The Martial Unity

The feat she accomplished was amazing. The idea that Rui would be able to perform that feat on any normal human was great! He would be able to travel without any detection as long as he timed the technique perfectly well.

He would be able to appear and disappear, just like a ninja!

Rui did have a soft spot for ninjas, not as much as he did for martial artists, but definitely close.

He got up with a barely constrained grin.

“The training for Blink is rather straightforward.” She said. “You train until you’ve mastered the execution, timing and placement of the technique. This facility has training resources that significantly make easier what is otherwise a significantly difficult technique to learn at the Martial Apprentice Realm.”

Rui nodded, aware of everything in detail. He still listened to her explanations out of respect, she was far better than Squire Maxime who uttered only a total of five words to Rui across the entirety of five hours of training.

“The combat application of Blink is quite different from the stealth application of Blink, so we train those separately in two training stages that you will engage in simultaneously.” She explained.

The first stage of the training was centered around mechanics dolls that blinked for periods longer than that of even an average human being. Rui was effectively supposed to play tag with these mechanical dolls, except he wasn’t allowed to move except for when they blinked.

This did two things.

First, it forced him to be more conscious of the timing of the mechanical blinks, and secondly it forced his body to learn how to exploit the blinks properly. Since the training stage required him to not use any Apprentice-level techniques or even any of the techniques from the Exploration Stage, he was only allowed to maneuver using his raw physicality during the Blink.

The training stage would progress once he completely mastered the tag game at a certain blinking speed of the dolls. Then the blinking speed would progressively increase, just a tiny bit at a time, no more than a two-percent increase. Once the user adapted to it and managed to perform optimally, the blinking speed would be increased by two percent once more, and it would progress so and so forth.

It was predicted that in a handful of months of continuous dedicated single-minded training, the user should eventually be able to reach the desired level of mastery over the blink exploitation principle.

After that the training would drastically spike as the blinking speed surpasses human limits and reaches the Apprentice Realm, at this point the user would be allowed to use Apprentice-level techniques, and fight at his or her strongest.

This would allow the user to get used to exploiting blink timing in Apprentice level battles, which was the most important and also the ultimate goal. An Apprentice level technique that could not be used in Apprentice level combat was just a failure of a technique.

And once the Martial Apprentice got used to exploiting the blink timing optimally in conjunction with Apprentice-level techniques, then the training regime was complete.

This was normally supposed to take several months on average.

Every two-percent boost in blinking speed usually took at the very least a day or two, maybe even longer depending on the mental faculties of the user. This was something Squire Helen knew quite well.

(‘So why…?’) She wondered. (‘Why has this boy adapted to a four-percent increase in the matter of two hours???’)

Rui had immediately grown quite interested and excited by the training regime, so he jumped right into it to get a taste of it.

She stared at Rui with amazement and shocked as he handled the training stage like it was a breeze.

(‘What is going on??’)

Rui on the other hand was grinning with all the ecstasy he felt missing during the Seismic Mapping training.

(‘If this is how every stealth technique training regime is like, then I might just convert to a stealth-oriented Martial Art!’) Rui thought to himself.

He had an incredible amount of fun adapting to the timing needed for Blink maneuvers for every increased blinking speeds.

A large part of his joy came from the fact that he was incredibly could at it, making for an astonishing growth rate.

It had taken him a while to realize why he was as good at this as he was. There were two reasons, as far as he could tell.

Firstly, his enhanced mental faculties due to the inherited mind from his previous life was greatly useful here, allowing his cognition to absorb experience and grow much more from it than any other individual at his biological age would.

Secondly, the cognitive processes needed to grow and adapt to the timing of the blink maneuvers were extremely similar to the principles and mechanics of the VOID algorithm used. It turns out that adapting to a Martial Art was quite similar to the learning process of adapting to Blink timings.

In fact, maybe he could expand the VOID algorithm to include blinks and Blink maneuvers in its counter-deduction system!

This was something he hadn’t considered before. On Earth, blinks were inconsequential, thus the VOID algorithm had not been developed to process blinks as a variable. Why would something that could not be used in combat be relevant to the VOID algorithm?

This epiphany strongly motivated Rui even more.

He truly immersed himself in training to a degree far, far higher than ever before. Every cell in his body stood together aiding Rui in his pursuit, he could feel himself growing every second.

What truly shook him was that he felt as if he’d grown not just in regards to the BLink technique, but as a Martial Artist too!

He felt as if he’d traversed deeper into his Martial Path, exploring parts of his Martial Art and his mind he never had before.

He was in a state of momentary limitlessness, he felt as if anything could happen as he was now!