The Martial Unity

His eyes turned back to the format at hand.

He definitely liked it more than the preliminary contest.

It actually consisted of many rounds. A total of six rounds would determine who the strongest Martial Squire was. Each round actually served as a way to filter a fraction of the Martial Squires in the contest.

The first three rounds each filtered out eighty percent of the contestants, leaving only twenty percent of the contestants to move on to the next round. By the time the fourth round is finished, only zero-point-two-five percent of the contestants would remain. A total of eight individuals would remain after the third round.

From there on, an elimination tournament of three rounds would go on to decide the next Virodha Champion. 

Because of the multi-layered filtering, Rui found that it was definitely much better than throwing all one thousand into a rumble where the last man standing wins. 

"What kind of competition are the first three rounds going to be?" Rui asked.

He noticed that that hadn't been specified. It was particularly important too, since the first three rounds would eliminate more than ninety percent of the contestants.

"You will find that out just as you're about to take on the competition," Master Deivon informed him. "It's not something I can divulge. Still, you're smart enough to gain deeper insight."

Rui narrowed his eyes. He already had plenty of ideas of what they could be. It was easy for him to make inferences and deductions once he looked into what the goal of the first three rounds was.

The goal of the first three rounds was to eliminate and filter out all the contestants who definitely had zero chances of winning the Martial Contest regardless of the format simply because they weren't strong enough.

This did not mean that they were weak in a general sense. They weren't, since they could be considered the top one percent of the Squire Realm. However, when it came to grabbing the title of the strongest, ninety-nine percent of them were simply insufficient.

The first three rounds sought to eliminate all those who simply weren't worthy of even being considered as a candidate of the strongest.

With that goal in mind, there were several inferences and deductions that could be made. There were bare minimum standards that one could expect from anybody who was worthy of the title of the strongest. Bare minimum as far as basic parameters such as offense, defense, and maneuvering. Even if the truly strongest Martial Squire, regardless of who that was, was a specialist, that person would still need to be above a certain level in these parameters. 

An offensive Martial Artist could never be considered the strongest if they were pathetically fragile as far as their defense went. Because a single attack would be able to take them down, and there would almost certainly be faster Martial Artists that would take them down by capitalizing on their weakness.

The same could be said for other kinds of Martial Artists. Specialist or not, there was a bare minimum in every category that one needed to be above in order to even possibly be the strongest.

Given how strong the strongest would need to be, that bare minimum was actually quite high and could serve as a good criterion to knock out many people from consideration, leaving behind only those who were truly worthy of being considered the strongest.

Thus it was quite likely that the the first three rounds would serve as a basic parameter test, among other things.

He wasn't entirely sure but he did look forward to facing each challenge and overcoming it. He hoped it wouldn't be like the preliminary contest with mass competition which he wasn't the most compatible with.

"You should also pack up and get ready. You will be headed to the town of Li in the Virodha Theocracy, the only state that operates in the name of the Virodhabhasa Faith." Master Deivon informed him. "All one thousand representatives will be gathered there before the main contest commences."

Rui nodded. "I'll do that. By the way…"

"Hm?"

"About our agreement, we didn't have the format when we made our agreement, but we do now," Rui told him.

"Ah…" Master Deivon immediately understood. "You're concerned about the clause of performing well enough to earn enough credit to purchase the medical treatment that you seek."

Rui nodded.

Their agreement had been that Rui did well in the Martial Contest as someone patroned by Master Deivon, earning the latter some credit as officially being the one to scout Rui.

"If you get to the final tournament of the Martial Contest, you be able to redeem the highest quality of medical treatment guaranteeing a full recovery with no complications," Master Deivon explained. "Ordinarily, you'd have to go further. But you're patroned by me which lowers the barrier as I'd mentioned when we first signed our agreement. Furthermore, you have been designated a Virodhabhasa Seed."

Rui furrowed his eyebrows.

It was not that he didn't expect that to happen. He actually did. His Martial Art matched with the description of the Martial Art of the Virodhabhasa; the Antithesis, far too well.

The two of them simply stared at each other in silence.

"To be honest…" Master Deivon began. "While I suspected you might be a Virodhobhasa Seed as I mentioned a year ago, it was a solid possibility that I was willing to bet on because it was a win-win regardless. However, today I got to witness you fight for the first time…"

The man stared deeply into Rui's eyes.

The very action caused Rui to experience a tremendous amount of pressure.

"Out of all the so-called seeds that I have ever come across in the past, half of them were questionable. Many people in authority hand out the title a little too easily because they stand to gain by contributing by finding seeds," Master Deivon candidly explained. "Yet you…"

The atmosphere intensified.

Rui's eyes sharpened as the air chilled a few degrees.

Master Deivon's expression grew more severe.

"Your very existence makes me wonder if the Divine Revelation isn't entirely full of shit."