The Martial Unity

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While he was quite satisfied with his progress, there was one issue.

"This is going to take longer than I expected," He muttered, turning to the distant figure of Squire Casen in the sky. "And even if she is a low-grade Martial Squire, it's not easy to commission Martial Squires constantly. I don't have that kind of money."

This obviously meant only one thing.

"I need to do missions if I am to continue commissioning her." Rui scratched his head.

He had considered buying a Squire-grade punching machine, before tossing the idea out the window.

"This technique needs to apply to more than just a punch. I need a Martial Squire training partner."

Project Bounce needed to work on all manners of striking attacks, it would be actually detrimental if he limited his training to mechanical and inorganic strikes.

"This will also be the first time I'm working on mastering techniques while also completing missions," Rui noted. "It's going to be a messy schedule."

While he could organize his training sessions well, it became harder to regulate the amount of time on missions, the types of missions he chose generally didn't allow him to predict the amount of time it would take to complete them.

"In which case, I should probably choose missions with defined time periods," Rui noted. "Ideally, long-term missions with defined timings would be perfect."

Though, those missions tended to have very low pay, unless he managed to get a real big shot to hire him as a bodyguard. In those cases, he would usually be doing nothing while earning really well.

('Do I really want that kind of a mission though?') Rui frowned.

Time was precious and even if it was a mission, Rui felt it was a waste to burn that many hours a day. Missions that gave him some kind of experience somehow, were the best.

('Oh wait...') An idea lit up in Rui's head. ('I wonder...')

He plucked his accounter, going through his personal missions. He had opened up his profile and inbox for commissions recently, and he had received more than just a few.

[Defense class commission: Bodyguard

Client: Savil Vengard

Grade: Two

Remuneration proposal: Fifty gold coins per hour.

Daily time: 84 hours a week.]

Rui raised an eyebrow at the mission. Just based on the rate alone, he could tell that this was one of the richer clientele of the martial Union. Fifty gold coins an hour was an outrageous income that an overwhelming majority of Martial Squires, especially at his current grade, would not hesitate in accepting the commission.

But not Rui.

('eighty-four hours a week?') Rui shook his head. His time was vastly more valuable than the time that would be burnt away standing around doing nothing. There was no amount of money that could purchase eighty-four hours a week from Rui.

He moved on to several others. They weren't too unfamiliar; standard defense-class commissions, as well as those from the hunter-class.

However, those weren't the ones that Rui was interested in at the moment.

"Ah..." A smile broke out on Rui's face. "Found it."

[Miscellaneous class commission: Sparring trainer

Client: Hestia Beauregard

Remuneration (negotiable): twenty gold coins per hour minimum

Mission timings (negotiable): fifty hours a week.]

He had been known as a highly effective sparring partner in the Martial Community and had received commissions to spar with other Martial Apprentices to help them grow. They had been enjoyable commissions, although they did not contribute to the growth of his Martial Art in any particular way, it felt good to apply his Martial Art in other ways.

Seems that people still remembered him for that quality.

He looked for the commission for the highest pay and negotiable timings, before accepting the commission.

[Miscellaneous class commission: Sparring Trainer

Client: Jeane Viermont

Remuneration(negotiable): Thirty-five gold coins per hour

Mission timing: sixty hours a week.]

Although this mission didn't give him any meaningful combat experience unless the target of the training was a Martial Squire, it did bring him satisfaction, so Rui was willing to allow the lack of high productivity.

Training someone via the VOID algorithm wasn't really an application of the VOID algorithm that Rui had thought about in his previous life. After all, the VOID algorithm was designed to win against any and all opponents. Rui had not even entertained such notions back then. But now he was starting to see how this could be the same. The VOID algorithm forced all Martial Artists to confront their flaws, shortcomings and imperfections.

There was no other form of training that forced Martial Artists to work on their lacking Martial Art and combat the way the VOID algorithm did. Furthermore, it did in the midst of combat, rather than through targeted training and exercises for any and all of their flaws like was normally the case. What Rui had learnt that demonstrating exactly in what manner their flaws, shortcomings and imperfections could be exploited against them allowed them to learn how to deal with those that would exploit their weaknesses.

It allowed Rui to see patterns in their Martial Art and combat style that they themselves would have never ever noticed without him. It was simply too difficult for them to introspect that deeply into their own Martial Art. They would need to get researchers of Martial Art to study their Martial Art extensively with all kinds of devices while processing the data they received before obtaining such results.

Rui just needed to observe them, and he would end up extrapolating even more information than any team of Martial Art scholars of the Kandrian Empire ever could.

He had applied this to Max and Mana when he trained with them, showing them their flaws and weaknesses. He was never too overbearing in his instructions, he did not want to have an undue effect on their Martial Path and end up causing them to become something that they weren't. It was possible that using the VOID algorithm to train potential Martial Artists was dangerous, and had thus acted very conservatively.