The Martial Unity

"This is it…!" Rui murmured.

He was sitting in the Martial library of the Virodhabhasa Church., surrounded by scrolls and heaps of books.

His hair and clothes were a mess. Dark bags could be seen under his eyes. Yet, an expression of ecstasy flashed across his face as he read through a scroll in his hand.

[Earthen Fortress Blossom]

This training technique subjects the body to an acid that kills cells below a certain degree of cell wall thickness. The acid is applied to the flesh of the Martial Squire, immediately killing off all the inferior cells and tissue, leaving only the most durable cells intact. Thus, when a healing potion is consumed after a training session, the flesh that is healed and restored comes from the cell division of the surviving cells, which happen to be the strongest and most durable. Over time, this significantly increases the durability of the user, albeit requiring a long time, and is prone to diminishing returns.

It was a grade-seven technique that gave a decent boost to the toughness of the Martial Body. Nothing too shocking, but a solid technique.

Yet, in Rui's eyes, it was a hidden treasure.

There were conditions that he had for whatever defensive Martial Body he created. They also applied to all of the Martial Bodies in general.

First, whatever techniques he ended up creating for the first iteration of Project Metabody needed to be techniques that could be activated and deactivated at will. They could not be permanent passive techniques. Nor could they be techniques that were entirely active and dependent on constant attention and focus from the user.

They had to be techniques that were passive for as long as the user needed, and then entirely inactive once the user deactivated them.

This limited the kinds of techniques that he could create. Most techniques were incompatible with the toggle on/off feature that Rui needed for his Metabody techniques.

That's why even though he came across many fantastic grade-eight, nine, and even grade-ten defensive techniques, they were not suitable for what he wanted.

Of course, Rui was not capable of mastering many of these techniques in the first place. But even still, even if he could master them, he wouldn't attempt to use them for the Metabody techniques, because they were not compatible.

That was why this technique worked so well. The thickening of the cell wall was something that could be feasibly accelerated to begin and end quickly within a certain timeframe as long as he applied the right principles. He just needed to make sure he did some research, and consultation, and found the right way to cause rapid cell wall thickening.

Furthermore, he knew that autophagy and the Reaper Dew poison were elements that could significantly boost the power of the technique, making it a lot more worthy of being a Metabody technique.

After all, all the other Metabody techniques that he had created were easily grade-ten. Void Forestep allowed him to handle the likes of the Root that overwhelmed an army of Martial Squires. Weaving Blood allowed him to negate the damage inflicted by Martial Seniors as though they were nothing. Hungry Pain itself served as the stamina Metabody technique, especially when he paired it with the Final Breathing technique allowing him to last for an absurd amount of time. The most recent Hypertrophic Surge had given him offensive power beyond anything he had ever imagined.

Although it hadn't been his original intention, it turned out to be the case that all of the Metabody techniques were grade ten, thus he couldn't let the final Metabody technique not follow suit as well, could he?

It would crumble the balance of the initial iteration of the Metabody Project, something he simply could not tolerate. Thus he went all out in his to construct a technique that was of the same caliber as its peers.

That meant that he could not use the Earthen Fortress Blossom technique in its current state even if he ignored the compatibility issues. That was the reason he needed to employ the principle of the technique but nothing else, otherwise, it wouldn't be as potent as he needed it to be.

The reason that there were diminishing returns was because the body most likely did not have access to the necessary compounds and nutrients in the blood flow to build a thicker cell wall, as well as the fact that it probably could not be maintained for too long beyond a certain point.

The grade-seven technique that he was looking at intended for the technique to be a permanent passive technique, while Rui did not require a permanent passive technique, and instead was fine with a technique that had a time limit. All the other Metabody techniques barring Hungry Pain had a time limit that he definitely needed to be very aware of.

That was the reason he was confident that he could make a grade-ten defensive Metabody technique. As long as he sacrificed the permanence that he wanted to get rid of, he could easily elevate the potency of the technique and increase its ability to defend himself from people who sought to hurt him.

All he needed to do was find the right formula for increasing the potency of the boost in technique in exchange for making it short-lived, while also finding the most effective way to trigger the technique. He could trigger it using a physiological trigger like it was for the Weaving Blood technique or a psychological trigger like it was for the Hypertrophic Surge technique. Or he could even do a combination of both.

Regardless, he was quite confident of the resulting technique that he would develop as a result, he would most likely be able to keep up with his other techniques. Once that was done, he would have completed the most challenging parts of the first iteration of Project Metabody. He was on a tight schedule since he only had a little over half a year before the Martial Festival would begin.