The Roschem Manor welcomed Rui as a guest and he was given his own guest room to stay at. This was a luxury beyond Rui’s expectations. Fiona chattered with him a lot as they waited for the commencement of the mission.
He’d learned a lot more about Fiona by that point. She was a grade-ten Martial Apprentice, even after the update of the Martial Artist grade system. Which meant her prowess was the real deal.
“By the way.” She said at one point. “Do you want to spar?”
Rui’s eyes lit up in interest as he considered her offer.
“Sure.” He nodded. He had considered the same thing, but he wasn’t sure if it was wise to challenge her in her own home after she had invited him. “I’ve been wanting a rematch for more than a while.”
“Alright.” She grinned. “Let’s get started then.”
She took him to a sparring facility inside the Roschem Residence., making him sigh at how rich and loaded her family was. He had visited the Arrancar Manor before and had seen something similar there as well, but that was more than three years ago. Back then he lacked the contextual understanding as to how ridiculous it was, unlike his current self.
“This is meant to withstand the power of Martial Apprentices.” She told him. “We can go all out here without a worry.”
“Honestly…” Rui scratched his head. “It’s gonna need to do more than just withstand the power of Martial Apprentices for us to truly be unworried.”
She smiled at those words. “Don’t worry, we’ll be fine.”
“Alright, if you say so.” Rui shrugged.
“Take your positions.” One of the servants served as a referee.
𝑶𝓋xt.𝗇t
Both Fiona and Rui took neutral stances against each other. They were both all-rounders, it was one of the reasons Rui wanted to face her. She was an all-rounder Martial Apprentice who was capable of going toe-to-toe with him.
She was the perfect opponent to exercise his capability with the VOID algorithm.
The atmosphere grew heavy as the two began focusing.
“Begin!”
WHOOSH
Fiona lashed out as she crossed the distance between them in the briefest instance. She didn’t hesitate to launch a barrage of powerful yet swift attacks. She had a much better understanding of his Martial Art since the last time they fought. She knew that he grew stronger as time passed, and she wanted to prevent from him growing to a stage where she would no longer have an advantage against him in combat.
She knew that his true strength did not come from overwhelming physical parameters but the freakish way he was able to adapt and evolve to his opponent with accurately timed and placed movements with high precision. Thus, prior to his change was the one time he was most vulnerable.
Yet to her surprise, overwhelming him was much harder than it seemed.
WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH
Rui bobbed and weaved as he evaded every single one of her attacks. His reactions were incredibly sharp.
(‘No, they’re too fast!’) She realized. It was as though his brain was simply functioning faster than what was possible in the Apprentice Realm. He reached with almost no delay, in the briefest of flashes.
She didn’t understand. She knew that he was capable of ridiculous reactions after he did his so-called adaptive evolution thingy. But she was pretty sure it was far too early for that to have already kicked in.
And she was right.
What she was dealing with was not the VOID algorithm. Rui was still building the predictive model of her. What she was facing was just the raw battle cognition upgrade that he had gained from the Mindmirror symbiote brain. His reactions and reflexes had all improved significantly thanks to programming the secondary brain with those neurological patterns with the Mental Embed technique so that the secondary brain could parallelly process identically alongside Rui’s own mind.
His reaction and processing speed had increased by more than one hundred percent. Despite possessing greater movement speed than Rui, she simply struggled to land a proper attack on him.
Of course, she was far from done.
CLAP!
She released a loud sound that disoriented Rui on the spot.
(‘High-density infrasonic sound waves?’) Rui cursed as he identified the principle of the technique she had used. Infrasonic sound waves were sound waves at a frequency below the audible range of the human ears. Greater amounts of this frequency of sound caused disorientation, sea sickness, and nausea.
She used a technique that generated high-density infrasonic sound that would disorient the target if the technique.
BAM!!
She managed land in her very first jab on him and the very first damage inflicted on an opponent in the duel.
Rui grimaced as he used all four of his Apprentice-level techniques; Adamant Reforge, Inner Divergence, Elastic Shift, and Acute Edge to mitigate the damage done by her attack, yet it was only partially effective, he couldn’t negate everything.
(‘Damn, she hits like a truck, as always.’) Rui grimaced. He had always known that she hit hard, but she had become even stronger than she was before. Her single strike throbbed through his body.
Yet, Fiona wasn’t done. She lashed out after him again, refusing to let him catch his bearings and awareness. She continued to whale out an onslaught of attacks, hoping she would get in more attacks by exploiting his openings.
Yet;
WHOOSH
BAM!
Rui evaded attacks as he slipped in a clean strike that neatly squeezed through an obscure hole in her defense.
It was a Flowing Canon with enough power to push even her back.
She glanced back at him with a wary expression. He, in turn, had a confident expression as he met her eyes with a new stance. He hopped lightly as his arms were aggressively placed. His new stance was offense and speed-oriented stance which placed less weight on defense.
The statement it made was clear. He didn’t need to focus on defense when fighting against her.