The Martial Unity

Rui felt nostalgic about his current circumstances, it had been a long time since he had faced a Martial Artists genuinely capable of forcing him to pause and think. Before he mastered the pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm, he had always been forced to fight with creativity and tactics in order to win.

However, the previous two training sessions had simply made him too strong. It took literal Martial Squires to force him to strategize and rely on tactics. Against other Martial Apprentices, he was usually too strong. He didn't need to strategize to win against them.

He was glad that there were still Martial Apprentices out there strong enough to force him out of his comfort zone.

('Alright, think, how do I get past this wall of wind?') He pondered as he blocked yet another wind blast from his opponent.

He couldn't outmaneuver it because it was simply too large and swift. He couldn't force his way past the wind attack with brute force alone. The wind that his opponent generated was incredibly powerful, overwhelming the friction between Rui and the ground. It wasn't a matter of strength, Rui simply lacked the leverage needed to apply his strength against the wind attacks.

WHOOSH

Rui dashed towards him with remarkable swiftness.

BAM!

He put together a guard as he skidded away some distance away from the wind attack. He glanced up at his opponent, after finally having paused.

He stopped attacking, as he took a moment to process his circumstances. The predictive model had been completed, but unfortunately, it wasn't nearly of much use. Sometimes, even predicting your opponent wasn't enough to counter them.

Even if Rui predicted his opponent accurately, he wouldn't gain some massive advantage. He still had no way to close the distance.

('My feet aren't fast enough.') Rui mused. ('It's hard to picture me outpacing the attack with my speed alone.')

Suddenly his eyes lit up with interest as a crazy yet plausible solution hit him. He took a few moments as he fleshed out a plan.

('If my feet aren't fast enough, then I ought to use more than just my feet.') Rui realized.

seemed like an extremely silly thing to think,

ensure that my accuracy

the attack made it very difficult to evade, it

going down to the

change and Rui intended on doing

here goes nothing.') Rui crouched as he

attack once more, prepared to immediately use his wind blast attack at a

WHOOSH

diagonally forward at a tremendous speed. The Martial Apprentice immediately launched the wind blast attack

Yet;

WHOOSH

image disappeared, evoking shock from the

It was a feint.

He had feinted using Phantom Step while misdirecting his opponent's attention toward the feint, causing it to be even more effective. He ran in the opposite direction with more than just his feet. He propelled himself forward by launching Tempestuous Ripples in the opposite direction. Using Newton's third

as he hastily tried to launch a second wind blast in time, yet Rui had no intention

BAM!!

his opponent's guard,

lacked the

POW POW POW!

opponent's guard. Rui discovered that despite being a long-range specialist, his opponent was quite tough even in close-range quarters. His defense was tough

a genuine

WHOOSH

high striking power, close to that of Fae's, from what Rui could tell. This made

surprising competence in close-quarters combat, he was still a far cry from

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