Rui wasn’t sure, yet he didn’t bother asking for clarification, it had already been made quite clear to him that nobody who knew the truth would reveal it so easily. Fae and Kane had both not been told about the breakthrough to Martial Squire, and Squire Dylon himself had refused Rui the truth, being purposefully vague and unspecific.
Still, Rui wasn’t too bothered by this, he knew he would learn about the truth and even experience it himself as long as he traversed down his own Martial Path.
Once the event ended, Rui remained in the facility, looking for others to spar against.
Although he had tentatively mastered each individual technique alone, he hadn’t fully gotten used to using all of them in combat. He’d decided he wanted to get more experience with them, it was better to refine it in the same environment of the Academy where he could afford to make mistakes than do so in the middle of a dangerous mission and lose his life as a result.
Especially so since the Academy had upgraded his Martial Apprentice grade from grade three to grade five. Meaning, from now on he could routinely take on missions that posed some degree of a threat, albeit not much, all by himself.
He would have only himself to rely upon.
The first course of action he wanted to do was test himself against different Types of Martial Artists, with different specialties. This gave him a wider dataset for him to evaluate how well he used his newly mastered techniques
He had already tested himself against an evasive maneuverer of Kane, and had been reasonably satisfied with his performance. Now he just needed to fight as many different types as he could. He could fight Fae for an offensive striker, Dalen for a defense-oriented Martial Art, Milliana for a stamina-oriented Martial Art. Felix for a grappling-oriented Martial Art.
He didn’t particularly have anyone else he was acquainted with.
He shrugged, approaching other Martial Apprentices who had also stayed behind looking for anyone who was interested in a spar.
The sparing match he had gotten into now was just that.
“Take your stances.” The supervisor instructed.
“Huff…” Rui exhaled as he put a foot forward, while extending his left arm open-palmed towards his opponent, while tucking his right fist at his ribs. It was a fairly neutral stance that didn’t put too much weight on offense, defense or maneuvering.
His opponent, a girl named Karura, folded both arms to the absolute limit, as though she was trying to crush something in between her forearm and bicep, while raising her elbows, while crouching with bent knees
The stance undoubtedly drew attention to her elbows. This alone suggested to Rui that her Martial Art was a super close range Martial Art centered around elbows. It reminded him of the elbow centric technique that Fae had learnt half a year ago.
“Begin!” The supervisor began the match.
Karura immediately closed the gap between them, something that was within his expectations. She wouldn’t be much of a super-close-range fighter if she didn’t close the gap between them.
Naturally Rui did not intend to cooperate peacefully, he immediately dashed backwards, maintaining the distance between them.
What surprised him was that she was actually faster than he was, which meant she had invested a lot into mastering maneuvering techniques to bolster her speed and mobility.
(‘She’s thought her Martial Art and repertoire remarkably well.’) Rui thought. He could understand why she had built up her maneuvering foundation.
As a super-close-range fighter, her very obvious weakness was people with greater range who could attack her from outside her range while she couldn’t. The
The most common-sense strategy against her was for one to keep her distance outside of her striking range, any moron could come up with this strategy as long as they thought hard enough. Rui was relatively certain that she had encountered this strategy many times until she chose to significantly bolster her maneuvering prowess so that she could close the distance every time they tried to open it, and force them to fight on her terms.
Rui suspected that in terms of raw techniques, he was probably inferior to her in super-close-range combat. Still, he didn’t feel any threat or fear, his sense of security had risen tremendously after his latest training session
Just as she reached three meters away, Rui calmly stopped running away and instead ran straight into her.
A look of surprise flashed across her face, as this was the last thing she’d expected him to do.
BOOM
A tremendous impact let loose a huge gust of wind and that drew the attention of everybody within visible range of their spar.
What they saw when they glanced at the source of the explosive noise was Rui standing nonchalantly with an fist extended midair.
And a girl flat at his feet, coughing blood.
Their eyes flew wide open as they realized what had happened. Those who had already been watching the fight gaped with dropped jaws.
A single strike! Rui devastated her with a single attack
When Rui switched direction and ran towards her, he had accelerated to his top speed with Parallel Walk and Balanced Direction in her direction
Just as they were a meter away, he all three of his striking Apprentice-level techniques; Flowing Canon, Vital Pressure and Outer Convergence.
Flowing Canon used the accumulated momentum of his acceleration via Parallel Walk and Balanced Direction to ensure the power of his strike surpassed that of his normal strikes.
Outer Convergence drew power from all his muscle groups.
And Vital pressure finished the job by ensuring the strike landed in a way the maximized as much pain and damage.
It was an attack that was fueled by the power of a whopping five Apprentice-level techniques and was the single most powerful strike Rui could possibly launch.
Karura had tried to defend with an Apprentice-level technique, but it was nowhere near enough. She had tried counter-attacking as well, but having been caught off-guard with an already shorter range than Rui ensured that Rui’s attack landed first.
And whence the attack landed, the fight ended.
Nay, it was over before it had even begun.
Rui had achieved a different level of power.