Rui left Kane to his own devices as he began spending his days mastering his new sense. He was initially having a little bit of difficulty with the new sensory technique that he had come up with. The reason was simple.
Sensory techniques required the most amount of training resources compared to other techniques in his experience. This had been true for every single sensory technique he had ever mastered in his entire life starting with the first one with Seismic Mapping all the way to his latest one. All of them he had mastered using the special sense sealing esoteric technology of the Martial Union.
Did that mean that it was impossible to create a new sensory technique without it? Of course not.
But it most certainly showed Rui how effective some of the training that Rui had undergone with the Martial Union’s resources could be.
Thankfully, the new sensory technique that he was creating borrowed from existing techniques, otherwise it would have been truly difficult for him to accomplish what he had in mind with the technique.
What he needed to use, each, Seismic Mapping, Tempestuous Feel, and Riemannian Echo partially only, while ignoring the rest of the senses.
It was like using only a part of one’s vision, hearing, and smell, all while ignoring the rest of those senses when one didn’t even know which parts they were.
Sensory data input did not come fully organized, needed to sort through all that data and fight what he wanted.
That was the issue that he was facing, it was an entirely mental problem.
He spent his days meditating before the Thundering Valley.
His training methodology was quite simple. He would apply his three senses to sense a small section of the Thundering Valley, while also storing all the sensory data that he got into his Mind Palace and organizing it.
Every time a lightning bolt struck the section of the valley that he was sensing, he would immediately go scour through his memory and look for signs of the upward stream of positive charges from the location where the lightning bolt struck, looking for any patterns that could be used to identify whether there were the preceding events of a lightning bolt strike.
One of the most annoying parts he found was focusing only on the relevant information and nothing else in such an environment. Although he had a sharp amount of control over his thoughts, it wasn’t easy being hyper-efficient in the way that his consciousness focused on important information.
This was separate from more tertiary processes such as using the Mind Palace for storage and processing. He was really starting to see why the Martial Union had extravagant training resources for literally every sensory technique.
As the days passed, Rui and Kane trained separately. Rui never saw Kane when he himself was training, and he respected Kane’s choice enough to not use Riemannian Echo to try and find him and spy on him.
However, he couldn’t help but grow curious. He managed to notice that every time Kane came back from training, there was an unmistakable sign that he had been hit by lightning, even if he did do a decent job covering it up.
He found it fascinating exactly what kind of training would require getting hit by lightning so often.
Though he wasn’t sure if that was a necessity for the training or just a consequence of failures.
He wasn’t sure if it was the latter, considering Kane’s demeanor was confident without a doubt.
Rui couldn’t imagine what kind of technique would require being hit by lightning, as strange as it sounded. 𝗈𝑣𝐥xt.𝚌𝔬𝗆
He recalled the fact that Kane had already thought of the idea for his technique after their first experience training in the Thundering Valley. That led him to believe that something about their first training session in the Thundering Valley led him to come up with whatever idea he was working on.
He momentarily considered whether his own techniques had inspired the technique before putting the thought of the way.
(‘That’s arrogant. I should focus on my own training rather than ponder his,’) Rui firmly pushed away any thoughts surrounding them as he dove back into his training.
Days turned into weeks, turning into months. The two of the grew into a rigorous disciplined schedule. They woke at around the same time, eating together before heading out to train in the Thundering Valley to train.
It wasn’t long before Rui made a breakthrough in his technique.
(‘I’ve found it!’) He grew excited as he finally caught all the patterns that allowed him to identify the preceding events of a lightning bolt.
He closed his eyes as he employed Seismic Mapping, Riemannian Echo, and Tempestuous Feel to the Thundering Valley before him.
An immensely gigantic flux of information entered his mind, yet he resolutely threw away exactly what he didn’t need. Instead, his mind swiftly focused on what he had come to realize was the relevant and necessary information.
SPARK
(‘There!’)
BOOM!
A millisecond later, a lightning bolt struck that exact location. He had come to peer through the veil of chaos that was the trajectory of a lightning bolt.
No matter what crazy path a lightning bolt ended up taking, its destination was fixed due to the streamer’s origin point being fixed.
This was the perfect way to estimate a lightning bolt without requiring abysmally powerful sensory techniques. He was quite excited by this result. He could now run around the Thundering Valley without care!
“Well, that’s not true,” He reigned his enthusiasm in. “A lightning bolt’s trajectory can still vary wildly and I can get by a lightning bolt that strays a lot if I’m not careful. Also, the inner regions of the Thundering Valley are definitely a no-no.”
The lightning in the inner regions was extremely dense from what little he had barely managed to glean using Riemannian Echo in combat. At that point, it was not longer speed training but defense or endurance training.