The Martial Unity

To Kane, the Void Forestep technique may have appeared to have been flawless, however, Rui knew that this was far from the truth. The truth was that this technique had several drawbacks and detriments.

For one, the only reason it worked so exceptionally well this time was that Rui had an extremely well-built predictive model of Kane, with excellent depth into both his active and passive patterns. This predictive model was built over the many years that Rui knew Kane. He had an immeasurable amount of exposure to Kane in all the time that he had known him.

It was unlikely that he would be able to replicate such an extremely well-developed predictive model for pretty much anyone else ever. Least of all the Root, to which he had the least amount of exposure.

That was why he did not take the performance that he had against Kane as the norm.

It was not.

It was quite likely that for any predictive model that he did end up building, he would not be able to replicate the level of prowess that he had just demonstrated against Kane.

('The biggest problem is that this can only be used after I form a predictive model,') Rui sighed. ('Until then, it's useless.')

That was also a rather severe restriction and limited the scope of the technique. That was a limitation that the original Godspeed technique did not suffer.

On top of that, this technique could not be used lightly.

Rui sighed as he glanced at his malnourished body, he felt as though he had lost precisely half his weight, which seemed like an absurd proposition.

('Martial bodies are denser than normal human bodies, that's why I can expel mass that isn't immediately substantial and still retain most of my complexion,') Rui glanced at his body, which looked the same as always.

Regardless, the technique left him weakened, he would need to consume a lot of nutritious food to regain all the expelled body mass back. Thus he could not use this with the expectation of fighting after he used it.

He ought to reserve this technique for only when he truly needed it.

These two restrictions were much more limiting than he had hoped, but they couldn't be helped. It was as though nature was balancing the technique out by giving it such restrictive limitations.

The technique was too powerful if Rui could use it freely without any detriments to himself.

After all, even if Kane's movement speed via Godspeed was much slower than any actual Martial Senior, it was still the speed of a higher Realm!

Even though Rui wasn't able to combat the attack, he had been able to accurately land his own attack.

That was something that no Martial Squire ought to be able to!

If the Martial Union learned about this, they would go to any extent to persuade Rui to submit the technique to the Martial Union.

Of course, Rui was under no illusion that this technique would be effective against an actual Martial Senior, not at all.

An actual Martial Senior did not just possess movement speed surpassing Kane's Godspeed technique, they also possessed reaction, cognitive, and processing speed on par with it. They would be able to observe Rui in slow motion, almost like he was a statue to them.

Thus, Godspeed was only quasi-Senior level speed when one considered speed in a holistic sense.

('Even with that consideration, it's quite insane,') Rui knew that there probably were almost no Martial Squire, if any ever at all, was capable of such a feat.

However, it didn't matter if he could not get the information that was necessary to form a powerful predictive model on the Root. What he needed was more information. Although he probably would never be able to make a predictive model for it that was as good as the one he had for Kane, it would probably make a huge difference.

He would at least be able to obtain a solid portion of the prowess that he demonstrated against Kane.

('I may have created a technique that, at least in preliminary tests, is satisfactory, but I haven't made as much progress against the Root of the Shionel Dungeon,') He sighed.

It couldn't be helped. Not a single other living creature in the entire Shionel Dungeon had run into the Root, as far as he was aware.

('This can't go on,') He sighed inwardly. ('If what I'm looking for won't occur naturally, then…')

An interesting idea popped into his head.

If the Root did not engage in conflict, then maybe he just needed to force it to. That could be the key to solving one of his biggest problems. It was unlikely such a thing would occur naturally on its own in the first place because he was far ahead in the exploration of the Shionel Dungeon compared to anybody else.

What that meant was that he would normally be the first one to undertake the final 'floor' of the Shionel Dungeon to claim all the ore deposits below the Shionel Dungeon.

There were several potential solutions to gaining combat data for active patterns in the Root's movements that popped into his head. Unfortunately, none of them were easy to realize in actuality.

"Hm…" Rui narrowed his eyes. "Time to enter the dungeon again, Kane."

"Like… now?" Kane tilted his head. "I mean, we just employed the Godspeed technique, and are weaker than our normal power levels. This probably isn't a good idea you know."

"We'll recover quickly, of course," Rui told him. "Our digestion system can extract all the necessary mass, as long as we eat enough. So we can bounce back after twenty-four hours of rejuvenation. Though this is quite inconvenient."

He sighed.

"You can see why I don't use it regularly," Kane grumbled, "The places I would be if I could use it without that drawback, I would be two grades stronger than I am, that's for sure. The combination of Void Step and Godspeed is super overpowered you know!"