The Martial Unity

The assistant standing outside felt a bit strange. Rui had not moved at all in the past half an hour since the training began. Although he was merely trained to be able to operate the machines that could not be operated by the person using them to be trained, such as the chamber that he was operating now, he had been doing this job for years, serving alongside the head and side Squire instructors of the facility that had trained many a Martial Artist to master many sensory techniques, it had given him a degree of expertise on how Martial Artists ought to go about the training and what worked best while what didn’t.

It was why he was confident that Rui was simply wasting time standing in one place instead of gaining enough experience in evading the projectiles. Rui even made bizarre requests such as adjusting the speed of the projectiles, size of the projectiles and weight of the projectiles.

(‘But what is the point of doing this if you’re not going to even begin dodging?’) He shook his head. Of course, he did not dare voice out his thoughts. Rui was a Martial Squire, someone who possessed an exalted status in not only society but especially in the Martial Union compared to a relatively low-level employee like him.

Suddenly, there was a change.

CLASP

Rui caught one of the projectiles aimed for his face.

The assistant shrugged, somewhat impressed, in his experience, it was somewhat unusual for a Martial Artist to gain the accuracy in timing and placement of movements to catch the projectiles, but considering he was still at a relatively low level, it wasn’t anything crazy.

“Alright, time to put my preliminary understanding and preparations to the test. Begin increasing the difficulty of the exercise slowly as time passes.” Rui instructed.

“Yes sir, will do.” The assistant promptly replied, sighing inwardly.

He increased the difficulty level by a bit, increasing the speed, and frequency and diversifying the size a bit.

CLASP

Rui caught a projectile the size of a baseball aimed at his shoulder, tossing it away. Technically, this was supposed to be evasion, but catching it had greater sensory requirements, thus Rui had chosen to focus on cleanly intercepting all of them.

One by one, he caught all incoming projectiles regardless of their direction and size.

(‘Interesting, maybe he is particularly talented.’) The assistant staff member watched with interest. (‘Let’s step up the difficulty a bit.’)

Once again, all the parameters were increased. Yet, Rui easily kept up with all of them. The speed and power of the projectiles weren’t at the Squire Realm, not at all. The lowest level of the training as Rui requested was at the human level, thus it wasn’t physically difficult to catch the projectiles for a Martial Squire, not at all. The difficulty of this training exercise was the fact that Martial Squires were unable to sense them at the beginning, thus no amount of strength or speed would allow them to catch or evade the projectile until they could.

An hour later, the assistant’s demeanor had long gone from calm and composed to shocked.

CLASP

Rui caught a thin ball the size of a ping pong ball, before moving his head to evade another projectile aimed at his head, while simultaneously catching a third projectile dashing for his knee. He was dealing with multiple projectiles simultaneously quite smoothly. What was especially shocking to the assistant staff member was that the speed and momentum of the projectiles had escalated from human level to quasi-Squire level!

This was unheard of in all his time serving as an assistant helper in this facility in the Martial Union, he had never heard of someone reaching the quasi-Squire level stage in evasive combat exercises after a single hour!

Rui had made more progress in one hour than some Martial Artists did in weeks!

​ Even now, he was dodging the projectiles smoothly, catching them whenever possible.

(‘He’s an unparalleled prodigious genius in the field of sensory Martial Art!’) The assistant gasped in excitement.

Of course, this wasn’t exactly true. The way Rui had gone about it was very simple, yet very different from all other Martial Artists.

He made the obvious deduction that the strange sensations he was experiencing were generated by the projectiles. However, while most people would stop there, Rui went much further,

In the beginning, Rui had simply spent quite some time observing and collecting data. He had begun by measuring the time difference between the inception of the sensation, and the actual clash between the projectile, while also measuring the momentum of the projectile based on the impact, and also measuring the weight and size of the projectile. These three measurements over a period of time allowed him to understand the correlation between these physical parameters and the sensations that they caused.

(‘Higher momentum seems to linearly correlate to a more intense sensation, as does density.’)

(‘Higher speed seems to linearly correlate to the abruptness of the inception of sensation of increased fluctuations.’)

(‘The sine of the angle of incidence is directly proportional to the intensity of the sensation, while also causing a similar angle in the pressure causing the sensation.’)

There were several correlations between what he felt and what they told him about the incoming projectile. Using these rules, Rui could infer the speed, weight, size, momentum, and even direction of the projectile, allowing him to effectively ‘see’ these projectiles at any given moment using these calculations.

Unfortunately, it was still far from perfect.

POW

Rui was smacked in the face by a football-sized projectile.

(‘Hm, I was too slow in my estimations.’) Rui noted. He wasn’t particularly displeased. He knew that this would take time, he needed to be able to read these sensations subconsciously, unlike the conscious calculations he was making at the moment.

Conscious calculations were far slower than reflex, the moment the assistant reached even the very base of the Squire Realm as far as the speed of the projectiles went, Rui knew he wouldn’t be able to keep up.