The Martial Unity

A few hours later, the two of them were flat on the ground, exhausted.

"Man… Huff… We couldn't land a proper strike on you even after we became Martial Apprentices!" Max complained.

"That too… Huff… He was moving slower than us… And we still couldn't even touch him," Mana panted. "How is that even possible?"

Rui, who was enjoying the rare pleasant weather of spring, smiled at their words. "It's a matter of timing and placement, my cute and adorable siblings."

"What does that even mean?" Max furrowed his eyebrows. He was much bigger than he was before, and he disliked being treated like a child. Unbeknownst to him, Rui found this part of him to be the most adorable.

"I can evade everything you throw at me because I can see it coming, and because I pick and choose the right evasion move in response," Rui replied. "Which is why even if I delay my response and reaction time to be slower than yours, I can still handily evade you with ease for the most part. I see your attacks coming sooner than you realize, thus I make the necessary preparations to avoid them sooner."

"Does this have anything to do with your Martial Path, big brother?" Mana asked, curious. "Your Martial Path was… adaptive evolution, correct? Are you adapting to us? Allowing you to do what you just described?"

nuanced question. Mana had always been smarter of the two, though she was more tactically indecisive in combat

Path is indeed adaptive evolution," Rui nodded. "But… what

to a level where he could easily see through their moves even without using predictive models of those two. This wasn't particularly shocking or surprising. Any

at

little proud of the admiration that they were showering him with. "When you go to the

amazing than

all that special in the Squire Realm at this very moment," Rui shook his head, trying to downplay himself. He didn't want them to have an over-inflated view of their brother. When they joined the Martial Academy, they would come to learn that their big brother was a bit of a celebrity in the Martial communities of the Kandrian Empire. Currently, Rui had come to find that almost all the people he had come to interact with within this community had heard about him, directly or indirectly. Fame from being the dark horse finalist of the previous Martial contest more than five years ago, fame from his win streak in the Martial Games, fame from killing a Martial Squire and achieving unprecedented power as Martial Apprentice that forced the Martial Union to re-evaluate their power grading system, and the man who had singlehandedly won the Kandrian Empire victory in the final

too self-conscious to brag so blatantly and because it did not truly matter. But now that the two of them would be going to be passing the Martial Entrance Exam that was less than a month

have become remarkably strong… remarkably quickly." He said that with a proud smile, but inside he was

Rui couldn't help but wonder. In reality,

but they were above average as far as talent went. Yet, they broke through to the Apprentice Realm earlier than Fae had. Fae herself was a renowned talent, even if she wasn't in the genius-level territory like Fiona, Kane, and Ian, who all broke through even well

five years earlier than the average age to break

for combat from a young age, yet now they had broken through to the Apprentice Realm at the age of thirteen. Something had to have

already had a strong suspicion as to what it