The Martial Unity

"Why did he go out of his way to do such a thing?" Rui wondered. "It sounds like a lot more effort than is really needed. Why is it that both of you can't just choose pupils like normal teachers would?"

"Hah!" She snorted at his question. "Do you have any idea of how many people clamor to be accepted as our pupils? I don't have the time or energy to sort through all of them to find the best one."

"I'm aware, but Martial Masters possess a lot of insight, don't they? Isn't it easy for you to make instantaneous evaluations of people you lay your eyes on?"

"I can't be bothered with all of that." She shrugged. "I much prefer something more exciting like setting up a challenge, like finding me in the Shadow Isles, though that had become stale until you arrived. He has his own version of that."

"Hmmm..." Rui considered her words.

It was precisely because he planned on learning from the Hypnomaster that he wanted to gain as much information from someone who knew him more intimately than the Beggar's Sect.

Of course, the Beggar's Sect's intelligence was valuable as well, they provided a much more thorough and rigorous overview than Master Reina did. He wanted to gather as much information as he could have.

"He accepts students less frequently than I do, you know." She remarked. "I think the last time he accepted a student was perhaps nearly six or seven years ago? Something like that. So it's not going to be easy. Not even for you."

Rui had no doubt about that. From everything that he had come to learn, the challenges he would need to overcome to reach the Hypnomaster were overwhelming in and of themselves.

That was fine as far as he was concerned. It has been a while since he had truly pushed himself to the limit in regard to a specific ambition or goal.

"Enough chit-chatting, get back to training." She instructed.

Rui obliged, closing his eyes as he returned to the newly-created misdirection technique project.

'I need to give it a better name.' Rui mused, before giving it a thought. 'Project Phantomind.'

A simple fusion of two relevant words was good enough for Rui. He was not proud of his naming sense, but it couldn't be helped. He usually named a project after he squeezed his creativity to create powerful technique templates, thus, there wasn't much creativity left for the actual name.

However, he immediately began chugging away at the project, making progress every second. One of the biggest issues that he had was project management. The complexity of this project was not different from that of popular animated productions, and he needed to manage everything inside of his head.

He had fixed up the smaller details such as the framerate, definition, perspective, and data tracks, now he needed a broader overview.

'The ultimate goal is to thoroughly trick my subconsciousness into thinking that Master Uma is actually on the battlefield and is attacking both me and my opponent or target.' Rui mused. 'I should add an element of customizing the mental simulation to overlap my environment perception to the project. That will make it even more convincing.'

The more convinced he was, the more convinced his targets or opponents would be.

He immediately began creating the three-dimensional mental simulation, putting away the two-dimensional image that he was working on for the time being. Time passed as he used his imagination as a premium graphics, video, and audio software to embellish his three-dimensional simulation of Master Uma.

It helped that his fear of Master Uma was quite real. He did not need to fake it, force it, or induce it.

He just needed to remember.

While the Silent Shadow was also terrifying, even more so, she was not hostile to Rui.

In fact, the two of them had started growing more informal and casual with each other. She had earnestly passed on the principles of assassination that she had herself developed and created, passing on much of her wisdom within the field of assassination.

It also helped that she had a remarkably easygoing personality with a somewhat dry, often crass, sense of humor. Though they hadn't grown truly intimate because of Rui's hidden identity, among other things, it wouldn't work if he tried to imagine her instead of Master Uma.

He sifted through unpleasant memories, using them as foundational templates for the three-dimensional simulation. It also helped that he saw her as a blade of wind once she started to fight seriously against Master Deivon.

'Speaking of which, I still don't know what the hell that was.' Rui mused. Considering that Master Deivon had done something similar, it was definitely related to the power of the Master Realm.

He highly doubted that they actually physically transformed into a literal sword and fortress. That was far too absurd even for the Master Realm. Most likely it was something else. He didn't know what it was, of course.

'Maybe Master Reina will tell me that along with whatever she meant when she said I'd have a harder path.' Rui hoped.

That was additional motivation to complete his training. He wanted to know more about the path ahead to a higher Realm. Intuition and inference told him that the path to the Master Realm was not the same as anything he had gone through before.

Regardless, time passed as he continued his training with the three techniques that he trained with under the guidance of the Silent Shadow. He hadn't been consumed with three projects in quite some time, which lengthened the training session well beyond any others that he had ever been through.

The totality of the training period stretched well beyond a year until he finally was complete with everything that he had set out to achieve. Perhaps he could have come out earlier, but his large ambitions and his perfectionist side forced him to stay until he was entirely satisfied with the outcome.