The Martial Unity

Hever's muscle memory flashed as he just barely managed to reach Rui's attack in time.

WHOOSH

It was a feint.

Where did he go?

THUD

Rui had crashed into his lower abdomen before Hever could even realize! The force of the takedown had toppled Hever onto the ground flat. Hever wrangled like a serpent, but to no avail.

CLASP

Rui used Shifting Silhouette, his only grappling defense technique to suppress all of Hever's grappling activity, and successfully mounted Hever.

BAM BAM BAM!

Rui mercilessly pounded on Hever like a gorilla, using the full power of Outer Convergence and Vital Pressure.

Hever had begun bleeding immensely. He did not have any defensive techniques like Inner Divergence, even if he did, they would not work very well, if at all in such a scenario. Inner Divergence required the user shifting the area of impact as close to the center of the body as possible, whereas Rui had mounted him, preventing such a defense.

Ultimately, the human body would not withstand the power of a Martial Apprentice. Rui even ended up holding back a bit, avoiding his head. One wrong mistake and Rui might have ended up even killing him.

Soon, Hever's condition had degraded immensely, but he never gave up. Rui couldn't really knock him out via blunt force trauma because his head would not rock because of the ground.

The solution was simply.

He quickly maneuvered across Hever's body, getting him in a chokehold. Hever's weaknesses and shortcoming were starting to show.

The brain would automatically shut down after seven seconds of limited blood or no blood supply.

And seven seconds later, Rui demonstrated this.

"Winner; Apprentice Rui Quarrier!" The supervisor announced.

The fight ended quickly.

The onlookers gaped in shock!

They expected Hever to win after that intimidating performance against Nel, but instead Rui almost crushed him.

Was Rui this abysmally strong?

Everyone couldn't help but wonder.

Rui shook his head. He wished he was, but the truth was a lot more sober. He was extremely compatible against Hever.

Although Hever was extremely strong thanks to his astronomical mastery of Meteor Throw, everyone knew that he had many, many gaping holes and vulnerabilities on paper. However, his absurd counter-offensive prowess shined too bright, dominating his weaknesses and even overcompensating for them. No one had figured out how to successfully exploit his weaknesses.

Except for Rui, and the VOID algorithm.

The VOID algorithm loved weaknesses. When Rui gave had inputted the parameters of Hever, it had squealed in ecstasy and gulped it up before excreting the desire results.

Metaphorically, of course.

Rui had deduced many solutions that devastated Hever, but they all required the Blink technique one way or another.

Only with the combination of Blink and Phantom Step, two high-grade techniques, could Rui be able to finally crack a hole in Hever's invincibility.

With those two technique Rui had generated many solutions to take Hever down. The solution he chose was Blink plus Mirage Dive, a grappling feint technique very similar to Phantom Step. This combination allowed Rui to permanently turn the battle into ground grappling, where Meteor Swing could not be used.

This was the power of compatibility. It was one of the most important variables in battle. Hever was decently compatible against Nel, allowing him to crush every single initiative Nel took and even coming close to winning.

But Rui was extremely compatible against Hever. The VOID algorithm along with Phantom Step and Blink were the perfect tools to defeat Hever in a short amount of time!

Rui's biggest regret was that he was unable to win without Blink. But he couldn't have his cake and eat it, too. But now all of his trump cards had been exposed.

If there was one consolation, it's that he had only three more people to defeat.

Nel.

Lala Sec.

And finally, Kane.

At the very least, he managed to preserve his trump card until he had only three contenders left. But on the flip side, he would need to win despite the exposure of his trump card.

However, Blink was not a very identifiable technique. It was not flashy and attention drawing like the Stinger. Hopefully, people would not have identified it."

"Great fight." Kane said with a thumbs-up.

"Thanks."

"That surprise takedown." Kane brought up. "That wasn't just feinting right?"

Kane being a master of the Phantom Step movement himself knew what feints were capable of, he had also grown familiar with Hever's speed and had realized that feinting alone didn't explain how Rui managed to cleanly bypass Hever's muscle memory counters.

He quickly tied the oddity with the many unknown techniques Rui had mastered.

"Hehe." Rui chuckled, realizing Kane hadn't figured out the mechanics of Blink from just that one instance. "Do you want me tell you about it?"

"No." Kane replied. The more he knew, the likelier he was to defeat Rui, this was against his desires, thus he avoided the knowledge. He couldn't purposely hold back either, his family had channels in the Academy, and if there were any signs of self-sabotage, then the Martial Squires observing the fight would no doubt relay this and eventually the information would fall into the hands of his family.

"Sure." Rui replied, aware of this consideration. "You ready for your next fight?"

"As ready as ever." Kane shrugged.

Rui glanced at the fight schedule on the notice board.

[Kane vs Nel]

Rui couldn't begin to describe how incredibly hyped he was for this fight. Kane and Nel were the two greatest hurdles he had left. They were both perversely strong, to a shocking degree.

Frankly, Rui wasn't sure how the battle would go down.

He lacked too much information. At the higher levels, it had become rare for him to be unable to predict the fight to some degree. Yet here was a fight between two of the strongest Martial Apprentices, and he couldn't help but be even more excited than he was for his own fights!

"This is going to be one hell of a fight..."