The Martial Unity

POW POW POW

The two of them clashed against each other midair, yet the directions they were facing were strange. The Britannian Martial Squire was lashing downwards towards the fort while Rui was facing him upwards in the exact opposite direction, with his back against the fort. The two of them slammed against each other, exchanging strikes. This was a particularly pleasant development to the Britannian Martial Squire since it meant that Rui could no longer evade him since he needed to clash with his opponent to prevent him from joining the battleground down below.

His opponent grinned, recognizing the benefits of this arrangement. He had finally managed to overcome the difficulty of landing a blow on Rui.

Yet, his smile disappeared very fast.

BOOM!!!

A tremendous impact blasted against him as they clashed with each other. Rui's elbow dug incredibly deep into his body.

"ACK!" The man grimaced in pain as he lumbered backward, pain and shock flashing across his face. He didn't understand, how did Rui overcome his tremendous defenses. He lashed downward again, preparing a strike as Rui intercepted him.

BAM!!!

His entire body trembled as the impact reverberated across him, causing him waves of pain across his body.

BANG!!

THWACK!!!

BOOM!!!

After the fifth exchange, Rui finally managed to drill past his stubborn mindset, causing him to stop.

"Hmph." Rui snorted. ('You really thought it would be that easy to out-strategize me?')

Rui quickly turned around the tables as he conjured up a way to hurt his opponent despite his solid defenses. Earlier, Rui had used all of his power to try and inflict as much damage on his opponent as he could, yet he was too weak to do so.

But, what if the impacts of his strikes were powered by not just one Martial Squire but two of them?

Both of them generated a significant amount of momentum every time they charged each for a strike. Rui simply placed and timed his attacks such that the impact would be empowered by both his own power as well as that of his opponent.

His opponent was effectively running headfirst into a punch with all his power each time, causing himself damage alongside the inherent power of the punch.

Of course, this required perfect timing and placement from Rui. He needed to ensure that the vectors of their bullrushes were perfectly aligned with the vector of his own attack to maximize the impact of the strike landing on his opponent.

Ordinarily, this was an extremely difficult task, especially in three-dimensional combat, a form of combat that Rui had almost zero experience with!

To perform the necessary calculations within the span of milliseconds to achieve the correct timing and placement of his movements in aerial combat was something that could generally only be accomplished with experience.

Or much more rarely; brilliance.

Rui rushed to launch another attack, yet even before he could reach his opponent, Primordial Instinct warned him of an attack, much to his confusion.

BAM!!

Rui grimaced in pain and shock as he beheld his opponent's arm stretching far beyond its limits. He quickly centered himself as he took note of what was happening. This wasn't the first time he had seen such an attack. He had run into it once in the preliminary contest of the Martial Academy more than two years ago.

It turned out his opponent was holding back such a trump card!

('Why didn't he use this earlier?') Rui wondered, suddenly his eyes widened as he saw something that shocked him. His opponent launched several more whip attacks, yet this time Rui was more prepared.

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH

Rui watched in amazement as he made a shocking discovery.

('It's not just his skin and flesh that are stretching, his bones are stretching too!') Rui gasped. ('His entire body is elastic in nature.')

Rui watched with amazement as he witnessed the most bizarre Martial body that he had ever come across at this point. To think it was possible to evolve the body of the human body in such a bizarre direction, Rui's worldview of what was possible had broadened in light of what he had just come across.

His opponent on the other hand was infuriated. He seemed especially angry that Rui had managed to thrash his defenses to such a degree. His arms and legs turned into whips that lashed across the air within a certain range. His striking range was ten meters, they whipped around forming an unassailable sphere with a radius of twenty meters within which any unsuspecting objecting would turn into a merciless target.

The whips managed to gain so much tangential velocity that the end of his limbs would have been blurringly fast even for a Martial Squire. The sheer wind currents all of his whips created were tremendous, he was affecting the environmental parameters of the local atmosphere with all of his movements!

Yet despite all of that, Rui grinned.

WHOOSH

He dove towards him as he cleanly evaded all the whips, much to his opponent's shock. Thanks to his enhanced cognition due to the Mindmirror brain as well as Primordial Instinct and the increasingly growing predictive model on his whips, Rui accomplished a feat that should have been beyond a Martial Squire of his power and inexperience. He wasn't able to avoid all of them, but even the ones that did strike him were adequately defended against, he didn't get away unscathed, but the damage was well within tolerable limits.

He rushed towards the martial Squire's body, doing everything he could to get close.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

Rui grimaced as powerful whips struck him in the gap. But-

('I've got you now.') he latched onto the man's body, wrangling him in the sky. The whips were long-range attacks, they were ineffective in full-contact combat! Rui forced himself to withstand attacks that he ordinarily could have stepped away from in order to continue getting as close to his opponent as possible

The man's limbs returned to normal as the two of them tumbled across the air together.