The two simply stared at each other. No words were exchanged, yet the silence was louder than anything they could say.
"Hoho..." The Martial Master grinned with amusement and excitement. "This seems like it will be quite entertaining. I shall call it the Master Races! And I, Martial Master Zeamer Ger-Vil shall serve as the referee!"
The two of them turned their eyes, glaring at him.
"Oh my, scary~" The man exaggeratedly shook his hands as he put on a show of cowering.
"Quit treating your students as entertainment," Rui grumbled, earning Ieyasu's silent agreement.
"Ahhhh, but that's the best part about having students you see? HAHAHA!" The man guffawed. "Seeing you two adorable brats get all heated up over this cute rivalry is heartwarming this old man. Ah but please continue, by all means, you can pretend I'm not here."
His hands stretched out as he began poking the two of them on their cheeks with an obnoxious expression, Rui directly, and Ieyasu through the air.
"...What are you doing?" Rui frowned as he tried shifting away in vain.
"It's an expression of affection, you see. I use it with my little daughters."
"I'll break that finger off," Ieyasu threatened.
POKE POKE POKE
"..."
POKE POKE POKE
"..."
PO-BOOM!
"My~" The Martial Master disappeared as a powerful Senior-level attack from Ieyasu crashed into the ground where he was standing there. "Goodness gracious, I sure have some rambunctious pupils."
Yet he didn't cease the poking gesture as his mischievous smile grew increasingly obnoxious. "You're going to have to do better than that."
Rui and Ieyasu exchanged glances before turning back to him. Neither of them was stupid. It was pretty obvious what he was trying to get them to do. Ieyasu got up, facing the man.
"Your efforts at provoking are unsophisticated," Rui informed him. "I could do better when I was a child."
"Hah, but it worked, didn't it?" The man shrugged.
"If you want a group sparring session, you can just say so, you know," Rui sighed as the two of them took their stances.
"But that would be boring wouldn't it?" The man laughed. "But I suppose you have a point. Let us set some stakes, then. Whoever loses gets to do anything to the loser."
"That's a scam,"
"Of course, I won't use my Martial Heart, so rest assured."
Rui narrowed his eyes. Not using the Martial Heart was the same as not using the Martial Mind, for the most part. Something that was meant to be powered by the Martial Heart would surely be very deficient without it, like a phone in ultra-battery-saving mode.
"Do you really think you can defeat us by reducing yourself to such a degree?" Rui tilted his head.
"Hahaha, that remains to be seen," The man remarked.
Rui got the feeling that he was more confident than he let on, but he also felt like they were being underestimated.
"Alright then," Rui activated his Martial Heart after inhaling some physical rejuvenation potions.
"Come," The man remarked.
The two of them activated their Martial Heart as they lashed out at him in unison.
It turned out that Rui was right.
He was confident, and he had reason to be.
WHOOSH!
He evaded their blows with a simple step back, much to Rui's and Ieyasu's surprise. The speed of his maneuver was quite slow, it didn't even breach the Senior Realm, yet they somehow were unable to get him.
The two of them lashed out against him once more, looking to land some solid offensive on the man.
WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH
Rui resorted to sweeping bod blows while Ieyasu used a striking Martial Art with shorter and crisp blows. The two managed to avoid getting in each other's way, remarkably, while smoothly targeting the Hypnomaster.
And yet,
WHOOSH!
"Hahaha, is that the best you've got?" The man laughed. "Show me your best, young men!"
Rui and Ieyasu increased their intensity as the two of them threw out enormous barrages of attacks that miraculously managed to avoid clashing as they sought to reach the Hypnomaster.
And yet;
WHOOSH!
Not even they could reach the Hypnomaster.
The Hypnomaster evaded their attacks with grace as he managed to ensure that not a single attack the boys threw harmed a hair on his body.
Rui frowned. 'Something's wrong. This isn't just a matter of timing and it certainly isn't speed. Every time I think I have him, I'm just inexplicably wrong.'
He calmly analyzed as he continued to gather more data attacking the Martial Master. 'He's not the physical brawler type in the first place, it doesn't make sense for this to be a physical technique. In that case...'
It was definitely a mental technique. Rui briefly created a list of possible principles the technique was possibly relying on. There was one at the top of it that drew his attention.
'Is he sabotaging my sense of spatial awareness?'
He couldn't dismiss that possibility. If the Martial master sabotaged Rui's sense of spatial awareness, then he could get Rui to miss by simply making them gauge his exact distance inaccurately. This would cause them to either time the attack too early or too late, both of which would make it trivially easy for someone as skilled as Master Zeamer to avoid them.
'I can't believe he can sabotage my spatial awareness when I literally have the ability to sense space,' Rui narrowed his eyes.
What he particularly was quite impressed by was that this wasn't even Master Zeamer fighting back, this was him merely evading their attacks to flex on them. And yet, it appeared that Rui had spoken too soon.
POW POW!
The two of them block simple jabs from him, and yet.
"Rgh!" They grimaced as a tremendous wave of pain spread through body as if they had broken bones and torn flesh.
'Not this again,' Rui groaned.
He was messing with their sense of pain, causing them to feel lots of it when they hadn't even taken any meaningful damage.
"Hohoho..." The man smirked. "This might hurt more than you would have expected."
