The fundamental structure of the human consciousness was such that the human could truly ever focus on only one thing at a time. Even if one felt that they were thinking about multiple things at once, this was not true. It was an illusion, what was actually happening was that the mind was thinking about multiple things in extremely rapid succession, making it seem like it was focusing on multiple things simultaneously.
This was the same mechanism that processors worked through, they could only engage in one distinct process at once and switched between many in extremely rapid succession.
It was because of this that in the brief moments where she had to focus on Kane, Rui's attack had almost completely landed on her!
As an experienced Martial Artist, she quickly realized the exact mechanics by which Rui was able to land powerful attacks on her bypassing her active defense due to effectively exploiting a momentary mental blindspot.
Yet she underestimated what was happening.
It wasn't just her that Rui was predicting, it was also Kane!
Kane was aware that Rui knew his movements inside out and was extremely flexible. So all he did was simply forget that Rui existed and went all out to become as much of a problem to Senior Xanarn as possible.
Rui had an extremely deep predictive model for Kane, he stacked the predictive models on top of each other to predict what Senior Xanarn was going to do many beats into the future!
This allowed him to prepare the most surgically adapted responses to her movements well ahead of time!
Despite her operating at a level that significantly surpassed grade-ten Martial Squires, the two of them were able to push her into a defensive state as they went all out. Although they were unable to dominate her because even without the Martial Heart, she could easily withstand anything other than Rui's most powerful attacks to her vitals, and Kane's occasional charged strikes to her eyes.
The battle turned into a spectacle, unlike anything the guardians around them had ever seen. They became so captivated by the movements of Rui and Kane, that they completely forgot that they were a part of the battle!
Rui and Kane momentarily exchanged grins as they burned their power to pressure Senior Xanarn to the absolute limit.
And it was working.
She gritted her teeth as she did her best to blast them back. Yet Kane was shockingly even faster than her in his Fulminata state. He could outrun her attacks until they diluted and weakened, while Rui efficiently canceled them a portion of the attack, that was going to hit him, out with very targeted sound attacks that functioned like sound shields.
He withstood the rest of her attacks with his body, while his enhanced healing factor worked furiously to fix all the damage to ensure he retained his combat effectiveness just enough.
Frankly, it was not easy. Her attacks were incredibly heavy, there was a reason that she had utterly mopped the floor with dozens of high-grade Martial Squires even without going all out.
Yet, Rui persevered. Because of the role that he was playing, he could tolerate not being in peak condition. His goal was to land more damage on her than she did on them.
That was why he narrowed down all his offenses to Flowing Canons and tier five Transverse Resonance. Furthermore, he had the opportunity to make sure they all landed on more vital areas than areas that would not do as much damage.
He aimed for her solar plexus, her liver, neck and above, and her diaphragm.
Because she had such a hard time preventing those strikes from landing, she most certainly suffered damage to her vitals.
A race between the two began as she stepped up her efforts even more and had long exited the 'teacher' stage of the battle, she was now focused on winning, and would not make it easy for either Rui or Kane.
A profoundly intense battle began between the two of them as they pressured her over and over, achieving an impeccable success rate!
The two of them had gotten into a comfortable rhythm as they grew increasingly cleaner and smoother with their cooperation.
Senior Xanarn on the other hand had been fighting continuously without even a moment's break for hours, exerting enough power to overwhelm dozens of Martial Squires for hours on end.
The source of power and formidability mainly came from their Martial Hearts, without which they were only above Squire Realm to whatever degree.
It meant that Senior Xanarn was truly running out of energy!
Rui could sense it as he watched her streamline her movements and reduce efficiency and unnecessary energy wastage.
Furthermore, she had changed her breathing technique to a gentler one, one that did not drain her power as much.
Her eyebrows knitted as she took on a deeper intensity. A lifetime of experience in combat began to reflect in her combat as she began fighting like she long begun fighting extremely seriously.
While she had a lot of trouble dealing with Rui, she was able to see through Kane with increasingly greater ease, as he was the least sophisticated fighter out of the three of them. She began reacting to his attacks more sharply, even ignoring his attacks unless they were genuinely threatening by aiming for her throat or her eyes.
This was Kane's greatest shortcoming because he could only exert meaningful damage if he struck her closed eyes, or her throat and neck, she very quickly became able to predict him with greater ease, since he only had a few options to make a difference!
This increasingly minimized the amount of time that Kane drew her attention away from Rui, making it harder and harder for Rui to land powerful attacks on her vitals.
WHOOM!
She managed to blow Rui away before he could land a strike on her, trumping their teamwork for the first time in the fight.
('Of course she wouldn't go down so easily,') Rui mused as he exchanged a glance with Kane.
