Rui did not forget that despite all his strength, the Academy counted him as a grade seven Martial Artist, three levels below grade ten. Even Fiona was probably at grade eight or nine at most. She had mastered a lot of techniques, but her Martial Art lacked individuality. Her prowess came from her techniques, not the depth of her Martial Path.
One of the reasons he was able to cope as well as he did in their fight despite the large gap was because his mind had reached a higher level in the Apprentice Realm than hers did. His raw cognitive and neural enhancements were greater, it’s just that she more than made up for that gap with a bunch of powerful and incredibly difficult techniques.
Hafborn was the example of someone who was incredibly powerful due to a lifetime of accumulation of techniques and experience. He was not a man who had been a Martial Apprentice for merely six or seven years. Rui wouldn’t be surprised if Hafborn had been a Martial Apprentice for far more than just that.
Even if Rui was a monster who could swallow up techniques at a rate of one per month, it was not possible overwhelm such a huge age and experience gap that easily.
It was for this reason that Rui truly looked forward to fighting him. An excited grin broke under his mask as he thought of the idea of testing his Flowing Void Style against Hafbor’s Martial Art.
Soon, his wish was granted.
“And yet another win for Apprentice Frillix Hafbor. A remarkable performance, will his streak end?” The butler elegantly spoke. “Coming up next, we have the representative fighter of Lady Nartha Freier. This is Apprentice Falken’s debut in the Martial games. How well will he perform against the defending champion?”
Immediately, a mild wave of interest fluttered through the guests. New fighters were always interesting.
Rui walked down the stair leading to the small arena below, as he felt many gazes pouring down onto him. The fact that he concealed his identity made him even more mysterious and exciting to them.
“Lady Freier.” One of the women Nartha was accompanied by addressed her. “What is his identity?”
She shook her head, sighing. “I cannot divulge that I’m afraid.”
“My.” She woman raised an eyebrow, before looking down back at the arena. The air had already changed by the time Rui even reached Hafbor and the arbiter. He wasn’t as immersed into his opponent as he was during the Martial Contest, yet the pressure his mind radiated clashed with Hafborn as the two fighters stared at each other wordlessly, silently regarding each other.
Rui stopped as he reached Hafborn.
“Take your stances.” The arbiter instructed.
Hafbor adopted his rock-solid stance once more.
Rui instead went for a stance that focused on offensive maneuvering. He didn’t bother trying to focus on raw power, his raw power was insufficient to hurt Hafbor. With maneuvering instead, he could exploit holes in his Hafbor’s defense to land the Stinger onto his eyes or balls. Rui had no problem in attacking his testicles, Martial Artists staked more than just those when they accepted life-threatening missions.
Furthermore, with potions, any damage to them could be undone, leaving him with no compunctions.
However, Hafbor was not stupid. While it was true that his eyes and balls were his greatest weaknesses, it didn’t take a genius to figure this out. It was clear to Rui that he was aware of this. The position of his arms and legs relative to Rui were such that it would be pretty hard for Rui to land a strike on either of those locations.
Normally, Rui’s greater speed would allow him to jab those locations before Hafbor could defend, but because his arms are legs were positioned to obstruct attacks to those locations.
“Begin.” the arbiter commenced the fight.
Rui shuffled around a bit, before smoothly dashing in abruptly, hoping to throw Hafbor off.
Yet he was unfazed.
POW POW POW!
Rui threw a flurry of jabs at him using Vital Pressure and Outer Convergence
WOBBLE
The strikes were cleanly redirected as Rui felt his balance briefly disrupted. This sensation was rather bizarre, but it also felt unsafe, Rui couldn’t really launch follow-up attacks worth launching in that state. He understood immediately that he had underestimated Hafbor’s active redirection defense. Not only could Hafbor redirect strikes away from himself with little amount of energy, but he could also raise the difficulty of throwing follow-up strikes. What this meant for Rui was that it was much more difficult even maintaining a constant flow of attacks against him.
“Tsk.” Rui tutted as he retreated for a second, regaining his bearings. He dashed in again, launching a weighted strike.
Hafbor shifted his guard to block.
Yet;
WHOOSH
It was a feint!
Rui swirled, crouching as he launched a low strike to Hafbor’s crouch.
POW
Hafbor shifted his body ever so slightly before the attack landed, causing it to strike his pelvis bone. Rui immediately retreated.
Normally, when people evaded strikes, they tried shifting their entire body out of the way of a strike, otherwise there wasn’t much point in dodging.
However, this wasn’t really the case for Hafbor. He didn’t need to move his whole body out of the way, he only needed to shift his vulnerable areas out of the way and that was good enough. His body was so tough that as long as he shifted the weakest parts of his body out of the way, he was not worried.
Rui’s attacks could hit him basically anywhere, he would not move away unless his eyes and groin were being targeted, and because they were smaller than other places normally aimed for, he only needed to shift his body to a limited degree to move them out of the way of attacks.
This made evasion far easier for him than it was for everyone else.
Rui would need to find a way to land a critical attack despite this, one way or another.