Having decided to mostly focus on the mind whilst in the Senior Realm, his path within the Senior Realm was laid out.
Of course, he didn't intend to abandon the power of Body, or Martial Art techniques that brought out the power of Body. However, it was worth it to focus on reaching a higher Realm of power, especially the Realm of power that he had most of an affinity for.
Rui continued to ask various pertinent questions to Master Reina, making sure that he got everything he needed to know out of the way.
"Mental techniques do not necessarily count as the Martial Mind, correct?" Rui asked. "Since the Martial Mind is the power of thought more than it is the power of mind."
"That's accurate," She replied. "Mental techniques make use of mind rather than thought, however, mind-oriented Martial Art still have much more of an affinity for the Master Realm than any other kind of Martial Art does barring Martial Artists like yourself, I suppose."
"Hm, that does make sense," Rui nodded.
"However, the difficulty of the Master Realm remains quite high, worthy enough to separate the Lower and Upper Realms," She remarked.
"I can understand why that's true, but I find that hard to believe in a personal sense," Rui remarked. "Do Martial Artists really have that much of a trouble thinking?"
"Hah, you're overestimating the lot of them." She snorted. "You're too divergent from the norm. The current thought process you undergo at the moment may as well be larger than some Martial Minds."
He understood why that was the case on a logical basis. Having only used intelligence for imbuing their techniques with individuality during training, they were much less unaccustomed to engaging in sophisticated systematic thought.
Of course, that was an over-generalization, and there were plenty of exceptions, but it was true to a large degree for the broader majority of them. In general, using the power of thought to massively elevate their effective combat level was something that was probably unthinkable for most of them.
For Rui, however, it came to him as naturally as breathing these days. He was from a different world entirely.
Literally.
He just couldn't resonate with the experience of not being able to employ the power of thought to elevate combat.
He thought back to his fight with Ieyasu, one of the ways he hampered the man's mind-reading was by flooding him with all the information of the VOID algorithm that was being processed through the Mind Palace.
The fact that a process that was starting to verge towards becoming subconscious or reflexive had proved too much for Ieyasu's conscious mind showed that Rui's standards were probably beyond anything this world had ever seen.
He was not surprised that the VOID algorithm was at the level of a complete Martial mind of some Martial Seniors, if not most, but unfortunately, it was not sufficient for Rui's Martial Mind.
'Even if it was. I still need to expand it.' Rui mused. 'I also need to update it and fully adapt it to this world. That remains to be true even if it is enough to be Martial Mind or not.'
He had made some solid progress toward Project Water with the development of the Metabody System. However, he was still far from a point where he could cleanly adapt to everything this world had to offer.
There was Martial Art that was obscure and esoteric enough, even for him, such that none of his techniques could handle them very well. One good example of that was the freezing Martial Art that he encountered in the preliminary contest of the Virodha Martial Contest.
By relying on the second law of thermodynamics, she was able to create a freezing Martial Art to cause instant death to those who were hit by her attacks, including Rui.
He couldn't adapt to her as cleanly as he wished he could, and that needed to be changed at some point.
There also were non-human threats and elements that he was less able to handle. the adaptive evolution model of the VOID algorithm was also simply unable to tell Rui how to adapt to and counter these kinds of techniques.
Which was another problem that Rui would need to confront sooner or later. The adaptive evolution model was growing increasingly obsolete over time. Rui either needed to update it or bypass it to a certain degree.
Fact of the matter was that Rui's experience had reached a stage where he could rely more on it to know what was the best adaptive counter to the more fantastical elements of this world.
He needed to solve that issue, he didn't mind what the solution was, but the redundancy and the inefficiency were no longer tolerable from this point forward. The reason for that was because it was extremely difficult to 'fix' the Martial Mind after becoming a Martial Master, it was better to get things right in the first go.
This meant that he had arrived at a level where the refinement of the VOID algorithm was going to start taking priority.
'I'm going to have to give it some very serious thought very soon.' Rui realized. 'It's not a matter that I can leave be for too much longer.'
"Anything else?" She asked.
"...No, I think that's about it," Rui murmured. "I appreciate you taking the time to help me. No, I appreciate everything that you've done for me. I won't forget the debt I owe you, Master."
He stood up, bowing his head deeply.
"You don't need to be so stiff," She remarked. "It has been a pleasure, all things considered. You have been the most entertaining pupil I've accepted."
"I'm glad I could stave off your boredom," Rui smiled wryly. "But unfortunately, it's about time I leave. I have things I need to do."
"Mmm, you planned on visiting Zeamer, right?" She remarked, referring to the Hypnomaster. "Well, good luck. Don't forget what I told you. The tribulations that he inflicts on those who seek him are not as easy as my challenges."
