A little over four months passed by quickly. Time was often a blur to those who had immersed themselves in training. Especially to someone like Rui, who truly lost track of day and night thanks to his relentless training and immersion. Furthermore, his tolerance of potions made it even more difficult to keep track since he didn’t have daily sleep cycles.
Rui launched a tremendous attack at Kane. The sheer force the attack contained blasted the air in its path apart, causing abrupt gusts of wind. The Outer Convergence technique once mastered had fundamentally upgraded his offensive force to a higher level.
WHOOSH
Kane evaded the attack, swerving to Rui’s open side almost instantaneously.
POW
He managed a get in a solid jab before Rui could guard, and leapt back unsatisfied. The jab had done nothing, it hadn’t even fazed Rui.
“Tsk.” Kane tutted.
Rui took the initiative to charge in, chasing after Kane, trying to cut off as much room for escape as he could. One disadvantage that evasive maneuverer fighters had was that they needed space, they were crippled significantly if they were boxed in a small space.
Still, this was not an easy strategy against someone like Kane, who had enough speed and mobility to bypass Rui’s attempts to block him.
WHOOSH
Kane dodged yet another strike as he managed to sneak in yet another strike past Rui’s guard, a strike that, once again, didn’t do any damage.
(‘Thank god for the fact that I have mastered three defensive Apprentice-level techniques. Kane’s general offense is too weak to bypass my solid defense, he’ll need to use higher-efficiency techniques like what he used against Fae.’) Rui mused.
Ever since he had mastered Inner Divergence, he had become quite confident and secure in his defense. The three techniques he had purchased were all quite compatible with the VOID algorithm. Rui resumed his tactic of trying cut off Kane’s evasiveness, but his approach to combat had begun to change.
No longer did he try running after Kane to land an attack, ever since Kane had mastered Axis Earthing, his ability to maintain his top speed despite making really sharp turns and curves had risen immensely. Meaning he could almost instantly switch directions extremely acutely without needing to slow down at all.
Pursuing him trying to hit him was impossible as long as Kane was focused on evading was utterly impossible. Even though Rui was quite swift himself having mastered Outer Convergence and Parallel Walk and Balance Direction himself, it was still far below Kane.
Instead, he altered and adapted his approach to be as well-suited to Kane as he could. He continued to attempt boxing Kane, but instead of going for the attack, he took an extremely defensive posture with very few openings worth attacking.
“Hah. Given up on attacking me?” He smiled playfully. “That just makes you a harmless punching bag you know.”
This wasn’t false, it was difficult to launch a swift attack from an extremely defensive position. On open offensive stance was launched attacks quicker than super defensive stances.
Against Kane, who was extremely swift and mobile, it just seemed like an incredibly bad idea.
Kane wasn’t sure what Rui was thinking, but he shrugged, before dashing in. His confidence in his speed and evasive mobility was extremely high and he did not think Rui would be able to out-speed him, especially from that position.
POW POW POW
He closed in, and landed heavier blows, which hit harder than the speedy light jabs that he thrown earlier throughout the match with the few low-grade of the Apprentice-level offensive techniques he had.
When he saw Rui didn’t bother counter-attacking, he threw a weight blow through a small chink in Rui’s guard, aimed for his neck, trying to finish Rui off with a single strike, unlike his normal fighting style. The reason he did this was because he knew Rui got stronger as the fight went on, he would alter his placement, timing and application of techniques, as well as general course of actions and tactics throughout the entire fight to better deal with his opponents. He did not want to prolong the fight too much out of wary caution against Rui’s adaptive evolution.
BANG
He cleanly landed the strike onto Rui’s neck, slamming him back. It seemed almost entirely clear that Rui had chosen the wrong course of action.
One moment, he felt elated for having won, giving him major bragging points.
The next moment, he saw a grin on Rui’s face.
And the moment after that, Rui’s arms and legs had already latched onto Kane’s arm, using the Binding Lash technique
(‘What??’) Kane was shocked that Rui had managed to use that technique against him successfully. He was long aware of the fact that Rui had mastered the technique but did not fear it because his speed was too high for Rui to time that technique perfectly. It was a technique that involved the entire body, meaning that it was slow. Against extremely fast opponents like Kane, it was practically impossible to use unless one had timed the execution with miraculous accuracy.
(‘How did he get me?’) Kane wondered as he struggled to get out of the lock. But it was of no avail, Rui was a much better grappler than he was. He used Shifting Silhouette, his only defensive grappling technique to crush all of Kane’s attempt at trying to attack Rui, while applying an immense amount of pressure on Kane’s joints.
“Alright alright you win.” Kane tapped the ground. Rui heaved a breath of relief as he let Kane go.
“Hehe. Looks like I managed to squeeze out a win.” Rui chuckled. “Good fight.”
“How did you even get me?” Kane complained. “I know you’re not an expert grappler to be able time that technique that well regularly.”
“You’re right.” Rui nodded. “I timed it because I had predicted what you were gonna do by limiting your striking options.”
Kane tilted his head in confusion.
“A closed defensive stance has fewer openings and holes than an open offensive stance.” Rui said. “Your options to land a clean strike were much more limited and fewer in number, making it easier to guess which one you would pick. It’s like the difference between flipping a coin and rolling a dice.”
The probability of predicting a coin flip was fifty-percent, but the probability of predicting a rice doll was only one-sixth.
This was because there were more options with the dice roll than the coin flip, thus making it much harder to predict dice rolls than coin flips.
Rui had applied this exact principle to his stance, by giving Kane fewer opening to land clean strikes in, he was able to make it easier to predict which option Kane would go for.
Kane grumbled while Rui chuckled at his expense.