The Martial Unity

"You think I'm not using my mental talent properly?" Rui frowned.

"It's a good technique for an assassin, but assassins in the first place do not seek to maximize the application of any given affinity to its full potential in all aspects. They only care bout killing. Thus they'd only apply things in order to aid covert killings. Mental techniques are capable of much much more than being a convenient tool for murder!"

"Right..." Rui considered.

"Going through all that effort to misdirect people so much only to then get them to ignore you is the most wasteful application of principles of mental techniques, but what more can you expect from assassins," He crinkled his nose. "Hypnosis, which is my chosen sub-specialty makes far greater use of the mind and misdirection."

"Hypnosis..."

"It is the art of manipulating the subconscious mind," He remarked. "In this case, anything that you have no control over consciously, normally speaking. Generally, speaking this includes memory manipulation, senses, and sabotage. Hypnosis isn't limited to Martial Artists. Normal humans can also hypnotize people. However, they are much more limited. For one, normal humans cannot hypnotize people against their will."

Rui nodded. Hypnosis was a proven phenomenon back on Earth, although it was not too very well understood. It was often used to aid with mental issues as a part of therapy.

"Not much can be said about the subconscious mind, but one thing about it is certain. It can be impacted, influenced, and even rewritten by external influences." The Master informed him. "There existed an extremely powerful barrier between consciousness and subconsciousness, which prevents the former from directly manipulating the latter. Furthermore, the conscious mind serves as a guard dog against external influences, preventing anything from impacting the subconscious mind. That is why normal humans cannot hypnotize their targets against their will."

Rui nodded. He was aware that Martial Artists were not nearly as helpless.

most common way is through misdirection," The man explained. "We distract the guard dog with something. A toy or a treat. And while it is distracted we

he understood why the Master disliked his

the guard dog, but instead of actually going to the treasure room, you run away from the prize to ensure that the guard dog never saw you. What a waste!" The man snorted.

What are the most combat-relevant applications? Manipulating memories sounds fun, but it sounds like it is much less combat-applicable than some of the

right up your alley then," The man speculated. "Those are the most easily combat applicable principles. However, rather than learning the principles and constructing basic techniques, it would be best to attune the

from mental techniques, but he could increase

since there surely were Martial Artists that were

sensory techniques that supplied him with information were also something that he

choosing. He was firmly on the side of

"Just hearing about it in a superficial explanation isn't enough to give me a good practical understanding of what is possible. Especially when mental techniques have such a bad framework. Can I get demonstrations of the several tentative categories

think that he had a particular affinity for one over the other, if that were the case, then he was more inclined to

ought to venture towards. Powerful but difficult to attune to adaptive evolution would be unfortunate. As would being easily attuned to adaptive evolution but not

something that was both powerful, and also highly relevant

"Alright, I guess we'll have to go disturb Ieyasu. It would be better to demonstrate it on

have lots of things that I would like you to demonstrate. That is why I

of my pupil, you're so

of them quickly made their