The Martial Unity

PEW!

Rui punctured a hole in his left wing.

"Argh!" Fernan grimaced.

Rui's eyes widened at that sight. ('The symbiote sends pain signals to his brain in response to painful stimuli.')

This was another disadvantage that Rui hadn't predicted.

Fernan's flight destabilized as he struggled to gain a bearing in the air. Rui had punctured a muscle, making it difficult for him to flap his wings equally. Furthermore, Rui exacerbated the issue with Tempestuous Ripple.

POW POW POW!

He landed three Tempestuous Ripples on Fernan's injured wing. The attacks did hurt Fernan as evident by the grimace on his face, yet the main reason Rui launched those attacks was not to hurt him but to destabilize him. Launching the gusts of at only one wing and not the other caused his trajectory to be even more unstable.

THUD

He landed on the ground, stumbling. He tried to regain his bearings, but Rui had no intention of allowing him to.

BAM!!!

A powerful Flowing Canon amplified by eight techniques crashed onto his guard. Fernan gritted his teeth as he tried to mitigate the damage, yet even the combined defenses of four arms weren't enough to stop Rui's overwhelming strike.

BOOM!

Fernan was launched across the arena as he crashed into the walls of the arena

He turned around in fear.

BAM!

A powerful blow crashed onto his face. He tried fighting, back, returning a powerful strike right back at Rui, when;

CLASP

Rui caught on to his strike and flipped him upside down with Flow Flux.

('Your extra apendages have destabilized your balance, all it takes is the slightest push at the right time and place.

BAM!!

A tremendous kick landed on Fernan's jaw even as he was upside down.

It was the second impact to the head.

The threshold had been crossed.

THUD

He hit the ground, unmoving.

Fernan lost consciousness as his brain was overwhelmed by the blunt force trauma.

"Winner; Apprentice Falken!"

Rui ignored the applause he received as he studied Fernan's body. There several bumps on his body where his wings and extra arms came from.

('So the symbiote even generates hard bone in his body before generating a limb.') Rui scrutinized Fernan with interest. ('Furthermore, the features of the extra set of arms are the same as his original arms. This means that Symbiote used his DNA to create the arms.')

Rui's mind furiously analyzed the situation even as he found the entire notion thoroughly amazing. ('Lady Farun said that the symbiote is implanted into their body as larva, the symbiote likely extracts the DNA of the host to recreate whatever parts that particular species of symbiote recreates.')

His eyes turned to Fernan's wings. ('But that doesn't explain the wings.')

Human DNA didn't have any information on wings, so how did the Symbiote acquire those?

('They must have used another animal, a bird with a wingspan that suited humans.') Rui concluded. ('I wonder if Symbiotic Martial Art can do other things.')

He was sure that there were other species of symbiotes that operated differently.

('If the symbiotes are connected to the brain, then there probably is a constraint of mental capacity.') Rui mused.

The subconscious human brain was not meant to accommodate more limbs and organs. More organs meant more information the subconscious brain had to process and act on.

Suddenly, his eyes widened as the realization of an incredible possibility dawned on his mind. ('If mental capacity is a constraint on symbiotic Martial Art... Then what if someone with superhuman mental capacity tried mastering a symbiotic Martial Art?')

Rui's body was well within human constraints that applied even to Martial Apprentices. However, his brain and specifically mind had undergone growth to a degree beyond human parameters. His subconscious mind had a much greater mental capacity that ordinary humans.

Greed creeped into Rui's eyes.

It was entirely possible that Rui was extremely compatible with symbiotic Martial Art techniques. If that was the case, Rui would be a fool to not, at the very least, look into the matter.

Rui added symbiotic techniques into the long list of things he wanted to look into for his next training stage. Yet as much as the very idea of gaining additional biological utility appealed to him.

Was it truly worth it?

Rui glanced back at Fernan who was being carried away before shaking his head. Sure, Fernan was incredible. His Martial Art had shocked Rui unlike anything. But he was not without glaring flaws.

('In pursuit of superhuman power, he neglected human power.') Rui mused.

Humans were strong. Humans had their own bottomless potential. Fernan had abandoned human power and potential when he gave himself extra arms and wings. Not realizing that he hadn't even explored the full power and potential of his existing limbs.

Now, did this mean that symbiotic Martial Art was inherently bad or weak or sub-optimal?

No, Rui was not naïve enough to think that either. Fernan was absolutely proof that it was not a sub-optimal field. Before Rui, he had crushed all opposition with all kinds of Martial Art with a fraction of his full power.

At the end of the day, results spoke the loudest. And Fernan's results were deafeningly loud.

('They key is balance.') Rui realized. ('Obtaining extra-human power like symbiotic Martial Art must not come at the cost of abandoning human power.')

Rui came to believe the key was finding that very thin but sharp line where the symbiotic power added to the human body did not dampen human power or potential. But perhaps even enhanced it and cooperated with it.

If Rui's suspicions about his compatibility with symbiotic Martial Art was true, then Rui would like to try and think about aiming to achieve where he added just enough symbiotic techniques to his Martial Art where it didn't dampen his potential. He wondered if he could achieve the best of both worlds. He was firmly of the belief that someone like Fernan was of neither world. He had no intention of adding extra limbs or giving himself wings.

But perhaps symbiotic Martial Art possessed a solution for the many problems he was plagued with. Perhaps a single symbiotic technique could become the key.

Anything was possible.