The Martial Unity

He hadn't even finished going through all the parameters that he wanted to be able to adjust, and he had finally arrived at the last on his list.

('Healing,')

This was normally not a parameter as it was a constant. Yet he didn't think that it was something that was inescapable. It would be quite convenient for him if he was able to increase the rate of healing in times when he was gravely wounded. One time that immediately came to mind was the time when he was chewed out by the Root, allowing himself to heal at a much higher pace, recovering sooner.

Who knows, if he had that ability back then he might have been able to catch the Martial Squire who left, leaking intelligence to Chairman Deacon that eventually led to the discovery of his identity.

Regardless, one potential path forward in this particular parameter was the Hungry Pain technique, of course. But he didn't want to bank only on that technique.

('Is it possible to increase the quality of my healing if I develop a technique that allows my body to consume living healthy cells to serve as fuel for new cells to cover up the wound quicker than it would normally do so?') Rui's eyes widened.

In that case, he was essentially sacrificing some power output to increase the rate at which he was healing. If he ever suffered a grave wound, he could heal at a much higher pace as long as he sacrificed some stamina, power, and speed.

It would be worth using to heal not just severe wounds, but also against Martial Artists with high damage output but low durability. Thus he would be able to take them down even if they gravely injured him.

That was a deeply attractive prospect.

('Should I move beyond just the primary parameters and specs, or just stick with the basics for now?')

He had already come up with many ideas and was on a roll, who knew, maybe he would find something interesting in that regard.

('Ugh, let's not overcomplicate it for now,') Rui shook his head.

He already had more than enough on his plate. It was a single project, yet it had already given him a lot of work to do right off the bat. He would rather have secluded himself dedicating himself to solving those problems, but he couldn't even do that due to the incoming war.

('Once I finish the basics, I can focus on improving it by focusing on details, but for now it's unnecessary,') He sighed.

He closed his mind as he summed up his thoughts. He needed to explore the probability of Hungry Pain serving one of the mechanisms by which he manipulated his Martial body as he pleased.

He also needed to look into esoteric material science and symbiotes that could potentially help him achieve what ordinary techniques could not do.

As long as he explored all the avenues and put all the pieces together bit by bit, he was sure that he could put together a solution that fulfilled his needs. For now, however, he was going to have to work out all the minor chinks out of the way step by step.

Over the next few days, he began a preliminary search into both esoteric material sciences and symbiotes, just to get a good gauge of how easy or difficult a problem was.

The difficulty of finding the solution depended on how much progress he could make at the beginning of the project. He was hoping that he would somehow get a little lucky and end up with a solution on the very first day of searching, but alas, nothing came up.

What he was grateful for was the knowledge base of the Floating Sect, it was clear that the Martial Sect had more than just knowledge about Martial Art techniques. He was glad that they contained a decent amount of the knowledge that he was looking for.

After all, given how isolated the Floating Sect was from the rest of human civilization, they needed to be able to handle their own problems by themselves and needed to be able to raise loyal skilled workers of different professions, many of which had extensive knowledge bases that needed to be mastered before they were qualified.

It was not practical to pick up and drop these people from the island and back to the land, and then back to the island. That was far from realistic to do.

That was why the Floating Sect had the ability to train its own professionals, and that included having access to the kind of knowledge that he needed to be able to fulfill Project Metabody.

In just the span of a few days, he immediately judged that whatever he was looking for was something that wasn't common or something he could just run into. He had a scholar's degree in the general sciences, which meant that he already had a lot of knowledge on a lot of esoteric substances, and he was able to evaluate whether the various candidates that he had come across were able to solve his problem or not.

He also gained a good understanding of how esoteric substances were categorized, and that allowed him to make more pertinent choices when engaging in research. He was able to avoid delving into vast oceans of information that simply wasn't relevant to what he was looking for. Rather than just mindlessly reading everything he came across, he was able to look for what he wanted in the first place.

Over those few days, he did not even physically train at all as he surrounded himself with books. He didn't even feel the urge to use the chamber all that much despite its many features and avenues for training.

The time for that would come, but for now, it was just a process of exploration until he stumbled into the necessary things needed to build whatever it was that he wanted to build.