BAM!!!
A powerful Flowing Canon crashed into Nel's guard. His eyes widened in shock as the sheer power of the technique launched him skidding away. Rui immediately chased after him, moving blurringly fast as he reached Nel in the briefest moments.
He launched yet another Flowing Canon. The very air trembled as a strike amplified by Parallel Walk, Balanced Direction, Wind Breathing, Outer Convergence, Vital Pressure and Flame Breathing.
BOOM!!
The two clashed as they exchanged their most powerful strikes. The sheer power from their clash sent reverberations across the sparring arena.
The Martial Apprentices who were also occupying the facility were all frozen, gaping at the ridiculous prowess that Rui and Nel displayed.
It was hard for them to believe the two were even in the same Martial Realm as them!
POW POW POW!
Nel basted Rui with a combo of strikes, pushing him back. Yet when he tried to follow up with a strike;
WHOOSH
Rui cleanly swiveled out of the way with remarkable speed and agility.
BAM!
He landed a powerful blow on his ribs, pushing him back.
Nel endured the damage as he threw a sharp kick even before Rui had finished his own attack.
WHAM!
Rui blocked, twirling away as he launched for an upper takedown maneuver.
And yet;
WHOOSH
It was a feint.
Rui coiled his arms around Nel's legs as he successfully used Mirage Dive to topple him to the ground. The two boys wrangled on the ground furiously as they tried to get an advantageous position.
POW!
Nel managed to break free with a timely strike just as Rui aimed for a chokehold.
Eventually the two boys seperated, getting to their feet.
Yet, they wasted no time.
The two spuriously exchanged blows with each other. Every once in a while, one of them would gain a momentary advantage, yet the battle stalled to a rough stalemate.
The spar went for some time until the two exhausted enough stamina to call for a break.
Rui smiled in elation as he drank some water. Just four months had passed, and he had gone from being significantly inferior to Nel in all physical parameters, to be able to rival and even overwhelm him in head-on combat.
"You've gotten stronger!" Nel laughed. "Let's do that one more time!"
"Sure thing." Rui replied.
Rui had recently gained satisfactory mastery Flame and Wind Breathing. He had begun sparring with Nel, who was also an all-rounder, to refine his application of the techniques in combat. He left out the VOID algorithm, and his other trump cards to gain a more objective understanding of his growth, and he was remarkably pleased with the results.
His offensive power had risen to a level that perhaps only Fae could overwhelm, and speed had risen to a level that only Kane and Vyoming could outpace. He couldn't ask for more from the two techniques.
Of course, it wasn't solely because of these two techniques that he had grown this strong, but he had come to have accumulated this power thanks to multiple techniques.
Vital Pressure was the first technique he had learnt, and it was a foundational technique almost every Martial Apprentice learnt. However, Rui had mastered Outer Convergence and Flame Breathing, two powerful techniques that boosted the raw power to extremely high degrees. Each of these techniques were in the upper echelons of techniques that boosted raw power, and the only people in his generation who could match him were specialists in this particular field.
Similar things were true for other fields as well. Rui's agility, speed and maneuvering had also reached another level. With Parallel Walk, Balanced Direction, Wind Breathing and Phantom Step. Rui could quite literally run circles around more than ninety-five percent of his peers!
His defense would soon follow suit. Although the Adamant Reforging conditioning training was not yet over, it would take serious power and lethality to inflict meaningful damage on him. He would probably be able to walk through normal attacks like they were nothing at that point. The average Martial Apprentice had zero chance of overwhelming a defense of four Apprentice-level techniques.
For an all-rounder like himself, these were incredible feats. There was a reason he had asked Nel to be his sparring partner. One was, of course, that he was an all-rounder. But the other reason was that Nel was one of the very few Martial Apprentices in the Academy who could stand up to him. He was literally the only all-rounder Martial Apprentice who could allow Rui to test all aspects of his newly empowered Martial Art equally. Rui was only one step away from straight up fighting with a Martial Squire because almost no one else was qualified.
He no longer needed to adapt, nor construct complex strategies with his trump cards to be a powerhouse. Even if just used his existing techniques in the most straightforward manner, he would easily be almost unbeaten in the Academy. He could not even imagine how strong he would go on to become once he completely finished this training session.
And he couldn't wait to experience that power.
He couldn't wait to launch powerful air blasts!
He couldn't wait to flip fools off-balance!
And most of all, he couldn't wait to apply the Mind Palace technique to apply the pattern recognition data science-based systems of the VOID algorithm.
Just how powerful would his Flowing Void Style become?
It was hard to even predict. The six new techniques wouldn't just add to his technique straightforwardly, the boost they would produce was greater. Each of the six new techniques had great synergies with some of the others, as well as the existing techniques in his Martial Art. These would result in a large number of permutations and combinations of techniques that could be applied in combat.
Even he couldn't accurately compute all that data to land at the right answer.
He would need to find out by actually experiencing it.
He turned to Nel.
"Let's go another round."
