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.

of rules for deciding the representative, to make

surprised him was the combat arena in

for these kinds of events. It was

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

Martial Academies had constructed a giant multi-environmental colosseum that catered to a large variety of Martial Art, such that not a single Martial

sparring sessions as 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,

look 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 them with, at the very least much better clarity than if they were watching with their naked eyes. They could enjoy the high excitement of some of the

event and one of the highlights of the Kandrian Martial Festival. The winner would gain many benefits. The sheer amount of exposure would mean that winning the Martial Contest or even performing well would 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. The Martial Union allowed for clienteles to direct commissions to specific Martial Artists within the Martial Union for an extra fee, though

the 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 Champion

permanent boost to their careers for the