The Martial Unity

Five months passed away quickly, quicker than Rui had noticed. With his potion tolerance, once he immersed himself into training, time passed way far too quickly. It got so bad sometimes that he wasn't able to tell the difference between hours and days sometimes!

Rui had spent the five months doing nothing but training the Stinger, Primordial Sense and the Phantom Step techniques. His estimates had been remarkably on point, he had wisely set apart one month after the initial four months of training to ensure he had properly integrated the three techniques he had mastered into his Martial Art and fighting style smoothly.

He had done this with the Apprentice and Squire instructors of the Martial Academy, rather than his peers. He didn't want to reveal his cards too early, since he knew that anything he showed would become common knowledge to the descendants from the Martial Community if he won the preliminary contest and became the representative of the Hajin Martial Academy, giving them an unfair advantage in turn.

Rui had thoroughly familiarized himself with the way the Martial Contest held by the sixteen martial Academies functioned.

Across the span of an entire month, each Academy would put their Martial Apprentices through a battle against every other Martial Apprentice in their entire Academy. The Martial Apprentice with the best score would be chosen as the representative of the entire branch.

The possibility of the top score being achieved by Martial Apprentices existed, however this would be resolved by looking at the outcome of the matchup between the two Martial Apprentices, since all Martial Apprentices would face off against all others, this matchup would undoubtedly occur. The outcome of this fight would decide which one of them would be chosen as the representative of their branch. In the worst case, if the top scorers with equal scores tied against each other in a matchup then the Martial Apprentice with the upper hand would be chosen as the representative.

laid out an elaborate set of rules for deciding the representative, to make sure

things he had learnt that had initially surprised him was the combat arena in

circular arena that one would expect for these kinds of events. It was actually a multi-environmental arena, meant to cater to all

Having a wide-open arena would obviously benefit certain types of Martial Art more than others. Stealth-oriented Martial Art, environmental Martial Art and more niche Martial Art would be quite unfairly disadvantaged in

had constructed a giant multi-environmental colosseum that catered to a large variety

well, Martial Apprentices were allowed to fight on platforms that catered equally to both Martial Artists contending with each other. It was just that for Rui and most Martial Apprentices this meant they would fight on ordinary rings, since that was neutral for most

very bizarre and oddly beautiful at the same time. It had many other features as well, like devices that recorded the fight and displayed it such that normal humans would be able to perceive

result in a huge number of clienteles making exclusive offers to either retain the winner as their own personal Martial Artist, or as regular customer.

winner would be flooded with highly profitable missions and remuneration pays from many, many interested clienteles! Even if one-percent of the regular clienteles of the Martial Union decided to try and have the Martial

would be a permanent boost to their careers for the