The Martial Unity

Rui was highly curious about what communication with intelligent creatures of other species was like.

But he was conflicted. It wasn't a combat-oriented technique, which meant it wouldn't make him stronger in combat or even increase his ability to complete missions. The only thing it would do was allow him to communicate with animals.

Yet, despite this, he really felt the urge to master the technique.

"Hmmm..." He had a complicated expression on his face.

After a bit, he finally decided to go on with it.

"Screw it. It's my Martial Art, I get to do with it what I want." He rationalized, trying to make himself feel better about his decision. "I bet there are some missions centered around the ability with the ability to communicate with the more intelligent life forms."

He grabbed the scroll for the technique before plopping it into his pouch.

With this, he had selected all six techniques for his next training stage;

Mindmirror Symbiote.

Mind Mask.

Shadow Step.

Reverberating Lance.

Final Breathing.

Fauna Flow.

These would be the six techniques that he had chosen to master. Each of the six techniques expanded his capabilities significantly, which had been the general goal of the upcoming training stage. The most immediate goal was to reach Squire candidacy, which could only be done once his Martial Art matured, fulfilling the second condition of Squire candidacy.

This was the reason he had gone on to expand his capabilities. He knew his Martial Art wouldn't reach a certain degree of maturity until he expanded its capabilities to a certain extent. Since it was meant to be an all-encompassing broad Martial Art in its ideal state.

He quickly headed over to the registrar of the library before purchasing all five of the scrolls. The sixth technique was something that he would be getting from the Martial Union directly. The Martial Academy was not equipped with the means to handle the Mindmirror Symbiote implantation. Even if it was, he would rather get the procedure managed by the Symbiotic Sect in the Martial Union who were the specialists surrounding the matter.

Once he purchased all five techniques, he took a seat at one of the tables before going through the training regime of each technique with great interest.

The Mind Mask technique had a training system that was quite interesting, yet it didn't deviate much from his expectations. It was training centered around meditation and thought processes that allowed the conscious mind to influence the subconscious mind to a certain degree. Initially, the process of self-hypnosis was quite long.

It would take hours for the user to first prime his own mind and set it in the right state via meditation. Once that occurred, the user needed to exercise imagination to create an image of themselves that diverged from reality as far as dangerousness and presence went. The technique worked by using well-defined imagination to substitute reality such that the subconscious mind responded to the imagination as though it were reality.

This raised the sense of danger that one could perceive from the user of the technique. The effectiveness and difficulty of the technique depended on the prowess of the imagination of the user and the amount of concentration the user could gather. It was a mentally demanding and taxing technique.

Perfect for Rui. The best part about the technique was that the technique had no upper limits inherently. Its only upper limits were the limits of the mind of the user of the technique.

It took a greater amount of imagination to construct an image the more the image deviated from reality. Since the user would have to rely more and more on imagination and less and less on the experience of what was real and actual.

Rui looked forward to the training of the technique.

He quickly opened up the other scrolls, going through them one by one.

"Interesting." He murmured.

The Shadow Step technique was certainly different and difficult. The technique definitely had a mental aspect to it as it required the understanding of how attention and awareness functioned, but beyond that, it was a rather brute-force technique with repetitive practice on the right forms and the right timing and placement of movements to engage in misdirection.

But at the core of the technique, the technique function by swiftly moving in the opposite direction that the attention of the user was being misdirected. The misdirection was integrated into the movements and had the same elements that people's movements had when their attention truly was on something in the opposite direction of their movements, like something chasing them.

The difference was when a Martial Apprentice with a superhuman brain and mind performed the same technique, it was much more effective because of the higher precision and accuracy of the maneuvers needed to draw attention away.

"It's not going to be easy to master this." He shook his head, before moving on to the other techniques.

The Reverberating Lance was an even more straightforward technique. The frequency at which a human being could vibrate their limbs was limited due to a neurological limit to the speed at which the human brain processed information and made decisions.

Because that limit was far higher for Martial Apprentices, the limit of the speed at which muscles could be vibrated was also much higher. However, that limit could not simply be attained, it could only be attained after immense practice.

The Reverberating Lance applied that to train the Martial Apprentice to vibrate their muscles at extremely high speeds and used that permeate an impact beyond just the outer skin, flesh, and muscles to the weaker and more vital organs within mammalian creatures.

Since it was a grade-seven technique, he wouldn't be pushed to the very absolute limit of vibration he could physiologically dish out, but he certainly would be pushed quite far along the way. Furthermore, he would have to train it for every muscle group so that he could engage in the permeation of an impact regardless of how it was dished out.