This battle came to remind Rui of one of his other weaknesses. Perhaps it was more of a shortcoming, but regardless, Rui had come to remember how much larger scale conflicts and team battles could catch him off-guard.
The last time he had been part of a conflict this big was in the Serevian War, however, back then he was the most powerful and dangerous person on the battlefield, thus he never felt this shortcoming nearly as much. However, he realized that he was too accustomed to analyzing and making combat-centric decisions in a vacuum with his opponent and himself, and the environment. He did not have much experience in group battles.
The last time he truly fought together as a group was with his four friends against the newborn Martial Squire of the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana. Even then, that was against one opponent.
Rui swore that he would rectify this problem when he got the chance. For now, however, he had to deal with the consequences of being caught off-guard due to not having factored in such an elementary solution.
His opponent shot across the sky at an extremely high speed towards him, laughing maniacally winding her leg back to slam him with a powerful attack no doubt. Rui scrambled away from the trajectory of her motion, but she carefully made sure to adjust her trajectory to keep up with Rui via sky-walking.
Rui felt Primordial Instinct screaming to him about the incoming danger as she got closer to him until it was too late for him to avoid her.
"RARGH!" She kicked hard, contorting her body to generate as much torque as she could. She employed power-boosting supplementary techniques not too dissimilar to Outer Convergence. However, it was exponentially more powerful than that of Rui when she used it. Hell, Rui was sure that she was proportionally more powerful than even Fae if their Realms and grades were hypothetically equalized.
Her leg blurred in his vision as it lashed out against him with tremendous power. Rui gritted his teeth as he intercepted the attack with his palm, immediately activating Flux Earther.
BAM!!!
CRACK!
WHOOSH!!!
Her eyes widened at an incredibly strange occurrence. The attack landed, and she even felt his wrist cracking, yet what surprised her was that the impact seemed to suddenly send him hurtling an incredible distance away at incredible speeds as though he had been launched by a catapult. It was a strange sensation unlike anything she had ever felt and a strange sight, unlike anything she had ever seen.
"Ugh…" Rui groaned as he finally managed to stop his momentum. "I almost died…"
He grimaced as he looked down at his swollen wrist. As bad as it looked, the situation wasn't all that bad. After all, he wasn't fighting with his arms in this battle.
('Unless, of course, I need to do what I just did again,') He sighed.
In the last second, he used Flux Earther to intercept the strike, however, instead of completing the full technique from start to finish, he only executed about half the technique. He elastically converted the power of her attack to kinetic energy to accelerate his body and send him flying as far away from her as possible.
Considering that he wasn't able to prevent his wrist from cracking, Rui considered it a partial success.
('This is still better than any other solution I had,') He sighed as he consumed his healing potion. He had brought multiple since he knew that it was entirely possible he would end up needing them given how restrained he was in this battle.
('Now then…') He turned back to face his opponent. She was still rushing down towards him, unwilling to give up on taking him down. She barreled down, passionately cursing him in increasingly creative ways to take him down. ('How do I handle this?')
He needed an actual solution here. Her tribe mate was already winding as he wrung his body to generate as much power as he could when he flung her the next time.
('I can't stop them from cooperating,') Rui braced himself as he prepared himself to take on yet another K'ulnen human cannon shot. ('They only need a moment to get their little combo off,')
WHOOSH
In the distance, she braced herself as her tribe mate launched her forward as he withstood the attacks of his actual opponent with raw durability to ensure that he could help her against Rui.
('Can't escape, can't defend,') Rui summarized even as she shot towards him. ('I guess the only possible way out of this situation is to retreat from the battle entirely or…')
His eyes narrowed. ('Win.')
A germ of an idea formed in his head as he came up with a strategy.
Even as she flew towards him, guarding her vitals, she was prepared to not ensure that he could not possibly escape this time. She took a partial grappling position as she decided to crush him in a midair grappling contest, rather than allow him to escape yet again with that strange technique.
Yet her eyes widened as Rui began sprinting towards her at top speed, closing the distance rapidly.
('Does he have a death wish?') She wondered in confusion as her senses picked him getting increasingly closer to her increasingly faster.
What kind of a long-range Martial Artist purposely drew closer to a close-quarters specialist barreling straight towards them with every desire to kill them? She didn't understand, this made no sense!
Hundred meters.
Fifty meters.
When they were only ten meters away from each other, Rui finally opened his mouth, launching two Sonic Bullets in rapid succession.
THWOOM THWOOM
He was staking a lot on this plan, his opponent didn't understand what his intentions were. He should have known that those attacks were almost entirely ineffective against her thanks to her ridiculously high passive durability. There was no way that any attack would be able to stop her from reaching Rui, and she certainly didn't think they were capable of preventing her from crushing him alive.
