The Martial Unity

He already knew this but, Master Uma was quite different from Master Carian. The latter was a lot more considerate and kind towards younger Martial Artists like himself. The former was a lot more ruthless and rough than her colleague.

She didn’t care to actually oversee the actual challenge itself. She was so averse to wasting her time on younger and inferior Martial Artists like them that she decided to integrate her training into the contest’s challenge so that she did not waste any time on them and could train while fulfilling her duties.

He found it interesting that she had the ability to essentially bypass her duties using such loopholes, but did not possess the authority to reject her duties. After all, if she did not want to be here, then why didn’t she straightforwardly reject her duty as the organizer of the second round?

That made Rui conclude that the duty was assigned to her by someone with enough power and authority that she couldn’t reject it. Especially since he could already tell that she was most certainly a zealot of the Virodhabhasa Faith.

Regardless, none of that mattered at the moment.

Rui narrowed his eyes as he considered the challenge before him. He analyzed the tornado she produced carefully, gauging as much information about it as possible. 

It was not a natural tornado, obviously. That meant that there was a good chance that it did not strictly behave the way a natural tornado did.

And he was right.

(‘The wind is not uniform,’) Rui narrowed his eyes as he felt the fabric of the tornado with his Tempestuous Feel. (‘Rather than layers of flowing wind, it’s more like a group of discrete gusts moving in one direction with gaps between them.’)

It reflected the nature of the breathing technique that she was using, it was most likely not a simply continuous breathing pattern, but rather something shorter and more frequent.

Unlike the others, he could verify this through the storm despite it jamming all senses. Riemannian Echo was completely unperturbed. He could clearly sense Master Uma meditating at the center of the storm, and it turned out that he was right. 

Her breathing was like the flapping of the wings of a bee. It was so frequent and rapid, that it was almost imperceivable. Each exhalation was short, extremely momentary, and swift. It generated a spiraling linear gust of wind that revolved around her.

She exhaled so many times per second, that the sheer number of individual gusts of wind essentially formed something that resembled a tornado.

For a moment, he couldn’t help but actually appreciate how remarkably fair the test was to Martial Artists of all three primary fields of combat. The nature of the challenge allowed for offensive, defensive, and maneuvering-oriented Martial Artists to each try and overcome this incredible hurdle in their own ways.

Defensive-oriented Martial Artists could simply employ their Martial Art and Martial Body to weather and shield themselves from the power of the tornado, although it depended because certain active techniques like Flux Earther were less effective against the likes of wind.

Maneuvering-oriented Martial Artists could aim for the particularly larger gaps in the gust of winds that appeared from time to time. As long as they were fast and agile enough, they could navigate the artificial tornado well enough.

Offensive Martial Artists could simply fight back against the storm and push back against the winds in order to make progress.

It was clear that the others had also realized that Rui could see Martial Artists falling into the three categories attempting these three broad approaches.

The question he needed to answer was what approach he wanted to go for. Since he had the Metabody System, he could try all three approaches if he wanted. 

(‘I need to choose the least taxing solution out of all three,’) Rui narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t sure if the potions that the contest would supply would necessarily return him back to peak condition if he pushed himself with the Metabody System, that was just how taxing the technique was. 

It wasn’t easy determining how he ought to go about it because he wasn’t immediately able to gauge which of the approaches would conserve him the most energy. Even within each approach, he had multiple choices. Like within the offensive approach, he could choose to apply his power through physical strength or through potent projection of wind with techniques like Mighty Roar Flash Blast or Transverse Resonance.

Furthermore, he could also use Weaving Blood to simply heal all the damage he endured while he was wading through the storm.

And of course, he had not forgotten the last way either. He could just steal a pass from one of the contestants who did manage to get their hands on one. He was not opposed to this choice either out of some silly sense of honor.

This was part of the contest, Master Uma herself had specified that passes could be obtained in any way. That was an indication that attacking pass-holders for their passes was a perfectly legal tactic that perfectly fell within the rules of the contest.

It was a requirement that contestants be able to not only acquire a pass but maintain it to the end of the round.

With so many options at hand, Rui was a little at a loss. He wasn’t sure about what the likelihood of their success were. 

The other Martial Artists were generally a lot more specialized than he was which meant they had only one option to consider, making the choice a no-brainer. It was only he who had the luxury of choice, who also had the burden of choice.

That was why he decided to do something that drew the attention of all the spectators and even the contestants.

(‘Nothing like a good sit in the middle of a contest,’) Rui mused as one leg lay flat on the ground, while the perched on its foot, folded. 

If he did not have enough data, then he simply needed to gather it.