The Martial Unity

Rui adopted a new stance. He brought his arms up, but positioned them lower than before, with their fists directed at Milliana. The physical difference between this stance and his previous one was subtle, but made all the difference in the world. His new stance was geared towards offense, whereas his old stance was partially defensive.

He dashed towards Milliana with Parallel Walk and Balance Direction, crossing the gap between them as quickly as possible.

BOOM

He launched a flying knee kick amped with Vital Pressure straight into her guard, it was an extremely powerful blow that used the momentum generated by the Apprentice-level maneuvering techniques to increase the impact.

Milliana managed to mitigate the damage with a few defensive Apprentice level techniques, but only partially, she had retreated reeling from the blow. In truth she didn't expect Rui to return with such a violently aggressive offensive strategy. She was sure he already realized that he would simply burn his energy with such highly energy-consuming tactics.

Rui launched more and more powerful blows, putting his body weight behind each of them uncaring for his defense. If Milliana was a defensive or evasive specialist, she would have been able to deal with the attacks while maintaining her ground. But she was an all-rounder stamina-specialist. Her focus on defense wasn't as strong as it would have needed to be to not be forced for her to open up distance between them.

She was also very much capable of an offensive approach too however.

She launched several jabs at Rui, but Rui blocked them briefly before continuing his offense unperturbed to her great surprise.

Rui on other hand was inwardly ecstatic.

('Minimalistic energy consumption reduces both your offensive and defensive options, you cannot launch bombastic offensive attacks like Fae because they are quite energy-consumptive.') he figured. ('I doubt you can manage such attacks in the first place.')

He was partially right. The lesser number of offensive options made her attacks easier to predict and thus easier to defend against by timing his defense well, but the process was much more taxing and stressful than he had imagined.

Furthermore, his muscles were starting to sore while Milliana appeared to be pristine condition asides from some bruises that Rui had given her. This was surely the result of stamina-supplementary Apprentice-level techniques.

('She can keep this up for a long time while I can't, I need to win quickly.')

He needed to execute his strategy immediately. He kept blasting her, while she mitigated the damage with minimal motions, however, while doing so she began reaching the edge of the ring.

('Is this his plan? A ring-out?') Milliana pondered, disappointed. ('If so, he underestimated me.') She adopted a tougher and stiffer stance, determined not back down more. She was not new to this strategy; it was one of the many tactics the other Apprentice students had attempted to defeat her.

One foot away from the ring, and Rui changed his stance abruptly, he opened his fists into open palms placing them beside him at chest height while crouching.

('A wrestling stance.') Milliana mused.

His intentions were transparent to her. He intended to shoot; a lunging action in wrestling aimed to performing a takedown, and push her out of the ring.

This was also not a strategy she had not experienced. But a simple strategy such as this had an equally simple counter-strategy.

She would merely need to step forward and shift all her weight to the pivotal front leg, and using the back leg as a force driver was the way to deal with shoots, then she would turn the battle into full-contact ground-grappling by shifting both of them off-balance. This was the least stamina-consumptive way of safely mitigating the risk of a ring out. It was hard to push someone out of boundaries when both of your bodies were on the ground in a taut locked stalemate, it would be possible for a grappling specialist, of course, but she knew Rui was not one. Furthermore, she was certain she had more experience in wrestling than he did.

Wrestling was inherently a battle of perseverance; it was a very stamina-intensive battle, where stamina was just as important as technique.

('Challenging a stamina-oriented specialist in a form of combat where stamina is king, you are more foolish than I expected, Rui Quarrier.') She earnestly evaluated, as Rui dashed at her, executing the shoot just like she had predicted.

She calmly waited for the perfect moment to step forward. If she stepped forward too early, she would be forced to stop herself once she reached the desire position, if she stepped forward too late, he would push her out of boundary. She wanted to shift all her weight abruptly onto the pivotal leg just as he collided with her so that the momentum of her weight shift would cancel his momentum out.

The moment came.

She raised her left leg and pushed it forward along with her body, intending to firmly plant itself in the ground.

"Gotcha." Rui whispered, sending a chill down her body.

SWEEP

Rui swiftly sent a low sweeping kick the very moment she lifted her left foot from the ground. The kick hooked her foot and swept it away before it could reach the ground

Suddenly, all of Milliana's weight that was supposed to be supported by that left foot, no longer could be supported.

Rui grinned as her body inevitably plummeted to the right.

He had never intended an earnest takedown; he knew it probably wouldn't work. She had a bit more weight than he did, by virtue of the age gap and she also had more experience with wrestling than he did, who had very little. It would be easy for her to convert the battle into full-contact ground grappling, where he stood almost no chance of victory in a head-to-head contest. Furthermore, it was such an obvious idea that she would not have remained a challenger for as long as she did if she could not deal with such a simple tactic

It was precisely because this was not a good idea, in combination with her energy-minimalistic approach that he could predict her very first counter; the leg planting and weight shifting was almost guaranteed, any other tactic in her position would go against her style strongly.

This allowed him to launch a sweeping kick as a counter just in time to knock out her weight support and throw her colossally off balance.

As she reflexively braced herself for the ground, Rui immediately whipped his left arm around her neck and pressed her head into the choke-hold.

A rear choke-hold

This was the riskiest part, but he had to take a gamble.

If he failed the maneuver or if she had a technique like Outer Convergence that could allow her to strike him hard in that position, she could break out. But he simply could not optimize his chances of victory any further, not in the middle of a fight anyway.

Back on Earth, there was a popular saying in the combat sports industry; 'If you get in a rear choke-hold, tap out.'

This was because there was no realistic way to beat the rear choke-hold back on Earth. It clamped down on the arteries and esophagus like an anaconda and exert such high pressure, that fighters described it the sensation as 'I felt my head was going to explode.'

Rui had to simply pray that this earthly wisdom would hold true in this world.

He squeezed down on her neck with his left arm and pushed her neck down with his right arm.

Yet she never tapped.

He squeezed and squeezed, yet she never resigned.

('What is she trying to do?!')

"Match over!" The supervisor rushed over. It was only then had Rui realized that she had passed out.

The rear choke-hold cut off the blood supply to the brain almost entirely, it was not unusual for its targets to pass out. It just hadn't struck Rui in the heat of the moment, because of his paranoia that she would break out of his rear choke-hold.

It seems she did not have any techniques that allowed to break out of the hold in a short amount of time.

Rui immediately released the hold; it would be dangerous to hold her in it any longer. Even as a paramedical team carried her away on a stretcher, Rui couldn't help but feel elated.

This was the first time he beat an experienced Martial Apprentice!

All the Martial Apprentices he had beaten were people like him, people who had recently advanced to the Apprentice Realm. These Apprentices had shaky foundations and hadn't expanded or developed their Martial Art much and were even more lacking in experience than he was.

But his rationality quickly established itself as he looked back on the fight.

('She wouldn't have lost in a real fight.') Rui realized.

There were no ring-outs in a real fight, which was a crucial part of his tactic, Rui did not think he would be able to beat her without this element.

('I've obtained enough basic experience with the six techniques I've already learnt, I can improve faster with developing more techniques and diversifying my Martial Art further yet.')