The Martial Unity

The VOID algorithm told him the future of his physicality.

The SOUL System showed him the future by intentionality.

Together, his intrinsic familiarity with Kane, his situational awareness of their environment, and, most importantly, the two systems of thought allowed him to see an unfathomable depth into the future.

Not just one step into the future.

Not even two steps.

No.

He could see the future of the entire battle unfold.

As well as its outcome.

He made a decision on the spot.

"I resign." Rui smiled, raising his hands.

"Huh?" Kane tilted his head in confusion. "Are you sure?"

"Yep, I'm certain," Rui heaved a sigh. "It's taking a toll on my body. I need to stock up on nutrition and energy since the Metabody System drained it all. At this rate, I'll lose because my body is simply failing. I have gained a good understanding of my new power, so there is no need to see this through."

Kane looked dissatisfied with that. "Why not just see the battle to the end?"

"We're in the Beast Domain, Kane," Rui's voice grew serious. "We need to keep our guards up and not unnecessarily waste energy. Carelessness is death in the Beast Domain."

Kane nodded apologetically, switching his Martial Heart off. "You're right, my bad. Good spar."

Rui nodded, chatting with him. Inwardly, he reviewed the foreseen fight. The future that he had just averted, he increasingly dominated the fight until, eventually, catastrophe struck.

The battle would have ended with Rui shattering Kane's Martial Path.

It was a horrific outcome that Rui would never allow to unfold. Doing that was no different from stabbing his friend in the back to kill him. Although it was possible for Rui to maneuver the battle in a way that avoided that situation, he decided it was not worth the risk.

With this, he had gauged a good intuitive understanding of how strong he had become. Of course, his predictive model with Kane was the strongest by far. This meant that he probably could not replicate such an astonishing result against any other Martial Senior. At least, not until he mastered the Angel of Laplace and his new SOUL System.

However, he had confirmed that the two systems of thought could allow him to bridge physical gaps so great that his opponent was invisibly fast to him and bone-shatteringly strong.

It was truly incredible to see what the kind of outcomes that thought could yield. Simply greater accuracy in timing and placement could bring about tremendous results, especially when he had techniques that worked better with timing and placement.

Phantom Step and Flux Earther were decent before he adapted. But once he adapted, they suddenly became astronomically more powerful, reaching grade nine, sometimes even grade ten, in terms of their defensive and maneuvering yields.

If Rui knew exactly how a person was going to move and exactly what their subconscious intentions were, it became significantly easier to execute the perfectly crafted feint at the ideal moment to completely bypass their awareness.

It was almost magical.

Flux Earther knowing the exact trajectory of the incoming attack allowed him to align the axis of his body in precisely the right way to maximize the smoothness of energy dispersal.

It was unfortunate that he didn't have an equivalent timing and accuracy-based technique for offense. Most of his offensive and power-based techniques, be it Reverberating Lance, Outer Convergence, Fire Breathing, and others, were static. This meant that even as his precision and accuracy of timing and placement rose, thanks to his systems of thought, his offense did not change all that much.

In fact, that was one of the reasons that Rui would have gone on to break Kane's Martial Path in the future of the battle. He lacked the offensive to do any real, meaningful damage to Kane. Breaking Kane's Martial Path inadvertently became a likely result.

Had he had an offensive technique that grew significantly more effective with greater precision and accuracy, he would have been able to end the spar with a victory before it reached such a grave end.

But alas, he didn't have what he didn't have.

It was another thing that he placed on his list of ideas to be explored in the future. Having a powerful offensive technique was just as important as having a powerful maneuvering and defensive technique.

Still, he would be lying if he claimed he wasn't deeply pleased with the spar against Kane. To any other Martial Senior, fighting another of their peer without their Martial Heart was absolutely suicidal. It was something that simply could not be accomplished by the conventional school of thought. The Martial Heart was too powerful.

Yet Rui had accomplished it anyway. He was probably part of a very few extraordinarily elite Martial Seniors that could have feasibly done so.

The first Martial Senior that came to mind was the Gatekeeper with his titanic physical prowess. Rui didn't think Kane could possibly beat the Gatekeeper under the same conditions that he fought against Rui.

'Also, Ieyasu.' He wondered how strong the man had gotten in the near-five years since they had last met.

There was no doubt that he had grown massively stronger since his battle with Rui. The only reason that Rui won their previous fight was because he had a higher affinity to the Master Realm than Ieyasu. The man needed more time to make any progress with the Martial Mind, which caused their fight to fall mildly in Rui's favor, allowing him to edge out a victory against his sole equal rival.

However, Rui knew better than to read too deeply into his victory. Ieyasu's Martial Path had elevated to a higher level after he integrated thought into it.

He shook his head, returning to the present.

There was no time to spend daydreaming about what-ifs. He had spent a year and a half in pursuit of Project Telepath. Now, it was time to get back to work and find the Divine Doctor.

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