The Martial Unity

Rui soon fell into a trance-like state as his subconscious mind absorbed his normal state as 'normal'.

Powerful gears began turning deep in his mind as the mental imprint technique by Senior Cayna took effect with full force. Both the trigger and triggered were in place, and the establishment of a causal connection between them in this new state was rapidly being formed.

Rui on the other hand became self-absorbed in his own body. The new state of his body had completely drawn his attention.

He could see what was happening to his own body. The outcome was shocking and terrifying, yet also highly exciting and promising.

His muscles grew larger step by step. This alone was one hell of a sight to witness. Every muscle group grew rounder and rounder as a result of the virus going haywire inside his own body. He could practically feel the virus consuming the myostatin reserves in his body while triggering rapid muscle growth.

He hadn't experienced pain like this since the Squire evolution breakthrough procedure. Frankly, he was shocked by the difference in his body. Out of all the Metabody techniques that he had created thus far, this one had surprised him the most. He had not expected it to be so jarring.

One moment he went from a body that was just muscular enough to have decent power, but also light enough to not be slow.

However, all of that went out of the window as he began resembling a mini-Hulk. He felt physical power that was unlike anything he had ever experienced in his life.

Yet at the same time, he felt heavier than he ever had in his entire life. He felt as though someone had strapped every muscle in his body with incredibly heavy boulders, forcing him to slug them around with every movement that he made.

It was tiring and energy-consuming. He felt his stamina slipping away like someone had poked a hole in the bottom of a bottle of water. If not for the fact that the autophagy of Hungry Pain supplied the body with vastly greater energy reserves compared to his normal base state, he would be exhausted extremely quickly.

He bore the pain and the alienation of his new state with a heavy mind. He felt as though he wouldn't like the Hypertrophic Surge technique more so than the other Metabody techniques that he had created.

However, its merits could not be ignored.

It was true that this Metabody technique offered him insane physical power. Just the sensation of his new muscles growing at the cost of the rest of his body told him that he was capable of unleashing power that was unlike anything that he was previously capable of as far as power went.

However, it came at the cost of defense, speed, and stamina. Just like the other Metabody techniques, it sacrificed the other attributes of his physicality in order to get a boost in the desired physical parameter.

('This is going to be rough.') Rui grimaced inwardly as he felt the onset of a fever coming.

His temperature rose dramatically as his body began fighting back against the viral infection in a way that is commensurate with how the human body deals with such infectious diseases.

Yet even as he began feeling delirious, he still maintained the abnormal breathing pattern that he had set as the trigger. In his current hypnotized state, he needed to make sure he didn't stray off-beat even a single time to make sure that his mind registered the trigger exactly the way he wanted to.

That was why despite his increasingly deteriorating health, he focused as much of his attention on ensuring that at the very least, the mental imprinting technique was not disrupted in any way.

It was a true test of patience as he suffered horrific pain, but also an increasingly stressed mind that did its best to deal with the failing mental conditions that came with severe infections and other things of the like.

('Ugh, I absolutely cannot allow myself to go through this every time I want to use Hypertrophic Surge.') He groaned inwardly.

If he grew mildly delirious and had a burning fever every time he had to use Hypertrophic Surge, then there were big problems at hand. One of the things that he needed to was deal with the fact that there were consequences to allowing a viral infection to infect the body.

Thankfully, he had long foreseen these outcomes. He had also naturally come up with solutions to them, but these would take time to implement. It meant that for the time being of the technique, he would need to suffer thoroughly in many ways in order to make sure that he nailed the technique.

The first session lasted six hours. He naturally broke out of the hypnotic state himself. He quickly injected his body with some myostatin to quickly stabilize his situation and return his body to its original state.

"Huff… Huff…." He panted heavily, wiping away his sweat-drenched body.

If a single trigger establishment session took this much of a toll, then it meant that he was in for truly rough times if he wanted to succeed in his goal.

Yet by the time Rui had finished recovering, all signs of dissatisfaction had all but gone. Hypertrophic Surge was most certainly a very powerful technique. Rui couldn't wait to perfect it and get rid of all the minor issues so that he could amplify his raw power to the very pinnacle of what the technique could offer and begin training in that form so that he could learn to exercise the devastating raw power that Hypertrophic Surge supplied him with. He couldn't wait to try out techniques like Flowing Canon and Transverse Resonance.

Both those techniques were extremely powerful even when they were used ordinarily, however, just how much would he be able to accomplish when they were amplified with Hypertrophic Surge, increasing their physical power much greater than their norm?