The Martial Unity

“But you’re a Martial Squire.” Rui frowned.

“I held back to match your physical power.” He shrugged. “As long as you master it perfectly, the result shouldn’t deviate much from this.”

Rui was quite excited at the prospect of obtaining that kind of lethality, that he resumed the torture training immediately. This time, he even stopped screaming. Bearing the pain and putting his toe through utter hell with each kick.

A little over an hour passed, and he had just completed a thousand kicks!

He glanced at his toe, after he healed it for the tenth time. It didn’t look any different at all. But, that obviously to be expected, if the process would be completed over the span of a million kicks, then there would be no visible progress over merely just a thousand kicks, which was 0.1% of the total progress.

The bone reconstruction process was a well-understood one. Bone had an incredible ability to adapt to mechanical loads or pressure we place upon it. According to Wolff’s Law, a bone’s internal framework, known as trabeculae is initially weakened when strained and micro-fractured by mechanical stress, thereby triggering a rebuilding process that eventually made the bone denser. The hard outer shell of the bone also became a little thicker with time. This was how bone could become stronger.

It was a long process that required prolonged period of just the right amount of stress and strain to the bones. It was not a process that could be sped up too much, even with healing potions.

Rui sighed, before proceeding to continue. He usually spent many hours on a single technique, and as painful as the Stinger technique was, he did not want to skip out on it.

If he left after only an hour, he would feel like he was admitting defeat! Thus he continued and persevered until several hours later, he finally managed to complete a total of three thousand kicks!

Every time he consumed a potion, the pain reset. As dozens of these rounds went by, he grew more and more accustomed to the excruciating pain. He wasn’t sure how the hell he was going to get to one million, but he knew he had to damn well try.

Still, this was just the first session. He put a halt to it after he hit the satisfying number of three thousand.

When he walked out, his toe was perfectly healed and functional, but it still hurt in his mind.

“Next.” He sighed wearily before heading to the maneuvering training facility. The next technique he intended to break the ice with was the Phantom Step technique.

He looked forward to this training session after the dreadful training session of the Stinger technique. He knew the training regime quite well, and was quite comfortable with it as well.

Once he reached, he searched for the head supervisor.

“Squire Instructor Veena.” He bowed once more, before explaining that he’d arrived to train for the Phantom Step technique.

What proceeded was a relatively smooth training session with no hiccups. Rui donned the body suit that was required for the prescribed training regime of the Phantom Step technique.

Across the entirety of the training regime, Rui would perform a wide variety of maneuvers that he would normally perform in a fight. Punches, kicks, jabs, dives, dodges, blocks, shuffles and things of that nature. The bodysuit was actually a piece of equipment that could be frozen at a particular spot remotely by a device in possession of the supervising instructor. As Rui shadow-fought, his instructor would freeze the suit at the correct timing for a feint in any given motion.

This would allow Rui to learn the exact position in all of these common motions he made, at which stopping abruptly would produce the most effective feint. By being stopped exactly the right timing and placement, Rui would be able to memorize the exact position and timing for feints in each of these maneuvers with his body.

This training applied the principle of learning with your body to the absolute highest degree. It exploited the kinesthetic and dynamic learning capability of the brain to learn via the body to the highest degree.

The training would focus on a handful of maneuvers at a time, each maneuver, Rui would need to practice thousands of times before he finally got the grasp of how to feint a particular motion. He needed to repeat this process for each motion. Different kinds of punches and kicks all required extensive practice before he could finally have some degree of confidence in them.

Rui had already suspected it, but he had come to truly confirm that this technique would likely be the most straightforward and easiest training regime for him out of the three training regimes he would be subjecting himself to for the next few months.

He had incredibly high hopes for this technique. It added a universal element of deception across the entirety of his Martial Art. In hindsight, he had come to realize that while Blink also did this, Blink was partially out of his control and also not something that he could time. Meaning he could never become too dependent on it. Blink exploited the blind spot of blinks to surprise his opponents, it was most fit to be a trump card, not a regular attack.

Phantom Step was much more universal than Blink, albeit a little less powerful, but Rui enjoyed the stability and control he would obtain with the Phantom Step technique.

As he daydreamed more and more about what he would accomplish with this technique, he grew more and more excited and engrossed into his training. He trained every second because he couldn’t help but ache for the day he would master this technique.

(‘This is what training should be like!’) Rui thought ecstatically. The Phantom Step training was like a soothing balm to the psychological wear and tear that the Stinger technique had inflicted on him. Nothing like an easy coperative training regime to heal his spirits!