The Martial Unity

Rui headed back home once the training session with Crea ended. Today was the first session between them, thus he didn't engage in any deeper training. He simply sparred with her to get a preliminary evaluation of her prowess, he spent the rest of his time getting to know her.

Her desire to become a Martial Artist was strong, however, it was different from the determination he saw in Max and Mana. The two of them were truly fascinated by Martial Art and thus chased after it. They enjoyed training and especially sparring as well, he could see that their motivation was true.

With Crea, it wasn't quite as simple. She yearned to become a Martial Artist, even more so than Max and Mana, but she didn't enjoy sparring or fighting, even if she was quite fierce during training. Rui could sense that she had a deep sense of reverence and admiration for her father, as a Martial Artist. She even displayed that towards Rui to a lesser degree, though less so because Rui hit his presence unless he needed not to. That along with his informal interactions with her had caused her to become a lot more informal and casual with him.

From what he could tell, her desire to become a Martial Artist wasn't a calculated objective or goal. He could sense it was a deep desire of hers. It seemed that simply becoming a Martial Artist, in and of itself was probably something she desired extremely. Not for the things that Martial Art seemed to bring, she didn't display much of a desire to make money, to obtain tremendous power, or prestige and social status. It didn't seem it be any of those, or perhaps it was all of those.

It was as though she simply couldn't stand not being a Martial Artist, more than anything.

Even if he didn't expect to figure her out on the first day he met her, it was clear that she was inscrutable and complex.

Still, that didn't particularly matter. Her motivation and determination were real, and that was all that mattered to him as a trainer. Everything else came after.

at a significant chunk of his time, he also had to work on building up Project Bounce from scratch and all from the ground up, which was no doubt a daunting task that also ate away at his funds,

Furthermore, he also felt the need to train with Max and Mana more extensively out of guilt of spending that much

no breathing space at all, and every

busy as all hell for the next few months." Rui

And he was right.

next three months, Rui

Project Bounce, one small step at a time. He had been increasing the distance over which he was propelled by a straight right punch from a Martial Squire significantly, which was good progress to be made.

right punch was just one of many strikes that one could launch, if Rui wanted Project Bounce to succeed, he would need to

and frustrating parts of Project Bounce. It was the sheer number of types of attacks that he needed to learn to elastically defend against to ensure they harmlessly launched him in

the only difficult part. Part of the problem was that he had discovered that it

right punch was coming. He was able