The Martial Unity

Once Julian provided context on all of the esoteric science that the research logs referenced, Rui had a far easier time understanding all of it. But he mostly focused on the Flux Evolution method, as it had been renamed by the end of the research logs.

“I see.” Rui murmured as he read through the elaborate explanation report that Julian provided him. “The reason that the evolution procedure cannot just be performed infinitely is that there is a time limit before the radiation administered becomes lethal due to overdosage. On Earth, this would be considered to be an Acute Radiation Syndrome.”

Julian’s report mentioned prolonged exposure to radiation was lethal. What he was surprised by was the fact that they didn’t know why. Both Julian and the researchers treated radiation as a dangerous but largely unknown and inscrutable form of energy similar to that of light.

“So, they haven’t yet come up with Maxwell’s Electromagnetic Theory or the Quantum Theory of light, huh?” Rui surmised. “They also haven’t discovered DNA or a detailed structure and function of cells. It also doesn’t seem like they have an accurately completed theory of the atom.”

The research logs gave him a lot of insight into the scientific limitations of this world. While they possessed a large sum of knowledge on the many supernatural phenomena of this world, they did not develop deep scientific theories that explained the phenomena in this world.

Part of this was because esoteric sciences were largely sufficient and a proven field. Most of the research and development in this world was targeted around the esoteric and supernatural phenomena in this world. This neglected research into ordinary fields that looked at the more mundane and ordinary phenomena such as that of gravity.

Rui didn’t necessarily fault them for this. In front of the many fantastical esoteric phenomena in this world capable of wonders, the ordinary phenomena weren’t really as alluring in comparison.

(‘interesting.’) Rui mused. (‘The harsh conditions that they subjected the body to are varied depending on which biological system they are evolving. To evolve the muscular system, they subjected the muscular cells to a substance via a potion that would force the muscular cells to consume a greater amount of energy to produce greater amounts of muscular force. The muscular cells that couldn’t keep up due to being too weak would perish while the genetically best cells would survive. The new cells reproduced from these surviving cells thanks to the healing potions will have mutated even more than normal thanks to the dosage of radiation that causes more mutations from generation to generation to speed up the evolution process. The process repeats over and over again such that each generation of mutated muscular cells is much superior to the previous generation. By the end of the procedure, the newest of muscle cells will have evolved far past normal human parameters.’)

Rui was fascinated by this process. Similar processes had been developed for all biological systems in the body. These processes were such that only the genetically superior proportion of the cells of a particular biological system or organ would survive. The next generation of cells would inherit the superior genes with some amount of mutations caused by the radiation. The best mutations would survive in the next round while the worst would die. The end result was cells snowballed with the most superior genetic mutations over countless rounds of evolution.

This ended up with all biological systems and all types of cells being genetically far superior to the originals.

However, there were constraints. Not only was there a maximum amount of radiation the body could be subjected to before it became dangerous and lethal, but there were also internal constraints to the body. Increasing the metabolic power and capability of each cell increased the energy consumption of each cell. This was dangerous because if the energy consumption was too high then the stamina of the body would decrease.

Of course, the energy reserves also increased during the Squire breakthrough evolution process. The aim was to ensure that the balance suited the Martial Artist.

For some Martial Artists like Fae, increased power at the cost of stamina was desirable. It suited her style. She was a hyper-aggressive offensive fighter who went all-out to defeat her opponent with overwhelming offense in a short amount of time.

On the other hand, sacrificing stamina for greater raw muscular power was absolutely catastrophic for a Martial Artist like Milliana.

“Different Martial Artists need customized Squire breakthroughs.” Rui realized. “You cannot universally apply the exact same identical procedure to different kinds of Martial Artists. It would ruin their Martial Path. Each Squire evolution needs to be surgically customized to fit the target Martial Artist.”

“That is also why the Martial Squire we fought, Caella Freelia, was so unstable.” He muttered. “Her body was not only completely different that it used to be. But the evolution ‘configuration’ she underwent was probably not customized for her. That’s also why her control was so unstable. We would probably be dead if she underwent perfect evolution.”

Rui wiped some sweat off his forehead. The fact that Caella had dominated them despite being nerfed in so many different ways went to show how much stronger true Martial Squires were.

“I bet this is the reason for the second condition of Squire candidacy.” His eyes widened as he made another realization. “Assuming the Squire evolution is permanent, then getting the correct evolution configuration of physical parameters is absolutely vital. If your Martial Art changes drastically at its core after you undergo Squire evolution, you’re fucked!”

In that case, it made sense to wait for a Martial Apprentice’s Martial Art to mature so that it would not undergo any drastic fundamental changes. Otherwise, the irreversible Squire evolution would not be suited to the drastic changes.

Rui finally understood the reasons for Squire candidacy. The individuality condition was to ensure that the brain was augmented enough so that the Martial Apprentice’s brain would survive the breakthrough. The maturity condition was to ensure that the Martial Art would not change drastically later on after the breakthrough to become incompatible with the Martial Artist’s evolved body.

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