𝑜𝓋𝗅xt.𝐎

A few hours later, the two of them were flat on the ground, exhausted.

“Man… Huff… We couldn’t land a proper strike on you even after we became Martial Apprentices!” Max complained.

“That too… Huff… He was moving slower than us… And we still couldn’t even touch him,” Mana panted. “How is that even possible?”

Rui, who was enjoying the rare pleasant weather of spring, smiled at their words. “It’s a matter of timing and placement, my cute and adorable siblings.”

“What does that even mean?” Max furrowed his eyebrows. He was much bigger than he was before, and he disliked being treated like a child. Unbeknownst to him, Rui found this part of him to be the most adorable.

“I can evade everything you throw at me because I can see it coming, and because I pick and choose the right evasion move in response,” Rui replied. “Which is why even if I delay my response and reaction time to be slower than yours, I can still handily evade you with ease for the most part. I see your attacks coming sooner than you realize, thus I make the necessary preparations to avoid them sooner.”

“Does this have anything to do with your Martial Path, big brother?” Mana asked, curious. “Your Martial Path was… adaptive evolution, correct? Are you adapting to us? Allowing you to do what you just described?”

That was a nuanced question. Mana had always been smarter of the two, though she was more tactically indecisive in combat compared to Max.

“My Martial Path is indeed adaptive evolution,” Rui nodded. “But… what I did now is not an application of Martial Art…”

The truth was that his normal and natural insight had grown to a level where he could easily see through their moves even without using predictive models of those two. This wasn’t particularly shocking or surprising. Any decent Martial Squire with enough experience would be able to do that more or less. Their movements were far less refined than what he was accustomed to fighting.

They stared at him dumbfounded.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Rui couldn’t help but feel a little proud of the admiration that they were showering him with. “When you go to the Martial Academy, you’ll meet even more amazing Martial Squires.”

“Even more amazing than you?!”

“I’m not even all that special in the Squire Realm at this very moment,” Rui shook his head, trying to downplay himself. He didn’t want them to have an over-inflated view of their brother. When they joined the Martial Academy, they would come to learn that their big brother was a bit of a celebrity in the Martial communities of the Kandrian Empire. Currently, Rui had come to find that almost all the people he had come to interact with within this community had heard about him, directly or indirectly. Fame from being the dark horse finalist of the previous Martial contest more than five years ago, fame from his win streak in the Martial Games, fame from killing a Martial Squire and achieving unprecedented power as Martial Apprentice that forced the Martial Union to re-evaluate their power grading system, and the man who had singlehandedly won the Kandrian Empire victory in the final battle of the Serevian Wars.

He had never informed them, or anyone in the Orphanage about it, mostly because he was far too self-conscious to brag so blatantly and because it did not truly matter. But now that the two of them would be going to be passing the Martial Entrance Exam that was less than a month away and attending the Martial Academy, he suspected that his reputation would be of use to them.

“Anyways, the two of you had made great progress and have become remarkably strong… remarkably quickly.” He said that with a proud smile, but inside he was absorbed deep in thought.

(‘Did these two possess the talent needed to breakthrough at the age of thirteen?’) Rui couldn’t help but wonder. In reality, he more or less knew the answer to that question. (‘…No, they did not.’)

It was unfortunate, but they were above average as far as talent went. Yet, they broke through to the Apprentice Realm earlier than Fae had. Fae herself was a renowned talent, even if she wasn’t in the genius-level territory like Fiona, Kane, and Ian, who all broke through even well before they had begun to go through puberty.

This made them very favorable prospects since they broke through nearly five years earlier than the average age to break through to Martial Apprentice.

So what had changed? They hadn’t shown dominant talents for combat from a young age, yet now they had broken through to the Apprentice Realm at the age of thirteen. Something had to have caused that.

Rui already had a strong suspicion as to what it was.

(‘The VOID algorithm must have accelerated their self-awareness since they got to witness themselves in me when I copied their movements with the predictive model, and when I showed them their strengths and shortcomings when I mildly adapted to them.’) Rui sighed.

The breakthrough to the Apprentice Realm was one born from self-discovery. Self-awareness was vitally important and decisive among other things. Rui suspected that the VOID algorithm had facilitated the self-awareness that was needed to break through to the Apprentice Realm.

(‘First Crea… Now these two…’) Rui noted.

Back when Crea had abruptly broken out of seemingly nowhere in the middle of the Martial entrance exam, he had only suspected that perhaps the VOID training had something to do with it, but now he had two more cases.

It was a lot more convincing and likely that his Martial Path could accelerate the rate of discovery of other Martial Paths of aspiring Martial Artists. That made his Martial Path and Martial Art that much more valuable.

(‘If the Martial Union found out…’) Rui shook his head.

The Martial Union was very careful about extracting techniques from Martial Artists. It had worked hard to develop a reputation for being fair.