The Martial Unity

The hunt had indeed begun.

Rui sprinted after the beast as it evacuated, reaching it immediately. Atop land, he was faster. He circled to the side of the beast.

BOOM

He launched a powerful strike to its side.

"ROOOAAAAR" The beast screeched in anger, as it turned to lash out at Rui with its mouth and limbs. Rui had no choice but to evade. There were several reasons for that.

The acidic saliva of the beast was too potent. None of his Apprentice-level techniques were enough to be able to withstand it, they were entirely far too removed from defending against corrosive attacks like that. He focused with all of his concentration as he evaded bites and tongue lashes of the creature, and claw swings

Thankfully, its offense was not complicated or convoluted. It had elementary attack patterns that it repeated over and over again. It never used any tactics or strategy, and was not flexible and versatile in its offense at all.

This was to be expected. It was, at the end of the day, a carnivorous beast with a voracious apetite. As cautious as it seemed at times, it was not an intelligent being, and was slave to its shortcoming and urges. Furthermore, right now, it was in a bad psychological state. Hunger, anger and fear clouded its already primitive judgement.

As far Rui, he fought cautiously despite this. This was because the VOID algorithm was not functioning to its normal level of effectivity in so far as predictive and counter-deductive capabilities.

The reason, of course, was no mystery. The VOID algorithm was built for humans, beasts were outside its intended utility and purview. Of course, it wasn't like there was no overlap. It was just that the further apart the target of the VOID algorithm was from being human, the less effective it was.

Right now, the VOID algorithm was functioning at about thirty-nine percent effectivity. This was because the most elementary level of predictive and counter-deductive measures were quite universal. Distance and center of gravity were universal variables that undoubtedly tied back to combat for pretty much all lifeforms. But the higher levels that employed systems based on the more sophisticated data science research into humans specifically that Rui had conducted into the past, were not applicable.

These higher parts of the VOID algorithm were much harder for Rui to apply to combat, he was usually unable to apply it most of the times.

Still, Rui did have some advantages.

BLINK

BAM

Canon and Outer Convergence. This was one of his most powerful attacks. The blow contained

out at Rui with an

it largely relied on vision outside of seismic sensing. Meaning on land, it could only rely on

that Blink was its mortal

what was happening. And even if it did, it was simply incapable of setting up traps

even doubted if it had any awareness of blinking, beasts lacked a

could fearlessly abuse and

that he could take down the beast, something he wasn't prior. He had placed the tracker on the beast, so that even if the beast was too strong for Rui, he could at the very least fulfill the first objective of its mission, but now he could take it one

force it to remain here.') Rui noted. Eventually, the beast's caution from the explosives that Rui had used to trick it would wear off, meaning it would undoubtedly escape via

underground, and he had figured out the perfect

The scales

that the scales were meant to allow the

a much softer exposed hide and flesh. Rui had felt it and damaged it, so he was relatively certain that the exposed flesh would not be able to withstand high sub-terranean travel at all. In fact, it was quite likely

not be that big a deal. But this was not the case for this beast. If this beast endured significant damage to its scales, then its

something that would heal in

travelling underground was simple; Expose more flesh,

BLINK

BOOM

BLINK

BAM

BLINK

POW POW POW