The Martial Unity

Time passed quickly. Frankly, there wasn't much for him to do at his quarters. He generally immersed himself in meditation as he thought about his upcoming fight with Servil Bisha, constructing an adapted fighting style for him.

So far, he had only come with a few elements that the adapted style needed to have in order to be suited to fighting Servil Bisha.

Evasiveness and anti-striking counter-offensive were at the core of the style. As long as Rui could negate the lethality that came from the permeation of the impact due to the vibrations, he stood a pretty good chance of negating the threat.

Another means by which he could reduce the formidability of Servil's Martial Art was through grappling. Ground grappling was also another by which he could negate Servil's permeation since Servil needed to inflict impacts to permeate them. He would not be able to land even a handful, if at all any strikes in super-close-range grappling.

Establishing these two elements in his adapted Martial Art was the first step. Now he only needed to finetune it to suit Servil's Martial Art's traits.

This was where he had an advantage compared to the other representatives. They're combat prowess would not change at all between rounds, but he would become more formidable with each round with the greater amount of data and time he had to thoroughly create the most suited Martial Art for taking each of them down.

This was normally something he would have to do mid-fight, but he would achieve better results if he had more time to flesh it out.

Soon, the day passed. He hadn't left his quarters for anything asides from his meals, occasionally running into the other representatives, only half of the original sixteen were present. Yet Fiona was the only one who bothered interacting with him. She remained as eccentric as she was the day prior, asking him all kinds of random questions as she satisfied her curiosity.

"How are you so strong?"

"What's your favourite colour?"

"Did you dye your hair black?"

answered those questions as shortly as he

it was time for round two. Rui went through the same procedures

We will soon be commencing the highly-awaited second round

faded into the background as Rui closed his eyes, zoning out. Prior to the start of the Martial Contest, he always thought the festive nature of the contest was a good thing, but now he couldn't help

and the

second round, we have Ian Nepomniachtchi and his Breathing Mountain Style of the Farund branch facing off against Representative Freund Gamor and his Dreamy Poison Style of the Villimaine branch. The

two contestants entered the arena, their powerful minds weighed on the onlookers as

you stances." The referee

while Freund's stance leaned

down his mouth mask this fight. He wondered if

Ian asked coldly. "Unfortunately, it's not going to be good enough. This fight is going to end

I'll show you how things

appeared to be a deeper history between them, though

referee commenced the

WHOOSH

to make contact to

WHOOSH

that he was using Lightning Breathing to amplify speed. Rui paid close attention to his breathing. He had to face Ian in the

approved of his decision. With Freund's poison being as potent as it was, it was best not to touch him unless the gains