The Martial Unity

"Instructor Dylon." Rui bowed.

"Hm?" Squire turned away from supervising some training of other students, recognizing him on the spot. "Oh, Quarrier. Is it four techniques this time?"

"Only three." Rui corrected him modestly.

"..."

"I'm here to learn this." Rui waved the Stinger technique scroll. "Care to help me out?"

Dylon winced when he saw the name. "I hope you're prepared. This is going to be rough, not to mention messy.

"Thanks a lot for that, truly helpful." Rui replied.

"Not at all, I'm just here to help after al- Wait, is that sarcasm? That's sarcasm, isn't it?"

"Can we begin immediately?" Rui asked, ignoring him. "I have a busy schedule."

"Of course, you do." Dylon replied, snorting. "Your life is a busy schedule, you're never gonna lose your virginity, you know. Why not forget about learning this technique and instead learn how to pick up girls, or boys, if you swing that way."

"If the Martial Academy ever did have such a teaching post, you wouldn't be hired for it." Rui assured. "Don't think I forgot how Instructor Kyrie rejected your ass by publicly beating you up in front of all your students." Rui ruthlessly reminded.

"Guh!" Instructor Dylon collapsed to his knees, clutching his chest in pain. "With this kind of offense, you don't need to master any other technique."

Rui sighed, exasperated. "Stop fooling around, let's get to work."

"No fun, are you?" He sighed, disappointed. "You've memorized the training regime, haven't you?"

"Every word." Rui confirmed.

"Of course, you have." He nodded, unsurprised. "Well, then you know you don't really need me very much. The Stinger technique merely requires the right training methodology and resources, and you're set."

He gestured to some unused equipment at one end of the training facility.

It was a kicking dummy, meant to be kicked. Asides from some unusual features, nothing about its appearance was too different from ordinary target dummies.

Yet, Rui winced at the sight. Because it was not an ordinary kicking target dummy. It was a special training equipment created by the Martial Academy specifically for the training of the Stinger technique. This training-dummy shaped the toe in the desire manner for the Stinger technique every time the user kicked at it with his or her toe.

Its exterior was made up of a jelly like substance, a semi-solid substance through with one could insert fingers and toes like ordinary jelly. It was not rigid, and allowed objects to pass through it. Rui was supposed to kick at it with his toe, ensuring his toe passed through it each time

This jelly was actually an esoteric substance that had a special property. It was engineered such that it would absorb the energy of the impact and use the same energy of Rui's own kick to press against the toe sideways. Every time the toe made contact, it would pass through it, like jelly, and the jelly would pressure it sideways immensely with the power of Rui's own kick!

The esoteric jelly was use immense amount of energy attempting to reshape, restructure and strengthen Rui's toe. Where did this energy come from? From Rui's own attack that would be absorbed by the esoteric jelly.

It was an extremely efficient substance that would use the user's own energy to continuously pressure and damage the toe, flesh and skin, accomplishing two things by doing this.

Firstly, it ensured that when Rui's toe healed from the micro-injuries, it would be ever so slightly stronger, and its shape would be ever so slightly closer to what was required for the Stinger technique. Of course, this was a very gradual change, it would require many, many months of training to complete the transformation.

"Was it one million kicks?" Dylon scratched his head, trying to recall. "One million kicks against the jelly dummy for the conditioning Stage to be over?"

However, once the training ended, the many tiny minute reshapes caused by the micro-injuries would eventually culminate to ensure that the toe's bone structure resembled a bullet, while the skin and flesh would become extremely rough like sand paper and as rigid as rock. This was to ensure that the skin of the target would tear apart with ease when the Stinger made contact with the flesh of the target.

Rui couldn't even begin to imagine how painful it was, but he didn't need to. He was about to find out himself.

He took a stance, preparing his right leg for a kick, while sticking out his thumb-toe.

BAM

"FUCK!" He felt like a truck had run over his toe, the jelly absorbed the energy of his impact and used it to grind his toe, like it was sharpening a sword or a knife.

He collapsed as he looked at his bruised toe, gasping.

"Get up." Dylon instructed, with a serious tone. "You can't stop right after you start, you know that."

Rui could only consume an extremely-low-grade healing potion meant for the training only after a hundred kicks.

"Steel your will kiddo." He instructed. "As you steel your toe."

BAM

BAM

BAM

BAM

BAM

...

BAM

One hundred kicks later, Rui's toe was swollen, bruised, broken all the medically different ways a toe could possibly be injured. The pain was beyond painful, it agonizing and excruciating and all the synonyms of the pain combined. Rui could barely even hear himself thinking over its intensity.

"Here." Dylon tossed him a healing potion, which Rui inhaled like a fish back in water, he even used Helical Breathing to speed up the process.

Only when his toe finally healed, had he regained his senses.

"What the fuck." He finally said.

"Yeah, it's messed up." Dylon nodded. "Most conditioning technique are. Pain is the part of the game."

"This better be worth it." Rui groaned.

"Heh." Dylon smirked. "You can be the judge of that."

He casually launched an incredibly swift kick towards the closest striking target dummy.

BOOM

Rui's mouth dropped as he saw Dylon extricating his toe out of a gigantic hole in dummy's head, with cracks emanating from it.

"You should be capable of that once you master it."

Rui's gaping mouth morphed into a smirk.