The Martial Unity

Had he instantly figured out what kind of techniques he wanted to purchase at this point in time?

No.

But at the very least he knew what he didn't want to do.

He didn't want to focus exclusively on any one field, he was an all-rounder and that didn't change. He was previously considering taking the suggestions of his friends and dialing down and focusing on the fields that may be the most useful in the Martial Contest setting, but he decided against that.

"That is not my Martial path." He shook his head, as he entered the Apprentice Library.

It was time to make his choices.

('What is something I would really like my Martial Art to obtain in this round of training?') Rui asked himself.

Well, this question was harder to answer than before because his Martial Art did not have very obvious needs anymore, being well-rounded enough with fourteen Apprentice-level techniques.

He put aside logical deduction for one second. What was it that he truly wanted to for his Martial Art? He looked inside, trying to gauge his emotions. Staying true to himself was the key to staying faithful to his Martial Path.

It had taken him a while, but he had come to a realization.

('I wish my Martial Art had more lethality.') He realized, recalling his dissatisfaction during the hunting-class mission being unable to take the earthen basilisk down in a shorter period of time.

His offense was limited to Outer Convergence, Flowing Canon, Binding lash and Mirage Dive.

level of lethality he wished he had. The kind of attack that could do serious damage to

these techniques had a high difficulty of mastery or were

Contest had a non-killing or crippling rule, which restricted how much lethality he

No.

his Martial Path, not that of

The only place he could possibly find lethal techniques would

once again came to marvel at how diverse the Martial

[Hypnotic Claw]

a potent venom that caused drowsiness. This was a technique that first required the user to spend months building up a strong tolerance to this venom by controlled administration of doses of the poison. Only then could the finger tips and nails be conditioned to produce this venom. Over the course of a fight, constant exposure of the venom to the user's opponent via the Hypnotic Claw would cause induced

disbelief. He still had vaguely mixed feelings about using poison to fight, but clearly, in this

fact that it had downsides to it. He would be unable to train in any other technique whilst training this technique and he would need to wear gloves permanently for the rest

aside, skimming

serious damage to their opponent or seriously incapacitating them leaving them vulnerable. Techniques centered around friction, body temperature manipulation, force permeation, nerve striking,

far too

expected, the power to instantly defeat or kill Martial Apprentices could

techniques were not super-difficult to master, then

was especially absurd, its

[Heart Permeation]

to the skin, flesh, muscles or bone in the chest area, but permeated all the way inside from the outside to the heart. The impact would cause an

could kill a Martial Apprentice instantly??? He had not thought it was possible. He hadn't ever gone through the higher-graded techniques in the Apprentice Library this extensively before. After all, he was still solidifying his foundation in the prior training stages, so he hadn't ever seen this

and had a grade ten difficulty. Which corresponded to a one-percent successful mastery