The Martial Unity

Master Deivon's eyes widened in shock as his sharp senses managed to detect what was happening. He got up, stunned in silence at the magnitude of what he was just witnessing.

He was not the only one.

The three Martial Masters overseeing the Martial Contest stirred as they beheld something they had never seen before.

The invisible cracks in the Martial Path were audible to the ascended senses of the Martial Masters!

At that moment, Master Deivon's expression turned grave. He didn't need to even look at Master Uma, Carian, and Greminga told him that they were each having the same thoughts.

It was hard not to.

I'm going to need to have a word with him. Master Deivon's eyes narrowed. 

The four Martial Masters hadn't even exchanged a single glance, yet their senses were not to be underestimated, not only had they noticed, but they knew that their peers noticed.

The four of them were the only witnesses to what happened. An air of tension emerged between only them, unbeknownst to anybody else.

Master Deivon clenched his fist as his eyes sharpened

He just hoped that this wouldn't escalate the situation.

Down in the colosseum, a fifth person followed suit. Rui's concentration broke when he detected a familiar hint of despair. Images of the same hint of despair in the eyes of his opponent flashed through his mind

The signs were the same. They were no different from the last this had happened. Unlike last time, he actually had an awareness as to what this actually meant.

He refused to let it happen.

He gritted his teeth as he made a swift decision.

BAM!

A clean swift kick to the jaw knocked her out on the spot. His expression grew severe as he feared for what had happened. He wasn't sure to what extent the damage had occurred. It had only happened for a moment before he knocked her out to ensure that she was no longer conscious. 

He didn't know what else to do, he had a feeling that no matter what he did, he would have only made things worse, thus he simply ended it by knocking her out. One could not experience conscious despair if one was not awake.

He could only hope that by the time she woke up, she would be fine. Or at the very least, able to continue practicing Martial Art. 

The crowd watching this, of course, did not understand what had happened. They simply mindlessly cheered as Rui seemed to make an abrupt comeback before knocking his opponent out. 

"And the winner of the first match of the first round is Contestant Falken!"

He couldn't even be bothered with his victory as he headed back to the contestant hall with a pensive expression.

This was not how he wanted to win. As a Martial Artist, he had a great amount of appreciation for other Martial Art. In his opinion, all Martial Art were a blessing to the world and were things that ought to be celebrated. Abilities like destroying Martial Paths, he did not want such a thing, he wished it did not exist. 

It was frustrating because it made him have to be careful about going all out. It made it hard to enjoy a fight with a Martial Artist weaker than him because he realized that he needed to be careful about getting too emotionally invested in the fight. Even if those emotions were positive, it did not bode well for his opponent for Rui to feel this way, unfortunately. 

That was something that he had to contend with, he had forgotten about it after Senior Xanarn had informed him about it. But now that he had become the strongest, he needed to be wary of it. back then he was just a high-grade Martial Squire who was a cut or two below grade ten. However, he was much too strong now.

Furthermore, he had added the Metabody System to the VOID algorithm, making it much more powerful than it used to be back then. If the VOID algorithm was the cause of this strange psychological phenomenon, then it certainly was going to be even more dangerous than it used to be.

Thank god I didn't use the Metabody System. Rui shook his head, sighing as he walked back to the contestant hall. 

In a way, she was lucky that she was too weak to force him to use it. The outcome would have been much worse than just the pattern recognition system alone. 

I hope she's okay. He truly did. The reason he knocked her out the moment he realized what was happening was to sort of push the kill switch on the strange mental phenomenon.

He just hoped it had worked.

I guess I'll go check up on her when she wakes up. 

He glanced at the rest of his competitors with a careful glance. Thankfully, it didn't appear that they had realized what was happening.

For now, he returned his focus to the tournament, looking at the rest of the matchups properly for the first time. He hadn't gotten a chance to properly consider them before.

Interesting... Rui mused as he saw that Squire Meera was on the other side of the tournament, in the final bracket while he was in the first. It meant that they could only meet in the final round.

He would not be surprised if that was done on purpose. It didn't take a genius to figure out that they were the two strongest out of all of the eight, thus the most suspenseful tournament ranking was one where their fight was settled only after the others.

Regardless, it didn't matter all too much. He was going to fight her at some point, and he didn't intend to hold back. She was not weak enough for him to have to worry about her.

"And in the next match, we have Contestant Frinjschia, the oldest veteran of the Martial Contest and a consistent top ranker in the Virodhabhasa Martial Contest! Her elder experience gives her a massive edge over her competitors!"

Rui watched the remarkable granny getting up. It appeared that he would be getting to watch her fight.