The Martial Unity

Although there were always more ways he could increase the accuracy of the technique, he ultimately gave up on it. The problem was that the principle of diminishing returns made it simply not worth the investment. He would have to spend an incredible amount of effort in overcoming many obstacles for benefits that were simply too insignificant to justify the efforts.

In fact, the second phase of the ODA System was almost verging over the limit, however, it was because Rui was quite keen on extending his maximum distance at which his aim was fully accurate well beyond the norm. After all, the first phase of the ODA System would merely give him accuracy of the best marksman.

Of course, this was still a great boon and an incredible development, however, Rui was not satisfied with this alone knowing he could go much further, thus he had resolved himself to push himself further to obtain even more extraordinary results.

If he was not wrong, then it was quite likely that no Martial Squire possessed the long-range accuracy that he did!

Hell, he wouldn’t be surprised if this extended even to the Martial Senior Realm, though he didn’t dare to have confidence in that possibility.

Time passed as he worked on the Sniper Project, refining the ODA system and field testing the protocols to gain some data. The best way to test whether something was functioning as desired was to simply physically test and gain data that would clearly indicate if it was functioning as desired or not.

Rui spent time in various kinds of environments, testing whether his predictions and extrapolations of atmospheric conditions were accurate to reality or not. Each time he noticed certain deviations, he identified the problem and corrected it, trying it over and over until the result was satisfactory.

In the meantime, Project Bounce had made a lot of progress as well.

Some great distance away from the Quarrier Orphanage in an uninhabited part of the Mantian Region, Squire Casen wound her right arm all the way back, clenching her fist rock hard. A tremendous amount of potential energy had gathered, brimming in her taught muscles.

Standing right before her was Rui, with arms in an extended stance, waiting to intercept the strike.

Casen swung her fist as her upper body twisted. The very atmosphere rippled, and the ground rumbled in shock as the unadulterated might of a Martial Squire crashed into his palm.

Yet Rui was ready.

His eyes narrowed as his palm intercepted the strike, moving with it as it increased its resonance the further it was pushed back, just like a spring. By the time Squire Casen had finished the strike, Rui had already been launched into the air.

The sheer velocity at which Rui had been launched far surpassed the speed of sound as his body cleaved through the air, leaving numerous sonic booms behind.

​ BOOM!!

In just an instant, he had landed more than a kilometer away from his original position!

“…Holy fuck!” Rui laughed. “That’s the tenth one hundred percent elastic collision in a row!”

Ten in a row with different kinds of attacks was definitely a sign that he had mastered it to a satisfactory extent. It would be more productive to move on with the next phase rather than become caught up with trying to refine the first phase even more, the issue with diminishing returns would certainly apply here as well.

“Another round?” Squire Casen asked as she sky-walked to his location.

In the past five months, she had helped Rui perfect and refine the first phase extensively and had grown accustomed to their training sessions.

“Yes, though you’ll have to scale down your strikes back to how elementary they were when we first began, you can’t go all out like you have been doing recently. I’m going to be trying something new.”

Her eyebrows rose in surprise. It seemed that Rui was finally satisfied with what he had been trying to accomplish for quite some time now. She was curious about what he would be trying to do next. Rui still hadn’t told her about the point of the technique, or what he was trying to accomplish at the end of the day. She had her own guesses, of course.

Her biggest suspicion was that Rui was trying to create an escape technique that was fueled by his opponent’s power. Perhaps the point of the technique was that it allowed you instantly get away right in the middle of combat.

In which case Rui will have already mastered that technique, but he evidently hadn’t thus she could only conclude that her suspicions were incomplete or straight up wrong.

“Alright,” Rui took his stance. “Let’s go, keep it nice and easy. We can increase the difficulty as time passes.”

“Ok…”

She didn’t even wind her attack back, she intended to begin with a jab.

Rui on the other hand, increased his concentration to the max. He was going to be trying something new that he hadn’t developed the muscle memory for, after all. His conscious mind needed to pull all the weight.

She threw a solid jab at him.

Rui tried not only converting the power to kinetic energy, but this time also tried directing it downwards into the Earth.

POW

THUD!

He failed as he instead was sent tumbling across the ground in a spectacular failure.

“Tsk.” He tutted as he dusted himself.

He didn’t experience much pain at all thanks to the Adamant Reforging conditioning training that made his skin and flesh quite resilient.

He was trying to test out one of the possible solutions to accomplishing phase two of the Bounce Project, which was getting rid of the inherited kinetic energy. He had tried directing it to the ground in an inelastic collision where all of it would get converted into damage into the ground, but his timing was terrible, and he mostly lost control of the kinetic energy.

Of course, he didn’t expect to succeed on the first try in the first place.