The process took Rui longer than he had expected. For one, he couldn’t help but browse through a large portion of priced techniques. But for another, the simple variety of techniques was far greater than what he had imagined. They were definitely far greater than anything Earth held.
On Earth offensive techniques were limited to striking and grappling.
Here there were was a wide repository of techniques that inflicted damage outside of these elementary principles.
Force Permeation to target internal organs.
Vitals targeting based techniques.
Vibration based techniques.
Temperature based techniques.
Nerve striking techniques.
Even techniques as ridiculous as poison techniques!
Rui gaped at the sight. He almost wanted to laugh.
“Poison? You can poison people through Martial Art? Hahaha!” He mirthfully exclaimed. He found the whole notion to be simultaneously absurd and yet so fascinating.
Even defensive techniques were far vaster than anything he had conceptualized. Back on Earth, one merely had to practice learning how to guard against strikes and learning how to get hit to minimize the impact.
Here, there were whole systems of principles and mechanisms by which techniques amplified defense.
Higher levels of the Damage Mitigation that used even more potent principles such as impact softening, inelastic recoil and other mechanism beyond just guarding existed. Rui was surprised by how something that used to be relatively straightforward and mundane was immensely various in this world.
The same was true for maneuvering and supplementary fields of Martial Art.
After hours of exploring, Rui finally made a decision in regards to all the techniques he would choose to begin mastering.
He glanced down at the scrolls he had picked. He had picked six of them. The reason he had chosen a total of six different techniques was because four of them were Apprentice level versions of the techniques he had already learnt prior. Harmonic Breathing, Damage Mitigation, Collision Optimization and Balance Direction each had an Apprentice level version to them, however, he expected to master them quickly after going through the techniques and their training sessions. Thus, he had decided to choose an additional four more technique to begin immediately after.
“The Apprentice level versions of these techniques are quite impressive.” Rui muttered as he went through them, some even had different names
“The Apprentice level versions of Damage Mitigation and Collision Optimization are Elastic Shift and Vital Pressure. How fitting.”
Damage Mitigation and Elastic Shift were techniques that aimed to reduce the impact of strikes by moving with the strikes, this caused the collision to be more elastic in nature, a collision where the opponent’s attack power was not converted to damage when the attack struck due to the user moving with the strikes rather than stopping them, was an elastic collision. It was the same as when baseball players caught balls by moving their hands with the ball while catching it to reduce the impact.
Elastic Shift encapsulated the technique’s functioning quite well.
Vital Pressure and Collision Optimization-I were techniques that worked by administering greater damage by striking vitals
[Parallel Walk]
This was the technique Kane had showed him when they sparred together the first time Rui had gone to his home.
It was a technique that eliminated the wasteful torque caused by swinging your arms and also rotating your body opposite to the legs, thereby decreasing the energy wasted and increasing maneuvering speed.
This allowed his travelling speed to increase dramatically.
[Acute Edge]
This was a low-grade defensive technique that focused on mitigating damage by making the angle between the surface of the body that contacts the opponent’s strike and the opponent’s strike to below and acute, turning into a nick and a slip, rather than a full-on collision.
This allowed the user to avoid enduring the brunt of the force by enduring only a portion of the power, by getting hit at an angle.
Rui nodded, satisfied with these choices. These were reasonable balanced and flexible choices and options, which was conducive to Adaptive Evolution.
He intended to grind harder than he ever had. Pushing himself to the limits with potions to master these techniques.
He wanted to join the other Apprentices in completing missions, he knew Kane, Fae and the others had already begun doing so, and for good reason.
He looked around him in the library, there were so many techniques that required merits he could hardly believe it.
(‘How many missions will it take for me to purchase these techniques?’) He wondered solemnly.
The answer couldn’t possibly be a small number.
On one hand he was a bit unhappy about the time it would take for him to purchase the techniques. The number of techniques he had now were sorely insufficient for proper adaptive evolution. He needed a vast variety of techniques of all kinds, the more he had, the better he would be able to adapt to all kinds of Martial Art.
On the other hand, he was looking forward to completing missions. This was what it meant to be a Martial Artist! He looked forward to diving into different kinds of missions and understand what it was like to be a Martial Artist, as well as what kind of Martial Artists he wanted to be.
He also needed time and techniques to modify expand the VOID algorithm to be able to account for the Martial Art techniques of this world.
The VOID algorithm was designed to handle the MMA of Earth, it could not be straightforwardly applied to the Martial Art of the Panama continent. The vastness and potency of the techniques were much greater than that of Earth, there were several new parameters and variables that needed to be accounted for by the Algorithm such as the strange principle and mechanisms of these techniques and also the efficiency of techniques. Only after expanding it to include these factors would it perform as well as it did back on Earth.
Furthermore, he still had the final obstacle to overcome. The same obstacle he failed to overcome back on Earth.