The Martial Unity

She most likely needed to reach a certain level of speed and force in order to generate flames with just friction alone, yet she seemed able to pull it off. Not only that, she also possessed a remarkable amount of control over the directions and intensity of the flames as well.

POW POW POW!

The battle was brutally one-sided, unlike a lot of challenges between guardians. It seems that the man had overestimated himself or underestimated her. Whatever the case, he most certainly messed up.

It wasn't ten minutes into the fight that he forfeited.

"Woah…"

"She's strong…"

"I'm not challenging her, that's for sure."

Rui heard a wave of murmurs from the spectators. He could definitely understand why they thought the way they did.

Yet he didn't share their sentiments.

('I wonder how well I can adapt to her,') Rui couldn't help but consider the matter. In actuality, her Martial Art was actually not that ill-suited to him. Her strengths were defined, and the resulting fighting style that he would create to adapt to her did not require most of his Martial Art, allowing him to get away with hiding most of his arsenal.

Perhaps there were easier targets, but…

('But they're not worth it,')

One of the ways that he could improve his ability to adapt was by challenging himself in new ways. Simply adapting to more normal Martial Art wasn't very productive.

After all, many Martial Art ended up having similar solutions when it came to adapting to them. Although they were all unique in some way or another, at their core, they followed the same concept.

The predictive models were unique, but the adapted Martial Art that he ended up fighting wasn't drastically unique.

('But she is strong,') Rui noted.

It reduced the probability that he would win, and thus the probability that he would survive.

Yet, he didn't mind undertaking the challenge. In exchange, he relaxed his rule regarding the usage of the VOID algorithm. He got a decent grasp of her movements, however, it wasn't enough to form a predictive model as the battle hadn't lasted long enough, and he hadn't seen enough of her Martial Art.

Yet he had made his choice. He left the colosseum heading back to the initiate housing block.

"Friction and fire?" Kane raised an eyebrow when Rui told him about her. "That sounds scary as hell. I would not want to fight her."

"You don't have the best compatibility with her, after all."

Kane would be able to evade her pretty well, but he could probably forget about trying to inflict any damage on her. His constitution was much weaker than hers was, and even hitting her would probably bust his hand up. He didn't even have a single genuine way hurt her.

If he tried shocking her, just being in contact with her would probably rip open his flesh effortlessly.

The same wasn't necessarily true for Rui, not only was his body much more durable, but he had undergone Adamant Reforging that conditioned his flesh very well, allowing his flesh to be able to withstand a lot without breaking.

However, that wasn't the route that Rui intended to go through when confronting her. He couldn't afford to rely on his conditioning to try and withstand her offense, that was a foolish move.

Her friction and heat were her offense and what made her a high-grade guardian. Rui did not think that a simple grade seven technique would be able to do much against her offense.

Instead, he intended to engage in a form of combat where he could simply deny her the opportunity to ever even come in to take him down.

He had a bit of leeway due to his decent healing factor being able to heal light wounds really well, but it didn't give him too much rope, he was better off being able to ensure that she didn't land a hit on him ever.

He quickly began cooking up an optimal game plan in his mind. He had come to accrue a lot of techniques in the past five years. It gave him an immense amount of versatility that he had the ability to choose from.

He had the five techniques that he had initially re-mastered when he became a Martial Squire. Wind Breathing, Outer Convergence, Phantom Step, Adamant Reforging, and Reverberating Lance.

After that he had come to develop his first two techniques; the Pathfinder technique, and the Flux Earther technique. He had mastered the Sonic Bullet technique as a result as well. In his time on Vilun Island, he had also come to master the Mighty Roar Flash Blast technique and had developed the Transverse Resonance Technique as a result.

He had developed Gale Force Breathing and the Riemannian Echo technique in preparation for the Shionel Dungeon and in his time in the Shionel Confederation, he had mastered the Forestep technique.

He had then gone on to create the Reverberating Catapult, Eye of Lightning, Thundercoil, and the Lightning Tap in his subsequent travels after escaping the Shionel Confederation.

Those were not a small number of Martial Artist techniques, not to mention the multiple Apprentice-level techniques that he had naturally come to adapt to the Squire Realm.

However, he realized that the more techniques he mastered, the more complicated it became to create the most optimal adapted Martial Art to any given Martial Art because he had to go through a large number of techniques before picking just the right ones that he needed.

Of course, the resultant adapted Martial Art would be even more optimal than if he had fewer techniques.

('Unless the techniques are higher in quality than quantity,') Rui noted to himself. ('Perhaps there is merit in focusing on creating a lesser number of high-grade techniques than it is to create numerous low-grade techniques.')

He shook his head, putting aside such thought for the time being. He had a fight to prepare for, and it wouldn't be that long before he would be stepping into the arena himself.