The Martial Unity

POW POW POW!

Fake Rui launched a barrage of swift jabs at Rui. The latter merely blocked them with a guard. With his current unnecessarily high defensive prowess, he needed much less effort in order to defend against other attacks effectively. This made defense more convenient, however, Rui still hated every moment of it.

He hated his lack of flexibility, both physically and tactically. He had no leeway to evade, he needed to defend every strike even though they weren't always the optimal move had he still had his all-rounder body.

He began relying increasingly more on his passive defense and natural defense rather than active defense. In his actual body, his raw durability wasn't high enough to rely more on it than more active defensive techniques like Inner Divergence. But in this body, its innate toughness meant that he had to worry less about getting hurt.

He had already begun gathering and processing fake Rui's data as the construction of the predictive model was already underway. It helped that he was quite familiar with his own move set, which hastened the construction of the predictive model.

POW!

BAM!

Rui gritted his teeth as he withstood an attack from fake Rui in exchange for launching his own. They both mutually bypassed the other's defense, yet the outcomes were different. Rui's strike was heavier because his hallucinated body was much more suited towards offense than fake Rui, while his body was more suited towards withstanding fake Rui's attack.

timing and placement were more effective and efficient than fake Rui's. This was the difference that the VOID algorithm caused. Even a large speed and mobility gap caused by a difference in frames were still

His mind flashed as he planted his legs firmly and stabilized his balance. Ordinarily, he would have met low attacks with attacks that evaded them while also hitting his opponent, like

been able to smoothly execute that attack. Instead, he relied

POW!

Rui's kick stopped in its tracks, unable to so much as budge against

WHOOSH

a strike on fake Rui, however,

adaptive evolution

adaptive evolution model, he was able to understand which counters could be performed by his current Martial body and which ones couldn't Every time the optimal counter to fake Rui's predicted move involved a lot of movement, speed, and agility, he simply replaced it with something that achieved as close

VOID algorithm could handle, but with Rui's extreme understanding of the algorithm as the actual

combat showed him the limits of the compatibility of any Martial body that wasn't an all-rounder. The

BAM!

devastating uppercut on fake Rui despite the speed gap between them. Exploiting a mistake as well as perfect counters from the VOID algorithm allowed

THUD

to his knees, before falling down entirely, losing consciousness due