agility, for parameters that he did need, like power from extra muscle mass that would slow him down.

For now, he had no idea how to go about the increase in power. Sure, he could think of some plausible avenues to explore, but he had nothing concrete the way he did with Weaving Blood.

This was going to take some good old-fashioned research. He couldn’t just idly think his way through this one. And he had never expected to be able to, he always knew that Project Metabody was going to be a long-term project that was going to take some serious ground-up effort by the time he was done with it.