The two fake Ruis faced off against him, quickly launching themselves at him. They, together, launched a wave of attacks that would have ordinarily been annoying to deal with, but his current state of having predictive models on both of them allowed him to not only deal with the situation but do so with even a certain amount of leeway.
WHOOSH
POW!
Rui evaded the attack of one of his opponents as he simultaneously launched a low sweeping kick against the other, staggering them. Rui quickly rushed forward, performing a throwing takedown on his opponent. He used his imbalance to simply take him down at that moment with less resistance. His opponent crumbled backward quickly. However, he didn’t have any leeway to turn the battle into a ground grappling match.
WHOOSH
Rui somersaulted away as his other opponent intervened attempting to throw another strike at him. He quickly unleashed several Tempestuous Ripples toward his opponent disallowing them to gather their bearings too easily. As soon as they dealt with the attacks, they realized that Rui simply used it as a means to escape from their attention for just a bit.
BLINK
BAM!
Rui managed to catch one of his opponents off-guard with a combination of Blink, Phantom, and Shadow Step, hitting them with a powerful Flowing Canon and flinging him that way.
Rui used the temporary one-on-one he had with the other fake Rui. He immediately began dishing out several waves of attacks against his hapless opponent. Although they weren’t all that different in physical prowess, Rui was still able to dominate them despite this. He was simply strong.
Eventually, Rui managed to take both of them out, relying on some clever tricks, but he took them out eventually.
THUD
When the final fake Rui fell to his knees collapsing to the ground, the fight had been completed. Rui felt amazing in his current body, it was able to execute the counters of the VOID algorithm more accurately than his actual body would. Yet before he could even bask in his victory, time was up. Rui woke up, opening his eyes to be greeted by the familiar ceiling of the procedure room he was in.
“The data suggests that there was a high degree of compatibility with your own body.” Doctor Herin said once Rui regained his bearings. “Seems we have hit close to the optimal bullseye.”
“This is where the hard part begins.” Squire Luna added. “You’ll have to discover the optimal configuration by brute force trial and error until we run into the optimal configuration of the parameters of the all-rounder Martial body.”
All-rounders were generally on a spectrum; an all-rounder was still considered an all-rounder even if they placed a bit more weight on one particular field than the others. As long as there wasn’t an overwhelming dominance in the emphasis on one particular field in comparison to the others, they would still be considered all-rounders.
“No…” Rui shook his head. “Frankly, this configuration is perfect.”
Squire Luna raised an eyebrow at those words. “A perfect distribution between all physical parameters just so happens to suit your Martial Art the best?”
Rui paused for a moment as he considered his response. “My Martial Path is adaptive evolution. I aim to adapt to all. I cannot place more weight on any one field as it would hinder my ability to adapt to some other Martial Art in question. Therefore, I think it is best if I proceed with this Martial body.”
Rui glanced down at his hands at those words.
He could feel the mild incompatibility between his current body and his Martial Art in comparison to a perfectly-balanced all-rounder Martial Art. His current body was a tad too heavy to perfectly execute some of the counters to his opponent’s predicted moves. He used the VOID algorithm more effectively and efficiently despite not having the familiarity with the hallucinated body than he did with his actual real body.
His Martial Art would be able to grow smoother once he had a body that catered to it perfectly. A speed and maneuvering-oriented Martial Artist would never be able to go further down their Martial Path with a heavyweight body. A power-oriented Martial Apprentice would never be able to go down their Martial Path with a lightweight body.
“If that is the case, then you can move on to the next preparatory step of the Squire breakthrough process.” Squire Luna informed him.
“The measurements?” Rui asked, recalling if from the briefing he underwent with Squire Gunther.
In order for the Squire breakthrough procedure to be perfectly tailored and customized to every Squire candidate, there were two things that were necessary. The first was knowing the end goal of the evolution process, this was the Martial body configuration. The second was knowing where the starting point was, this was equally necessary.
The procedure could not get a Martial Apprentice from a particular starting point to a particular destination if the starting point was unknown. Thus, Rui’s physical parameters would need to be documented thoroughly from the very top to the bottom and everything in between. Once his physical parameters were measured, then the evolution process would quickly be created, perfectly suited to take him from his current body to his Martial body in the Squire Realm.
Thankfully, it was a mundane process, there was no difficulty in successfully passing it.
“I shall inform the Martial Union of the success of the Martial body procedure, and the arrangements for the measurement process will be arranged rather swiftly, by today, even.” Squire Luna told Rui.
“Actually…” Rui interjected sheepishly. “I would rather not undergo the measurement procedure immediately. I have some personal matters that I would like to before proceeding forward with the preparations for the breakthrough to the Squire Realm if that’s alright.”
Squire Luna simply stared at him. “That is your prerogative, of course. If you wish to delay the breakthrough to the Squire Realm, then you do have that choice.”
“Thank you.” Rui bowed down. He had some personal preparations to make for the breakthrough to the Squire Realm.𝓞𝒱xt.𝑜