𝒪𝒱xt.𝐂𝑶
Rui’s concerns turned out to be true, it did take far too much time for him to take down the spider. He knew it would given the fact that tier four Transverse Resonance did not so much as cause the Spider to bruise.
This highlighted the difference between him and the spider.
(‘Fitting for the sole monster of a floor,’) Rui mused.
Generally, the more monsters a floor had, the weaker each monster was individual. Floors with a lesser number of monsters tended to have monsters that were individually stronger.
This was almost certainly the case with the floor with the Earthen Basilisk. Just purely off of the size of the creature, Rui knew that its physicality was quasi-Senior level, though its actual threat level was probably at the very peak of the Squire Realm due to the fact that it was a beast with no techniques and tactical capabilities.
In this case, Rui didn’t think the spider was nearly as physically tough as the earthen basilisk, but it certainly was more lethal offensively due to the poison.
(‘Pity it’s not going to save it here,’) He narrowed his eyes as he successively launched four Mighty Roar Flash Blast sound projectiles.
THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM
The four supersonic sound pulses overlapped and constructive interference successfully took place as an extraordinarily powerful trajectory slammed into the spider’s eye.
SPLAT
As tough as the spider was, not even it could withstand such powerful attacks on such a vital spot. It shuddered in pain as it began bleeding from the wound, clearly bewildered.
What it didn’t understand was from where and how such an attack was hitting it.
(‘Sensing sound projectiles are already hard to sense, to begin with,’) Rui mused. (‘On top of that, in the Shionel Dungeon, sensing it is an absolute impossibility. If not for the fact that this technique is inconducive to be used in the environment of the Shionel Dungeon, this would have been one of my trump cards in addition to his blade and pipe.’)
The ODA System was also an important reason why this tactic was working in the first place.
Normally, using the ODA System along with Transverse Resonance was too difficult, since both techniques required an enormous amount of data when working with the VOID algorithm, which also quite mentally taxing.
Thankfully, the spider was a creature that seemed extremely comfortable with remaining stationary. Which made his life easier as far as constructing predictive models went. He could rather easily know well ahead of time which way and how the spider was going to move.
This reduced the burden from the VOID algorithm just enough that he could use it with tier-four Transverse Resonance.
It took hours before he was finally done.
THUD
The spider’s body collapsed after tons of attacks finally wounded it enough to make it bleed out to death.
“It’s done,” Rui sighed, collapsing down as he rested on his arms in a sitting position.
“Get some rest,” Kane told him. “I’ll go mine all the esoteric ore deposits since I didn’t contribute to anything this time.”
“Appreciate that,” Rui nodded, left to his own thoughts while Kane descended downwards to the corpse. He didn’t even need to clear a path to the corpse since Rui’s continuous attack had already done that.
Rui on the other hand considered the battle he had just undergone.
(‘That spider is probably exponentially less powerful than the Root,’) Rui mused. (‘It’s unacceptable that I can only kill it with such a great advantage.’)
He considered the reason that he had to resort to a strategy that was no different from running away from the spider.
(‘Too slow, too reliant on stealth, too susceptible to poison, Too weak to inflict meaningful damage within a short span of time,’) Rui sighed.
There were all reasons that he was unable to fight the spider head-on face-to-face. He would need to address all these reasons and more.
(‘That’s going to entail a lot of hard work, not to mention the creativity,’) Although Rui did have an exceptional track record when it came to developing techniques, it was by no means easy. He needed to push himself to the limit to develop powerful techniques. He didn’t just conjure them up out of thin air magically.
He was consumed in thought surrounding the matter even until Kane was done, and the two of them returned from the dungeon, heading back.
“Training?” Kane frowned. “You’re going to be training in the Shionel Confederation? Really?”
“Yeah,” Rui nodded. “That’s why I was hoping you could do the deliveries yourself. I need as much time to myself as possible considering all the dungeon raiding that we do.”
Kane wasn’t entirely sure why Rui was subjecting himself to training outside of the Kandrian Empire so far from it, but he simply nodded. “Gotcha, see ya.”
He left, disappearing into thin air, to complete the chores while Rui turned his attention back to himself.
(‘Before I can even begin training I need to develop a theoretical framework for the techniques,’) Rui knew that he couldn’t jump the gun. (‘And for that, I need to identify what I seek out of my techniques.’)
When he considered what he knew about the Root, there was one thing that he knew he sought the most.
(‘I need a technique that allows me to broadly cope with the absurd speed of the Root’s roots,’) He still recalled how he couldn’t perceive the root’s blinding speed with his Riemannian Echo.
Of course, the Riemannian Echo was not a sensory organ that Rui sensed through as much as he was reading it, which made it slower. Still, it was fast enough that he would be unable to react to it had he been there in the flesh as well.
This was most likely not a tenable state for winning. He could not allow for such a giant combat speed gap especially when there was also a giant power gap that came with it, he would be blasted with critical injuries before he could even begin to react.