Given that Rui had resolved to clear that floor, he had inadvertently put himself at odds with an extraordinarily powerful creature. Even if the Root of the Dungeon was not quite on par with Martial Seniors, it was still extraordinarily powerful and beyond the limits of the Squire Realm.
Rui already knew that if he simply tossed himself in front of it, he would get smashed like a bug.
Yet, he intended to confront it.
He would rather the latter occur without the former. The only way for that to happen was to grow stronger.
Which meant that it was time for another training phase.
It had been three months since the last training phase that he had undergone to prepare for the Shionel Dungeon. The techniques that he come up with back then had resulted in him dominating the Shionel Dungeon extremely thoroughly, upending the stable deadlock that had existed prior, and uniting a ton of people who would very much like to see him dead as a result.
Rui had confidence in his ability to craft techniques that would allow him to be capable of insane feats. He had strong reason to be confident with his scientific martial arts background, as well as a proven track record of developing highly effective techniques that were game-changing, be it the Hungry Pain technique that fundamentally strengthened the Squire Realm and made them significantly stronger from the very start which was one of the reasons that he was strong despite only having spent less than four years in the Squire realm.
His Void Pathfinder had drawn the adoration of a prominent and powerful Martial Senior like Senior Ceeran as a way of overcoming the limitations of accuracy at great ranges and distances. He had opened up an entirely new paradigm of aim in his desire to gain accuracy at huge ranges. Although he hadn't used the technique in a while because of how useless it was within the Shionel Dungeon, it was still a valuable grade-ten technique.
His Transverse Resonance technique allowed him to hit above his paygrade remarkably well, allowing him to launch attacks up to four times as powerful as his otherwise most powerful ranged attack.
His Riemannian Echo could negate conventional sensory jamming technology as it operated on principles that he was quite certain was not used in sensory techniques, otherwise there would be a lot of Martial Squires replicating at least a part of his success.
That was why he was quite certain that he had a solid chance of being able to cleanly handle the Root's terrifying ability to end him, as well as the herculean task of trying to kill the root in the worst-case scenario.
He did not need to fight it head-on, necessarily. He just needed to clear the floor.
For one, he did not think his regular tactic with him and Kane using Void Step to bypass senses would work. He knew that Void Step only worked on sentient beings with a sense of awareness and self-awareness.
It had already failed to work on flora lifeforms like the tree on the sixteenth floor, thus Rui didn't think it would be particularly effective against the Root. Unfortunately for Kane, or fortunately rather, he was going to have to sit out the raid of the Root floor.
Unless he could grow massively stronger in a training phase by developing a technique that allowed him to be useful against the Root, but Rui highly doubted that this was possible. Kane had never even created a technique from scratch, and had only conducted a single major modification as far as Rui was aware. He knew that ordinary Martial Artists could not develop techniques as fast as he did. Developing an original technique from the start usually required a year, if not multiple, to do.
This was the reason that Martial Squires spent many years in the Squire Realm before becoming Martial Seniors.
Rui, however, possessed a lot of confidence that he could do it within a much shorter amount of time. However, even before he could begin coming up with templates, concepts, and theoretical frameworks for the techniques that he intended to develop, he needed to come up with the conditions needed to clear the floor, one way or another. He could not just create a technique for a specific purpose without understanding what was precisely needed of the technique.
This would require him to build a deep understanding of the Root. He would need to spend a lot of time understanding its strengths and weaknesses before he could even think about taking on the giant creature of the Shionel Dungeon.
For instance, if it turned out to be the case that it was weaker the closer Rui got to it, then Rui would immediately develop a technique that would allow him to close the distance between him and the Root. Or if it turned out to be the case that its vitals were extremely weak, then Rui would work on creating superior versions of the Reverberating Lance technique.
He needed to know such information if he had any hope of clearing the Root floor, that was for sure.
Regardless, there were some basic things he already knew. The roots of the Root were extremely fast and capable of exerting a tremendous amount of force. It had thousands of main roots emerging from it, and each of them possessed as much power as mid-to-high-grade Martial Squires.
That was what he was contending with.
Thus he needed to either withstand dozens of attacks of such power simultaneously altogether or he needed to possess means to evade them.
Or a combination of the two. He couldn't possibly have either.
A multitude of possibilities flashed through his mind, though most weren't feasible for him. What he needed was a realistic way of mitigating the heavy advantages that the Root had against him.
He considered going through an abysmal amount of conditioning, attempting a brute force method of toughening himself as much as possible, but he shook his head at the idea, he knew that that was not going to work.
