“Cheer up.” Fae said. “You did a good job.”
Dalen nodded. “It was a hard fight. If I hadn’t gotten you by the end, you had a solid chance of winning.”
Milliana sighed mildly, nodding slightly. She wasn’t very expressive, but everyone could see she was dejected by her very first match resulting in a loss.
“The best part is that you can make improvements rather easily, just by shifting your tactics a little.” Rui told her, trying to encourage her.
The fight had ended, and all five of them had gathered after their first fight.
Just as Kane was about to try and console her, a voice interrupted him.
“Apprentice Kane Arrancar.” A staff member addressed. “Your second official match is ready.”
Kane’s expression drooped, as he nodded wordlessly. “I’ll catch you guys after.”
They all bade him good luck, before heading to his ring. Kane had finished his fight earlier than all of them, thus it made sense that he was assigned a fight sooner than all of them, especially, he was assigned his first fight the latest.
“His opponent…” Rui glanced at the boy, recognizing him instantly. “Gale!”
What odds. What was probability that Gale would get matched up with Kane immediately after Rui?
(‘What terrible luck, too.’) Rui thought. He knew Gale’s strength as well as Kane’s prowess well enough to know Gale had almost no chance of beating Kane.
“Take your stances.” The supervisor instructed.
“Looking forward to a good fight.” Gale took his stance, as stance that allowed him to launch ranged blows with the greatest of ease.
“Yeah.” Kane impassively replied, before taking an even balanced stance that allowed him maneuver with the greatest of ease.
“Begin!” The supervisor commenced the match.
And that was when it happened.
Kane disappeared.
He didn’t run.
He didn’t bob and weave.
He didn’t dance around his opponent like he normally would.
He simply and irreconcilably, disappeared.
Fae, Milliana and Dalen were shocked.
“Where did he go?!”
“What kind of technique allows for such absurdity?!”
“…!!” Even the impassive Milliana expressed visible incredulity.
Rui on the other hand, wasn’t even watching.
Or to be more precise, he wasn’t watching with his eyes. He had wordlessly closed his eyes the second Kane disappeared from his vision.
He had immediately maximized Primordial Instinct and Seismic Mapping.
The Void Step technique applied psychological tricks to minimize one’s presence, as well as maneuvering-based misdirection techniques to draw the target’s attention away from the user subconsciously whenever the user began moving.
It was truly absurdly powerful technique when mastered since it meant you were effectively invisible when you moved, and it was an absurdly difficult technique that made you extremely difficult to deal with when mastered.
The reason Rui shut off his vision was because he knew he would not be able to sense Kane at all with his normal senses, the misdirection was too strong and Rui had not trained in any anti-misdirection defensive measures, nor his normal senses to a superhuman level with sensory techniques.
But he had honed two new senses in the form of Seismic Mapping and Primordial Instinct.
He had primarily wanted to test how effective they were at combating the Primordial Instinct technique.
Up in the ring, ten seconds had passed since the fight had begun. To the ordinary observer, Gale was merely getting pummeled by an invisible force. One could only see Kane momentarily appear when he paused briefly after smoothly evading Gale’s haymakers.
His friends continued gaping at the sight.
Rui on the other hand, was still motionless with his eyes closed.
“Incredible…” He finally muttered.
He wasn’t able to precisely sense Kane’s attacks.
He wasn’t even able to precisely sense Kane’s exact position.
The only thing he could properly sense was the direction Kane was in, and an extremely vague and unclear sense of distance.
That was all.
It was like watching a censored video. Asides from direction, everything else was almost entirely unclear!
He was truly shocked that Void Step were able to obfuscate Kane to such an incredible degree against two roughly high-grade sensory techniques. Seismic Mapping was above average, while Primordial Instinct was a thorough and unshakably high-grade technique. Seismic Mapping had huge range, environmental mapping capabilities as well as object detection while Primordial Instinct had given him extremely heightened instinctual senses and evaluation as well as predictive measures. Together these two techniques should have ensured nothing could possibly obfuscate his senses.
Yet both of these techniques combined were barely able to make a dent against the Void Step technique!
(‘Thank god I mastered these two techniques.’) Rui mused. He would have been utterly screwed had he not mastered them. Kane would have thoroughly bullied him from start to finish.
BAM
Gale collapsed to a swift kick to the chin, shaking his brain enough to cause enough brain trauma to knock him unconscious.
Only half a minute had passed since the fight had begun, and it was already over.
Rui opened his eyes with a wry smile only to find Kane throwing a pointed meaningful look at him, before exiting the stage.
Even before Kane had actually exited the stage and reached them, they had begun pestering him with question.
“What was that??”
“How did you do that!”
“Hey!” Calm down.” Kane raised his arms, exasperated. “It’s just a peak grade technique, that’s all.”
Contrary to calming them down, it caused an even greater commotion.
“Congratulations Kane.” Rui wished earnestly. Even though he knew Kane didn’t care for his victories in the contest and would rather lose, Rui still believed he ought to be proud of his accomplishments.
“Thanks.” Kane replied, before returning to pacifying his over-excited friends.
Meanwhile Rui simply smiled wryly as he pondered to himself.
(‘Alright now…’) He thought to himself.
(‘How the fuck am I going to deal with that?’)
He wasn’t entirely sure about how he was going to deal with Kane’s newfound prowess. But, he did have a few ideas.
(‘We’ll see if they’re good enough when the time comes.’) He mused.