The Martial Unity



His training began to get into a rhythm as time passed and his body got increasingly accustomed to its new circumstances. That was a desirable outcome, as it meant that his body was slowly canceling out the effects of the Herenal Virus through changes in the metabolism of the body. It had almost entirely returned to a normal size a few months into the training.

That was a good sign.

It meant that it had learned to counter the presence of the Herenal Virus without making a big fuss, metabolically speaking. Soon enough, it was time for him to move to the next phase.

"Fuuu…" Rui closed his eyes as he began focusing.

In the past few months, he had been religiously working on the mental imprint technique for the past few months and had been associating the breathing pattern that he had developed with the state of zero myostatin count. It had taken some, but he had eventually gotten everything that he needed, mentally speaking, to begin testing the Hypertrophic Surge technique.

Rui concentrated, gathering his mind and honing it in one direction. He also had a medical team on standby, courtesy of Master Deivos.

('Alright, here we go.') 

He executed the breathing technique strongly, making sure that everything was in order. Instantly, he could feel a profound change rippling across the entire body. He knew this sensation quite well.

He had subjected himself to it.

Then, it happened.

"Urgh!" Rui gritted his teeth as his muscles began slowly expanding in both volume and density. It was a slow but painful process.

Thankfully, the evolution breakthrough procedure to the Squire Realm had given every Martial Squire a remarkable degree of pain tolerance that they didn't possess prior. It came naturally after subjecting themselves to the hellish suffering that was the Squire evolution breakthrough procedure.

It didn't take even a minute for the entire transformation to occur, and it was still a sigh to behold.

It was hard to imagine that such a thing was possible!

None of the other techniques made such a dramatic transformation to the body barring the Void Forestep technique. Even that did not feel comparable to the transformation caused by the Hypertrophic Surge technique

Rui clenched his fist hard once the transformation was complete.

POOF!

A shockwave emerged just from the gesture alone.

('This…') Rui stared in amazement. He was utterly speechless by the sheer magnitude of the enhancement to his physical by the Hypertrophic Surge technique. It was unbelievable to him that a single technique could cause such a titanic difference in the raw physical power generated by the Martial Body.

Giddy excitement washed over his body as he got ready to test it. Of course, he did not intend to go all out right off the bat. That was not safe, and it was best to take a more systematic approach to analyzing the boost given by the technique. 

He needed to make sure that the technique did not have any unintentional side effects. If it did, he needed to make sure that he addressed them early on as opposed to later. This was essentially a sort of 'systems check-up' and a 'debugging' phase of creating a technique. It was impossible to account for every variable that came into play with the creation of the technique. There were generally going to be some oversights, especially when it came to more complicated and sophisticated techniques that deal with more complicated sophisticated matters such as the metabolism of the human body.

However, Rui soon discovered that while there were some elements here and there that were slightly off. For the most part, this technique worked the way he hoped it would.

RUMBLE!

Many pedestrians outside the training facility frowned, freezing on the spot as they felt tremors running through the ground, shaking them on the spot.

"Is this an earthquake?!"

"We need to get away from all infrastructure if it is!"

"Damn! This region has almost never experienced earthquakes! Where is this one coming from?!"

The entire district began panicking a little as minor, but definitely visible, tremors spread through the entire district. The town guard force even began mobilizing according to protocols, ready to evacuate if the situation escalated!

How could they have imagined that this was not caused due to seismic activity, but by the power of a single Martial Art technique?

"Hahahaha…" Rui chuckled subconsciously. "This…"

He gazed with widened eyes as he studied a target barrier in the distance. It was a barrier with circles on it and a bullseye in the center, a barrier meant for target practice. Rui had been informed that the barrier was constructed out of quasi-Senior level esoteric alloys, and thus he did not have to worry about destroying it and could go all out.

"Hahaha…" He laughed weakly as he stared at the gigantic hole that he had blasted into the barrier. The same barrier that had withstood countless Squire-level attacks over many years had crumpled immediately under the sheer destruction that Rui unleashed against it!

He had just activated Transverse Resonance tier five. His most powerful long-range technique combined with Hypertrophic Surge had resulted in destructive power that was so utterly titanic that it completely overwhelmed the limits of the training facility that he had been assigned.

It was an unofficial statement that Rui had exceeded the limits of the Squire Realm. Even by the standards of the Virodhabhasa Church, Rui had exceeded a certain level that the church had never thought possible. Otherwise, the facility would have been designed to accommodate such power.

"Damn…" Rui scratched his head as he executed the deactivation trigger, returning his myostatin production to its heightened standard, immediately triggering muscle atrophy, bringing them back to the norm.

He heaved a sigh. He would love to immerse himself in his technique, but unfortunately, his actions had consequences. While the training facility that he was in was meant to be air-tight with its anti-espionage measures, all those measures were irrelevant in the face of Riemannian Echo, he could easily sense the consequences of his technique outside the facility.