The Martial Unity

"She was about to get absolutely flattened by an attack that she couldn't handle… But then somehow the man took damage and backed off," Kane murmured, confused. "Is that poison, is she a poison-user?"

The others that heard Kane's speculation seemed to be inclined to agree. It made sense, this kind of delayed damage that was inflicted without strikes and collisions was characteristic of poison techniques.

"Not at all," Rui shook his head with an amused smile. "He just hurt himself."

"Huh?" Kane tilted his head.

"Take a look at her joints and bones," Rui gestured with his head.

Kane turned back with furrowed eyebrows, scrutinizing her body. "They're a much darker skin tone than the rest of her body, they also seem rougher and thicker… They're conditioned?"

"Correct," Rui nodded. "The weak point of the skeletal structure of the human, as well as a Martial body are the joints. Joints are easier to break than bones. She simply exploited that principle to inflict damage on him using his own power."

"I don't follow, how can she even do that?"

Rui paused for a moment as he considered how to explain it. "You can think of the skeleton as a chain. The human body passes power through each bone all the way to the fists and the knuckles that serve as the point of transfer of any impact of a punch. It's a chain that carries over the power of an impact. This is similar to a chain pulling an object where the force passes from the first link to the last link until it reaches the object, pulling it along. However, what if there was a weak link among all these links that couldn't withstand the force applied?"

"It would… break."

"Correct," Rui nodded. "What she is doing is essentially removing the weak links from her chain, so that the weak links in his chains will break first in a tug of war. It doesn't matter how much force he applies, human level, Squire level, or even infinite force. The weakest link will always break first in a tug of war, and the weakest links are all in his chain."

Kane's eyes widened as he understood the analogy. "So the clashes between their fists are like a tug of war but in the opposite direction. Both of their joints are experiencing the stress from their clash, but her conditioned joints stay strong causing his joints to take all the damage."

Rui nodded. "Ordinarily, the joints of both fighters will share the strain from the clash, meaning there is no difference. But in this case, it causes a collision where joints take all the strain because hers don't. When he swung down on her, she simply guarded because his wrist was weaker than her rock-solid guard, meaning his wrist took damage before her guard, causing him to take more damage as a result. It was like trying to break a rock by hitting it with a glass rod, the glass is always breaking first no matter what."

It was a simple principle that exploited collision mechanics, yet it was quite remarkable. By conditioning not just her bones to be rock solid, but her joints to be equally tough, she could ensure that the clash would do the most damage to his joints than anything else.

('I knew she wasn't an offensive striker. She's actually a conditioning-oriented counter-offensive specialist,') Rui mused. ('And she's going to win this battle.')

BAM BAM BAM!!

The man tried different kinds of strikes to see if he could bypass her strangely painful defenses. He even tried bull charging with his entire body, yet she keenly struck back, causing sharp intense pain to his joints.

CRACK!

His shoulder dislocated when he threw a wild haymaker. She swiftly rushed forward, throwing a flurry of strikes at his shoulder, exacerbating the problem.

The rest of the fight was brutal. Rui and Kane watched as she utterly beat the man black and blue, breaking his joints one by one, before then breaking his bones.

CRACK!

A heavy blow to the head launched him across the battle arena, smashing him against the wall, as he collapsed to the ground unconscious, bleeding profusely.

She didn't even bother finishing him off.

It was only a few minutes later after the man breathed his final breath that the battle was declared over.

She simply left the arena expressionlessly. Rui watched her with a raised eyebrow.

('She's worthy of being a guardian,')

She ultimately did not even take any meaningful damage despite facing a high-grade power-oriented Martial Artist head-on. That was an extremely remarkable feat that put her above ordinary high-grade Martial Squires.

The fact that she was among the tenth class of guardians showed that the Floating Sect guardians were elites even among the upper echelons of the Squire Realm. Rui wondered what kind of guardian the number one ranked guardian of the Floating Sect was like. He couldn't even imagine how strong he or she was.

Rui glanced back at the arena as he considered his prospects against the two that just fought. They were much closer to him than the number-one-ranked Martial Squire of the island.

Against the deceased man, he would probably fight like Kane. Evading the man's haymakers was pretty easy with his capabilities, and exploiting the opening that he created to pepper him with blows.

Alternatively, he would also be able to blast him away from a distance with powerful attacks, although that was sub-optimal because his long-range attacks consumed more energy than his close-range strikes.

His guardian opponent on the other hand was much trickier, but he didn't think he couldn't win, not at all. It made him confident that he could get into the ten class of the Floating of the Sect, and bag a lower chamber. He just wanted to find an apt opponent without growing too reliant on the pattern recognition system.

"We're going to watch all fights that occur in this colosseum till the final date, and then pick candidates based on all of that," Rui remarked.