The Martial Unity



The issue was that he didn't quite know how long this would take. The goal was too open-ended.

At least when he left the Shionel Confederation, he had a very clear idea of what his timeframe was and the difficulty of the task. Ever since he met Senior Xanarn, he also knew the conditions it took to break through to the Senior Realm, which made him more able to plot out the difficulties in overcoming the hurdles before him.

But when it came to finding a solution to her conditions, that was something he could not estimate the timeframe for. He couldn't even establish any meaningful conditions for him to satisfy.

"That's quite some time…" Kane replied.

"It's not all that much," Rui shook his head. "It'll pass before you know it. Especially when you have all your work cut in front of you.

Rui referred to all of the introspection and experimentation that Kane needed to do before he incorporated daggers into his Martial Art. There was no strict reason to not do it, but generally, people were careful about adding weapons to their Martial Art unless they were absolutely certain that their Martial Paths were relevant enough to it to do so.

The reason for this was varied. It was not easy to create weapons for Martial Artists of higher Realms and grades due to the requirement of materials whose tensile strengths and properties were well above the limits of their Realm.

However, that was not the only reason.

Weapons were too committal. Even the smallest of weapons impacted Martial Art across the board. The presence of weapons changed how one would engage in all aspects of combat too much.

That was why Rui had not yet added a weapon to his Martial Art. If he got a sword, then he could not be anything other than a swordsman. Trying to be a wrestler or a striker while carrying a sword was the dumbest decision anyone could make.

However, in Kane's case, he could see that this decision made sense. Kane was an evasive maneuverer that focused on evading his opponent's attacks and attacking the openings in their movements created by attacks. Given that he focused so many bodily resources on evasion, it was best to use an external element to amplify his offense.

A simple dagger or two made him more lethal as long as he was willing to sacrifice more conventional offense like striking.

This was also an acceptable trade-off as Kane actually hated working on his offense more than anything. Rui couldn't help but recall how much of a fuss he made in the Umiana Trench because it was centered around offense.

If Kane did come to adopt daggers, Rui was sure that he would be able to execute it just fine. It would make him a much more dangerous Martial Artist.

The only thing he would need to be wary of was the fact that individuality surrounding his offense was going to be difficult to come up with. 

The two of them spent some more time chatting with each other before Kane left Rui to rest.

Rui spent a few more days in the clinic recovering bit by bit as he brought his body back to peak health. It took some time to make for the cell death and the lost mass in his body that truly ended up putting it on the verge of death.

Such a thing could not be healed easily, even for the Martial Body. Had an ordinary human suffered such a degree of harm and damage without dying, they would have never ever recovered naturally through ordinary treatment. Yet Rui's Martial Body healed itself in less than a week even with its crippled healing. Martial Bodies were foundationally superior in every regard.

Soon after Rui made a full recovery, he actually spent several days simply breaking into his recovered body, ensuring that his physical parameters had not been affected by the horrible condition that he had afflicted himself with.

Thankfully, his recovery was fine. His muscle and bone strength had not declined in any way, and while his body did feel a little stiff compared to normal, his flexibility had not suffered either.

His stamina had returned back to its base degree soon enough as well. His body had regained all the mass it had lost and replenished all the cells that had died, he finally looked the way he was before.

"Huff…" Rui sighed lightly after completing an intensive workout exercising his body. ('Everything is optimal. It's time to leave.')

He had already gathered some light portable belongings and bare basic necessities similar to what he would carry on a long-term mission. 

Among the many things he did while he was preparing to leave was visit Senior Xanarn. He had needed special permission from Senior Sarak to be able to visit her just once. She had been placed in a quarantined ICU and Rui needed to undergo a round of sanitization to visit her.

He didn't like what he saw.

Her skin was sickly black, many shades darker than her bronze skin. It was not a human skin tone, closer to the color of tar, a color that no human ever ought to be.

He could smell the poison inside her skin.

Countless syringes connected to tubes plagued her body, it was hard for Rui to even look at them without wincing.

He walked closer to her.

Her breathing was controlled mechanically. So much so that Rui was relatively certain that she would die on the spot if not for the machines that looked nothing short of vital life support.

He exhaled as he held her hand, playing with it. As if that would clarify the tumultuous storm of emotions that he felt about her.

It wasn't long before he left, heading straight towards his chamber to gather all his belongings and step off the island, heading out to find solutions to the many problems that plagued him.