The Martial Unity

More than three months had gone by. Rui's life had turned into an intense monotony of dungeon clearing, both as Rui and as the Voider, gathering information on the Root, and training with Project Forestep.

Rui had dedicated the entirety of his mind and body towards mastering as much of the Godspeed Breathing technique, hoping to gain as much of this power as he could.

Unfortunately, as good as he was with breathing techniques, he was not as good as Kane was with speed and thus was unable to reach Kane's level of mastery of the technique.

After more than three months of dedicated training, his growth had finally plateaued at about forty percent of the full level of mastery.

"That's still pretty good all things considered," Kane told him. "If not for the fact that you lack the reaction speed to keep up even with thirty percent of the full mastery of the Godspeed technique, you could use it without compunctions. I still don't know how you plan to get past that restriction though, honestly."

Kane had not attempted to pry out Rui's intentions regarding the Godspeed technique. Martial Art related matters were deeply personal to each Martial Artist, and they were not light matters that were generally discussed without care.

Rui on the other hand did not want to make claims that he could not support, and thus did not go too deeply about what he was trying to accomplish. All Kane knew was that Rui was trying extremely hard to realize his ambition of applying the Godspeed technique.

"I'm not entirely sure of much myself, Kane," Rui sighed. "I guess we'll find out. Come at me."

"What?"

"I said, come at me," Rui stood still.

"I'm confused," Kane frowned. "Have you actually completed the technique? I thought you were going to spend time trying to look for a way to compensate for your lacking reaction speed."

"I thought of a potential solution to that problem even before I decided to learn the Godspeed technique," Rui replied.

Kane tilted his head. "Huh. That's unexpected, to say the least. Is there nothing you haven't thought of a solution for? Leave some intelligence for the rest of us man."

Rui smirked. "Well, let's see if I was right. Thankfully, you're the perfect test subject. Come at me with your fastest standard attacks. Let's see how I do."

taking

to

was loose, yet it was because of the

this, Rui didn't feel any wariness. The problem for Kane was that Rui knew him too well. The prediction model he had on Kane was

too

way possible. The combination of all his other techniques of his Flowing Void Style when applied

intend on taking a stance?" Kane raised

Martial Art," Rui replied calmly. "I'm going use only the technique I'm trying

to compete with him with a single technique, he would strongly doubt them. Barring people like Hever who dedicated themselves to a single technique, or people in possession of an extraordinary grade-ten technique, it

than to underestimate Rui, so he simply abided by his

His approach was swift.

and even low-grade Martial Squires,

WHOOSH

STEP

already face to face with Rui, a swift blur of a

THWACK

Kane's eyes widened.

face should have been was his hand,

out of

launching the opposite leg into a blindingly swift backward spanning roundhouse kick to the side of

WHOOSH

kick passing through Rui's head, dispelling the empty image. He quickly stepped

going to use

Phantom Step technique that created illusions inside the target's head with extremely convincing

Rui smirked.