The Martial Unity

Of course, the sheer strain that it put on Rui could not be understated. Neither the VOID algorithm nor the ODA system was easy to apply completely in the heat of combat, especially the former.

However, together?

Together they were a whole other beast that truly pushed even Rui’s prodigious superhuman mind to its absolute limit. He didn’t think he would be able to maintain for any extended period of time. He had only done so for about ten minutes before the battle transitioned.

(‘Very effective against close-range experts,’) Rui noted. (‘Unfortunately, I cannot maintain it for the entirety of a battle, thus it cannot serve as a universal solution against close-quarters specialists.’)

There were certain templates that fights between certain kinds of Martial Artists followed. After all, while every Martial Art and Martial Path was unique, that did not mean they had zero intersections and similarities.

Fights between long-range Martial Artists and close-range Martial Artists generally went the same way. If the long-range Martial Artist was able to open and maintain the distance between his opponent and himself by firing attacks at them to stop them from coming closer and also moving back, then there was a good chance that they would not lose. Furthermore, if they possessed the capability to inflict meaningful damage with every attack, then their chances of winning were also more significant.

In cases where long-range Martial Artists won, they usually never allowed the close-range Martial Artist to close the distance between them, and fire off powerful attacks from a distance, inflicting enough damage with each attack such that, over time, their opponent would lose, one way or another.

Close-range Martial Artists also had their work cut out for them. Their win conditions were closing the distance between themselves and their opponents so that their opponent was within striking range. At such close range, their victories were almost guaranteed. There was simply no way the average long-range Martial Artist could possibly keep up with a close-range Martial Artist at close quarters.

There were even existing paradigms for close-range Martial Artists as a means to accomplish closing the distance that had already been tried and tested as solutions that were effective enough. For example, one popular solution was to master maneuvering techniques that allowed one to weave through incoming fire from range while closing the distance. Evading the attacks while closing the distance prevented the long-range Martial Artists from pushing them away with said attacks.

Another solution was to either withstand the attacks with a powerful passive defense or to power through them with momentum and strikes.

Regardless, close-range Martial Artists that were able to overcome or bypass the long-range offense usually won by successfully reaching their opponents and overwhelming them with their powerful close-range offenses.

One of the disadvantages that long-range Martial Artists often suffered was that it was too difficult to keep close-range Martial Artists away from beyond a certain range. Some of them could prevent them from approaching closer than a hundred meters, though they were very few.

The issues were too many, it was far too easy to avoid attacks at that distance.

Rui, on the other hand, could keep them away from a huge distance thanks to the fact that Sonic Bullets were difficult to perceive after the launch and the fact that Rui’s accuracy was too high even at great distances away. Furthermore, the combination of the ODA system and the VOID algorithm allowed him to ensure that even though his opponent did his best to avoid being a target by moving around in random trajectories, Rui could still hit them very accurately!

This meant that Rui the maximum distance at which Rui could force his opponents away and from entering was incredibly large. Large enough that almost all long-range Martial Squires would burn in jealousy if they found out.

Of course, this was not a viable strategy because not only could Rui only maintain it for a short amount of time due to the mental toll it took on him, but also, when he did eventually reach his limit, his mental strain would hinder his performance significantly, preventing him from fighting optimally against an opponent in close-quarters combat

Thus, unless he somehow massively improved the ease of usage of the VOID algorithm and the ODA system, it was highly unlikely that this would ever become a one-size fits all strategy. Rui didn’t think that the difficulty of the VOID algorithm and the ODA system was something that could be lowered. If anything, it would probably only keep increasing as time passes.

He had spent an enormous amount of time trying to reduce the difficulty of the VOID algorithm but to very little avail. The principle of diminishing returns had already long stalled the research of optimizing the VOID algorithm to make it easier to execute.

Rui didn’t think that he would have better luck in this world. Even if it was possible, it was simply not worth the time and effort that would almost certainly be needed to make any meaningful progress. It was far easier for him to pursue other avenues of strength, even in regard to the VOID algorithm itself.

For example, Rui was still very cognizant of the fact that the VOID algorithm’s protocols were still not adapted to the new world that he had been reborn. He still needed to reconfigure the protocols of the VOID algorithm and perform new original research or borrow from existing research to form the new basis of the adaptive evolution model that actually allowed him to adapt to his opponent’s Martial Art.

That was a far more productive and vital area of research to go into.

Even if Martial Artists lived longer, time was a precious resource that they needed to spend wisely and allot appropriately.

(‘The ODA system is good, but I do not have a need nor a desire to spend too much time trying to optimize it,’) Rui noted. (‘I am an all-rounder, not a long-range Martial Artist, after all.’)