The Martial Unity

Rui had gotten a good long sleep that night, resting his weary mind and spirit. He slept rare, so when he did sleep, he slept for a good nine hours of deep sleep. Feeling rejuvenated, he was already prepared for the next mission.

He did not feel the need to take a break or unwind, he was determined to gather as many martial credits he could six months before the Kandrian Martial Festival. That meant pushing himself to the absolute maximum.

The reason he limited himself to at most six months before the Kandrian Martial Festival was because he needed time not just to master the individual techniques, but become familiar with using these new techniques with the rest of his Martial Art, he knew that the next round of training would also require the most amount of adjustment time.

The larger his Martial Art grew, the harder it was and longer it took to fully integrate new techniques. This was because having more options made it harder to choose. If one had to make a choice between two options, and two hundred options, one would obviously have a much harder time with the latter than the former.

This was an exaggerated version of what Rui was going through as he grew stronger. He had undergone three rounds of training ever since he became a Martial Apprentice.

The first round he had learnt very foundational techniques; Vital Pressure, Elastic Shift, Parallel Walk and Acute Edge and Helical Breathing. There was absolutely no large variety of options here. He barely had one technique for one field, and there were many fields his Martial Art needed to have had zero fields.

Making choices were extremely easy when you had only one choice.

The second round involved filling the gaping holes in his Martial Art; with techniques like Flowing Canon, Binding Lash, Shifting Silhouette and Mirage Dive.

These still weren’t problematic because they only filled in the shortcomings, at the end of the day he still barely had one or two choices, at most three choices.

The third round, the last round of Apprentice-level training he had undergone was a bit different. Now his Martial Art had a total of fourteen techniques. This was a surplus compared to before, he had plenty of choices, permutations and combinations to choose from and that made decision making process harder than before.

More choices always meant more time to process, he needed to be able to master these techniques not just individually but also in conjunction with each other, He needed to treat them as part of one single Martial Art and individuals within a single group.

However, this could not be done through merely words. Last time it had taken merely a week to grow comfortable with all techniques, since Outer Convergence and Inner Divergence were passive and constant, as was Seismic Sensing. Blink had been the only issue.

However, Rui was quite certain that the next round of would be different. If he did in fact learn four to five techniques in totality, then he would have a total of eighteen to nineteen techniques in total. This was no trivial matter, he wouldn’t be able to optimize his swiftness and comfort with using these techniques with each other in a week.

This is why he had set himself a time limit for missions such that he would have just enough time after the technique training to ensure that his fluidity and comfort in using these techniques in conjugation with each other and in rapid succession with each other.

Only then would he be able to participate in the Martial Festival with his Martial Art at its peak form. He would rather forgo mastering more techniques in order to truly master a few number of techniques. It meant nothing if he had all these powerful techniques if he did not know how to apply them optimally and apply them with other techniques optimally. His Martial Art would simply be no more than a haphazardous cluster of techniques that he wasn’t able to use as well as he could have.

In many ways, techniques were like tools. Mastering a technique was like having a very high-quality tool, but if you did not know how to use these tools properly because your purchased too many too quickly, then you were inferior to someone who knew when and where to apply which tools and why.

Rui would always choose to be the latter than the former, he believed in control above all. And he would never forsake it for anything, no matter how powerful the technique or power in question was.

He did not intend to cross his limit, he would go all out in earning martial credits, and then ensure he spent them wisely.

For now, he could forget about the future techniques he intended to master, for he had yet to accumulate the martial credits he intended to accrue. It was for this very reason he was walking towards the mission library, after having taken a good long rest, he was already ready for his next mission. He intended to scan the library for the most profitable mission with a difficulty grade at or below his grade as a Martial Apprentice and complete as soon as he could.

He entered the familiar pentagonal library, immediately running his gaze across the entire library.

Last time he had picked a hunting-class mission, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go for yet another hunting-class mission right off the bat. He did intend to widen and diversify his experience.

There were three classes of missions he hadn’t experienced yet.

The offense-class, the covert-class and the miscellaneous class. He had already ruled out two of them in his last visit, but he didn’t feel as close-minded as he used to. Maybe he would end up enjoying all three of these classes of missions more so than he did his hunting mission.

“Decisions, decisions.” he murmured, as he walked deeper into the library.