The Martial Unity

Rui finally got a good look at his aggressor. Not that it helped much because his aggressor was masked. However, there were things that could still be gauged despite this.

('Adult male. His bulky physique probably means he's not a speed or maneuvering oriented Martial Artist, he's definitely a Martial Apprentice though') Rui thought as he struggled to restrain him.

Rui's goal in this fight was not to win. He had two goals:

The first was to survive. His survival was the ultimate priority to him. Although he had gotten closer to Bella during the mission, he was not going sacrifice his life for her. Rui never fancied himself to be a hero or a saint.

The second, was to stall, not win. He did not intend to expend any extra energy on killing his opponent or knocking him out, though if he could, that would be great too. But for the most part, Rui was going to do his best to stall for Bella.

Stalling was easier than defeating, in most cases. Thankfully, this was one of those cases.

This was also how Rui planned to compensate for the weight difference. Rui had grown remarkably physically stronger over the last year, much more so than almost anybody else. However, at the end of the day he was still only a fourteen-year-old.

His opponent seemed to be in his twenties, the prime of his life. An adult Martial Apprentice was stronger than an adolescent Martial Apprentice. Rui had to capitalize on his advantages as much as he could, stalling instead of aiming for a win, was part of the plan.

FOOSH

The masked Martial Apprentice finally managed to untangle himself from Rui's ground grappling.

POW POW POW

Rui immediately began showering him with a barrage of strikes of Vital Pressure, but his opponent managed to block and redirect almost all of them.

WHOOSH

Rui managed to cleanly crouch out of a high kick while simultaneously sweeping his pivot leg with a low kick.

BAM

Rui from knocking him out of balance. His opponent returned the favour by launching

BAM BAM BAM

They both paused for merely half a second, regaining their bearings. However, Martial Apprentices processed combat so quickly that even half a second in combat was akin half a dozen seconds. In fact, not even half a minute

the VOID algorithm. ('The first step is to adapt my fighting approach such that the relevance and significance of power and durability is as

knees relaxedly. Despite this, Rui dashed towards the masked Martial Apprentice aggressively,

WHOOSH

and stepped back avoiding a counter haymaker from his opponent before

Pow

WHOOSH

range after avoiding a low kick. The masked Martial Apprentice grimaced in frustration at the abrupt change in

('Float like a butterfly...')

WHOOSH

danced out of a straight

like a

POW

clean jab to the

This strategy was similar to what Kane used against Fae. A light offense combined with evasive

accomplished this through speed and agility,

lacking speed and agility with the

for, and the VOID algorithm simply outputted a corresponding move that

his work allow him to gain an upper hand, even if small, in a disadvantaged battle

BAM

He got up quickly and propped up his stinging arms into a stance, prepared for the next

awaiting a bullrush, yet a guttural screech from a distance away broke him out of