The Martial Unity

Fae resumed her offense, launching yet another heavy blow.

FWHOOSH

Tarah redirected her energy yet again, flipping her with. Thankfully, Fae's sense of balance and control over her power always allowed her to ensure she landed on her feet each time.

('My most powerful attacks take too long to land.') Fae realized. ('It seems her counter-offense needs great timing, which is easier to achieve with slower attacks.')

Fae intuitively figured out one of the answers Rui was hoping she would. She immediately stopped launching fearsome singular attacks and instead launched a swift barrage of shorter palm attacks. These attacks contained less power than her strongest full-body palm strikes, but they were much quicker and she could launch a greater number of them than her most powerful attacks.

Immediately, she noticed a difference.

Tarah resorted to redirecting them away, but she wasn't able to use Fae's energy against her like she had.

"She's switched to defensive redirection." Rui said, having anticipated it. "Redirection is delicate and requires a lot of precision, it won't be easy for her to be able to redirect all of Fae's power when there's so many different attacks all coming at her extremely swiftly."

"Doesn't seem like a capable technique." Kane commented. "She should stop relying on it."

"Redirection can be quite powerful when mastered." Rui disagreed. "But the problem is Fae's offense is just too strong. The greater the amount of power, speed and number, the harder it is to defend via redirection alone."

Rui was sure that Tarah would be able to redirect most of his attacks head-on. His offense was inferior to Fae's and she should have a much easier time than she was having against Fae.

Of course, Rui wouldn't fight her the way Fae did head-on. Analyzing and evaluating Tarah with the VOID algorithm yielded a pretty interesting solution. The anti-Tarah fighting style that the VOID algorithm developed relied on Rui abusing his Parallel Walk, Balanced Direction, Blink and Phantom Step together to launch tricky attacks, through holes in her defense that Rui had picked up via the VOID algorithm, that she would have trouble intercepting.

Counter-offensive required the user to intercept offense at the right timing, to perform whatever counter-offensive maneuver the user would perform, but the interception was the most important part of counter-offensive Martial Art techniques.

to intercept was the greatest way Rui could hinder

large number of weaker but quicker attacks like Fae did, but he wouldn't launch them head-on but instead would use his maneuvering and stealth to launch unpredictable and

takedown via Mirage Dive or pierce

was just him, of course. Furthermore, he had already resolved to hold back his more potent trump cards for important fights, and preferably win

a

FLICK

the time, the palm bypassed her interceptions and struck her cheek,

POW POW POW

opening launching a flurry of

flustered as never-ending waves of powerful blows

shorter swifter blows to be weak,

they were still incredibly

BOOM

to launch a heavy blow, the

BAM BAM BAM

gaping holes in Tara's defense, pounding her as

BOOM

CRASH

Tarah's hastily construed guard, sending her crashing out of

Fae sighed.

"She won." Rui grinned.

grumbled. "Can she just not win in a

Rui shrugged

what against me?" Fae's