The Martial Unity

Even if Rui had made predictive models for all of the Martial Squires ahead of time, he could not know which Martial Squire was being deployed when the K'ulnen Tribe's Martial Apprentice inevitably failed, ahead of time. That was why Kane had been deployed outside of the K'ulnen village, waiting to identify which of the Martial Squires of the K'ulnen Tribe had been dispatched against the Martial Apprentices of the Martial Union to protect the K'ulnen Martial Apprentices.

He was to immediately inform Rui of which of the Martial Artists had been deployed via a pre-decided code since they did not know the names of all of the Martial Squires of the K'ulnen Tribe.

Code H was a low-grade Martial Squire, lower than Rui but not by much.

Based on the intel that the intelligence team had gathered on the man, he was an extremely close-quarter striking-oriented Martial Squire whose Martial Path was centered around elbow and knee striking. This caused his Martial Art to turn out to resemble something like a fusion between Muay Thai and Silat, two traditional martial arts of Earth from Thailand and Southeast Asia.

Rui had painstakingly constructed a predictive model of his incoming opponent based on the intelligence gathered by the Martial Union as well as data that he himself had collected based on surveillance of the battles between the K'ulnen Tribe and other Martial Sects that Squire H had partaken in.

Rui closed his eyes as he brought up the predictive model for Martial Squire code H from his mind palace, readying it to immediately fire in an input and pass the output to the ODA System.

And soon enough, Squire H entered the very periphery of his Tempestuous Feel technique. One of the challenges of applying his Pathfinder technique to Martial Squires was the fact that Martial Squires often traveled and fought in the air, which meant that Seismic Mapping was useless in this scenario, the only thing that he could do was rely on tempestuous Feel.

The second that Squire H hit the edge of Rui's Tempestuous Feel sense, Rui's pupils dilated. His brain went into overdrive as the entirety of his mind fired up, furiously rushing to ensure that the VOID algorithm and the ODA System would be completed as early as possible.

He pumped his latest sensory data into the VOID algorithm, and immediately he extracted a high-certainty prediction of his opponent's position. Almost reflexively, he tossed that prediction of his opponent's future position and trajectory into the ODA System, establishing the predicted data as the position of the target.

Instantly, he computed it and obtained the trajectory of the Sonic Bullet that he would be launching against his opponent.

The second half of the ODA System was also computed rather swiftly. Thankfully the atmosphere was tranquil, the atmospheric factors were rather easy and simple to predict.

It all came together.

An image formed inside Rui's head.

The exact movements he had to make. From the position of his limbs to the center of gravity. He could see exactly what he needed to do, where he needed to be, and when he needed to be there.

With almost no delay, he shot into position, opening his mouth and launching a small, yet potent Sonic Bullet.

THWOOM

The sound bullet flew for just three seconds... before stopping. Stopping after it crashed through the right eyeball of Squire H.

There was no scream, nor a struggle. There was no resistance, nor evasion.

THUD ｂ𝚎ｄｎ𝚘ｖ𝚎𝚕．𝚘𝚛𝚐

The body of Squire H fell from the sky, falling straight down to the ground like a puppet whose strings were cut.

Rui heaved a deep sigh as he began panting slowly. The sheer mental strain of pulling off what he did was not low. The VOID algorithm was hard enough as it was, the ODA System piled on top of that, on top of yet another layer of difficulty being the fact that his opponent was a sprinting Squire gave him no room for error whatsoever. He had to be exactly perfect, and not even the tiniest bit less.

Yet, one could be quite certain that he'd succeeded, given the unmoving body of his target. Rui couldn't even sense a heartbeat through Seismic Mapping.

Rui hit a button on his comms device, before sky-walking above the trees, revealing himself to the world. He donned his grade-ten Martial Squire mask, allowing any scout of any Martial Tribe to feel his presence and the illusion of power he projected.

He also wanted to highlight the distance from which he had successfully taken that shot, highlighting the power of his technique quite deeply.

He quickly began retreating towards the Vilun Settlement at top speed. The K'ulnen Tribe would no doubt be extremely furious at the death of a Martial Squire, and he did not want to wait around to deal with repercussions directly. He did not think he stood a chance if he had to deal with more than one Martial Squire at a time unless they were extremely weak.

His mouth broke into a shark-like grin as he rushed back towards the Vilun settlement at top speed.

He couldn't help but feel quite excited at the feat that he had just accomplished. It was not hard at all to believe that he was a grade-ten martial Squire given that he just nailed a Martial Squire from nearly a kilometer away!

If the G'ak'arkan Tribe was merely interested before, he had no doubt that they were extremely shocked at this point. After all, the feat he accomplished was not something that any Martial Squire could possibly accomplish, yet if there was one that could, it could only be a grade-ten Martial Squire, correct?

He did not think that even the Martial Squires would be able to keep their composure when they learned what Rui could do despite the distance. If Rui was not wrong, then he had achieved a feat that they likely were not confident of replicating with their own long-range prowess.