Barring the first attack which gave her space, Rui found that she actually fought remarkably reserved. That made sense, there was no point to a training session if she simply blew them away with the power of her Heart.
('In fact, she doesn't even seem to be using her Heart.') Rui's eyes widened.
That was incredibly impressive in his eyes. It meant that she was severely restricting herself to ensure that she didn't devastate them with a single attack.
Rui had wondered how strong Martial Seniors were without their Martial Hearts. After all, the power of the Martial Heart was the defining condition that separated the Squire and the Senior Realms. Did that mean that a Martial Senior without their Martial Heart was merely as strong as a Martial Squire?
('Surprisingly, that doesn't appear to be that far from the truth,') Rui realized as he watched Senior Xanarn fight. ('She's holding back by fighting without her Martial Heart, yet with the limited power that she had availed to herself, it doesn't appear to be too easy.
Her movements were sharp and her expression was taut. She certainly was not at a lower hand, which meant that she was probably operating at grade-ten Squire-level power or perhaps quasi-Senior level power.
Rui thought back to the Root, which was a quasi-Senior level threat. She definitely wasn't operating at that level right now, given that she had sealed her Martial Heart. It also showed Rui that the Martial Heart was an overwhelming proportion of the power of Martial Seniors. Unlike when Squire Kyrie restricted her movements, this wasn't as much of a restriction of her normal power, but a complete absence of it due to the Martial Heart not being activated.
Squire Kyrie retained her toughness and reaction speed even when she held back because she could not hold those back.
Yet Senior Xanarn could hold those back to a much greater degree.
('Interesting,' this is so different from the power of the Apprentice and Squire Realms,') Rui mused as he studied her movements with interest.
The power of the Apprentice and Squire Realms were inducible, the core source of power never dissipated. The cognitive enhancements to the brain gained by discovering the Martial Path were permanent, barring extreme cases. The Martial body was certainly not something that could go away, it was a permanent change.
Yet it appeared that the Martial Heart was different. It was almost closer to a techniques as opposed to a Realm, in a sense. Rui found that to be quite interesting, he wondered if the same was the case for the higher Realms.
('It seems that every Realm has something or the other that's unique in the power that it gives to the Martial Artist.')
He watched Senior Xanarn's movements closely. The total amount of force she had exerted was not all that great, yet she exerted them with a level of efficiency that could not be underestimated.
He wasn't too interested in the Martial Squires. While it was true they were powerful, he had seen many powerful Martial Squires, it was far from a novelty at this point in time.
Instead, he focused on her movements as his mind rushed into work.
He was building a predictive model.
He abstained from doing so against guardians because he did not want to become dependant on pre-preparation to defeat people he ought to be able to defeat without preparation like fellow Martial Squires, and because he didn't want to get a position that he couldn't defend without preparation.
Neither of those reasons were relevant here, since he was dealing with a Martial Senior who he could never possibly defeat in the Squire Realm, and since this was sparring training and not an official match.
That was why he went all out as he observed the patterns in her movements and quickly recorded them into his Mind Palace.
('Her movements are pristine,') Rui admitted.
She evaded attacks with just the necessary amount of effort, and nothing more. She exerted a level of efficiency that was truly impressive.
('She's a sound-oriented Martial Artist,') Rui mused.
Yet she wasn't ordinary, her production and manipulation of sound far surpassed Rui's Sonic Bullets.
She used sound for offense, defense, and even maneuvering!
Furthermore, it did not even appear that she was strictly using specific Martial Art techniques. It was as though her intuitive understanding of sound was so great that she no longer even needed strict Martial Art techniques to manipulate them!
('Is this what becomes of Martial Art when one traverses to higher Realms?') Rui wondered. ('Do techniques cease to have form and simply become concepts and principles?')
He wasn't sure, he lacked too much insight into the higher Realms for him to be able to come to that conclusion.
THWOOM!
She swept several Martial Squires across the floor with strange motions that generated pulses of sounds. Rui found her motions to be mesmerizing, almost, so much so that he almost forgot to memorize her movements.
"She hasn't opened her eyes even once," Kane murmured.
"She's blind," Rui replied. "She primarily relies on her hearing."
"That's incredible," Kane remarked. "I wonder why she chose that kind of Martial body."
"She lost her vision even before she became a Martial Artist," Rui informed him. "She adapted so well to her disability, that it ended up giving her her strength and even defined her Martial Path."
"She lost her vision before she became a Martial Artist?" Kane murmured with widened eyes. "That's… incredible."
Although Martial Artists could cope without vision as long as they learned sensory techniques or trained existing senses well, the same was not true for normal humans. The fact that she became a Martial Artist despite having lost her vision was definitely shocking.
Rui even guessed that the reason her Martial Path was related to sound was because of her blindness, it was an instance of traumatic and significant events having an impact on one's Martial Path when they did end up discovering it.
