The Martial Unity

She grew more serious as she threw swift yet powerful jabs. Her Martial Path was centered around agile momentum. She placed equal weight on speed and power, allowing her to land a great deal of solid strikes quite quickly. The reason she had chosen to accept this mission in the first place was that her Martial Path suited the needs of the mission quite well.

She was quite curious to see what Rui had actually accomplished after training with her for so long. She decided to use the entirety of her arsenal to test his current prowess.

POW POW POW

Rui intercepted all of the strikes with palms while effectively spamming Reverberating Lance with his back leg, while also pushing himself down every time she intercepted a strike.

Squire Casen twisted her core as she landed a devastating roundhouse kick.

CLASP

To her surprise, Rui managed to intercept and dispel the momentum that she had painstakingly gathered with the torque of her body.

RUMBLE

The very land shook under the sheer amount of power that Rui was permeating across its depths. Of course, this didn't even hamper either of the Martial Squires, the vibrations were occurring so slowly in their perception that it may as well have not been occurring at all.

As Rui put himself on max alert and focus to dispel the energy of all her attacks, he purposely avoided using the VOID algorithm to build a predictive model and adapt to her entire Martial Art. The point of this training, and of this particular exchange was to test how well he had mastered Project Bounce.

Bringing in the VOID algorithm would ruin that because it would take the burden off him and make it too easy to defend against her attacks. Even if he was imperfect with Project Bounce, the VOID algorithm was simply too powerful, he would be able to counter her so easily that he would not notice any imperfections in the master of the technique.

Thus, for the time being, he consciously avoided building a predictive model on her.

Of course, once he verified that he was doing just fine as far as proficiency went, he would not hesitate to use it with the VOID algorithm. After all, using it with the VOID algorithm was how he would be fighting against his opponents and enemies normally.

Rui almost wanted to abandon his abstinence and immediately begin using the VOID algorithm to see just how incredibly powerful his defense had no doubt grown thanks to the synergy between the VOID algorithm and Project Bounce.

He could feel it in his bones that the sheer amount of defensive prowess he would no doubt gain due to the synergy between the VOID algorithm would be far beyond anything he would obtain through an of the defensive techniques in the library.

Yet he managed to reign in his urge.

('This... is ridiculous!') Squire Casen, on the other hand, was incredibly impressed by his current prowess. ('It's like I'm fighting a defensive Martial Squire of a higher grade!')

BAM

She landed what should have been a devastatingly impactful dropkick right on top of his head she found that even such an attack was entirely dispelled. It was utterly confounding to her.

Although she had been watching Rui for nearly half a year, the level of understanding she had managed to develop about his intentions wasn't actually that deep. Part of it was because she lacked the scientific background to understand exactly what Rui was doing.

In her eyes, Rui had simply gone from sending himself flying with each strike to sending himself digging into the ground with each strike to suddenly magically dispelling all of the power of her attack into thin air!

It was an utterly ridiculous transition from her perspective. Where was the power of her strike going? How could it vanish so easily?

('Something like this might very well be a grade nine defensive technique!')

She did not speak vainly. Her biggest nemesis was the solid active defensive technique.

Rui immediately sky-walked into the sky. "Come. I wish to test my defensive prowess in the air."

She nodded, lashing out toward him high in the air.

Rui grew even more serious. Dispelling the energy of the attacks in the sky was harder because the air was not as much of a conductor of impacts the way the ground was.

She ran towards him, throwing a powerful kick.

VMMM!

Both of their faces morphed, surprised. When Rui dispelled the attack into the air, a strange sound was produced.

('I see. My vibrations are partially turning into air currents, but also sound when I use Reverberating Lance to dispel the impact in the air.') Rui realized.

It made sense, sound was nothing but vibrations in the air, thus Reverberating Lance, which generated vibrations, also generated sound when used to dispel attacks in the air!

He didn't normally notice this effect because he only used Reverberating Lance at the moment of impact with another body, thus sound was never generated because the attack permeated into the body of his opponent, rather than into the air.

VMMM!

BRMMM!

RNNNN!

What Rui found most interesting was that the pitch of the sound seemed to be proportional to the pitch of the sound generated. The stronger the attack, the higher the pitch and frequency of the sound generated.

EEEEEEEE!

Rui winced as he felt a shiver go down his spine. The sound was particularly high-pitched which was extremely irritating and painful, like chalk on a board.

('I need to keep that in mind.')

WHOOSH

Rui chose to evade another attack as he returned to the ground. Squire Casen chased immediately after him from a height above. She sprinted downwards at absolute top speed, gaining a tremendous amount of speed and momentum as several sonic booms recoiled across the sky. As she approached the ground, her leg stretched all the way, before striking downwards with incredible power.

This drop kick combined one of her most powerful strikes that were greatly empowered by the immense momentum she had generated!