The Martial Unity

Now that Rui had established his short-term goals, he needed to find a way to go about achieving his goal of adding a new system to the VOID algorithm centered around the altering of the Martial body or its spec configuration.

It was all good and fine to get excited by this ambitious new goal that would massively improve his adaptive evolution. But he needed an actual plan about how he was going to go about that.

The first issue was knowing what were the conditions and requirements for the mechanisms by which he altered the spec configuration of his body. If it turned out to be the case that altering his body to different types and changing his spec configuration was too difficult or cost too much, then it wasn't viable.

Furthermore, he couldn't really accept if the flexibility of the mechanism was not high enough for him to gain at least various different kinds of the most common kinds of spec configurations.

This included speed and agility-oriented Martial bodies like that of Kane's that were highly compatible with maneuvering techniques. Power-oriented, defense-oriented, stamina and endurance-oriented Martial Artists were also the bare basic necessities.

Then Martial bodies specialized for range, for breathing techniques, or other systems. Those were a secondary concern, it would be a nice bonus if he could pull it off.

('I should start by giving this project a simpler name,') He considered the matter for a bit. ('Metabody… Project Metabody.')

It wasn't the best name that he had come up with in his time, but it worked. The goal of Project Metabody was to achieve a way of altering the spec configuration of his Martial Body most suited to taking down his opponent in viable and feasible manners.

This would be the first project since Project Water whose end outcome wasn't going to be limited to a single technique. Although this project wasn't nearly as ambitious as the entirety of Project Water, it was still far too large to be limited to a single technique.

Now that he had named the project, and identified the broad bare basic conditions for the resultant techniques of the project to be considered a success.

('I should be able to specify and identify the variables of my physiological output that need to be manipulated to alter my spec configuration.')

Spec configuration was simply the degree to which the Martial body had the primary parameters of combat such as strength/power, durability/endurance, speed/agility, stamina, and healing. Although it wasn't limited to these, these were the most basic and primary parameters, and different Martial bodies had them to different degrees.

For example, the spec configuration of Kane's Martial body was simple; extremely high speed/agility, low power, low durability, medium stamina, and medium healing.

Normally, evasive maneuverers did not have any healing worth speaking of, but thanks to Rui's Hungry Pain technique, his healing factor and stamina were well above what he would have been able to obtain otherwise.

Rui's spec configuration was evenly distributed across all parameters, he did not place any particular weight on any one of them and instead distributed his physiological resources to all of the parameters of the body equally, thanks to the Hungry Pain technique, he too was well above how strong he would have been had he evolved without it.

However, what he was focusing on was the underlying variables that decided how high a certain parameter would be.

Strength was the simplest of them all, it was decided by muscle output. It was a straightforward parameter. Although there were different kinds of strengths, for now, Rui was focusing on the broad categories of the parameters before he focused on details. If he couldn't get the basics right, there was no point trying to aim for more ambitious things.

Stamina was a monolithic parameter, it corresponded with energy reserves with the rate of consumption of energy. Unlike strength, it depended on two variables across the board.

High energy reserves and low consumption of energy corresponded with high stamina. Whereas having higher energy reserves but high energy consumption resulted in medium stamina.

Low energy reserves and high energy consumption resulted in low stamina.

The relativity between the two variables was what decided stamina. If he wanted to alter his body's spec configuration to higher stamina than he already did, he would need to find a way to physiologically cut down his energy consumption increase his energy reserves, or both, then he could increase stamina and obtain a Martial body that was more centered around it for the time being.

('To a certain extent, I do that with Final Breathing,') Rui mused.

It cut down his energy consumption and increased his endurance, though it wasn't drastic enough to be considered body-altering, it did a decent job. What he was looking for was degrees of shifts that were comparable to the kind that he got from the Godspeed technique.

Still, it was definitely much better than nothing.

('Speaking of stamina… I wonder if she's finally a Martial Squire,) Rui thought of an old friend that he hadn't thought of in a long time. ('I'd given her the Hungry Pain technique, but I don't think that helped her get closer to the Squire Realm since she got it from, thus no individuality from her own end.')

He would liked to have thought that Milliana surely would have reached the Squire Realm by now, but he wasn't confident. It was unfortunate but, she never struck him to possess the qualities needed to eventually become a Martial Squire.

The same could be said for Dalen, another old friend from his days in the Martial Academy.

The harsh reality of the matter was that most Martial Apprentices did not make it to the Squire Realm. People like Fae and Kane were special.

He sighed, shaking his head, as he continued focusing on the matter of the variables that he would need to focus on in order to change his spec configuration and alter the parameters of his Martial Body.