The Martial Unity

“It’s odd that they’re grouping up so much the deeper you go into the forest,” Rui murmured.

What was driving the migration of fauna toward the center of the Serevian Plateau? The mission bill had mentioned changes in the migration patterns of the fauna in the Serevian Plateau. Rui wondered if they were referring to this.

“Anyways, is it about time I begin?” Rui murmured to himself as he glanced to the right gazing down at a lake.

He was required to use the bio-recon surveillance device at eight points equally distanced from each other and the center of the Serevian Plateau to gather data on various environmental parameters. Furthermore, he had to do this multiple times at different distances from the center of the Serevian Plateau. Essentially, he would be taking environmental data along effectively all portions of the Serevian Plateau at a certain distance from a certain point onwards.

As for how he knew whether he was at the required distance to conduct the eight-point empirical surveillance, he would refer to topological features on the map and get a roughly accurate estimate of the distance from the center of the Serevian Plateau. Once that happened, even if he was roughly off, he would more or less obtain the data he wanted to obtain.

Since there was no such thing as GPS or satellites that would allow him to reach the exact position, such practices were common and really the only norm.

He navigated a bit relative to the lake until he stopped.

“Right about here should be fine.” He nodded. He plucked out his bio-recon device and planted it into the ground as per protocols, before hitting a few buttons.

The device immediately buzzed and whirred. Rui watched on with interest as he felt the insertion of a thin needle dig into the soil and the extraction of soil with Seismic mapping. The bio-recon device had taken an incredibly thin but deep soil sample. The next step involved some more button pressing and different positioning. It took him several minutes until he had collected the required data at that particular point. He moved on to the other points, using the same practice of moving relative to topographical features to find his spot.

It wasn’t easy, as he constantly ran into other beasts and creatures. He promptly fought them away testing his prowess against different types of creatures.

The diversity in fauna gave him a lot of data on how the Flowing Void Style performed against vastly differing species. There were several conclusions he had been able to draw.

First, the predictive model was surprisingly effective against the various creatures that he squared off against. It seemed that he was able to eventually predict their motions with close to the same degree that he predicted humans.

It was surprising, but in hindsight, he should have expected it. The predictive model was merely just applying statistics and probability to motions and inferring the probabilities of possible moves based on existing patterns of motions.

Thus, it could effectively be applied to any dataset of motions within a closed system. This was a relief to Rui, it meant he would not need to change the predictive model all that much in order to adapt to the world of Gaia.

However, the same couldn’t be said for the adaptive evolution model. The model that outputted the correct counter move to the predicted move by the prediction model. This model was incompatible with non-human animals.

However, it was more complicated than that, Rui learned. The adaptive evolution model was varyingly incompatible with non-human opponents. For example, it retained a portion of effectivity against four-limbed mammalian vertebrae creatures with two legs and two arms. This was because there were surprisingly enough common grounds between these creatures and human opponents that the adaptive evolution model wasn’t entirely obsolete.

However, when the opponent diverged from humans genetically, the adaptive evolution model grew increasingly obsolete. Once the opponents were non-vertebrae or had a different number of limbs, then Rui simply tossed it away, it couldn’t even be used at all.

It showed him the scope of the problem in so far as it was related to non-human creatures.

(‘This won’t be easy.’) Rui sighed as he glanced back at an animal that had approached him threateningly. At this point, Rui was tired of testing the VOID algorithm against the fauna of the forest.

He used the Mind Mask technique to project a powerful image of himself as he viably could. The Mindmirror secondary brain chugged alongside as it aided with the technique parallel to Rui’s mind.

He opened his eyes as a Squire-level aura descended onto the area.

The wolf-like creature whimpered in fear as it turned around and fled for its life, intimidated by the sudden spike in danger that Rui had emanated.

Rui dropped the stealth strategy and went for the intimidation strategy when gathering data with the bio-recon device, mostly because he was stationary and couldn’t use the Shadow Step technique when stationary. Mind Mask was powerful but it could not provide him with stealth all by itself.

Instead, using it to fool all the creatures that he was in the Squire Realm was a much more effective strategy. It was attention-drawing, of course, but effective nonetheless. It was a bit dangerous in so far as if he ran into a Martial Artist who approached him despite the Squire-level aura. Which is why he would rather keep a low profile. He wasn’t going engage in flashy showing off in the middle of a dangerous mission if he could avoid it.

It took him a few hours, but he finally covered all the points he was required to by protocols.

“Finally done.” He huffed before setting back the bio-recon device, before turning to face front. “Now for some more personal investigation into the heart of the matter.”

He eagerly began traveling towards the heart of the Serevian Plateau as the explorer within him woke up. He wanted to find out the mystery that lay at the heart of the continent.