The Martial Unity

"It is," Rui nodded as he gazed at his palm. "I'm glad it turned out well."

"Wait," Kane brought his hands to the temples, confused. "You created a new technique in the time period between me leaving and you purchasing a training slot?"

"More or less," Rui nodded. "Well, creating a new technique is a tad bit overselling it considering I just put together elements from certain techniques to create a new one. It wasn't that hard, honestly."

Kane just stared at him with a shocked expression. He couldn't believe what he was hearing, but he had seen that strange new palming technique that Rui had used to dispel the water.

Rui had been so successful in dispelling the wave with his little palm technique that he had drawn the attention of many Martial Artists from him. They even started to look at him differently, considering him to be stronger than he was.

Funnily enough, this was something Rui was accustomed to. He had gone through this for quite some time.

Even on his mission to Vilun Island, he had been perceived as a grade-ten Martial Squire the entire time, back then he had merely been posturing with the Mind Mask, of course. In the Shionel Confederation, he hadn't actively tried to convince people that he was a grade-ten Martial Squire, in fact, he was just trying his best in the dungeon, and his preparations had allowed for him to exceed his normal level. The Shionel Confederation had naturally become convinced that he was a grade-ten Martial Squire at a bare minimum, given many of his feats.

It didn't feel out of place when people treated him to be stronger than he really was, which was quite strange when he looked at it.

"How did your training go?" Rui asked.

Kane's expression soured. "Let's just say it wasn't the most pleasant of experiences."

Rui smiled, amused. Kane was quite averse to power-oriented striking techniques, his style generally did not utilize them, and he much preferred more lethal attacks that didn't necessarily have more power but inflicted more damage.

Such techniques were usually much harder to land or had some other shortcomings that Kane could bypass with his maneuvering techniques and techniques like Void Step.

"Don't worry," Rui assured him. "It'll do you wonders in the long run. Unlike me, you have the advantage of knowing without any shadow of a doubt what is the most effective way to shore off your weaknesses."

"I imagine that's much harder for an all-rounder like you," Kane remarked. "Having to juggle and balance so many things. Specialists like myself have it easy."

"In some ways, true," Rui nodded.

He had to admit the sheer number of things that he had to keep in mind when considering the balance of his Martial Art was definitely a lot. At this point, he had mastered so many techniques of different kinds that it was not easy to create an accurate picture in his mind about the balance between techniques.

However, he was glad that he had come up with another close-range technique. He had been concerned that his long-range offensive power from the techniques that he had gained and created in Vilun Island.

The two of them headed toward the part of the town that was meant for housing Martial Artists. Neither of them was too eager to stay in a place devoid of privacy, but they had to make do with it. Most Martial Artists did not have the ability to feel what was going on over longer distances, thus Rui could at least take some comfort in knowing that he probably was not being watched nearly as much as being noticed. He hoped there was an unspoken agreement between the Martial Squires that they wouldn't peek at each other, though he knew that there was nothing guaranteeing that.

The housing section was divided between Martial Artists of different Realms. It appeared that Martial Apprentices got small rooms that only provided them with the bare basics of needs. Martial Squires each received a less bare room that contained additional facilities, while only Martial Seniors and Martial Masters received what could be considered luxurious.

However, he highly doubted that any Martial Artist cared. No Martial Artist that came this far came for a sightseeing vacation, everyone here was serious about training, any Martial Artist that complained about the lack of hospitality would only be making a fool of themselves.

Rui considered his progress when he finally got a chance to rest for the first time since the training.

('It's good… but I still haven't forgotten that the things I need to do for training have increased ever since my previous training phase,') Rui sighed as he thought of the technique that he had created in the Shionel Confederation. The Forestep technique was powerful be it increased the difficulty of training all techniques from there on out. The reason for that was that he needed practice and to get used to applying the Forestep technique to supplement existing techniques. This meant that even after he mastered a technique, he still needed to train further to master it with the Forestep technique.

This significantly raised the difficulty and time period needed to master techniques. If he could master new techniques in a matter of months, then perhaps from this point in, mastering techniques would take no less than a year.

This meant that if he wanted to master ten new techniques, this endeavor might end up taking a decade to achieve.

He wondered if similar circumstances were among the reason that Martial Artists of higher Realms took longer to develop their Martial Art than Martial Apprentices and Martial Squires did. Sage Sia, the Martial Sage who created the Umiana Trench, spent two decades creating a technique. He knew that Senior Ceeran had spent quite a lot of time developing his Martial Art as well.

Perhaps the Squire Realm was the last Realm at which he could speedily develop a technique in a single day.

('I sure hope not…')