The Martial Unity

"We understand." The man addressing Rui said. "We'll make the best of your teachings."

They nodded vigorously. Vemy threw him a brief mischievous smile sneakily that the others didn't notice.

('So she didn't tell them, phew.') He sighed inwardly.

"How do you propose we go about this?" The man asked.

"Hm..." Rui thought about it. His mind flashed back to the days when martial Apprentices all ganged up to fight Kyrie, once the sparring session was over, she would round them all up and instruct them on their shortcomings, flaws, and weaknesses as well as offer suggestions on how to mitigate or get rid of them.

"We don't have much time," Rui told them. "A third of you come at me at once first, followed by the remaining third."

It was not practical to try and spar with twenty-seven people at once. Not because Rui could not accomplish it, but if he wanted, he could slaughter all of them with relative ease. But sparring twenty-seven people at once wasn't really practical for a meaningful form of training because there was a physical logistical limit to the number of people who could attack him at once, and a limit to the number of Martial Apprentice he could focus on grilling at once.

Meaning, sparring twenty-seven at the same time would make all of them feel left out for longer periods of time. It was better to spar with fewer people at once and ensure that each of those people could have a proper sparring session where they were intensely involved with the fight.

They nodded at that proposal, having similar thoughts.

Rui pointed to three random Martial Apprentices out of the crowd. "What are

"Cern."

"Gerard."

"Mina."

of all of you, aren't you?" Rui could clearly sense that those three were the only full-fledged higher-grade Martial Apprentices

able to discern it so easily. Was this one of the abilities

teams that each of you will lead, and decide who will go first," Rui told

observed them intermingling with each other carefully. What they didn't know was that Rui was already testing them. Depending on how smoothly their team formation went, it would tell them much about themselves. If they scrambled to obtain all the strongest Martial Apprentices for their own team at the cost of the other teams, then it would generally reflect poorly on their sense of unity and teamwork. If they were truly united in their goal to make the

it's already going well.') Rui

amongst themselves rather than trying to compete with each other by trying to attract the other Martial Apprentices to their team.

them told

analyzing them. He was satisfied when he saw that the teams were broadly equally strong. Although it was impossible to create three perfectly equally

also noticed that each team had roughly three of the ten offense-oriented Martial Apprentices that he had seen practicing coordinating their attacks to blasting a large opening in walls to allow the army to pass through smoothly. Meaning each team had a similar level of offensive capabilities. This meant that they had tried to create teams that not only were equally strong but also

and speed to the peak of the Apprentice Realm, though I may decide to use even lesser if I can, barring my toughness and reaction speed,

made sense, there was no point in him going all out as that would simply kill them or defeat them so fast that there was nothing of value to be learned in their loss. They would gain

will be going