The Martial Unity

CLASP

SHING

Rui summoned his sword from his dimensional storage ring before drawing it rapidly as he was beset by zombies from all directions. Despite their aggression, Rui didn't feel any hostility towards them. It was probably his imagination, but he almost could see the pain, suffering and the longing for it to end in their eyes.

"You won't feel any pain," He subconsciously murmured before they reached his striking zone.

SLASH

In an instant, the Bellhorn Blade arced through the air, disappearing in the eyes of the beholder for an instant.

SPLAT

The heads of the monsterified humans cleaved in two as their eyes instantly lose their light, and their bodies collapsed like puppets cutting their strings. Rui made sure to destroy their brains to ensure that there was no possible way for them to suffer from his attacks. They did not experience any pain, their vision, senses, and even consciousness disappeared when the sub-ice cold Bellhorn Steep triggered the repelling effect of the esoteric substances in their tissue, destroying the tissue on a molecular level.

Frankly, they didn't stand a chance. Not only were they only as strong as he was when he evolved to the Squire Realm, but they also did not possess the ability to hurt someone as strong as him. Even without the Bellhorn blade, he would have utterly massacred them, it was just easiest to give them painless deaths with the bellhorn sword as opposed to any other way.

His offensive techniques would cause too much pain. Techniques such as Reverberating Lance, Flowing Canon, Sonic Bullets, Mighty Roar Flash Blast, and Transverse Resonance would cause far too much pain as it would devastate their bodies, causing them suffering before they finally succumbed to my wounds.

He didn't even need to employ a single defensive technique. None of their attacks were able to reach him. They simply used straightforward attacks, and Rui simply killed them before they got the chance to kill him. The range given by his arm and the length of his sword meant that even if they stretched out their arms as much as they could in order to reach him, his blade would always kill them long before they could.

There was simply no attack that could even reach him for him to defend.

He didn't even bother employing the VOID algorithm this time around. Their attacks were so simple and elementary, even Max and Mana were less transparent than them.

Not only were they not trained, but they were fighting primally, and to Rui their attacks were telegraphed long before they had even begun. He could even predict what they were going to do long before they had even begun the thought process to do it.

The bellhorn blade ceased being a simple sword. It became an arc of death that brought peace to the living that suffered a fate worse than death.

He even had the leeway to focus his attention on Kane with Riemannian Echo. Unlike him, Kane did not possess the ability to solo battalions of Squire-level combat threats head-on. He relied on Void Step to evade their senses while he made launched his most powerful attack into their vitals which killed them swiftly enough.

He did not have the kind of sheer offensive potency that Rui had, thus he needed to carefully time and place his attacks. Swiftly, he killed the monsterified humans left and right at a rate that, while still much slower than Rui, was far higher than a Martial Squire of his youth in the Squire Realm should have been capable of. It was quite impressive that low-grade Squire-level combat threats were this helpless against him even though he should have been a low-grade Martial Squire himself since it had only been a year and a half since he broke through to the Squire Realm.

Yet he was already graded as a grade-four Martial Squire on account of his phenomenal stealth-based evasion and remarkably powerful Martial Squire constitution thanks to having mastered the Hungry Pain Martial Art technique as a Martial Apprentice. His progress and rate of growth were only surpassed by Rui himself. Only Rui could handle him as easily as he did thanks to the highly potent Riemannian Echo that categorically bypassed the Void Step technique.

In front of almost any other Martial Squire, his rate of growth was startling, as was the potency of his techniques. Yet it was only before Rui that he appeared ordinary.

The two of them were killing the monsterified humans of the town of Veril at a rapid pace, yet their seemed to be no end. It appeared that more humans than Rui had initially expected had survived the eruption of the Shionel Confederation. The sheer number of monsterified humans exceeded the number of monsters in any of the other floors that Rui and Kane had cleared.

('We're basically fighting against half a large town,') Rui sighed.

He was grateful that the monsterified humans were extremely weak Martial Squires, and were also largely mindless and primal.

If they retained all of their human intelligence and rationality while still being hostile to Rui and Kane, they would be much more formidable. Many thousands of low-grade Squire-level combat threats were a huge problem in theory, but their mindless irrationality made them simpler to deal with.

This was why Martial Artists were, as a population, not weaker than beasts and monsters despite being a much smaller group. Martial Artists were of a higher quality, Martial Art allowed them to apply their power better. Furthermore, in individual fights, combat parameters mattered more, but in a larger-scale comparison, strategy, and tactics mattered more.

That was why the Martial Squires in the Shionel Confederation clearing the Shionel Dungeon were making steady progress defeating the monsters despite possessing fewer numbers. Each Martial Squire could, on average, take down many Squire-level monsters by employing highly effective techniques applied in tried and tested tactics and strategies.

This was part of the reason that Rui and Kane were dominating despite being so outnumbered.