The Martial Unity

He quickly exchanged all of his hard-earned martial credits for the techniques, before sitting down at the Apprentice Library to memorize their training methods.

Out of all the three, The Stinger's training was the most painful and least pleasant by far. The training of the technique involved the repeated damaging of the toe to cause micro-fractures that when healed via healing potions would strengthen the bone structure to stronger than it ever was, while also reshaping the bone and the flesh to become more conducive to piercing.

This was not something Rui was unfamiliar with as a concept. It was a well-documented fact that pressure and the reconstruction of microfractures strengthened the bone. There were several traditional martial arts on Earth that used this kind of conditioning to strengthen bones. The most popular ones being Karate, Kung Fu and Muay Thai. Each applied this principle in different way to varying degrees.

But the Stinger technique's training took it to a whole other level.

It was a long and painful process that was nothing short of pure torture. This was one of the reasons it had an abnormally high difficulty grade. Too many students who had undertaken this training had simply quit. Only ten-percent of the Martial Apprentices who had purchased this technique had the determination to see it to the very end.

The excruciating pain was simply too much for most of them, the power of the technique was simply not worth the agony that the technique's training regime entailed, only a handful of Martial Apprentices possessed the fortitude needed to complete the training.

Rui intended to see it through to the very end as well, the lethality of the technique was extremely attractive, it would benefit him not just in the Martial Contest, but it would help him in all future missions as well. He would be able to end fights much quicker than he ever was able to before.

Had he had this technique in his very first mission, he would have been able to hinder the enemy Martial Apprentice and rejoin with Bella before she was found and killed. He might have been able to prevent the bandits from escaping and the earthen basilisk would have gone down far sooner than it did.

In comparison, the remaining two techniques had training regimes that were far easier.

The Phantom Step technique had a training regime very similar to that of the Binding Lash technique. It involved memorizing the timings of feints by wearing suits that froze motion at the right moment so that Rui would understand the timing for feints of each maneuver. The training involved Rui learning to replicate that timing so as to be able to replicate the feint perfectly.

Rui was certain he would handle this training regime quite well, he had already undergone it once and was quite familiar with how the Academy trained feinting maneuvering techniques. Thus, he would likely master this technique the quickest because he wouldn't need to go through the adjustment phase of the training regime.

This was also one of the reasons he was comfortable choosing it. With how brutal the Stinger's training regime was going to be, he would like it if, at the very least one of the other two training regimes was something he was confident of nailing smoothly, that would put less stress on him during the entire training stage, without a doubt.

The more at ease he was mentally, the easier he would be able to make it past the painful Stinger technique.

The most interesting training regime however, was the Primordial Instinct technique. This technique exploited the fact that the danger and precognitive instinct of the human mind could be exercised and developed, like any other muscle.

In fact, it treated the subconscious instinct of the human as a muscle, and trained it like one.

How were muscle trained? By straining them with weight against their motion. A similar principle was applied to the subconscious instinct of the human mind. It was restricted by restricting senses and then thrust into situations where its danger sensing capabilities would inevitably be strained.

This was also another training regime he wasn't entirely unaccustomed to. He had gone through similar training for the Seismic Mapping technique. There were of course, several key differences.

The first was that the Seismic Mapping technique almost completely sealed off all senses so that Rui's mind would be forced to subconsciously rely more and more on sensing the seismic radiation to be able to perceive the environment and objects in the surroundings as well as the movements of these objects, as long as they were touching the ground, of course.

Primordial Instinct instead restricted all senses, including techniques like Seismic Mapping, to a high degree, but not completely. This was because the Primordial Instinct of the mind operated via the subconscious processing of the senses. Restricting the senses completely was not a good idea because it simply meant that the Primordial Instinct of the subconscious mind would simply not be able to operate at all.

Thus, the training regime involved almost complete sealing og the techniques, but not entirely, and the user would be forced to rely on his instinct more and more. As months passed, the senses would be restricted more and more as the user improved, until they were almost completely restricted and the user was still able to operate via the subconscious instinct alone.

This was because as time passed, the instinctual sense would grow stronger and sharper until it was able to significantly boost the reaction time of the user, especially to blindside attacks as well as the subconscious precognitive capability of the user.

"Alright then." Rui got up, dropping his scrolls into his pouch. "Time to get to training."

He walked out of the Apprentice Library, heading towards the Apprentice offense training facility of the Martial Academy, headed by Squire Instructor Dylon. For the first time in his life, Rui was not excited for a training regime even before he had begun it.