The Martial Unity

He couldn't help but wonder how much quicker this would be if he had the right type of Martial body to counter his opponent. After all, his opponent relied on piercing attacks. How much quicker would he take her down?

It was hard to know for sure, especially when she wasn't strong enough to push his predictive model to the limit.

CRACK!

"Argh!" She grimaced as Rui clinched her fingers with a well-timed and placed fingerhold, breaking her fingers thoroughly.

Having her primary weapon be broken so easily drew her attention, distracting her for a moment and drawing attention to the wound.

Yet it wasn't the time for that.

POW!

A swift kick to the jaw followed, causing her to undergo dizziness.

POW!

A swift but strong blow to the diaphragm followed it up, unable to help deal with the blunt force trauma that the attack gave her, she too lost consciousness as she ceased her sky-walking before plummeting from the sky.

Two down.

Rui wasn't sure how many he ought to take down, but he just decided to do his best. One of the annoying weaknesses of the Floating Sect was that he couldn't make predictions on all of them. Due to their current state and the fact that he was in the middle of the war, there was simply too much happening.

Yet despite all that chaos, there was one that stood above all of them.

One that drew attention to himself for the sheer spectacle that he was providing to everyone watching.

A hoard of Martial Artists, struggling to fight a single man.

Tokugawa Ieyasu. Rui watched as the man annihilated hoards of Martial Squires with a simple gesture of his hand. That was why Rui knew that there were things about him that set him out to be far stronger than he was.

The first was the most obvious enough.

('He's not using sound techniques,') Rui narrowed his eyes as he watched the man use all kinds of techniques left and right!

Furthermore, they weren't ordinary techniques either. They were all extraordinarily powerful, and not something that could be used by just anybody.

('Wait, so sound is not his Martial Path?') Rui frowned. There was only one other possibility that could justify what he was seeing.

The man used new Martial Art techniques extremely frequently. Yet Rui immediately noticed a pattern from the get-go.

The man used the same Martial Art as his opponent!

Rui's eyes widened as one clear explanation popped into his mind. One that he had jokingly considered, but now seemed to be quite real.

('Is his Martial Path…?') Rui mused with incredulity. ('Copying?!')

He didn't even know that such a thing was possible at all. After all, it wasn't every day that he ran into such a powerful Martial Art and Marital Path.

Of course, when he considered his own Martial Art, it was more frequent, of course.

Still, the very concept was something that Rui found quite strange, even if impressive.

('Martial Paths are a representative of one's uniqueness and individuality,') Rui mused. ('How is he able to copy other people's Marital Art and Paths?!')

That sounded like a bad joke, but it turned out to be real.

Yet, unfortunately, he did not have the pleasure of being able to watch Tokugawa fight entirely and fully.

He was in the middle of a way, he could not let his mind wander the way it normally did.

Yet, it was hard to miss him. Tokugawa Ieyasu's impact on the battlefield could be felt across the entire battlefield. He was so strong, that he was the sole reason that the Kaddar Task Force felt the need to send in more Martial Squires to reinforce their compatriots!

Just one man!

Rui gritted his teeth as he got the news.

The Floating Sect did not take this lying down. They sent their own guardians to reinforce the defending army of the Floating Sect.

Soon enough, the battle quickly began to pick up more steam, allowing it to become even larger and more chaotic than ever before.

The sheer amount of area that all the Martial Squires actually occupied with their battles was genuinely astounding, not even the smaller nations were enough to accommodate all these powerful Martial Artists in their air space.

The skies of the Kaddar Region quickly began lightning up now that the day grew darker and darker and dusk was arriving.

The many Martial Squires were exhausted and tired for the day. Many of them had been fighting from the very first wave, like Rui and Kane, and they were dead tired!

That was why both sides soon decided to withdraw their Martial Squires who were truly exhausted.

It was dangerous to have them continue fighting beyond this point. They already had long gone past the point of safety. Forcing them to fight beyond this measure would likely cause all of them to cause each other or themselves.

It was better for both sides to freshen up and catch a break so that they could return rejuvenated and fight a more meaningful conflict.

To a certain, it was probably more profitable to just the Martial Seniors fight and the winner gets the island, yet neither side wanted to take the perceived risk of losing their Martial Seniors, thus on the first day of war, not a single Martial Seniors rose from the Kaddar Region.

Rui was actually somewhat nervous about the matter too, that was why he couldn't keep too safe. He recalled when the matriarch of the K'ulnen Tribe just appeared out of seemingly nowhere, crossing a huge distance in a matter of seconds!

If not for Senior Ceeran saving him from her wrath that day, he would have died on the spot.

('Well, even though there were no Martial Seniors, we did the closest thing to them,') He quietly glanced at the number-one-ranked guardian of the Floating Sect, recalling his performance during the first attack with interest.

('Imitative Evolution, eh? Most interesting,')