The Martial Unity

[Flame Breathing]

A less potent and less difficult version of Fire Breathing.

Rui raised his eyebrows in interest as he stepped in closer for a better look. To his pleasant surprise, he found that the difficulty was grade-seven, which was far more manageable and achievably. In fact, he found similar techniques for Lightning Breathing and Earth Breathing.

[Wind Breathing]

[Rock Breathing]

All of the names were tacky, they were each downgraded versions of the grade-nine breathing techniques.

Rui immediately picked the Flame Breathing and Wind Breathing techniques. However, just as he reached for the Rock Breathing technique, he hesitated.

The Rock Breathing technique was a form of active defense. Which meant defense that required active initiative and activation of the defenses from the user. It was different from passive defense which existed regardless of what the user did, like body conditioning.

The reason Rui was reluctant to choose this technique was because he already had three active defense techniques; Acute Edge, Elastic Shift and Inner Divergence. He didn't have a single passive defensive technique.

This was a problem because he had learnt the usefulness and even the necessity of passive defensive techniques. Passive defense would not reduce if he made a mistake in timing because they were perennial. It gave him greater leeway than active defenses did.

There were just as many scenarios where active defenses did much better than passive defenses. Arjun Erigaisi had lost in the very first round because he did not have any active defenses to

and Rui wanted eliminate circumstances where his

his gaze from the

for passive defenses, he already

defensive section and began looking for an appropriate defensive conditioning training technique. There were plenty, each for different purposes. He, however, was looking for something

found it soon

[Adamant reforging]

generally increased the durability and toughness of flesh for a variety of all kinds of damage, including blunt

far as potency

nodded; this did indeed suit his purposes. With this, his combat prowess would reach the upper echelons of the Apprentice Realm

difficulty, that he was willing to purchase. He did not want to push himself too far nor stay immersed in training for too long, after all. The next thing he wanted to verify was whether mental techniques could alleviate the difficulty of using the

was

manipulation of other minds, rather than his own. It was rather unfortunate.

can increase brainpower by a factor of three or

be absolutely revolutionary, and even if a technique such as that did exist, Rui highly doubted its difficulty would be below grade-ten. Such a boost to the brain was not too

of the day, the more powerful systems within the VOID algorithm required immense amount of nigh-instantaneous pattern identification and recognition. His mind

Rui sighed in frustration.

was just about to leave, when a familiar