Rui exhaled deeply as he closed his eyes, concentrating. His breathing evened out as he gathered his awareness and focus. Honing them towards their target.
Senior Xanarn.
He breathed deeply, opening his eyes.
"Begin."
Immediately, the guardians began bombarding her with attacks. As always, the close-range Martial Squires rushed in, hoping to land some attacks immediately as soon as the session began.
Meanwhile, the long-range Martial Squire also rose up as they aimed at her, avoiding the close-range Martial Squires.
Rui, on the other hand, did not rush in or attack from range immediately.
No.
He waited. He waited as he watched her with hawk eyes.
She pirouetted through the air, releasing a tornado of painful melodies through the air, tormenting the Martial Squires.
Yet even then, the moment he was waiting for had already come.
('Now!') Rui blasted out a tier Transverse Resonance.
The supersonic sound bullet swam through the air, yet it wasn't until the last moment that Senior Xanarn sensed the Sonic Bullet.
THWOOM!
The sound projectile dispelled as she breathed heavily, activating a breathing technique that generated a wall of sound, barely blocking his attack just an inch away from her body.
"Tsk," Rui tutted. ('Her pirouettes are paired with some technique that produces a lot of sound of one particular frequency. If I can produce a sound projectile of similar frequency, then I can camouflage my sound behind her sound. But it looks like it wasn't that easy to get a free hit.')
Rui had noticed many patterns in her movements and had prepared extensively for a confrontation with her.
She turned towards Rui with a surprised expression, before an amused smile replaced her expression. She launched waves of sound against him, looking to incapacitate him.
Yet, to her surprise, it didn't happen.
He had already made up his mind to rely on long-range attacks for as much as he could. The reason was simple, in order to adapt to her, he needed to be able to ensure that her incapacitating sound did not get in the way.
Unlike all the other guardians, he actually had a way by which he could negate the effects of her sound on himself.
THWOOM!
He launched Mighty Roar Flash Blast before him, and the two sound waves interacted in a way that left him unharmed!
('Destructive superposition for the win,') Rui smirked.
This was the opposite of the Transverse Resonance technique that empowered attacks by relying on constructive superposition to superimpose two sound waves upon one another to produce a stronger resultant wave with the net energy of the two waves.
He had used destructive resonance to cancel out the annoying sound, furthermore, the best part of this little tactic was that it only required as much or a little bit more sound than the sound that the attack contained.
Considering her attacks were often centered around hurting people with sound passively produced by her movements, Rui found it prudent to be able to handle them.
She smiled mildly at that, yet she wasn't done. She swirled through the air, releasing
an enormous blast wave of sound!
The sheer power in every square meter exceeded even a high-grade Martial Squire's ability to defend against with ease, only the strongest of defensive Martial Artists managed to withstand the attack.
And Rui.
This time, Senior Xanarn looked surprised that not only had Rui defended against the attack even though it seemed to have hit him, but he also seemed unharmed.
('Hehehe… It worked,') Rui smirked.
What he had effectively done was release a large and diluted Mighty Roar Flash Blast just moments before the attack reached him. Instead of focusing on a single pulse to form a dense attack, he let it expand in front of him just as her sound attack reached him.
It was effectively no different from a shield as long as he timed it right and made sure it underwent destructive resonance. Furthermore, he burned less energy than she did, because she was constantly making wide-area large-scale attacks that attacked many Martial Squires at once, this was a pattern that she had yet to break in the times that he had observed her holding back.
It meant that he needed to defend against only a portion of her power, meaning he consumed less energy than she did.
Ordinarily, he would have unhesitatingly gone all out with Godspeed, employing Forestep to get as much of an advantage as he could.
But this time, he didn't.
('I'm not fighting alone,') He mused as he put distance between himself and Senior Xanarn. Rather than simply launching huge barrages of attacks, he chose higher certainty shots and used tier four and sometimes even tier Transverse Resonance to make sure he hit her as hard as possible whenever he did.
He was conserving stamina.
Kane, too held back, exchanging glances with Rui as they confirmed their intentions with just simple glances, The two of them were extremely familiar with each other and didn't even need to exchange a single word to understand each other in combat.
Now was not the time for the two of them to use their most powerful trump cards. She was far too fresh, and the sparring battle was still far too chaotic for them to do so.
One of the disadvantages of Rui's Forestep technique was it relied on predictions to keep up with the movement speed of his Godspeed. What that meant was that the more he could predict in a given circumstance, the greater the risk he was enduring.
Currently, the two of them were not facing Senior Xanarn alone, they were also fighting alongside many guardians who were going all out.
Guardians that Rui could not predict, what if he ends up attacking one of them because he didn't predict them getting in his way?
Or worse yet, what if he himself ran into one of their attacks because he couldn't predict them?
He couldn't use Forestep in such chaotic circumstances. Thus it was a better idea to let the sparring session die down a bit and let her burn her stamina while the two of them retained theirs.
